Your Mother Was Right
Vegetables are the foundation of a great diet. A recent, 15-month study of 2000 subjects found that those with the highest vegetable and fruit intake had a 70% reduced risk of heart attack and other cardiac problems. (This was reported in Health Sciences Institute’s e-alert, which sends out free emails.)
Raw is preferable, of course. Bear in mind that we were not evolved to eat cooked food, and that our primitive forbears lived on a diet of raw food for millions of years. If you are not prepared to eat all raw, at least be sure to eat a salad before eating cooked food. This will get your enzymes perking so that they can cope better with the cooked food that follows.
There are many different salad combinations. A wide variety should be eaten – dark green lettuces (not head lettuce), cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, beet root (beets), capsicums of all colours (peppers to Americans), red onions and any other vegetables that take your fancy. Chop, shred or dice them in various combinations. Rocket, coriander (cilantro), parsley and any number of green herbs in pots make great additions, and provide calcium your body can assimilate, other valuable minerals and great flavour.
Every day have a large salad with most of these vegetables and herbs. Because they give an appealing texture, add a cut-up avocado and a small amount of virgin olive oil as well as a squeeze of lemon. Then, and this really makes it yummy and crunchy, sprinkle two tablespoons of seeds over the salad. The result is so filling that it will keep you going all day. (Instructions for preparing the seeds are below.) Please do the best you can to use organic vegetables for their life-saving minerals and vitamins. If a seasoning is desired use A. Vogel’s Trocomare and Herbamare.
Another great way to get lots of raw veggies down is by drinking a glass of freshly squeezed carrot, celery, beet root, parsley, cucumber, etc., as well as any greens that are available. Organically raised raw egg is delicious, blended with the juice. Add Maca, minerals and RoseHip granules, and blend it all for a nourishing, filling meal.
Most people are not prepared to go the all-raw route. For those, it’s a good idea to eat a wide variety of steamed vegetables, with particular emphasis on zucchini, celery and string beans, the three liver-cleansing vegetables. Combined in a soup and blended they make a great detoxifier known as Bieler Broth after Dr Bieler. Potatoes, steamed or baked, and seasoned with herbs and butter, chives, shallots, or chopped red onions (raw or cooked), are a delicious and filling addition to a vegetable meal. For those few who are allergic to the nightshade vegetables (potatoes, capsicum, tomatoes and eggplant) special care is needed. And, don’t forget Dr. Bieler’s soup if you or a family member are feeling toxic.
Nature’s Treat
Fresh, raw fruit can be prepared in so many ways: you are only limited by your imagination. Fruit salads are lovely, especially if bananas are included for thickness. Sauces can be made of fruit to drizzle over the salad, by blending several fruits with avocado and/or frozen bananas. The addition of dried fruit, especially dates, creates a rich sauce. Sprinkle a few nuts on fruit salads, even though they are not an ideal combination the nutritional value is there.
Fruit smoothies are great on warm days and are a lovely treat for children. Use fruit juice or make almond milk (directions below) and put in the blender with frozen banana and any other frozen or fresh fruit you like. Just remember – when freezing fruit, it should be very ripe, and hard skins must be removed first. Cut frozen fruit in chunks before blending. For variety you might like to add a raw egg before blending, but be sure of the purity of the eggs you buy. Frozen mango and banana, blended ’til smooth, makes a delicious ice cream, and it won’t shorten your life!
Try drying your own fruit. Each season get cases of ripe mango, banana and pineapple, taking care that they are extremely sweet. A dehydrator makes this easy, but they can also be dried on cookie sheets in an ordinary oven, turned to ON, but no higher, in order to preserve the enzymes. The great advantage of this is that the sulfur and possibly dirty conditions used during commercial drying are eliminated. Dehydrators must be set at 40 degrees Celsius or below, or 100 degrees Fahrenheit or below, so enzymes are not killed. If you use an oven, take care that the fruit does not go mouldy.
Dehydrators can be used to make delightful treats. As just one example, soaked, ground almonds can be blended with soaked (and drained) dates and orange juice to form a paste that can then be spread on a dehydrator tray, using a blank. In order to keep it from sticking, a tiny amount of coconut oil should be spread on the blank first. Dry until it reaches the desired consistency – crunchy or soft. Let your imagination create other treats, or refer to the many available recipe books for dehydrating food.
Don’t Neglect Your Protein
If you are a vegetarian you will need to learn to prepare nuts so that the anti-enzyme factor is eliminated. When selecting nuts, make sure they are not rancid, and use as wide a variety as possible. Do not, however, use cashews or peanuts, as they are not healthful. Put all the nuts in a large container and add more than enough water to cover, so that when they swell they will still be covered. Put enough good quality sea salt in the water to make it taste noticeably salty. Soak them overnight, or longer. Drain in a colander, then put in a dehydrator until they are dry and crunchy. Keep the temperature low to preserve enzymes – it will take about two days before they are ready, depending upon the room temperature and humidity. If you do not have a dehydrator, nuts can be dried on cookie sheets in an oven at the ON setting, no higher, and will need to be stirred occasionally.
Almonds should be handled separately. Soak them over night and next day drop them in extremely warm water to loosen the skin, which can then be easily removed. The skin has oxalic acid in it, which is to be avoided. They can then be added to the dryer, along with the other nuts. If you wish to make almond milk, simply blend with juice or water ’til smooth. Almonds contain easily assimilated calcium, and should be used frequently.
When drying seeds you may prefer to keep them separate from nuts, as they are tiny and tend to get “lost”. The salad addition mentioned earlier is comprised of pepitas (pumpkin seeds), sunflower seeds and pine nuts. Dry them using the nut drying technique, draining through a sieve instead of a colander, and sprinkle them over vegetable salads or cooked vegetables, or use them in other creative ways of your own.
Before our oceans became so polluted, fish were an excellent form of protein and healthful oils. No more – they are now contaminated with mercury. Farmed fish are the worst of the lot so don’t trust them. Because they are tiny, sardines are thought to be free of mercury, and if you use only those packed in water they can be a tasty addition to salads and other dishes, as well as a safe way to get calcium, protein and the good oils sardines contain.
If you eat red meat, roast, grille or saut it lightly. Absolutely never barbecue meat, or anything else: charred foods are the most cancer-causing thing you can eat. And, please, never eat meat that has been injected and fed grains. Grass fed is the only safe meat. The same rules apply to chickens. If you don’t like to roast or grill, chicken pieces cooked slowly in coconut oil are delicious. Do not be phobic about the skin, which should be kept on. Eat meat sparingly, as a condiment, rather than the main course. Eggs are a fine protein, especially when eaten raw, but they must be from free-range birds and they must be fresh.
It is impossible to be healthy if you eat the wrong fats and oils. If you fancy stir-fry, use coconut oil. It is healthful and delicious. But remember, it’s essential to take good quality food enzymes when eating cooked food.
Once you have established the above rules, and have stuck to them for a while, you will see that eating healthfully is easier than it seems. The secret is to Keep It Simple. You will discover such improvements in well being that your efforts will be rewarded. The trick here is to forget about fancy recipes and stick to the principles of safe food preparation. You will be infinitely stronger and healthier and you will live decades longer. Remember – some of us are stuck down quickly due to bad food choices, while some are able to defy the odds for years because they were born tough. But no one, not even you, can get away with ignoring the laws of nature, long-term.