Green For Life by Victoria Boutenko

Boutenko, a long-time raw foodist, felt there was a missing link in her family’s nutrition, even as good as it was (they eliminated many chronic diseases from their lives when they went all raw 15 years ago). She undertook to study the diet of primates, since humans share 99.4% of their DNA with them. Of course, what she found is that they eat copiously of GREENS, a wide variety of them.

Boutenko asks the reader to undertake an experiment: to chew a mouthful of greens, and spit it out right before swallowing. You’ll find it is simply torn up, not creamed and ready for digestion like it needs to be. This is because over several generations of eating increasingly more refined foods, the human body has adapted by developing ever-narrower palates. We no longer chew food to the extent that we need to to extract nutrition from denser foods like raw green vegetables, like primates with wide palates do. The BlendTec Total Blender does that breakdown for you, in the green smoothie: all you have to do is “chew” as you drink it, to create saliva for digestion.

Greens like kale, collards, mustard greens, arugula, turnip greens, celery, spinach, dandelion greens, beet greens, and chard don’t end up on too many salad plates. They’re a regular feature in my green smoothies every day. And, you don’t have to drizzle them with fattening, chemical-laden salad dressings to get them down, in a smoothie.

Best of all, in addition to the superior nutrition of dark leafy greens, Boutenko points out that kale fiber, for instance, can remove many times its own weight in toxins from the body. She undertook to study a group of 30 people ranging from the morbidly obese in wheelchairs to people who already ate a fairly healthful diet: every one of the 30 reported excellent improvements in health, some of them very dramatic. Many said they just wished they had more than a quart a day! The top three health benefits were better digestion/elimination, more energy, and weight loss.

The China Study by Colin T. Campbell, PhD (also see www.thechinastudy.com)

Colin Campbell is a professor of nutrition at Cornell University and has sat on the highest nutrition governing boards in the U.S. He is the son of a cattle rancher and believed, in his early nutrition research, that he would find LACK OF PROTEIN to be the cause of childhood liver cancer in the Phillipines.

He found just the opposite: the wealthier children with good access to meat/milk were dying of liver cancer, not the poor children who could afford only plant food. Time and again, Campbell and many other researchers discovered the same results: that in animals and humans, high consumption of animal protein causes all the modern Western diseases, including cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and much more.

The rodent studies are fascinating: two groups of mice are put on 5% animal protein pellets (casein, from milk) and 20% animal protein pellets, respectively. That parallels an almost-vegan diet versus the typical American diet. At the typical rodent lifespan, the 5% group were lean and healthy and the 20% group were full of cancerous tumors and many were dead (all would die early).

Even more fascinating is how the researchers could SWITCH the groups’ diets. Lean, healthy rodents develop tumors and die when placed on the 20% animal protein diet, and formerly cancerous rodents lose weight, tumors are eliminated, and they live and thrive when placed on the 5% animal protein diet. These studies were duplicated with the same results, by other researchers all over the globe.

Campbell went on to conduct the largest, most longitudinal, most comprehensive nutrition study in human beings, in history, yielding hundreds of statistically significant correlations. He has been studying 360,000 people in China for about 30 years now. Whether or not you completely eliminate animal foods from your diet, this book is so compelling that you will be motivated to make a commitment to a plant-based diet and share the message with others.

How to Raise a Healthy Child In Spite Of Your Doctor by Robert Mendelssohn, M.D.

Dr. Mendelssohn led a research hospital in Chicago until he became so disgusted and disenchanted with medical practices that he wrote this book that every parent should read to understand why it’s so critical to not put blind faith in medicine. Some of the things I recall most vividly is how he challenged the escalating trend of tonsils and adenoids being taken out of young boys, only to find that truly, the surgery was unnecessary and risky for the patients but needed to fill quotas for medical residents’ requirements.

I learned from Dr. M that a fever is a natural, healthy way for the body to fight infection, and that fever should not be “fought” or drugged. He put my mind at ease with statistics reassuring me that an out-of-control fever is so rare as to be something I needn’t worry about. This book is a good start towards realizing that the doctor isn’t God: a good first step down a road to a mother becoming a healer in the home.

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

This book has tons of great quotes and data from other books on nutrition. It has a lot of good recipes, and great sections on many nutritional principles. It’s worth owning. But let me say that she’s dead wrong in her adoration of meat and dairy (though at least she says to naturally ferment them). So read the good stuff, especially the advice to soak grains before cooking to neutralize phytates in grains that leach minerals from your body.

The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash

The definitive garden how-to, with hundreds of recipes on how to use each of those garden vegetables—I use this recipe book constantly, except when someone borrows it, falls in love with it, and doesn’t return it!

More on gardening: for how to grow a winter garden even outdoors in a cold climate, I like The Four Seasons Harvest by Eliot Coleman and the very best way to grow a garden, maximizing space and minimizing work, Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.

Dr. Jensen’s Guide to Better Bowel Care: A Complete Program for Tissue Cleansing through Bowel Management by Bernard Jensen

Dr. Jensen lived to be 93 years old and has long been the pre-eminent expert on bowel care. His massive research indicates that the average American has 10 lbs. of impacted fecal material (mucoid plaque) rotting in the gastrointestinal tract. His photos of many decades of research of what comes out of people who cleanse is disgusting, yes—but more disgusting to have it inside you and never get it out! It’s a disease waiting to happen. The photos will be motivation to you to undertake a serious colon cleanse.

The Sugar Blues by William Dufty

Written in the 1950’s in a very provocative and engaging style, this seminal book is your chance to get up the motivation to kick the sugar habit. As many nutrition authors have stated, sugar is killing us. And it’s more addictive than cocaine. (I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I?) Give your teenager twenty bucks to read it.

Chew on This by Eric Schlosser

My 11- and 13-year old kids loved this best-selling expose and never wanted to set foot in a fast-food establishment again. Okay, they never set foot in fast-food establishments anyway, except to make a bathroom stop on a trip. But they still tell stories from the book despite reading it more than a year ago. The other day I overheard my 11-year old telling her friend, regarding her sugar habit, “You know that children diagnosed with diabetes by the age of 8 shorten their lives by 25-30 years, don’t you?” Heh heh heh. My evil plot is working.

The Children’s Health Food Book by Ron Seaborn

I won’t kid you—this is a weird book! But it was recommended to me by a friend, and when I picked it up at a health food store, my then four-year old son went CRAZY for it. I read it to him several times a day until I just couldn’t take it any more and was making up my own words. The antiheroes are the Starch Creature, the Dairy Goon, the Meat Monster, and the Sugar Demon. Of course, the vegetable, fruit, and whole-grain superheroes come in and save the day. Good for younger kids—just beware that the preschool teacher might call you and say your kid is scaring the other kids by pointing out how bad their snacks are (this actually happened to me).

www.RawFoodArt.com by Shelley Abegg

Shelley is one of my best friends, so here’s the shameless plug: she’s 50 but looks 30, wears a size-one and has gorgeous hair and skin, so people basically follow her around, chanting her name. She’s an artiste par excellence. When she was diagnosed in 2002 with advanced (stage 3) breast cancer, she skipped the chemo, radiation, and mastectomy, and began eating a 100% raw diet. Cancer gone. Now she’s applied her artistic talents to creating fabulous recipes for cuisine as gorgeous and delicious as you’d be served in any five-star restaurant. The fudge bars blow my mind. Buy her recipes on her site currently being built.

Raw Power! Building Strength & Muscle Naturally by Stephen Arlin

Arlin’s imposing physique is proof of what we already know from watching primates: a plant diet provides all the protein you need for quality body building. I’m just a girl, not a true bodybuilder, but I love weight training, and this book long ago helped me let go of protein powders and bars. Arlin has eaten a 100% raw vegan diet for over 15 years. His recipes are interesting and unique.

Honorable mentions:

Eating Without Heating by Sergei and Valya Boutenko (great, simple, unique raw-food recipes even an older child could make—everything I’ve tried in this book, I’ve liked)

Dr. Robert O. and Shelley Young’s books on alkaline foods and why they’re so important: Sick and Tired, The pH Miracle, Back to the House of Health.

The Vaccine Guide by Randall Neustaedter, OMD (the most objective and helpful of several books I read before deciding to forego immunizations for my children)