I’m all about giving you new reasons to eat healthy.  New ways to make your trip to the grocery store more interesting.  New things to think about.  Well this next post may sound weird, but I believe it.  And if I believe it, it must be true, right.

We’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat”, right?  Well here’s a list of new reasons to eat your way to health.  Again, it’s not all about what you put in your mouth, as much as what you are NOT putting in your mouth anymore.  The body knows how to heal itself.  But with our unhealthy eating and living habits, the body spends too much energy trying to process and digest.  How about we make it a little easier on ourselves?  

There was once something called “The Doctrine of Signatures”.  This philosophy has been an idea of herbalists and alchemists for centuries.  It is the idea that God has marked everything He created with a sign that was an indication of the purpose if was created for.  A similar belief was held by Native Americans and Oriental cultures. This doctrine did not become a part of the medical thinking until the middle of the seventeenth century.  Colors and shapes of plants remind us of the body part where they would do the most good.  Every whole food has a pattern that resembles a body organ or function.  I’ve listed below a short list of some whole foods and their function.

Grapes:  This fruit hands in a cluster shaped like the heart.  Grapes look like a blood cell and research shows that grapes also are a heart and blood vitalizing food.

Carrots:  A sliced carrot looks like the human eye.  Science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to the eyes.

Tomato:  A tomato has four chambers and is red.  The heart has the same features.  All research shows tomatoes are heart and blood food.

Kidney beans:  These beans actually look like our kidneys.  They help to heal and maintain kidney function

Walnuts:  These nuts look like a little brain.  Left and right hemisphere and upper and lower cerebellums.  We know that walnuts help develop over three dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Celery, Rhubarb and Bok Choy:  These look like bones.  Bones are 23% sodium and these are also 23% sodium.  We now know that if you don’t have enough sodium in your diet, the body will pull sodium from your bones, and make them weak.  Eating these foods will replenish the skeletal needs of your body.

Eggplant, Avocado and Pears:  Are you getting the picture? Have you guessed what these target?  Female health!  Research shows that if a woman eats one avocado a week, it will balance hormones, shed unwanted birth weight and prevent cervical cancers.  These look just like the womb and cervix of the female.  It takes nine months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit.  Interesting, huh?  There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each of these and modern science has studied about 141 of them.

Figs:  These are full of seeds and grow in groups of two.  They increase the motility of male sperm and will increase the numbers of sperm. 

Sweet Potatoes:  These look like the pancreas.  They actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives:  Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.  Enough said?  Ok, here are some more…

Grapefruits, Oranges and other citrus:  They look just like the mammary glands of females and assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions:  They look like body cells.  Research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all the body cells.  They will also produce tears which wash the eyes.

Whew!  That was a lot of information.  Take it one at a time.  Take the list with you to the grocery store.  Eating these veggies in their raw state is even healthier for you.  Keep the enzymes in your food!  Allow your body to heal by eating raw.  Raw food is easier to digest.  Less work, more healing.

Take care of yourself. 

The statements in this blog are for nutritional purposes only.  Please talk to your primary doctor if you have concerns before making any major changes in your  dietary lifestyle.

I remember eating salad growing up.  I remember carrots and potatoes placed beside the meat on my plate.  I remember tuna added to the spaghetti sauce.  I’m sure we had vegetables.  My brother had a garden in our backyard.  I remember pictures of him tending to it.  Most of my knowledge about vegetarian and living food comes from my parents, but not when I was a kid.  I learned most of it later on in life when they both started their own vegetarian/living food lifestyle. 

The body requires electrically charged foods.  This energy comes from sunlight and many veggies are a prime source of chlorophyll.  Chlorophyll is vital for photosynthesis, which is what plants use to obtain their energy from light.  The body needs vegetables to aid in the making of essential nutrients.  Leafy greens are a high alkaline food.  They contain protein and important amino acids used in breaking down protein.  Past eating habits have built up highly acidic environments in our bodies. 

Broccoli-all parts of the broccoli are highly nutritious.  An antioxidant, it also contains potassium, calcium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, magnesium, beta-carotene and Lutein.  Great for dipping, lightly sauteing or blanching.   You can also make a raw broccoli soup by putting all parts of the broccoli into your Vitamix blender, combined with water, onion and any spices that float your boat.

Cauliflower-contains calcium, potassium, sulphur and silicon.  Try juicing the leaves and the flower for a highly beneficial drink.  You can also eat raw, make a mock mashed potato either cold or cooked, by adding garlic, olive oil and onion.  Cauliflower also has sulforaphane which enters your bloodstream and helps your antioxidant defense systems.

Celery-mmmmmmm. A highly nutritious, alkaline veggie.  Juice it with the leaves on or eat raw with almond butter topping.  Celery can reduce blood pressure and help with appetite control.  It contains chlorine, sodium, potassium and magnesium.

Kale-a favorite of mine for making green smoothies.  Kale has phytochemicals high in sulphur and aids the body’s detoxification enzymes.  It contains sulphorapahne which comes out when kale is chopped, chewed or juiced.  Other nutrients in kale are calcium, iron, Vitamin A, C and K, beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin, with are known to help protect against molecular degeneration.

Beets-Ok, this in one veggie I haven’t gotten my daughter to eat.  I think they taste like apple and absolutely love them either raw or lightly cooked.  Victoria Boutenko says eating beets should not turn your urine red.  Juiced beets can have a high sugar concentrate.  Sugar beet juice was used in Chicago to help prevent ice build up on the roads (just a little tid bit for you).  Beets are a very good source of betaine, potassium and folate and can help to replenish iron that is lost during the menstrual cycle.  It is good for the liver and heart health.

Red Bell Pepper-source of Vitamin A, C and Potassium, it also contains Lycopene.  Red is better than green when it comes to peppers.  Green peppers can be hard on the digestion.

Avocado-another yummy veggie.  High in heart healthy monounsaturated fat, it also contains Vitamin E and glutathione.  We need fats in order for the body to work.  Make guacamole by adding tomatoes, sea salt, and onion (optional).  Dip other veggies like carrots, cucumbers, or mushrooms into it instead of chips. 

Put a salad together with all the above ingredients and add flaxseed oil, a dash of any seasonings that you enjoy.  You can also add apple cider vinegar or liquid amino and top with any sprouts you found at the local market. 

How can you get your children to eat them if they won’t?  First, keep trying to add different veggies to their plate.  Babies have taste buds not only on their tongue, but on the sides and roof of their mouth.  This means they could be very sensitive to certain foods.  But as they grow, the taste buds disappear from the sides of the mouth.  As you get older, your taste buds become less sensitive and you will most likely be able to eat foods that you didn’t when you were younger.  Change it up.  Add color and mix veggies in with pasta or soup, or use veggies to dip into their favorite dressing.

Enjoy your veggies!

In my family, it’s an aunt and an uncle.  My friends?  Many….too many.  I had my own scare once, many years ago.  Fortunately turned out to be nothing.  But not to me.  It set me on a quest to figure out what I was missing, emotionally and physically.  What else do I need to do to strengthen my body and mind?

I attended a movie last night, “Healing Cancer From Inside Out”. The first part is about the numbers, the money and the ego involved with the “curing” of cancer.  The second part is the “healing” of cancer.  The presenter lost her mother to cancer and just found out her mother-in-law found lumps in her breast.  I attended with a friend who had breast cancer.  Is she cured?   Is she healed?  All we can do is stay on a healthy eating, exercise, and emotional track.  Doing our best to keep our immune system healthy.

Below is part of an email sent out by Hippocrates Health Institute:

This information is currently circulating on the internet and is purportedly part of a report generated by scientists at Johns Hopkins. We aren’t sure about the origin of this report, however, it does contain a lot of good information (much of which Hippocrates Health Institute has been teaching for years).

AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY (TRY THE KEY WORD) AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHN HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY .
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.
3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9 When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.
CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet , Equal , Spoonful , etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful.
b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk, cancer cells are being starved.
c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds and nuts help put the body into an alkaline environment. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water.
12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.
13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from eating meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6 , Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body’s own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells

This is a lot of information regarding cancer and the treatment of cancer.  It’s everything I believe and more.  What do you do now?  Is most of this new to you?  Some of it?  What are you going to do now?  Please, share this with your friends and family. Even if you believe they would never go for this, do it anyway.  Sometimes just reading these sort of things can change something in people who sit on the fence.

What can you do today to start?  It’s a sunny day here.  Is it there?  The sun is an important source of  Vitamin K.   Walk somewhere.   Not easy, I know, when it’s cold where you are and you are not an outdoor cold weather person, like me.  So what do I do? I walk up and dowm my inside stairs a few times.  I do yoga (that’s an inside activity).   Take any kind of exercise class at the local gym.  Most gyms now offer one day memberships.  If you are walking outside, walk up a hill.  The view from the top is great!   Don’t forget your water!

How about some juice this morning instead of that plate of pancakes?  Juices prepared at home lack the added sugar and preservatives that store bought juices have.  Soy, rice and nut milks…are all healthier, filled with protein and low in fat and calories, not to mention great taste.  Lunch?  Pick out anything green, something red, something orange and something purple.  Yes, these are vegetables.  Toss together with a dressing or just munch on. I love to add dried cranberries, raisins and nuts to my salad.

All great ideas.  Send me some of your ideas for quick and easy ways to get healthier today.

Today I wish you good health.

Donna Bergonzi-Boyle

I’d like to see the look on my grandfather’s face if I time traveled back to 1950’s America and told him I ate a diet consisting primarily of uncooked, raw food.  He’d probably spit hot borsht at me.  A man of true serenity and balance, he did live to be 99 so, in preface to this article, I restate my overarching belief in the moderation of all things, including diet.  Neuroticism around food is unhealthier than unhealthy food.  At least that’s my opinion.

That said, I eat healthy, I pay attention to what goes into my body and I am pretty aware of its effects.  The last several years have seen a rise in popularity of what is most usually called the Raw Food diet and there’s some real compelling evidence of its benefits.  The raw food diet is a diet where at least 75% of what’s eaten is unprocessed and uncooked plant foods, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans, nuts, dried fruit, and seaweed.   The theory is that heating food above 116 degrees F destroys enzymes in food that can assist in the digestion and absorption process. Cooking is also thought to diminish the nutritional value and life force of the food you ingest.

The stated benefits of this way of eating are compelling.  Increased energy, improved skin appearance, better digestion, weight loss, reduced risk of common illness such as flu to more serious problems such as heart disease and cancer are just a few of the plusses.  Raw foods contain enzymes which greatly aid in their own digestion, freeing the body’s own enzymes to do the work unimpeded of regulating all the body’s many metabolic processes. Heating food degrades or destroys these enzymes in food, putting the burden on the body’s own enzyme production.  Eating food without enzymes makes digestion more difficult, leads to toxicity in the body, to excess consumption of food, and therefore to obesity and to chronic disease.  Raw foods contain bacteria and other micro-organisms that stimulate the immune system and enhance digestion by populating the digestive tract with beneficial flora and raw foods have overall higher nutrient value than foods which have been cooked.  The diet is also low in sodium and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fiber and phytochemicals.

So what can you eat?  Basically unprocessed, organic, whole foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, grains, legumes, dried fruit, seaweed, freshly juiced fruit and vegetables, purified water and young coconut milk.  There are many books written about the diet but the one describing the easiest transition is the Complete Book of Raw Food.  Another great one is the Raw Nirvana DVD Set.

Now although at least 75% of what you eat should not be heated over 116 degrees F there are a few cooking techniques that can make foods more digestible and add variety to the diet, like sprouting seeds, grains, and beans; juicing fruit and vegetables; soaking nuts and dried fruit; blending and dehydrating food.

Skeptical?  Try it for a month.  If you don’t feel better you can write me a nasty email.

In the meantime…

Be well

JuicyJosh

www.877myjuicer.com