Robyn's Blog

At the request of GSG reader Chris, I am teaching a free green smoothie demo/clinic in Salt Lake City on Apr. 13, at 10 a.m. I will sign books and answer questions afterward, from 11:00 to 11:30.

Location: RS room in LDS Church at:

13th So. Wasatch Blvd. (2500 E.), on the SW corner of the intersection, Salt Lake City

It will be fun and informational, with green smoothie tasting of course! I can send you a flier to send to your friends, if you are one of the first 25 to RSVP here on the blog—just state how many you’re coming with. (That’s all the room Chris has, since she has 60 coming already.)

See you there!

The “Renegade Lunch Lady” Chef Ann Cooper went to Washington, D.C. to investigate our first lady’s agenda. She ripped a hole in Michelle Obama’s “feel-good” childhood-obesity legislation, that has no funding and no policy “teeth.” I figured as much. Great platform, Mrs. Obama. Let’s make it reach to families and schools:

Let’s get vending machines out of the schools even if they create revenues (at the expense of our children’s health). Let’s get processed food out of school lunches. Let’s not cut funding and class time for physical education. Let’s educate people about real nutrition, not curriculum funded by big businesses like meat and dairy and processed food conglomerates.

Those are the things we need, not feel-good irrelevancies like providing milk and juice as options, or replacing potato chips with low-fat potato chips, or frying the french fries in a different oil. (Someone here in Utah, where nutrition initiatives have always failed in our legislature, called me this year to ask if I’d get behind a school-lunch initiative that was baby pablum like that.)

Chef Ann Cooper’s sites are here:

Thelunchbox.org
Lunchlessons.org

Enjoy her sites—I love this lady and her enthusiastic, tireless mission. She said re-training long-time lunch ladies, towards better nutrition, is one of her most difficult tasks. We are certainly, the vast majority of us, deeply and emotionally entrenched and invested in the destructive food habits of our generation.

I am personally not untouched by the way our culture is sucking our kids into a no-win situation where more than half our kids finish junior high school overweight. Since my divorce 18 months ago, despite the fact that I have NEVER purchased school lunch for any of my children, one of my own children has become overweight. I do not provide junk food in my home, and serve only whole plant foods. But just eating in her father’s home some of the time, 1 of my 4 children has gained significant weight.

It is an issue that is very difficult to discuss with a child. Any suggestions are welcome.

But one study found that being overweight is a bigger life stressor for a child than having cancer is. Watching my own daughter, I cannot overestimate the social impact on her own life. I am doing all I can do, including begging her father to make efforts on his side, but the good news is that she has the experience and knowledge to make a change in her choices, when she decides the physical/social/emotional cost is too high.

We do more than physical harm to children allowing them to become overweight. The whole culture must be educated and retrained back to the basics our ancestors took for granted.

If more and more people support whole, locally grown, organic, and raw plant foods, we will turn the health care debacle around. Watch this blog this week for my thoughts on ObamaCare.

In Anaheim (I know! I still haven’t told you about the handful of cool products I found—but I will! And I bought some of them for you!) . . .

I heard the coolest talk by Chef Ann Cooper, the “Renegade Lunch Lady.”

She manages 30,000 kids’ lunches in the Boulder, Colorado area. Her goal is to transform children’s diets from the hot mess of processed food it is now, to a nourishing whole-food meal, one school lunch at a time. She’s my hero.

The U.S. government pays $2.68 for a child’s school lunch. Two thirds of that, Cooper says, goes to payroll, leaving just a dollar to feed each child! She wants you to go to her site, thelunchbox.org and write your elected officials to ask for an extra dollar to feed kids good nutrition, in addition to other government initiatives.

She told us to go out into ExpoWest and find real nutrition. (Good luck! Like I said, 1 in 100 “organic” or “natural” choice is worth your money.) Instead of (her voices changed to a sarcastic tone) organic gummy bears. (I love this lady. Wasn’t that just what I was telling you last week? Don’t waste your limited dollars on organic junk food!)

She said, about school lunches:

“Just say NO to refined flour. To soda, candy, and chips. To antibiotics and hormones. To chemicals and preservatives.

“Just say yes to plum tastings, to a salad bar in every school, to cutting sodium levels in half, to hummus tastings.”

She helps the schools figure out ways to connect children to their food sources. Growing food in the school yard. Trying new, whole foods they’ve never been exposed to, with fun tastings—with all the varied colors, textures, and tastes.

She says the USDA LOVES food for school lunches that haven’t been touched by human hands. School lunches nationwide are chicken nuggets, corn dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches. And we wonder why 70% of America is overweight. In the next two years, MILLIONS of Americans will become overweight. We have to stop the trend NOW.

What is needed, Chef Ann says, is “fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains, and clean proteins.” Amen, sister.

She says, “Vote with your purchasing!”

Here’s her PowerPoint presentation she showed us, which is fantastic:

http://www.chefann.com/html/about-chef-ann/audio-video.html

So I told you last summer I was doing a Vitamin D experiment and that I’d report back. After a summer in the sun playing tennis and running, I was tanned and probably as high in Vitamin D as I would get in a year.

I get a moderate amount of sun (while trying to avoid being burned) because (a) I love playing sports outside and (b) I think the sun helps us avoid cancer, have strong bones, and a strong immune system, among other things. I took the high-accuracy Vitamin D blood test and scored quite high, a 79. I asked my LNP who interprets these test results for a grade like you’d get in school, for that score, since I can’t find a chart. She gave me a B+. She said many people have extremely low scores, like 5 or 10.

So the next part of my experiment was to take Vita D (pill form) through the winter. I was out of the sun the entire 8 months except for a few sunny days in Peru, and a day or two of spring skiing lately. I had never taken Vita D in my life, and I hadn’t taken a vitamin supplement of any kind for years.

So I took 3,000 IU Vitamin D daily, for 8 months (a very conservative amount). My score was a 61 when I went back for the test last week.

So my Vitamin D level fell–a lot–because the synthetic version does not help me anywhere near as well (if at all) as the natural way (sunshine) does.

This is certainly in keeping with my assumption, that natural ways to get vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, enzymes–are superior and are utilized much more efficiently and effectively by the body.

I wonder about lots of things. First, should I take 5,000 IU instead? (Was my dose too low?) I can’t answer that based on this experiment, and you can overdose on Vita D. I’m going to take 5,000 IU next winter. Second, how do I know that my level of 61 isn’t the exact same it would be if I didn’t supplement? I can’t know that.

What I do know is that the sun gave me a close-to-optimal amount of Vita D.

I have more to say about Expo West, but today I’ll write you some of a text exchange I’m having right now with my good friend Matthew F., who loves science and despises religion. I’ll leave out the unrelated parts, like about what day we’re going to take our kids skiing this week:

MF: Did you see my email about the chemical composition of apples? I always hated apples and I knew they were made of chemicals! Now that I know they’re made of chemicals, I can safely remove them from my diet! Whew!

GSG: Just because there are “chemical” compounds in natural foods (hello, EVERYTHING is on the periodic chart) doesn’t mean that eating synthetic chemicals is a good idea.

MF: You said chemicals, not SYNTHETIC chemicals. Sh**! Where’s an apple?

GSG: If you want to eat chemicals that are isolated and bathed in petroleum products and preserved in formaldehyde, go for it! (Num num.) Me, I’m eating your apple.

MF: You make is sound like all synthetic chemicals are bad and I agree that some are, but some natural things are bad for you too. There is so much hype and misconceptions about good nutrition. We have to not be married to our preferences and our “doctors” who don’t use the scientific method.

GSG: I’m not married to any acupuncturists or anything but I think I have a strong tendency based on a lot of evidence to eat whole foods instead of refined ones. The scientific method has been applied pretty well in that arena. And the same logic follows that hundreds of synergistic and perfect combinations of elements in an apple that science doesn’t even understand yet are better for me than a man-made pill with a synthetic, isolated vitamin in it.

Have you replaced God with science? What if God made perfect foods and science can’t and never will? What if science is just imperfect humans mucking around trying to make sense of complexity? Science is good but often fatally flawed. Not all science is equal. Methods are more sophisticated now but motivations are more suspect. Precious little “objective” science is left since the “scientific method” was originally conceived in all its idealism.

MF: What about apple trees that are fed water with pesticides in it, or a green smoothie girl who has the bad kind of synthetic chemicals in the plants in her smoothies?

GSG: Chemicals are everywhere. But less of them is better.

MF: Those people get colon cancer while the bastard who eats hamburgers lives to be 82.

GSG: Not usually. According to science more chemicals = more cancer, in general. Says a huge and growing pile of evidence.

MF: Synthetic ones, you mean.

GSG: That’s usually what people are referring to when they say “chemicals.” If you don’t see the diff between an apple and a can of Sprite (they’re both sugar, right?) we have a problem. My kid’s pediatrician said there was no diff.

MF: What IS the diff between sugar found in Sprite and sugar found in an apple? We need it for energy and brain function–so where does sugar in Sprite come from?

GSG: It’s massively chemically altered, concentrated, removed from other elements that make it a nutritious food. Like fiber. Like hundreds of micronutrients. Like dozens of types of enzymes.

Dallas friends, I have a flyer for the free clinic/demo I’m doing in Colleyville on Sat., Apr. 10 at 10 a.m.

If you want a PDF of it to promote to your group, just email us at support123@greensmoothiegirl.com.

It’s at Market Street (grocery store), 5605 Colleyville Blvd. See you there! Thanks Pamalee and Joni for getting this going!

So Tif and I got back this week from Expo West in Anaheim, one of the biggest trade shows in the U.S. After three days, we were still seeing booths we hadn’t been to before. Everything and anything you can find in a health food store. A lot of stuff you’d find in the “organic” or “natural” section of a regular grocery store, or Costco, too.

This is my main reaction to the show. At the risk of sounding like a snob, most of what is flying under the banner of “natural” and “organic” is just expensive junk food. A lot of refined food, soy products, stuff with a healthy ingredient or two and a bunch of bad ingredients.

Tif works for me but isn’t a foodie or a health nut. So she’d tell me something tasted wonderful (oh, the samples are endless!) and then she’d ask, “Is this good for me?”

More often than not, I’d say, “On a scale of 1 to 10, the regular stuff is a 1 and this is a 2.”

One of the worst examples: an “all-natural” cake mix. The dude handing out samples of the cutest little cupcakes and brownies. I said no thanks, and he protested: “But everything in this is what you’d use to make it from scratch at home!” (He obviously doesn’t know me.)

I walked over and read the ingredients on the box. The first two were: wheat flour, cane sugar.

Tif said, “But it’s WHEAT flour!” That just means white flour–bran and germ stripped away, nothing but nutrition-free endosperm (and some chemical vitamins added). If it doesn’t say “whole-wheat flour,” it’s white flour. If the box doesn’t say “100% whole grain,” it’s not (and usually the first ingredient is, in fact, white flour–because it’s people who don’t know better who buy stuff with labels that say “includes whole grains.” You can legally put a pinch of whole wheat in the recipe and tout it as INCLUDING whole grains.)

This is what I call “feel good” health food. It’s not good for you. It just makes you feel better about your food dollars. At the end of the day, it’s still just a bunch of crap in boxes and cans and packages.

I have found just the very fewest of exceptions and I’ll be talking about them in the coming weeks. Seriously. Like 1 in 500 booths at that show are offering anything worth your time and money.

Just because white flour is organic doesn’t make it nutritious. Just because the sugar is organic doesn’t make it good for you. Just because it’s made of soy doesn’t make it non-fattening.

One of my favorite subjects (I might write a whole book) is how to get the kids or spouse on board, eating whole foods.

I get notified via Google Alerts daily about what people are saying about GSG on the web. I don’t usually go into most of them, but here’s one today I think is pretty great called When Green Smoothie Girl Meets Red Meat Boy:

http://www.sheddingit.com/2010/03/18/marriage-relationships-eating-habits/

Her 10 tips include

10. Make two versions of meals
9. Make green smoothies purple with berries
8. Don’t be a martyr
7. Don’t be a bitch
6. Go grocery shopping together
5. Give in where it doesn’t matter
4. Find out the limits
3. Share your knowledge
2. Don’t be a soup Nazi
1. Have him watch Food, Inc.

How do you take your bee pollen?

Just a warning: today’s blog has nothing to do with nutrition. It’s just a funny story about something that happened in the Long Beach airport on the way home from Anaheim yesterday.

So Tiffani and I got there almost 3 hours before our flight was to leave. We’d been at a raw restaurant with lots of people from the show, raw foodie and earthy crunchy friends with dreadlocks and guitars, the night before, till late. And we’d been talking to people for 3 days straight. My vendors were there. My best friend and her parents from San Fran. One of my favorite readers, Tonya. A few of my former university students who came to hang out with me. A million people trying to get us to try their stuff. Skinny Bitch, the author. Heather Mills, the richest ex-wife in history. The Biggest Loser (who looks to have gained a few kilos). The whole show was a trip!

Point is, we were both in need of a cat nap.

So we saw these comfy chairs with no arm rests between them and we sprawled out. Each of us was taking up two seats. No big deal, in a room full of 250 chairs and about 10 people. Right? Well, you’d think.

A lady and her husband walked up. She had that frown-lined face that speaks of a lifetime of conflict and bitterness. She demanded: “ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE UP THAT WHOLE SPACE YOURSELVES?”

I said we were going to take a little nap. Tif pointed out that there were many chairs, all of them comfy, with hardly anyone in the waiting area. The lady became angry and demanded that we give her the seats. I said, very quietly to Tif, “I don’t think we should do something just because a bully wants us to.”

So Frowny Lady stormed over to a security guard. The guard came over with a triumphant Frowny and asked us, “Do you need that space?” We said yes, and the guard said to the lady, “Well I can’t MAKE them move,” and walked away.

At this point, I was finding the whole thing really amusing and I was fighting a case of the giggles. You know, the kind that you keep trying to suppress—you cover your mouth, you clamp your lips together—but it just going to come out no matter what! I think people who see a room full of hundreds of chairs and want the ONE and ONLY THE ONE someone else has—well, it seemed like great comedy at the time.

So an even funnier thing happened. Frowny stomped over and sat in MY seat, right up against me. She plopped down really hard, with a big “UMPH!” sound, to be extra obnoxious. Wiggled her fanny around to really settle in. Not in the seat next to me, mind you, but IN MY SEAT WITH ME.

Every point of the side of her body was in total contact with mine.

Well, here’s the thing. I love to defuse situations like that by doing what I call THE OPPOSITE. The opposite of what most people would do. The opposite of what is expected. The opposite of instinct.

When I make a driving error and someone flips me off, I employ THE OPPOSITE. I wave enthusiastically as if the person giving me The Bird is a close friend I am thrilled to reconnect with, on the road. (Warning: your children will be mortified by this.) (Tip: do this while thinking of someone you would truly love to see in the other car.)

The person who made the obscene gesture is completely taken off guard. At first they are startled and think (watch carefully and you can see this thought register on their face), “Oh no! I just flipped off a friend!”

Then they see they really don’t KNOW me, and they become very annoyed, because they’ve failed in their goal to make me angry. Instead I’m obviously just stupid in my giddiness to say hello, grinning ear-to-ear.

Back to the airport story. Doing THE OPPOSITE came in handy.

I imagined her being my grandma, whom I like very much. I snuggled into her—burrowed, really—and put my head on her shoulder, closed my eyes. Took a long, leisurely breath. A contented sigh, really. This was going to be an even better nap than I’d get stretched out! Perfect!

This did not, however, go over big. She said:
“DON’T. F’ING. TOUCH. ME.”

Tiffani, whose jaw had been hanging open ever since I decided to enjoy my lovely, soft, Frowny pillow, finally spoke, indignantly:

“But you’re touching HER!”

Well, Frowny got up and stormed off. Everyone in the room laughed so hard, and so long, that very frankly the whole event was worth the stress. Laughter is like raw food, and oxygen—it’s just GOOD FOR YOU!

One woman, an hour later, came over and cozied up to me IN MY CHAIR just like Frowny had, and then cracked up and went back to her chair. One guy couldn’t stop laughing for about 20 minutes. Other people showed up, and they were told the story, and everyone got to enjoy it over and over.

It was great fun. Try it sometime. Do THE OPPOSITE. Anger is toxic. It’s really fun to defuse it.

My friend Laura once said, “Everything that happens is good. Either it works out well, or it makes a great story.” Hope you enjoyed mine.