Robyn's Blog

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: Is chocolate actually good for me? Will you do a good/better/best on all the carob and chocolate options? I’m craving chocolate after having a baby and want to know what’s best.

Answer: It’s a confusing subject because so many products have been made from cacao, the seed of the fruit, the whole food, that is the source for “chocolate.” (Most processed chocolate products manufactured by candy companies have precious little cacao in them, if any—they are often chocolate-FLAVORED products.)

Chocolate has been given a lot of attention lately because of some of its nutritional properties. It’s tempting to WANT to see it as a cure-all. Why?

Because it has compounds in it that make us (myself included) crave it. In fact, just writing this, I had to take a break to find chocolate, because I was daydreaming about it. There’s a built-in desire to call chocolate a health food.

No, I’m not about to tell you to avoid chocolate. (Whew!) Unprocessed dark chocolate is a very complex food with hundreds of chemical compounds, many of which are very beneficial nutritionally.

Those who market it tout its ORAC score (a cumulative antioxidant score) of over 13,000, higher than virtually any other food, even green tea and acai berries. Dark chocolate contains heart-healthy, cancer-preventing nutrients linked to helpful blood thinning, protection against diabetes, mental alertness, even weight loss. It’s high in minerals as well.

(A caveat, however: those same nutrients can be found in other, lower calorie and lower fat, raw plant foods that cost less than $1/lb. And along with the healthy dark chocolate usually comes lots of fat and sugar, and usually quite a bit of processing that loses some of the health benefits.)

If you do eat chocolate, find cacao content at 60% or above. If you’re accustomed to processed “chocolate,” you may barely recognize the dark, bitter, earthy taste of the whole food.

Cacao is the seed of the fruit, the whole food, that chocolate comes from (before it is typically and often processed to a nearly unrecognizable form). Cacao is also called cocoa beans or nuts or seeds. Dried cocoa beans are called cocoa nibs.

A very aggressive network marketing company sells little daily bites of chocolate—not organic, not raw, but high in cacao and sweetened fairly naturally—that calculate to be about $60/lb.

That is correct, $60/lb. And they’re selling it by the UPS truckload—even though superior products cost 1/6th that amount in retail outlets. The only good thing I have to say about that is that they’re feeding you about the right amount, daily: a small nugget of dark chocolate. These products are still very high in fat and some type of concentrated sweetener, so more is not better.

And if you’re eating lots of expensive dark chocolate and can’t afford a whole-foods pantry, please re-evaluate your spending decisions.

If you’re going to eat chocolate, preferably eat organic, fair traded, high cacao-content (60% or higher), naturally sweetened (agave, maple syrup, stevia, etc. rather than cane sugar). I do not really believe any labeling of chocolate products as “raw.”

First, there has to be some processing; and second, since virtually all chocolate is coming out of third-world countries, policing that is difficult at best and impossible at worst. (Same issue we’ve been discussing with agave.)

Carob is a chocolate “wannabe” that does not stimulate the dopamine receptors in the brain like chocolate does. It doesn’t contain natural stimulants theobromine and caffeine like chocolate does, which may cause people to feel unwell. If you like the flavor of carob, that’s possibly your “best” option in the good/better/best analysis below.

But most people seek chocolate for a reason: it has the feel-good amino acid tryptophan which makes the brain transmitter serotonin that depressed people lack. In short, chocolate makes us happy.

So here it is:

Good: dark chocolate, naturally sweetened (no HFCS or other refined sugars)

Better: Dark chocolate (60% cacao or better, 80% if that’s not too dark for you). Free traded, organic, naturally sweetened bars are about $10-15/lb. at health food stores. Or make your own recipes using non-alkalized, unsweetened cocoa powder.

Best: make your own recipes (Ch. 11 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods, or other raw-food recipes) with raw cacao nibs.

Use sweeteners like stevia, maple syrup, raw agave. Use virgin coconut oil or avocadoes for the fat. Or skip chocolate altogether and use CAROB if you like the taste of it better.

In terms of the products you can purchase, the ORAC scores tell us this:

Good: non-alkalized (non-Dutched) unsweetened cocoa powder

Better: Dark chocolate, roasted cacao powder

Best: Raw cacao powder or raw cacao nibs

An email I got this month that I appreciate and want to share:

Robyn,

I wanted to share a Mother’s Day gift idea I came up with using your recipe books.

My husband and I are watching our finances right now and we were trying to come up with a way to do something special for our mothers. One lives an 8-hour drive away, the other lives a 22-hour drive away, so it’s difficult to find inexpensive ways to celebrate the day. In addition, my father’s birthday is coming just a week after Mother’s Day! Talk about expensive!

So, with some creativity and your GreenSmoothie.com resources, I put together some fun gifts. I made the “Gooey Chewy Caramel Corn,” “Chia Snowballs” and “Candy Bar Fudge.” I put them in tupperware containers, wrote out the respective recipes on purple index cards and taped them to the containers, put a bow around the containers, included a nice card and a $5 book I purchased for each person. I shipped them yesterday (USPS flat-rate boxes made this affordable–the fudge is HEAVY!) and cannot wait to hear how they like them. For three gifts, we spent a total of $60, including shipping!

Thanks to your wonderful Holiday Favorites recipe book, my mother, mother-in-law and father will be receiving gifts they will actually like, be exposed to healthy food that tastes GREAT … and my husband and I got away with spending very little!

I also wanted to make a quick comment regarding this whole Mercola debate. I have been following Mercola for about 9 years. He’s opened my eyes to many things and I trust him as a valuable health resource. If I have questions as to whether something is truly healthy, I check his site. However, when I read his site and emails, I get nervous, anxious, and a “there’s no way I can do this” feeling. The frustrated perfectionist in me can’t handle hearing about the 101 things I need to change on a daily basis. I’m sorry, but I cannot invest a few hundred dollars in changing out my doorknobs so they hold on to less germs!

Your program, website and emails, on the other hand, give instruction that is do-able and affordable. I actually get motivated and encouraged just looking at your website (rather than anxious and depressed!).

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for providing the service and information you do. I continue to spread the word about your site and program.

Thank you!
Melodie

Thanks everyone who came to my class in Orem last night! It was great fun and I enjoyed meeting you. Those of you who drove from Idaho, Moroni, Fairview . . . I’m awed, hope it was worth your drive to feel the energy of people like you who want a fresh start and good ideas for a healthy life.

Thanks Susan W. for putting it on—I know it’s a lot of work. The Herb Shop is where I got my start. Locals, please support this wonderful family-owned business run with lots of integrity and knowledge.

Photos: here’s Shelem being offered a plate of kale and chard from my garden. Here are my two wonderful green smoothie guys/girls showing how easy it is to get 15 servings of raw greens and fruit in your diet daily, with 10 minutes in the kitchen. Thanks to my good friends Tif and Dave for the help!

Love y’all, love your support of my mission, love that you bring your friends because you care about their health. Hope to come to your city soon too.

My friend Dale Allred has started a CSA (community-supported agriculture) called Jacob’s Cove in Orem, Utah and has expanded capacity, 200 more shares now available. A small 1 adult share is 5 to 7 pounds each week for 3 months (13 weeks).

Small share (1 adult) $208
Medium share (2 adult) $390
Large share (4 adult) $715

Those who get a share now will have first rights to the year-round production. Otherwise there won’t be more shares until next summer (and that will be dependent on expansion).

Deliveries begin end of June or early July. I really like that if you go out of town, you can opt out that week and they’ll tack that delivery onto the end–no lost produce (I did not have the option in the other CSA I was in).

The Allreds are serious about taking back our food. One of the very best things you can do (besides planting your own garden) is support local organic agriculture. They are growing 60 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, all colors of bell peppers, cucumbers, melons, squash, beans, peas, beets, carrots, eggplant and–he asked me what I wanted since my readers will be key in supporting his CSA–TONS of varieties of greens!

Please go here to get your share:

http://www.heritageharvest.net/

I’m doing the green smoothie show in Idaho Falls next Thursday, June 3, so please let your friends who live there know:

7 p.m. at the public library (457 W. Broadway)

Please come to leave energized (or re-energized, if you’re a longtime health nut) to eat right using methods that are inexpensive, fast, and give you more energy than they take to accomplish! RSVP here:

http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/about/idahofalls/

Also don’t forget this week, locals in Utah Valley, the same class at The Herb Shop in Orem, Thursday May 27, 7 p.m. in Orem. RSVP here:

http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/about/herbshop

So I’m here in Las Vegas, where I spent the weekend with my girlfriends. We
did the grueling Angel’s Landing hike at Zion’s and had all kinds of fun in
the sunshine including a lot of running outside, and trawling the outlet
malls.

So I’ve pretty much HAD IT with shopping, because my patience for that
activity is limited. I’m waiting it out in the car, reading Eat Pray Love
while Kristi and Jamie keep going. And GSG reader Bev comes up to the
window, and says, “ARE YOU ROBYN?!”

She said she’s read my books, made some of my recipes that morning, and just had a big fight with her teenage daughter who said, “Mom!! She’s in her
PRIVATE CAR, leave her alone–don’t even THINK about walking up to her!”

And Bev said, “No, she’s GreenSmoothieGirl; she WANTS us to talk to her!”

Bev is right. (Moms are always right.)

If you see me at Costco or in the airport or something, please talk to me! I
do not bite. Maybe I will show you the cooler full of green smoothies in the
back of my car. Like I did with Bev. And won’t THAT be a bonding moment.

Bev and I might hook up again and I’ll do a green smoothie class in Las
Vegas soon. Anybody who knows a health food store that wants to host it, let
me know! And maybe I’ll run over to Reno that same week and do another show there.

If you’ve read my books, you know there are two foods I never eat and I don’t let my kids eat either. We are virtually 100% about good nutrition at home, but at a party or in a restaurant, we make good choices but aren’t perfect.

The two “over my dead body” foods, though:

One, processed meat. (Bacon, sausage, hot dogs, salami, deli/luncheon meat.) Two, soft drinks.

Here’s a meta-study (my favorite kind–a review of lots of different research studies, in this case almost 1,600 pieces of research) showing how damaging processed meat is to our health:

http://health.yahoo.com/news/reuters/us_heart_meat.html

Nearly 20 years ago, I read a study examining childhood cancers. Kids who developed cancer had no risk factors in common except a prevalance of high (11 or more monthly) hot dog consumption. I have no idea why I remember that–11 hot dogs a month–but I do. Then my best friend worked for Bain & Co., out of college, and one of her clients was a meat-packing plant. After working inside that business, she said to me, “Promise me that you and any offspring you have will never eat a hot dog. You would not believe how disgusting all the ingredients of that product are.”

Everything I’ve read since then confirms those original seeds planted in my brain that hot dogs are . . . well, nauseating. Get the vegan kind at the health food store if your family likes hot dogs.

That’s why you’ve heard them called “cancer sticks”–they are not just full of salt, but also nitrates and nitrites, which are well documented to be highly carcinogenic.

I’ve had ONE bite of a hot dog in the past 20 years. That was when I was on national television with two cameras and 20 teenagers chanting, “EAT. IT! EAT. IT!”

You know I’m here to nurture you towards better nutrition without being radical. But some “foods” really don’t qualify as such and I ask you to consider a full-on ban in your home of processed meats.

As if we haven’t done this subject to death.

From the consensus of many people commenting on my blog about Mercola coming out against agave, it looks to be about 50/50. People who’ve had a positive experience with that product, versus people who’ve had a negative experience. The only ways I can explain this are (a) we are all individuals, with varying reactions to the same foods, and (b) wide variability in sources.

I went to visit my friend Francine last week and grilled her more. She owns a thriving female hormone clinic called Wellnique in Orem, Utah, specializing in bio-identical hormones. (This keeps women off synthetics like Cytomel and Synthroid, which is a very good thing.) She is a licensed nurse practitioner (requiring an M.S.) and nutritionist. Here is the gist of our conversation:

Robyn: “Francine, you’ve told me that you have Type II diabetics in remission from making no other changes in diet besides switching from sugar to agave. You know there’s a lot of debate right now about various types of agave, and inferior suppliers, and whether agave really has less blood sugar impact.”

Francine: “I absolutely have had amazing results with GOOD agave. When my patients have used the cheap stuff, they gain weight. But with the Xagave brand, which is raw and organic, and they are very involved in their sourcing, I have had tremendous success.

“I often read studies about various things and try them in my clinical practice. If I don’t get the results in my patients that studies guarantee, I’m not going to use it.

“For instance, some studies show that alpha lipoic acid supplementation combats visceral (belly) fat. But I have yet to see any evidence of that in my patients. So I don’t recommend it any more. I want the science AND the positive results in my patients.”

Let me be clear here (Robyn writing): sugars impact your blood sugar, period. Organic and raw from a reputable company like Madhava, GloryBee, Xagave are the ONLY forms of agave I would suggest, and use them sparingly. Let greens and vegetables be the staples of your diet.

Use fruits/dates for the most part when you want sweets. Consider the concentrated sweeteners if you choose not to give up “treats” that remind you of your comfort foods—and not every day. I eat a treat only on occasion after a very healthy (raw or mostly raw, often probiotic-rich) meal.

If you have 12 Steps to Whole Foods (digital download, manual, or Complete Course), a few readers have pointed out an error in a recipe:

In the Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies in Chapter 11, I inadvertently omitted

1 1/2 cups of water.

Please write that into the recipe on p. 216. Add it after the coconut oil/Sucanat.

By the way, when I tested the recipe yesterday to ascertain what the missing liquid should be, I also substituted unprocessed, organic coconut sugar for the Sucanat. It has a lower glycemic index score. (It’s 35 compared to honey and cane sugar’s 55 to 68. Sucanat is raw cane sugar.)

In the chocolate chip zucchini cookie recipe, I augment the sweetener with stevia to keep sugar minimal but cookies sweet.

Please forgive me for the error!

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: You say if we drink a quart of green smoothie daily for $2.50 according to your calculations, that 12-15 servings of raw greens and fruit just might save us money on medical bills, thereby justifying the expense.

Answer: Thanks for this. I would like to know from anyone reading this, how much are your medical bills, annually or monthly?

I don’t have any medical bills so I honestly don’t know. I purchased medical insurance for myself after my divorce a year and a half ago, but I haven’t used it.

My son did require an x-ray and MRI recently when he threw out his pitching arm. (It was a rotator cuff sprain and bone bruise on the growth plate in the shoulder—he is out for 3-6 weeks.) And about 8 years ago my daughter was pushed off a slide and broke her arm. Besides that, we don’t go to doctors since massively changing our diet 15 years ago.

If your medical bills are low or nonexistent, because of lifestyle, say that please.

Those of you who know someone living the standard American lifestyle and diet, please let us know—what does it cost?

I am not asking about what medical care is for special circumstances. For instance, medical bills are $1 million annually for my friend with a hemophiliac son.

Just wondering what Americans are paying–out of pocket plus insurance.