SuperFoods

The beauty of eating whole foods is that you can eat as much as you want and as often as you want. Listen to your body and enjoy!

Fill your daily diet with these life-saving foods:

• Greens - Learn to eat more than just romaine lettuce. Learn to saute kale: de-spine the leaf, wash and toss with olive oil and onions. Learn to add spinach to all green salads. Bake brussel sprouts in olive oil and tons of garlic in a glass dish. Eat something green in it's highest enzymatic state every day.
• Fish-with-fins - Stay on top of the water when choosing fish. Make salmon, tilapia, halibut, swordfish and roughy your meat of choice. Buy wild! Omega-3's will make your skin smooth and clear. Mollusks are bottom feeders for a reason: God made shrimp, mussels and clams as maids to clean up the bottom of the ocean. Don't eat the help.
• Whole food condiments - Get rid of the mayo and butter. Stock up on extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Bragg's Liquid Aminos, white pepper, apple cider vinegar, Vegennaise, organic dijon mustard, raw minced garlic, fresh herbs from your own garden and organic onions. Olive oil and sea salt keep a baked potato much oilier and saltier than any butter/sour cream combination.
• Fruit - Go big on fruit. Don't stop at half an apple a day. Get a blender and go nuts around 3pm every day. Place 2 bananas, 1 cup of frozen strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries and 3/4 cup distilled water in the blender. Drink it down. Fruit likes to be in your tummy all by itself. Fruit is a natural sugar that satisfies your body's natural sugar craving. This is a perfect pre-dinner snack for you and the kids.
• Nuts - Make yourself little snack bags. Treat yourself to a little shot of protein every morning around 10am. Try these: organic raw almonds and organic raisins, organic raw cashews with your own sea salt, dried cranberries with walnuts and pecans, organic raw almonds and ghirardelli chocolate chips.

Eat the rainbow. Fill yourself with goodness. Flood your body with minerals and natural anti-oxidants. See what happens!!

Sweet Dreams

If I told you you need to detox, you would probably assume I meant going on a restricted diet. But what if one of the most effective detox strategies was to sleep?

As recently as 10 years age, health journals questioned the body's need for sleep. Now we find it is essential to several different elements of your health.

"The parasympathetic system repairs and rebuilds, and
it turns on at night when we're asleep. It's responsible for digestion and
increases the efficiency of digestion and secretion of hydrochloric acid,
enzymes from the pancreas, the bile salts from the liver. It increases the
absorption of nutrients, stimulates the repair of damaged tissues, and basically
is a reparative system."
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez
Knockout: Doctors Who are Curing
Cancer
Suzanne Somers

Face it: on a daily basis you are barraged with chemical and pollutants. Exhaust from cars, plastic wrappings on food, nail polish, pesticides sprayed on our parks, chemicals used to sanitize office buildings: they all seep into your system. But your body has a beautiful system for ridding itself of trash. Sleep is a part of that system.

If you are not getting 8 hours of sleep it is most likely due to 1 of 3 things.

• TV - People who "relax" by watching TV are fooling themselves. TV is not relaxing; your body is doing several things while watching TV and relaxing is not one of those. I won't go into it here.
• Caffeine - is a stimulant. If you choose to consume caffeine, complete your consumption before noon.
• Glucose - Glucose ups and downs can knock out your body's natural rhythms. The sugar high that accidentally coincides with bedtime will keep you jumping. Don't eat synthetic sugars ever: stop eating 3 hours before bed. Drink water. All alcohol, beer and wine are condensed sugars which may induce sleep initially, but invariably disrupt deeper sleep cycles later.

Speaking of REM, dreaming happens during the REM stage of sleep. Dreams frequently seek to fix what went wrong during your day. You may notice (if you can remember your dreams) that, while they employ elements of an actual event in your life, they are altered for the better, weirder or worse. This is the psyche's way of "fixing" the problem; you may even dream a viable solution to the problem.

New research shows that the 7-8 hours of recommended sleep per night are not adjustable. Everyone needs them. Teenagers, with their growing brains, need more. But nobody needs less. Less sleep stifles the metabolism - you can actually gain weight by reducing sleep time. Your body has an 8 hour job and it needs you "off the clock" in order to do it's work.

"Humans, like most animals and plants, have biological
rhythms, known as circadian rhythms, which are controlled by a biological clock
and work on a daily time scale. These affect body temperature, alertness,
appetite, hormone secretion etc. as well as sleep time."

Wikipedia

You know the routine. No TV in the bedroom. No computer in the bedroom. Buy the most expensive sheets you can afford. Buy a new pillow every Christmas or once a year. Go to bed around dark, wake up around first light. You will see the effects of your nightly detox.

• Sleepy's - Your eyes rid themselves of the dust and grime of the day. It collects near your ducts for removal upon waking.
• The urge to urinate - Your bladder fills itself during the night with deleterious waste cast off by the digestive system.
• The urge to poop - Your colon fills itself similarly with the waste collected by the night-time ritual of completing the digestive process for the day's intake.
• Snot - You may feel the urge to blow your nose upon waking. Once again, collected waste from the night's cleansing.
• Hunger - A sure sign that you have detoxed well during the night. Your stomach is empty and ready for a healthy dose of morning nutrients.

Fait dodo ma petite. Sleep tight.

Poop: The Straight Scoop

As a mother of 3 I need to tell you something. There is nothing more important to your health and well-being than pooping 1-2 times per day. My experience as a mother is that it is key to getting rid of sickness. Men and babies seem to have no problem. Children tend to have trouble when they are sick or have had too much junk food. Women of all ages seem to be in a chronic state of constipation. I'm gonna give it to you straight:

"Whatever is swallowed that is indigestible and/or
unabsorbable passes through the intestines and is delivered to the rectum for
disposal by defecation. The bulk of this material is composed of the
cellulose walls of the plant cells that we eat in fruits, grains, and
vegetables. We call this stuff fiber, and nutritionists often extol its
value....
Fiber gives us the sensation of eating a lot, but it
provides no calories. In a society such as ours, in which obesity is the
leading nutritional illness, food that lacks calories is something to be
treasured. Fiber also gives the colon something to squeeze down on, which
is nice because it keeps the organ fit and trim. A colon that lacks any
exercise can get to be flaccid and weak. After many years of "good
old-fashioned meals of meat and potatoes," a low-fiber diet, the colon may
become as flabby as its owner."
The Second Brain: Gut Instinct
Dr. Michael D. Gershon

I know you think you eat right. But that coffee, muffin, chicken salad, dinner-out daily menu earns you a nutritional zero. Or better yet, let your colon be the judge: did you poop two times during the day? Your body was created to obey the first law of trash: in with the new, out with the old.

And this is why it is critical: a sluggish intestine will lead to sickness and disease.

"Unquestionably, the key to success with any disease
and with any therapy is to keep the gut working. If it isn't, then you
can't absorb anything and nothing is going to work, no matter how good your
nutrition is. If your digestive system is compromised, nothing is going to
happen. We have to get everything working properly: the accessory
organs of digestion, the liver, the gallbladder, pancreas, the stomach, and the
small and large intestines."
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez
Knockout: Doctors Who are Curing
Cancer
Suzanne Somers

You can trick your system into eliminating. You can eat a double cheese pizza and then swallow some Metamucil to poop. But this trick will leave you nutritionally bankrupt.

"The first thing we can do to reverse this situation is
to take in more liquid-at least one gallon a day. Start with clean, either
filtered or bottled water in divided doses, drunk throughout the day. This
helps to rehydrate the body and get everything moving inside. Ideally,
your body should be 74 percent water. For each 1 percent below the ideal
number, your energy level is reduced by 5 percent. When you don't have
adequate water, your joints aren't properly lubricated and they become stiff and
painful. When you drink enough water, you rid yourself of many ills,
including constipation, arthritic pain, swelling and inflammation, localized
pain, and musculoskeletal conditions; even migraine headaches decrease in
frequency and severity."
The 7 Steps to Perfect Health
Gary Null

The only way to eliminate garbage is to

• stop putting garbage in
• be very careful with meat/wheat/dairy intake
• start putting fiber and roughage into your intestines so they will push out the gunk
• remember that 80 % of your immune system is housed in the small and large intestines
• drink vegetable juice, fruit juice or aloe juice
• slather everything in olive oil

"Stool can come in many different colors. Our stool's usual brown color is due to the presence of a compound called stercobilin, which is formed when the bacteria in our colon digest bile. Most daily variation in stool color is due to the dietary intake of various foods and medications. However, changes in stool color that persist for longer periods of time can be a sign of an underlying gastrointestinal disorder.

• Black - Iron pills ( or foods high in iron), blood (from higher up in digestive tract) exercise
• Red - Blood (from lower down in digestive tract), beets
• White/Gray - Bile duct blockage, liver disease
• Green - Gastrointestinal infection, spinach
• Yellow - Fat in stool"

What's Your Poo Telling You?

Josh Richman and Dr. Anish Sheth

Parasites - No Way!

You have parasites in your body. They reside in your small and large intestines. Everyone has them. Doctors know you have them - but it's not popular to talk about them.

You get parasites by eating food, swimming in the ocean or lakes, even walking barefoot through the grass. When they enter your body, your digestive system goes to work. Parasites nest in your intestines where the immune army is ready and waiting. Good and bad bacteria are kept in optimal supply in the intestines. There the parasite is either killed or washed through the colon and out of the body.

"One reason that the bacteria in the lumen of
the colon do not break out and infect the body is that they are at war with one
another. No one kind of germ gains ascendancy and takes uncontested
possession of the colonic turf. The constant competition between otherwise
nasty germs helps to keep the bacterial population under control. It
really is a case of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. Our bacterial
companions in the colon may be repulsive, but we still have to take good care of
them. Taking an antibiotic, therefore, is not without risk. Killing
germs in the colon can be a hazardous venture. Antibiotics that annihilate
our colonic friends can get us into big trouble very
fast."
The Second Brain
Dr. Michael D. Gershon

But what happens when the system is ill and not working properly?

If you eat large amounts of animal products i.e. every meal, then you have an over-abundance of parasites. Onslaughting your body this way over several years will leave your intestines in a poor state. This is when it gets bad. If you can envision: a build-up of living warring parasites end up buried in the intestinal walls because they cannot be processed through the intestines. Their war causes holes in the intestinal wall where the parasites can leak into the body, called leaky gut. Or the war causes small caves where the intestine is herniated, called diverticuli.

"Undiagnosed parasitic infections (from
microscopic protozoa to various species of worms) may account for a good deal of
the otherwise unexplained diseases currently besetting America. One
estimate contends that 25% of New York City residents have a parasitic infection
and that, by the year 2025, 50% of the projected 8.3 billion world population
will have them. Parasites tend to reside in the intestines, but they can
also migrate to the blood, lymph, heart, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, spleen,
eyes, and brain. While in place, they can produce numerous
symptoms: constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome,
joint and muscle aches, allergies, anemia, skin problems, sleep disturbances,
chronic fatigue, and gradual immune dysfunction."
Definitive Guide to
Cancer
Dr. W. John Diamond & Dr. W. Lee Cowden

Once you have parasite leakage into other areas of your body, a new problem begins. Remember that the liver is the largest internal organ in your body. The liver's function is to provide the necessary enzymes with which to break down the food entering the stomach. The parasites have access to the liver two ways: first through the stomach where they first reside in food while in the process of digestion, second through the small intestinal leakage. If the liver now has parasite activity, the enzyme work of the liver is being stalled or stopped.

"We all have tapeworm stages in our bodies,
probably going back to childhood when we ate dirt. Every tumor, benign or
malignant, has a tapeworm stage in the middle of it, even including warts.
Growing a tumor around a tapeworm stage may be Nature's way of protecting us
from it! It is not normal for these stages to hatch and develop
further. Their purpose is to stay dormant. But I have found that
tapeworm stages make malonic acid. This is a powerful inhibitor of your
metabolism. So it is very important to kill the tape worm stages in your
body - and in your tumors - even though they are responsible for the newplasm
(tumor), not the malignancy."
The Cure for All Cancers
Dr. Hulda Regehr Clark

If the parasite surrounds itself with a protein coating, it is now called a tumor. Tumors eat sugar, dairy and animal flesh in that order of preference. They grow and grow if fed properly and sometimes exhibit very animal-like qualities like hair, teeth and legs.

"Two other organisms that challenge your immune
system are parasites and fungi. Parasites need another organism to live
off of, so they require something from you to survive and to replicate
themselves. In the case of tapeworm, it lives in your intestine - and can
grow up to twenty-two feet long (about the height of a two-story
building). Parasites are most common in unsanitary food and poor water
supplies and are responsible for 4 billion cases of diarrhea around the world
every year - band news for everyone (except maybe
Charmin)."
You - The Owner's Manual
Dr. Roizen & Dr. Oz

Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to poop. Stay tuned....................

Case Studies

I have had the privilege to help people address their specific disease or ailments with nutritional advice.

Mary attended one of my vegan cooking demonstrations. I spoke about juicing vegetables as a fabulous way to get raw vitamins into your bloodstream quickly. I also spoke about the danger of centering your daily diet on meat, wheat and dairy. I challenged the group to go 30 days without meat, wheat and dairy. She took me up on it.

Mary found out that she was inadvertently eating a spectacular amount of bread, pasta, tortillas, cookies, Wheat Thins and other flour products. When she got off meat, wheat and dairy she lost 10 pounds in 30 days. She made sure to stay full by eating 4-6 small meals per day. She found that she never had a feeling of "missing" anything. Her physical therapist was not told about her change in diet. She knew he had stressed the importance of protein for rehabilitation of her quad and didn't want to hear his predictable lecture. He informed her after the 30 days that "Finally your quad is firing after 3 years of therapy." Mary and I don't think it was a coincidence.

Mark had horrible TMJ - the jaw pain associated with grinding your teeth in your sleep. He is a meat-eating man in his 40's who is mindful to eat vegetables but was not open to other dietary changes. He went the month of December in terrible pain and announced to his dentist that he was coming in for a root canal and would not leave without one. His dentist examined the tooth from which Mark felt the pain emanated. The dentist took an xray - all was normal. Mark told me he was at his whit's end and needed to sleep. I cautiously advised that he try to go meat free for 3 days. "What in the world would that do?" he said. I know that meat binds muscle and can cause cramping, arthritis and stiff muscles. I asked him to just try it. Trying to go without meat for 3 days doesn't make you a vegetarian, I assured him. 3 days later, he was pain free. And incredulous!

Mark told his dentist about the vegetarian solution to his TMJ on his next visit. The dentist said it was just a coincidence. Mark is a salesman and didn't let it go. The dentist finally conceded that maybe it was true but that he didn't need his patients finding a cure for TMJ because 40% of his clients come in to be fitted for a TMJ night guard. Mark stays away from red meat and chicken. His pain returns when he eats it.

Chris told me she had severe migraines. She had been to every specialist including a cranio sacral chiropractor. She found some relief but at least once a month she was bedridden for 3 days with a migraine and vomiting. I asked her if she would ever consider going dairy free for 30 days. She said no. I said I would help her find dairy substitutes. She informed me that dairy was not the problem and that, anyway, she didn't eat much dairy.

Chris caught me at a soccer game about 6 months later. She said she had a migraine that laid her up for a week right after we spoke. She had decided to try the dairy free idea. It worked. She now has about 2 migraines per year. They are predictably near her period and she works with her chiropractor to reduce the time it takes to recover.

I believe in nutritional healing.

Mad Cow

Dairy. The idea of giving it up makes some people crazy. They can't and won't live without cheese. So go ahead and eat it but here are the facts.

Cheese is made from cow's milk. Cow's milk is taken from a lactating cow who is no longer feeding a calf and is forced into permanent lactation either by hormone injections or simply by milking the cow past her calf-feeding time. The cow's milk is then pasteurized and homogenized, meaning heated to the boiling point. This rids it of germs to make it USDA compliant but also destroys any natural enzymes. Those enzymes that are destroyed are the same enzymes which are critical to your digestive system when trying to break down cow's milk into usable vitamins and nutrients.

"Mammals need the enzyme lactase to digest lactose (the
sugar found in dairy). However, between the ages of 18 months and 4 years,
we lose 90 to 95 percent of this enzyme. The undigested lactose and the
acidic nature of pasteurized milk encourage the growth of bacteria in our
intestines. All this contributes to a greater risk of cancer because
cancer cells thrive in acidic conditions."
Skinny Bitch
Freedmand and Barnouin

Cheese is a fermenting of milk. It involves controlled spoilage and mold. For instance, Roquefort and bleu cheese have holes poked through the cow's milk in order to marble the mold throughout the cheese.

Cheap cheese like the big bags at Sams are mixed with preservatives. You might notice the white powder coating on shredded cheese. This preservative helps to keep the shreds from sticking to each other so that you can sprinkle them more easily. Cheap cheese tastes like plastic sometimes. This is because it has absorbed the plastic packaging in which it has been stored, sometimes for up to a month.

"Researchers at Harvard, Yale, Penn State, and the
National Institutes of Health have studied the effects of dairy intake on
bones. Not one of these studies found dairy to be a deterrent to
osteoporosis. On the contrary, a study funded by the National Dairy
Council itself revealed that the high protein content of dairy actually leaches
calcium from the body."
Skinny Bitch
Feedman and Barnouin

We use cheese or milk in almost every single restaurant, fast food and "kid" food we serve: pizza, macaroni and cheese, cheetos, mozzarella sticks, hamburgers, tacos, enchiladas, queso, cereal, cupcakes, cookies, frappucinos.

If you are fighting disease, stop it. It is very difficult to digest cheese. Your stomach will move the product into your small intestine in almost its whole form because it is not a usable substance. Once in the small intestine your body will "discuss" what to do with the offending substance. Most frequently, your body will table the discussion until a use can be determined and will store the substance as putrefaction. Putrefaction is the waste that lines the small intestine much like the line of people at the DMV who are waiting for their drivers test. The rest of the waste gets to proceed through while the cheese waits for the body to see if it can find a use for it.

"In the beginning of my career, I concentrated on the
biochemical processes of liver cancer. Chapter three delineates the
decades-long laboratory work we did with experimental animals, work that passed
the requirements to be called "good science." The finding: casein,
and very likely all animal proteins, may be the most relevant cancer-causing
substances that we consume. Adjusting the amount of dietary casein has the
power to turn on and turn off cancer growth, and to override the
cancer-producing effects of aflatoxin, a very potent Class IA
carcinogen."
The China Study
T. Colin Campbell, PhD

Behold, I have given you every green plant, and it shall be food for you. Genesis 1:29

Sugar Crazed

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will involve the patient in the proper use of food, fresh air and exercise." Thomas Edison

Sugar is bad for you - you know you shouldn't eat it. Refined sugar, white sugar, Equal, SweetnLow, corn syrup, sucrose, and all manufactured sugars halt the immune system for 4 hours after ingested. Your precious organs are forced into emergency mode when you pour this chemical into your stomach. The pancreas secretes insulin for each influx of sugar; if you eat refined sugars which are contained in processed foods at every meal then you are stalling your immune system all day as well as causing your pancreas to work overtime. The blood starts to rush the glucose influx around in an effort to either utilize the sugars or flush the toxins from your body. Read The Zone by Barry Sears.

"Cancer cells feed directly on blood glucose,
like a fermenting yeast organism. Elevating blood glucose in a cancer
patient is like throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire."
Beating Cancer with
Nutrition
Patrick Quillin, PhD, RD,
CNS

But how do you stop?

• Substitute - Eat fruit, honey, 100% maple syrup, beets, raisins, whole fruit smoothies, Stevia, and herbal teas.
• Trick - your body into not wanting sweets. Eat long grain brown rice. Learn to steam millet, quinoa and buckwheat. Steamed grains provide B vitamins which are satiating and filling. Pour a little raw coconut milk over a bowl of cold rice - tastes like mom's rice pudding.
• Eliminate - Drink a lot of water. I mean a LOT. Measure your water intake each day and go for 60 oz per day for 60 days in a row. Make a note of the changes in your skin condition, hunger levels and frequency of urination (which will taper off after 7 days). Filling your stomach with water will keep you from snacking and will cause you to urinate a lot of the congested sugars in your system that are causing you to crave more.
• Discipline - yourself to never drink another soda. Diet soda pop is worse for you than fully caffeinated, fully sugared soda. Why? Because researchers have found that when you drink a soda that has fake sugar, your pancreas reacts with a spurt of insulin which is not used up by the artificial sugar. Later on, your body will want to right itself and will send messages to your brain that you need sugar. Unfortunately, your body is right! You need sugar to absorb the insulin which is floating around unused. Get rid of all soda. Weigh yourself in 3 months. You will weigh less regardless of the kind of soda or amount you used to drink.

It makes me crazy that people who are seriously sick are not advised by their doctors to eliminate sugar from diets. If my kids go to the pediatrician when they are sick, the doctor hands them a lollypop at the end of the visit. What is wrong with us? It is a scientific fact that refined sugar is harmful to the human body. It is currently accepted oncological data that white sugar feeds cancer cells. Then why don't we advise people to help themselves? Why are we taking baskets of food to sick neighbors and not being advised to help them nutritionally? Am I the only one thinking this is insane?

"Tumors are primarily obligate glucose metabolizers,
meaning 'sugar feeders'. The average American Consumes 20% of calories
from refined white sugar, which is more of a drug than a food."

Beating Cancer with Nutrition

Patrick Quillan, PhD, RD, CNS

Traditional Medicine and Alternative Medicine Jive: Part II

Traditional doctors are trained in pharmaceuticals, surgery, emergency care and healing.

Alternative medicine concentrates on a plethora of healing sources all aimed at using organic means to stimulate the immune system to repair itself.

While these two methods appear disparate and are frequently at war, perhaps we can all agree that they both have their place.

Alternative medicine should be used for all preventative measures; traditional medicine is superior when illness is traumatic and life threatening.

For instance, when planning to care for your family on a daily basis, alternative medicine is perfect. Go to the chiropractor for adjustment of the spinal flow or cranial-sacral massage to open blocked energy flows. Use whole foods that heal the body with their natural store of enzymes and alkalinity. Use herbal remedies such as teas, garlic, herbs, tea tree oil, barley green, ginger and oils to heal everyday ailments like colds, allergies, stomach upset and skin conditions.

Traditional medicine is invaluable in cases which call for trauma medicine, life saving surgery, antibiotics and diagnosing unknown pain.

The problem comes when there is an auto-immune disease that is treatable two entirely different ways by two different camps. Traditional medicine wants to treat cancer with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. All these methods can potentially add to the cancer: chemo causes severe damage to the immune system, surgery can spread cancer cells. Alternative medicine wants to treat cancer starting with the cause: change of diet, oxygenation, anti-parasitic herbs, prayer, and nutritional deficiency healing.

I have a friend whose 12 year old was recently diagnosed with leukemia - every parent's nightmare. What to do? I know this mother will be underwater while being onslaught with violently differing data. Then she will be fighting for her son's pain management while being pressed to make a decision as to a course of treatment.

I'm a boy scout - I like to be prepared. Let's all be prepared. There are two amazing books on the market. Choices in Healing by Michael Lerner is a brief, fact filled look at 23 traditional, alternative and integrative cancer therapies. The book is sensitive but clinical. The Definitive Guide to Cancer compiled by William Goldberg is a collection of over 20 doctors from traditional training who practice integrative medicine. A virtual encyclopedia of integrative doctors and their proven therapies.

"More often than not, cancer patients believe that
their choices for therapy are dictated by the findings of pure biomedical
science. Cancer patients also tend to believe that biomedical science is a
monolith - a huge body of knowledge that dictates what an individual must do
with a specific kind of cancer - and that all the information generated by this
monolithic science is funneled into the brains of the first physicians they
consult. Netiher belief is accurate."
Choices in Healing
Michael Lerner

Choose alternative medicine as a lifestyle when all is well. Interview the traditional medicine doctors who attend your family. Don't expect a buy-in. Ask them if they can support you as you use herbs and food to keep your family well; ask them to support you on a celiac vegan diet. But respect the traditional medical world's unprecedented expertise at diagnosing disease and treating trauma.

Participate in Your Own Healing.

Food as Medicine

Thy food shall be thy remedy. Hippocrates

In alternative healing there is an often used term: the Standard American Diet, or SAD for short. It refers to the typical American course of meals throughout the day.

• meat and chicken
• eggs
• cheese
• butter
• wheat flour: pasta, bread, croutons
• white flour: bread, breading, pasta, pastries
• sugar and soda pop
• alcohol
• coffee and caffeinated drinks

Even though it looks like you are eating a wide variety of foods that give you vitamins and minerals (I'm sure the bread says "fiber enriched"), there is an excessive amount of chemicals and preservatives contained in the above list. The preservatives, antibiotics, pesticides, white sugar and salt contained in those foods either cancel out any vitamins that may have lived through the cooking process or the shelf life has destroyed them. These are not foods!

Food is what grows in the ground, on a tree, on a bush and is brought to your kitchen in whole food form; no doctoring, no cooking, no preserving, no coloring, no salting, no nothin'! Then it is up to you to make the food palatable while keeping it's vitamins, minerals, enzymes and healthfulness in tact.

• fruit
• vegetables
• beans
• long grain brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat
• raw nuts
• water
• extra-virgin olive oil
• Braggs Liquid Aminos
• balsamic vinegar
• apple cider vinegar
• flax seed oil
• nori, wakame
• Grade B maple syrup
• raw local honey
• raw almond butter, cashew butter
• raw garlic minced in water
• white pepper, cayenne
• sea salt, kelp
• Barley Green, Perfect Food
• Dr. Brantley enzymes
• live acidophiles
• basil, oregano, parsley, mint, dill
• raisins, figs, prunes, cranberries

Take this list. As you eat through the day, make a checkmark next to each category you consume. In which column are the majority of your foods? For instance: Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad contains chicken, romaine lettuce, romano cheese, white flour croutons and milk based salad dressing. The only whole food you get a check for is romaine lettuce - not a sufficient influx of vitamins and minerals. Go for the vegan black bean soup next time!

"The foods that form the basis of the normal Western
diet cause the liver to work overtime as it tries to metabolize the dense
concentration of nutrients that are constantly flooding the digestive system and
bloodstream. Poor digestion is one of the main causes of toxicity because
it adds an unnecessary and in many cases overwhelming burden to the liver's
normal workload. The liver simply can't keep up with the quantity of
contaminants in the blood that must be processed. When food is properly
digested, the liver can attend to its job of detoxification."
The Seven-Day Detox Miracle
Bennett and Barrie

Fighting Your Weight

I don't know anyone who doesn't fight their weight or at least mind their waist-line.

Here's the cycle:

You eat a little salt/fat/sugar.
You crave more.
You eat more salt/fat/sugar.
You stop eating fruits, vegetables, rice and beans because you're "just not hungry".
You eat even more salt/fat/sugar.
You gain too much weight.
You can't "get the weight off."
You can't stop thinking about your next meal.

Simplistic diet rituals consist of abstaining from food, eating low calorie foods, or eating smaller portions. Stop making yourself crazy.

None of these diets address the basic problem: you are starving. Specifically, you are starving for water, enzymes, lipids, vitamins and minerals.

"Think of your body as being composed of millions of
tiny little engines. Some of these engines work in unison; some work
independently. All are on call twenty-four hours a day. In order for
the engines to work properly, they require specific fuels. If the type of
fuel given is the wrong blend, the engine will not perform to its maximum
capacity. If the fuel is of a poor grade, the engine may sputter,
hesitate, and lose power. If the engine is given no fuel at all, it will
stop.
The fuel we give our bodies' engines comes directly from
the things we consume. The foods we eat contain nutrients. These
nutrients come in the form of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, water, amino acids,
carbohydrates, and lipids. It is these nutrients that sustain life by
providing us with the basic materials our bodies need to carry on their daily
functions."
Prescription for Nutritional Healing
James F. Balch, M.D. & Phyllis A. Balch,
CNC

If you want to lose weight, do this: assess your vitamin and mineral deficiencies. You can do it one of two ways: go to a doctor, preferably a chiropractor, who does blood and urine analysis. Or self diagnose: try the following.

Find out what your "go to" food is: sugar? fat? fried foods? If you don't know or say yes to all three, keep a food journal for 3 days. Write down the time, food and quantity of everything you put in your mouth. What is the pattern?

Is your food-craving sugar or soda pop? Eat 5 pieces of fruit a day for 30 days. Eat the rainbow: eat a kiwi, an apple, 1/2 cantaloupe, a banana and a big bowl of berries. The second day eat 5 fruits and don't repeat any from the first day. Make it a game. Make a raw vegetable juice. Buy a Jack LaLayne juicer and throw carrots and beets into it. Drink it down any time you crave sugar.

Is your food-craving salt? First of all, all these years of craving salt have dehydrated you. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water. If you are a juicer put celery in your juice. Make a homemade V8 by juicing tomatoes, one apple and celery. The celery makes vegetable juice taste salty - go figure. Make a huge steamer full of long grain brown rice and top it with Bragg's Liquid Aminos.

Is your food-craving cheese? Eat natural oils. Almond butter is great on apples, celery, spelt toast and spelt tortillas. Experiment with Udo's Blend on your salads. Rub extra virgin coconut oil all over your body. Sit in the sun for 20 minutes. Your skin, which is a highly absorbent organ,m will ingest the oil into your blood stream while amplifying the Vitamin D trick your body does when exposed to sunshine. Extra virgin olive oil is your best friend. Soy, miso, tofu and all their whole food cousins will satisfy your texture craving.

Is your food-craving fried food and junk food? Extra-virgin olive oil and sea salt are a perfect pairing. Bake a russet potato until the skin and insides are soft. Slather it with olive oil and seal salt. Eat till you poop. Cover everything you eat with olive oil.

Is your food craving meat? Be very careful with this one. If you desire meat 3 times per day you might be feeding an intestinal parasite. Parasites are protein lovers. Your mind may be fooling you into thinking you "need protein". Trust me, you won't test protein deficient in a million years! America as a whole is on protein overload, just look at our collective massive middle sections: we have enough fecal matter stored in our small intestines and colon to poop for the next 10 years without becoming protein deficient. Stop it, right now. You are now officially a vegetarian. Tell everyone!

You are not fat, you are vitamin depraved. You are not undisciplined, you are in terrible need of enzymes. The fat is not in your head, it's in your body because you're ingesting plastic and petroleum instead of God's green earth. You truly are hungry: Eat Food!

Where Traditional Medicine and Alternative Medicine Jive

Inflammation is the new buzz word in medicine. Traditional medicine is tracing all disease back to inflammation.

Inflammation used to be looked at as a good thing: it was the body's way of fighting back. Swelling, pain, and limited range of motion are important defense mechanisms and aid in recovery.

But chronic inflammation leads to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety disorders, Lou Gehrig's, multiple sclerosis, lupus, arthritis, even autism.

"It turns out that two physiological processes
play a major role in inflammation: the immune system and the prostaglandin
system. They interact with each other and either enhance inflammation - or reduce it. What are the key players that influence this process?
toxins, infections, injury, heredity. What you eat - your diet, influences
all of these factors. Your diet determines how you feel, and how you
recover from illnesses. A poor diet can increase and prolong inflammation
while a good diet can cause it to grind to a halt in time, protecting your
health."
The Blaylock Wellness Report Vol.5,
No.6
Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.

Cancer and inflammation:
100 years ago traditional medicine discovered that toxic chemicals, viruses, bacteria/parasites, sunburn, radiation and injuries can all cause cancer. But there are unrelated diseases that seem to culminate in cancer at alarmingly high rates: diabetes, hardening of the arteries, arthritis, depression, auto-immune diseases and obesity. All of these diseases and conditions have one thing in common - all of them cause your body to produce high levels of inflammatory chemicals with a resulting breakdown of cell membranes by free radicals.

Not only is there a link between chronic, prolonged inflammation and cancer - continued inflammation makes the cancers grow much faster.

Inflammation and Age:
By the time we reach age 80, inflammation in the average person is significantly higher than when we were younger. Why?

• Persistent infections from viruses, bacteria, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as mycoplasma.
• High mercury levels
• Years of ingesting excitotoxins in the form of food additives and omega-6 fat.
• Stress

How to overcome the body's propensity for inflammation? Stop giving it stuff to fight!

Your body is self-healing. Think of it as a boat constantly straining to right itself in a storm. Your body is perfectly, scientifically made. Your immune system is strong and capable. Give it half a chance!

Pesticides, antibiotics and preservatives kill cells. The body then launches an attack. Stop eating preservatives. Preservatives are always found in boxed foods, canned foods, restaurant foods and junk food. Stop eating that crap.

Animal products are very hard to digest - they stay in the intestines for days. Animal flesh and animal milk in the form of cheese, milk and yogurt are difficult to move through the intestinal tract and colon. Limit or eliminate these products. They are also highly addictive. Try this experiment: stop eating all animal products for 30 days. On Day 31 buy a pound of ground beef. Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Smell it. What does it smell like to you? Let me know.

Dr. William Kelley, DDS, a dentist by training, developed this protocol in response to his own pancreatic cancer, which he faced and reversed in the late 1960's.

"His metabolic detoxification therapy calls for
coffee enemas, restricting of protein intake, and emphasizing a diet of whole
grains, fruits, and vegetables supplemented with proteolytic enzymes and raw
juices. Dr. Kelley advised cancer patients to altogether avoid pasteurized
milk, peanuts, white flour and sugar, chlorinated water, and all processed
foods. In general terms, he recommended that the diet consist of about 70%
raw foods, such as fresh raw salads, to maximize the consumption of living
enzymes. Dr. Kelley developed a line of 25 nutritional formulations for
hard tumors (solid mass cancers) and 29 for soft tumors (leukemia, lymphoma,
melanoma) which the patient takes until they are cancer free for 2
years."

Definitive Guide to Cancer

Diamond, M.D. & Cowden,
M.D.

No doctor worth his training will argue with this eternal truth: eat right and exercise to avoid disease.

For My Navy Chicks

Every once in a while you're someplace where you don't have control over your food. You might be at camp, at a friend's house, at a business conference or on a ship!

There are ways to beat the system and still eat healthy:

• Eat a lot of small healthy meals. Sometimes you will need to pack-a-snack. Take fruit, nuts, tea bags and a bottle of water from the breakfast buffet to snack on later. That way you will be able to resist the waffles and Mrs. Butterworths. Eat a fried egg, a banana and some oatmeal with raisins. Then pack-a-snack for later.
• Be High Maintenance. I tell people I am celiac although I have never been formally tested. I don't need a test to tell me my body is allergic to wheat: if I eat flour products I immediately want to claw my throat out and kill myself. Wheat gives me instant strep throat and depression. Why would I need a test.
• Ask for help. Ask the chef for a whole piece of fruit or whole vegetable. I have friends who go to our neighborhood mexican place, Zuzu, and buy a whole avocado. Then they mix it with the limes from the iced tea bar and a little sea salt. Guacamole!
• Yesterday I was at a Realtor Rally. They served sandwich buffet which is my basic nightmare: meat, wheat and dairy. What to do? I ate a piece of bread with dijon mustard and the biggest stack of sliced tomatoes and raw onion slices. I picked a sweet pepper out of the iceberg lettuce "salad" bowl and washed it all down with several bottles of water. Go straight to the vegetable tray and start with covering 80% of your plate with vegetables.
• Poop. 80% of your immune system is housed in your small and large intestines. You must keep things moving down there. Poop every 24 hours with the goal of pooping once every 12 hours. The residual benefits of eliminating debris are bizarre: a clear head, a light body, a happier attitude, a healthy hunger, a stronger immune system, a total change of abdominal shape and a finer tuned appetite. Smart young kick-ass chicks who have been eating poorly will find they have fabulous abs just by becoming vegetarian for a month. Fear the Goat.
• Eat all the time. Eat five times a day. Start each meal with a huge glass of water. Then eat a huge piece of fruit. Sit and chat or read. Then eat a huge salad with every vegetable you can find and a huge splash of olive oil. THEN eat your meal. Snacks should always be whole raw foods: apple, carrot, almonds, raisins, walnuts, water.
• Fruit likes to be in your tummy by itself.
• Everything tastes better with a little sea salt or balsamic vinegar. Never tried okra? Cowgirl up and give it a try.

Salad Bar Bowl

If you are faced with a cafeteria style meal, take a large plate or bowl and place rice in the bottom. Place 2 huge scoops of beans on top. Then fill the rest of the plate or bowl to the top with vegetables, preferably steamed. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, balsamic vinegar or all three.

Recipe: Salmon, Brown Rice and Kale

This is my favorite meal. Every Sunday I have a beautiful piece of wild organic fish. These sauces are made with whole ingredients and can be used a hundred different ways. Enjoy!

Salmon

My husband is great on the grill! I place the wild organic salmon in a grill basket with garlic salt and lemon pepper (lots). Grill to your desired internal temperature.

Aioli

1/4 cup Vegennaise (at Whole Foods it is above the yogurt and beside the miso)
1 Tblsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Tblsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 Tblsp raw minced garlic
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dijon mustard

Place all ingredients in a small bowl and blend with a fork. This makes enough for 1-2 people. I love my aioli salty and garlic-y so alter those amounts to your taste.

Long Grain Brown Rice w/Bragg's Liquid Aminos

Place 2 cups Long Grain Brown Rice (#6678 at Whole Foods in the bin aisle) and 2 cups distilled water in rice basket of steamer. Steam for one hour. Serve w/Bragg's Liquid Aminos. Apply sauce as you would a soy sauce.

Kale and Onions

Sautes sliced onions (1/3 of a medium onion) in extra virgin olive oil until barely done. Wash, de-stem and coursely chop 4 large leaves of kale. When onions are barely done, place huge pile of kale on top of onions. Pour 1 Tblsp balsamic vinegar over the top. Cover with a loose lid and turn heat on low. The kale will wilt down over the next 5-7 minutes. Serve hot with a dollop of walnut sauce.

Walnut Sauce

In food processor place 1/4 cup raw shelled walnuts, 1 tsp miso, 1 tsp Ume Plum Vinegar and 1/4 cup water. Blend until smooth with bits of walnut.

yummmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shopping List: Serves 2

• 1 lb wild salmon
• garlic salt
• lemon pepper
• fish grill basket
• Vegenaisse
• extra virgin olive oil
• lemon
• raw minced garlic
• dijon mustard
• 2 cups Long Grain Brown Rice
• Bragg's Liquid Aminos
• 1 bunch green or red Kale
• 1 medium onion
• balsamic vinegar
• rice/vegetable steamer
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• miso
• Ume Plum Vinegar

Recipe: Kid's Lunch

Lunch is difficult. Breakfast is easy because you can make fruit the main course. Dinner is easy because you can plan to eat at home and use a salad and rice, potatoes or quinoa as the main dish. But lunch is difficult because the kids are eating at school and you may be meeting a friend or client or eating at the office.

I try to let go of some of the lunch decisions for my family. I feel they are only nourished by eating whole foods and abstaining from meat/wheat/dairy. BUT, I also feel they need to learn to made their own choices, live with the consequences and even eat a little crap out of shear rebellion!

That said, here's our favorite sandwich: Almond Butter/Banana/Honey Sandwich

Almond Butter - I use Whole Foods almond butter. The ingredients listed on the glass bottle are: almonds. They grind the whole almonds and package. The problem becomes that the natural oils rise to the top. You cannot just buy the jar, open it and stick a knife in to grab some almond butter. The first time you use it you need to take about 5 minutes to very carefully mix the almonds with the oil. If you take time to thoroughly mix it the first time you open the jar, the rest of the time you can just do a little stir through on the top. I recommend using almond butter because peanuts are 1. overused in kid's food 2. not farmed properly in the U.S. and 3. have a high mold count and spur allergies whether you are "peanut allergy" or not.

Honey - Try to use a local, non-filtered honey of the highest quality.

Spelt Bread - While I am against flours, it's hard to make a sandwich without it! I love the spelt bread in the cold cases but it isn't always kid-friendly. Whole Foods and Central Market make lovely spelt breads. This way the kids are getting a whole grain with the germ and diversifying their mineral intake: kid's menus are overwhelmed with wheat flour product.

Bananas - Remember, organic produce is important when eating the skin but not as important when buying a thick skinned fruit or vegetable. I buy conventional oranges, bananas, cantaloupe, watermelon and grapefruit in bulk at Sams.

Toast the spelt bread. Spread with almond butter. Slice bananas. Drizzle with honey. La Voila!

Let the kids make the whole thing. Supervise, don't touch! It's important for you to be the Mom and make them eat whole living foods. It's also important for them to feel empowered. They get to decide how many bananas and, anyway, it's always fun to drizzle honey!