Food intake and recipes

My food intake during the past week in pictures:

                                                  

Veggie juice: 2 celery sticks, 1/3 cucumber, 2 carrots, 1 apple, handful of spinach and handful of red cabbage - hence the purplish colour.

My Big Breakfast smoothie this weekend: 1/4 of pineapple, 1/2 of mango, 1 banana, 2 tbsp of wheat germ, 1 tbsp of sesame seeds and juice of 1 orange. Yummy! Maya had this for breakfast too instead of porridge, with added pieces of banana, dried apricots and milled seed mix. She ate it all!

Green veggie juice: 2 stalks of celery, 1 carrot, 1 green apple, handful of green grapes, larger handful of spinach, bunch of broccoli stalks, 1/2 tsp of spirulina powder. Nutritional powerhouse? Yes!

Monday lunch - Rabbit Food from Toss It Salad Bar: Cos lettuce, cucumber, carrot, beet, asparagus and feta cheese, served with vinegar-oil dressing and sprinkled with pumpkin seeds.

Monday dinner - Curried veggies with smoked mackerel fillet: 1 shallot, 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 zucchini, 1/4 cauliflower, handful of spinach, few sugar-snap peas and can of flageolet beans sautéed with stash of turmeric and curry. 

Tuesday lunch - Avocado and fennel salad: 1/2 bag of baby leaf salad, 1 small avocado, 1/2 fennel head, 1/4 carrot, 1-2 tomatoes, bunch of basil leaves, stash of balsamic vinegar, sea salt and pepper. Squeeze all together with your hands so avocado covers everything, sprinkle with nutritional yeast if preferred. 

Red veggie juice: 1 carrot, 1 green apple, 1/2 fennel, 1/3 red cabbage.

Simple guacamole: 1 avocado, 1-2 garlic gloves (depending on your love of garlic), juice of 1/2 lime, sea salt and stash of cayenne pepper, make as spicy as you wish. Mash avocado with fork and mix the rest in. Had it with salmon and salad for dinner.

Protein myth revealed

Since as early as we can remember we have been told that we have to eat meat to get enough protein into our diets. That high animal protein diet is healthy and necessary if we want to grow big and fast. If that’s true, how do elephants get so big?

The truth is that protein does not create protein in our bodies, amino acids do that. Best source for amino acids is green leafy vegetables and other plant foods. And it’s in readily accessible form, which your body can easily assimilate. Most of the animal protein is destroyed during cooking anyway, and whatever is left, is difficult to digest. So if a huge piece of meat has 20 g of protein, after cooking it around 10 g remains, and of that your body might get out maybe few grams of protein. Compare this to green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, kale, collard or spinach, they may have only few grams of protein per average portion, but all this can easily be assimilated by your body, plus you get extra nutrients, vitamins and minerals (instead of hormones, antibiotics, chemicals and parasites which might be present in meat products).

Obviously it’s not only raw, green vegetables that contain protein - beans, legumes, nuts, seeds and certain grains have also easily accessible, high quality protein present. To this day we’ve been told that plants don’t contain the full range of amino acids, and need to be combined to get the “complete” protein. It’s a myth. Protein is made up of amino acids, often described as its building blocks. We have a biological requirement for amino acids, not for protein itself. Humans cannot make nine of the twenty common amino acids, so these amino acids are considered to be essential, which means we must get these amino acids from our diets. And we need all nine of these amino acids for our body to make protein.

Soybeans, quinoa (a grain), and spinach also are only few non-animal sources considered to have high quality protein, which means they have large amounts of all amino acids in easily accessible form. Other protein sources of non-animal origin usually have all of the essential amino acids, but the amounts of one or two of these amino acids may be low. If you eat varied, raw plant based diet, you’ll get more than enough protein.

You might wonder why we have been made to believe that meat is best protein source and milk is best calcium source if they’re not. Answer is simple: huge and rich meat and dairy industries has been funding lots of research done on protein and calcium. They’ve spent millions and millions on advertising and lobbying for this message to be indoctrinated. Obviously it has worked, still is, as majority still believe this message. Did you know for example that high-protein diet is depleting your calcium levels via urine and is number one cause of osteoporosis? Not to mention about proven scientific link between high animal protein diet and various cancers. And if that is not enough, think of animal welfare and poor creatures that are first being fed, drugged and then slaughtered by various cruel means so you can eat them.

P.S. Another myth – milk and other dairy products are not the best source of calcium, yes, you guessed right, plants are!

Yours truly,

Former meat and cheese eating monster

Don't you feel hungry?

I get this question quite often when I mention that I eat Raw Food diet. And that was my fear as well before I started to eat more raw food. In the past I've always been feeling constantly "hungry" when I've been on any restricting diets - low fat or portion restrictions or calorie counting diets. But I must say that I do not feel at all hungry now when eating so much fresh, live foods. My body gets the nutrients it has been craving for, and I can eat as much raw food as I want - no calorie counting or portion control here!

So what is hunger? If you haven't eaten for a while you start to feel something you identify as hunger - abdominal cramping, weakness and feeling ill or dizzy. But according to Dr Joel Furhman this is not hunger. He writes in his book Eat to Live: "Our dietary habits, especially eating animal-protein rich foods three times a day, are so stressful to the detoxification system in our liver and kidneys that we start to get withdrawal, or detoxification, symptoms the minute we aren't processing such food. Real hunger is not uncomfortable. True hunger is mediated by the hypothalamus in the brain. The hunger-related activity of the hypothalamus correlates best with increased sensation of need in mouth and throat area."

So eating animal protein puts lots of stress on your liver and generates nitrogenous waste which is toxic. These toxins rise the uric acid in your blood stream and withdrawal of these toxins can cause uncomfortable symptoms that many call hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia means "low glucose in the blood stream". Furhman says that most people who have been (self-) diagnosed with hypoglycemia have normal glucose levels, reason they feel ill is when their stomach empties the detoxification begins. As with any withdrawal or detoxification, you get the symptoms I mentioned above. To get better means stopping eating animal protein, feeling bad for a week, and then feel great. That's exactly how I felt first week after I stopped eating meat - proper withdrawal symptoms with headache and all. I still have a bit of chicken now and then, but I'll probably never go back eating so much meat as I did before, definitely no red and processed meat. And if you now ask where do I get my protein, I'll say: vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans and legumes. And occasional fish. I will write more about the Protein Myth another day. For now, time for bed!

I survived...

No, it wasn't that bad actually, the liver flush. Drinking the 2 glasses with Epsom salt was easy, I just held my breath and didn't taste a thing. Drinking the oil and lemon mix was a bit more trickier. I read somewhere that using straw would be easier, but it was not nice. So I just hold my breath again, and drank it all quickly, felt a bit nauseous after second glass, but not too bad. I did wake up at night feeling dizzy though. In the morning I felt like I had major hangover, really weak. No stones came out though, but it's normal after first flush, if I have any they might start to come out after second or third flush. Had a smoothie for breakfast as was not hungry at all, but by lunch I felt I needed something heavier, so had baked potato with cheese and coleslaw.

By afternoon I felt quite ok, and later went for BBQ at friends house. Had huge salad and even some grilled chicken breast. I have a feeling that BBQs are going to be tricky if I decide to increase my raw food intake, but as it is at the moment I still eat fish and cooked veggies, so I'm cooool =)

Today I feel really good, like I've got some extra energy from somewhere. I've decided to do second liver flush next weekend, and then maybe few more to get my liver squeaky clean!

Apart from smoothies and veggie juices I've had veggies with hummus for lunch and salmon with spinach and veggies for dinner. Haven't had time to make any raw dishes this weekend, hopefully can do something during the week. I got new book delivered yesterday: Raw Food Made Easy, with loads of lovely recipes.

Liver flush

I've been eating quite well this week, some days have been 100% raw. I've been feeling quite well, more energy, I even woke up before 6 am without the alarm!

I tried some lovely smoothies for breakfast, these actually fill me up more than fruit salads as I can add milled seeds, flax seeds and oatmeal. I also added Spirulina to my smoothies, makes them not-so-nice green, but the taste is still lovely. Google: "As a health supplement, Spirulina algae is an extremely high protein source with a protein content of 60-70 percent higher than any other natural food and most nutritional products. However, even greater nutritional value can be found in its high concentration of vitamins, minerals and other beneficial nutrients. This super food has the most remarkable concentration of functional nutrients ever known in food - animal or plant."

Today I'm doing my liver flush. As I wrote earlier, I've done bowel flush few weeks ago to get rid of any waste from my bowels, and I did another one yesterday in preparation of liver flush; been feeling hollow inside whole day. Had fruit for breakfast, and some toast later to fill my tummy a bit, and a huge salad for lunch. I haven't been eating anything since lunch, so my liver is now ready to flush out any stones, toxins and parasites that might be in there. I started the flush with glass of water and 2 tsp of Epsom salts, an hour later another glass which prepares the ducts for elimination. I then mixed 400 ml olive oil with juice of 1 lemon and 1 lime, and drank half of it an hour later. Will drink the rest before I go to bed, and hopefully by tomorrow my liver should be cleaner. It's not very nice thing to drink, but it's doable, just must hold the breath! Will write how it went tomorrow.

Here are some pictures of my food intake

Breakfast on the go - green smoothie

Dinner: mixed vegetables, shiitake mushrooms and punto beans sautéed in coconut oil, with kale and avocado salad. Incredibly tasty!

Lunch: Romaine salad with avocado, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, celery, carrots, tomatoes and mung bean sprouts, sprinkled with nutritional yeast. You won't believe until you taste it how good it is!

Putting price on health?

Feeling good today, went to gym first time since I started to work, which I realised to my horror is 6 months ago! Wanted to start gently, so I went to Pilates, scary how stiff my muscles are. Will do same on Thursday, and once my body is used to it, I might start Spinning again, my favourite.

Anyway, I have been in Planet Organic again, went in just to get a smoothie with wheat grass, but ended up buying tahini, raw coconut oil, carob flakes, raw cacao nibbles and spirulina powder (for my smoothies). It cost me a small fortune, it usually does when I go to Planet Organic. And considering we are buying 3 times the amount of fruit and veggies as before, it starts to feel in our bank accounts. But as somebody said: Can you put a price on your health? I think not. Sure, you might be saving now buying cheap and nasty food, but you'll eventually have to pay with poor health and illnesses. So I'll always think: We'll manage. And it has already started to pay off, I feel much better and even my energy levels are starting to increase.

So what did I eat today? For breakfast as usually huge fruit salad. Here are some pictures of my tasty food:

My 10-am-snack was flaxseed and sesame crackers with sauerkraut, nut mayo and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast, yummi!

Enjoying my apple-grapefruit-orange-wheat grass smoothie in the sun

Off the topic: I love my new Puppies ;-)

For lunch I had kale and avocado salad with quiona, spinach, aduki bean and sun-dried tomato mix. Gorgeous! 

Afternoon lift: a bit of raw chocolate

Went past Scandinavian Kitchen and bought a bottle of pressed wild blueberry juice. Very strong flavour, but also very good.

And I finished off my day with carrot-celery-cucumber-apple juice and Body Builder smoothie made of soya yoghurt, wheat germ, linseeds, banana and orange-lime juice. De-li-ci-ous!

P.S. Note the little monkey in the background =)

Today's food intake

Just a quick update of my rawish day - for breakfast had huge fruit salad, mid-morning snack of flax cracker and sauerkraut with tea, lot's of fresh apple juice in between (for my poor liver), and kale-avocado salad for lunch. Got hold of wheat free cheesy snacks, but weren't really nice, weird texture. And for dinner had huge green juice  of apple-carrot-sprouting broccoli-red cabbage. I made mango-pineapple-banana-raspberry smoothie for my dear husband and darling daughter, and I sneaked in some of my green juice into the smoothie. They loved it!

And for dinner - kale, pok choi and various other veggies in a wok with wholemeal rice and quorn, topped off with sesame seeds. And now my mouth is watering of all the lovely food I'm writing about, so I better go to bed.

Will take my camera with me tomorrow so I can take some pictures of the raw stuff (or not so raw) I eat, for me to look at when slipping, and for you to see how lovely it is! =)