Living Healthier

Living healthy. What does this mean? For one, it means eating foods as nature intended, not the twinkies and diet pepsi that the media screams at us to buy. Sure, twinkies and diet pepsi can taste good, be we all know they are not good for us.

Here's what I choose to primarily snack on on a daily basis. Green smoothies. Green smoothies you say? Aren't those gross? Well, I used to think they would be. Until I made my first one. Took me about 3 sips before the body realized what I was feeding it was actually good. Then I craved it. So how do you make green smoothies?

This is a typical menu I use, which is my own menu, for making smoothies. And because I used a larger blender, the Omni Blender, I can actually make 4 smoothies at one time.

Recipe ingredients that I commonly use are:

- 3-4 leafs Romaine lettuce

- 1-2 stalks Celery

- 1/4 to 1/2 cup homegrown sprouts( mine are typically made using alfalfa, rice, radish, rye, and sometimes wheat, sometimes caraway)

- 1/3 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

- 1/3 cup fresh or frozen peaches ( not all the time on this one, mostly while in season)

- 1/3 cup fresh or frozen raspberries or strawberries

- 1/5 cup flaked coconut

- 1 TBSP dulse

- 1 TBSP almond butter, or brazil nut butter, or cashew nut butter(mostly made with the Omni blender

- 1 apple, either red delicious or gala

- 1 pear

- 1 or 2 bananas

- 2 to 3 cups water(non chlorinated; mine is well water)

Bear in mind, I do not use all these ingredients at one time, typically though, I will have about 11 ingredients per smoothie. And because I make four smoothies at one time, I can save them in the fridge for a couple of days if I choose. I always use organic produce. It's the only good way to go.

Check out the Omni blender below. It's actually at least as good as the Vitamix, has the 3 hp motor, fits UNDER my cupboards(Omni's height is 16-1/2"), which none of the Vitamix could do, and has a 7 year warranty. And one little thing I can't leave unmentioned, is that it a fair amount less money than the Vitamix. Don't get me wrong, the Vitamix is a great blender. I just prefer the Omni, for the reasons I just stated. Plus, OmniBlend will also send you a recipe book to get you started. How does it get any better than this?

Live To Eat, Or Eat To Live?

This is a question that few folks think about. And most of these people actually live to eat, rather than eat to live. What do I mean by this? When you shop at a regular grocery store, you are nearly 100% guaranteed to end up with genetically modified foods, foods with MSG(under a wide variety of names. Check this site out for more help on this, with Soy(this is not a healthy food unless fermented), canola oil(I don't care who tells you it's healthy, or even safe. No one has been able to prove this yet, and all the evidence shows us otherwise), NutraSweet(listed under many names), and much more additives that are very toxic.

People buy food at specific stores mostly due to price. But how much money can you save? Perhaps $1,000 per year? And how much does a bout of cancer cost? Or two or three bouts of cancer? How about Alzheimers? How about Dementia? Is it worth it? Many still believe it is.

If you are one who believe that health should be a priority, and not an occasional pasttime, that you, and you alone, are responsible for your health, then perhaps this message will not be in vain. I know it's not. You are reading it. So what to do with your diet?

Raw foods are great foods. Especially when they are organically grown. I do everything possible to avoid non-organic, due to the very high probability of genetically modified organism in those foods, that have no business being there. That, and there is a high likelihood of pesticides and herbicides in non-organically grown foods. Pesticides and herbicides do what? Kill. Makes sense, if you want to reduce the population or/and keep customers for life in the medical industry, doesn't it?

Foods I eat on a regular basis include:
~Kiwi
~Banana
~Most berries
~Potatoes
~Tomatoes
~Romaine Lettuce
~Sprouts I grow

And more of course. The potatoes and tomatoes are the only ones listed above that are not always raw. As raw, organic foods though, they are superbly beneficial to your health. Potatoes are not very healthy in a cooked state.

The reasons I use the above foods, and I kept that list short to keep this blog posting from being 4 pages, is this:

Kiwis are loaded with an enormous amount of enzymes. All live foods have live enzymes. All cooked foods are devoid of enzymes. Enzymes are required for every function of the body and mind. EVERY function. If one consumes large amounts of raw foods, they will have more energy, better and more memory of dreams, have far less health problems, have a better attitude, have better vision, mobility, sex. When one obtains a health problem, the body is simply letting you know, you need to cleanse. Raw foods cleanse. And this one cleanses fairly well. Kiwis are also abundant in a large variety of nutrients.

Bananas are a good food, in a variety of ways. Although it is not a food high in potassium, as you are led to believe by the food industry. Potatoes are much higher. But they do have potassium. They have a fiber that really helps the body's regularity, they have many live enzymes, and have a moderate amount of nutrients.

Berries have some excellent healing capabilities. Or perhaps better said, would be that they help the body to heal, due to the compounds found in the berries. For instance, raspberries and strawberries have ellagic acid, which helps the brain. The American Cancer Society states that ellagic acid helps reduce cancers, and helps the liver to remove cancer causing substances from the blood. Berries are rich in enzymes, and the darker berries have the most powerful healing agents that we are aware of, out of berries in general. Berries are known to be very good cleansers of the digestive tract.

Potatoes are rich in the compound lutein, as are spinach and kale. Lutein is a an anti-oxidant known to help eye health. Raw potatoes are loaded with very beneficial enzymes, that will help keep blood sugar in better control, give added energy(do not consume just before bed or you may not sleep), helps the digestive system, helps the dreaming process, helps rheumatoid arthritis, where cooked potatoes aggravate arthritis. I highly recommend this raw food. For many, it is an acquired taste. I grew up eating them.

Tomatoes are just a superbly beneficial food. They are medically known to help reverse cancers, are a high source of vitamin C, Harvard studies show that men who consume 3 of more servings of tomatoes per week, have a 45% less risk of prostate cancer. Tomatoes are also rich in betacarotene and lycopene. The darker the color, the most of these compound in the food.

Romaine Lettuce is one of the best, if not the best, lettuce to consume, in my opinion. This lettuce appears to have more nutrients than any other currently produced. Romaine is much higher in nearly all nutrients, between it an Iceberg.

As for sprouts, I recommend not just one sprout, but many. Alfalfa, Red Clover, Broccoli(medically known to help cancers), radish. These sprouts all contain nutrients with concentrated amounts of phytochemicals (plant compounds) that can protect us against disease. I used to eat a quart of these every day. If you choose to consume this many, bear in mind, that because all live greens will thin the blood, you may get cold with this many in a 12 hour period. This is a good site to give some added information on the immense value of sprouts.