real food

Healthy Summer Recipes

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Healthy Summer Recipes

Summer is on its way – can you feel it? I certainly can. That warm breeze pouring in my windows has me on the edge of my seat for summer salsas, delicious salads and refreshing mocktails.

These are my favourite recipes right now!! I’ve personally created them and tested them with many family members, and they’re all a huge hit!

Here is your It’s-Almost-Summer-Let’s-Celebrate Recipe Compilation…

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I Feel Like I’m at the Beach Tropical Mocktail

To your high speed blender, add…

3 peeled oranges (leave them whole)
2 cups frozen pineapple chunks
5 large frozen strawberries
1 frozen banana
1.5 cups water
6 ice cubes

Blend and serve!! Enjoy this kick of immune boosting vitamin C, fat busting bromelain and packed in nutrients from these superfoods!

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Sweet and Spicy Summer Salsa

To a medium sized bowl, add…

1 chopped mango
2 chopped roma tomatoes
1/2 red onion chopped tiny
1 chopped avocado
1/2 chopped jalapeño pepper
1/4 tsp sea salt sprinkled over it
Then add juice of 1 lime (which will disperse the salt throughout)

Stir well and enjoy as a side to barbecued chicken, with as-healthy-as-you-can-find-or-make nacho chips or as a dip for vegetables.

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Summer Spinach Raw Vegan Caesar Salad

To a large bowl, add…

1 bunch shredded organic baby spinach
1/2 head of red leaf lettuce (or romaine – choose your favourite! This adds texture and different green nutrients)
1 sweet pepper – choose your colour and chop
1 roma tomato – chopped
1/2 cucumber – chopped
1 bunch of grapes – sliced in half

Raw Vegan Caesar Dressing

(Ditch the store bough chemicalized, food-like dressing and make your own!! This literally tastes IDENTICAL to Caesar dressing, it’s SO delicious!)

To a high speed blender, add…

1/3 cup raw cashews
2/3 cup water
2.5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp garlic powder
10 shakes sea salt
6 shakes pepper

Let this soak for 15 minutes before blending to allow cashews to soften and make the recipe creamy. Pour over your salad bowl, mix and enjoy!

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What is a Meal Replacement Shake and Why are they Pushed on the Elderly?

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What is a Meal Replacement Shake?

You’ve seen them advertised on tv. Boost. Ensure. Those meal replacements in a bottle, with elderly ladies jumping on a trampoline or elderly men finishing what looks to have been a marathon, who are just overjoyed with happiness, radiant health and physical activity.

Cut to…. having these shakes be recommended by doctors for patients who are suffering the effects of chemotherapy, and are not hungry due to the poisons being pumped into them, who have no energy to exist, due to the poisons being pumped into them (a topic explored in another blog here!), or for those people living in a nursing home who maybe struggle to eat properly due to denture issues, decreased appetite or various other health issues.

First of all, what is in those meal replacement shakes? Can it even be called food?

It is definitely not food. It is a chemical concoction of food-like substances created in the lab with a whole lot of sugar added to it. They are marketed (very well) to medical doctors, nurses and health aids to recommend to their patients, but it seems the ingredient list is lost in translation.

Here, we break it down. Can you even recognize any of these ingredients as real food?

Ensure Plus® Milk Chocolate

Water, Corn Maltodextrin, Sugar, Blend of Vegetable Oils (Canola, Corn), Milk Protein Concentrate, Soy Protein Isolate, Cocoa Powder (Processed with Alkali).

Less than 0.5% of: Nonfat Milk, Magnesium Phosphate, Sodium Citrate, Soy Lecithin, Natural & Artificial Flavor, Calcium Phosphate, Potassium Chloride, Cellulose Gum, Potassium Citrate, Choline Chloride, Ascorbic Acid, Cellulose Gel, Carrageenan, Salt, Ferric Phosphate, dl-Alpha-Tocopheryl Acetate, Zinc Sulfate, Niacinamide, Manganese Sulfate, Calcium Pantothenate, Copper Sulfate, Thiamine Chloride Hydrochloride, Vitamin A Palmitate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Biotin, Chromium Chloride, Sodium Molybdate, Sodium Selenate, Potassium Iodide, Vitamin B12, Phylloquinone, and Vitamin D3.

There are 22 grams of processed sugar in one 250mL bottle.
Processed sugar FEEDS cancer cells. Yet they are highly recommended to everyone who has chosen to take chemotherapy because they HAVE CANCER. Too much sugar can also destabilize blood sugar, lead to sugar spikes and crashes and cause moodiness.

There is also less than 1 gram of fibre in the entire bottle, which is an essential piece of our nutritional needs. It helps to move things through the digestive system and sweeps up toxins as it goes.

The canola or corn oil are both extremely inflammatory compounds and cause a great deal of havoc in the body.

All of the vitamins and minerals that are in the bottle are synthetic, and your body really has no idea what to do with them. Your body likes natural vitamins and minerals from real food, as they are synergistically available to work together in the body. There are many vitamins/minerals that need others to be fully utilized by the body, and Mother Nature provides this for us in REAL FOOD.

There are many artificial ingredients in this bottle which help to create flavour, thickness,  colour and preservatives to let it sit on the shelf for months. All of which cause a host of inflammatory responses in the body.

What should you eat instead?

For people who are suffering ill effects from chemotherapy, or have decreased appetites, or anyone who needs to eat when they may not feel like it, a simple smoothie is the best recommendation.

For example, you could blend up a bit of frozen banana and strawberries with almond milk and that would be a perfectly healing meal (that needs no replacement!)

Or raspberries, blueberries and peaches.

Or strawberries, kiwi and natural peanut butter.

It does not matter what the combination is, as long as the person enjoys the ingredients. There is a much higher chance of them drinking something fruity and palatable than blended green vegetables to start. Meet them where they are at, and if it is a plant based, whole food – throw it in that blender and I really hope they enjoy it!

With Sources from:

https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-plus#milk-chocolate
https://draxe.com/meal-replacement-shakes/

What Otto Warburg Actually Discovered About Cancer

Could Your Boy Belly Cause a Heart Attack?

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Could Your Boy Belly Cause a Heart Attack?

Do you carry extra weight around your abdominal area? Research is telling us that people of normal weight who have extra central body fat are at an elevated risk of dying of heart disease.

Central obesity it extra fat around your midsection, and there is an easy way to calculate if you may fall into this category.

1. Measure your waist at your belly button.
2. Measure your hips at the widest part of your buttocks.
3. Divide the first number by the second number.

For men, your waist-to-hip ratio should be no greater than 1.0 and for women it should be no greater than 0.9.

If your numbers are higher than the suggested ratio, there are simple changes that you can implement to reduce your ratio and improve your health.

The first thing that you need to do is to add more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet. It’s very difficult to make a massive diet and lifestyle change all at once and be able to sustain it long term. So the most important thing you can do is eat more fruit and veggies and these foods will begin to crowd out the bad foods.

I also want you to moderate your meat intake. A serving of meat is the size of a card deck. Which does not mean 8 decks stacked on top of each other!! When was the last time you ate a steak that fit in your hand? I bet it’s been awhile.

Over the years, our portion sizes have grown and grown into rather ridiculous quantities of food. Our bodies don’t need that much food and literally can not digest that much protein in one sitting. This extra protein ends up being stored as fat and can contribute to central obesity, putting you at risk for heart disease.

Avoid fast food, processed food and packaged food.

Eat real food!! Learn to make a few delicious recipes that you enjoy. Check out our blog of recipe ideas here.

And of course, move your body more often. Add some gentle cardio to your routine, go for a power walk at lunch, hit the gym and sweat it out.

The very first sign of heart disease is erectile dysfunction. Your arteries and capillaries are very active and sensitive in that area, and can be the first to indicate that there is hardening of the arteries or plaque building up in your blood vessels.

Obviously not a topic that you want on your radar, but heading to the doctor for a prescription to help in this area is one of the worst things you can do. It puts added stress on your cardiovascular system and masks an important symptom that is telling you that your body is in distress.

This is the time to make healthy diet and lifestyle changes to let your body naturally heal and return to abundant health.

With Sources from:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/research-were-watching-belly-fat-boosts-risk-of-dying-of-heart-disease