Organic vs Non Organic?

So many times I hear people ask me if they should spend the extra money on organic produce. My answer is always "Hell ya!" Think about it. Not only does organic produce and food have more life force in it, but it also has more enzymes, more vitamins and more minerals than their sprayed chemicalized counterparts.

In my opinion it's better to buy 3 organic apples for the week (or a few days) than to spend the same amount of money and buy double the amount of apples, so that you can have say an apple everyday.

So say you eat an apple everyday and you only buy 3 organic ones verses 7 non organic. Then on day 4 you have no apples right? Well instead of having that apple have a glass of water. I'm telling you it's the goal anyway. Our bodies should be able to produce all the vitamins and minerals on its own, but because it can't (right now at least) we need to put food into it. So the goal is to eat less and less anyway. As David Jubb says "We're digging our graves with our own teeth."

And think of this, by buying the organic produce and sacrificing (in this example) those other 4 days of having apples, you're actually supporting the organic farmers (who have to jump thru 3x as many hoops as the other farmers) thereby driving down the cost, thereby making it cheaper for your raw food counterpart (in say New York )to buy his organic food. It's a win win for everybody. Your body will thank you and so will the rest of us in this movement.

Oh by the way, did you see the list of pesticides found in these foods? Would you like a DDT whopper with a side of benzene? Benzene is so hot right now...

Click here to find out what you're eating!

But where do you get your protein?

I really thought this video was great because is show that it's cool to actually (as a guy too) do the work and spend some time in the kitchen making some food that is good for you. Gone are the days when the woman cooks up a dead carcass for you to eat when you get home from work. Thank God too. :)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120122116182915297.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today


Just the other day I was at a dinner and all my friends (and some people who I had just met) were eating chicken, stuffing and were asking me about my diet. I brought a salad, with no dressing. I love it that way.

It's funny how brainwashed we are. First question they ask always is, "So where do you get your protein?" It's so funny, nobody even asks WHY that question is even important. Or nobody asks why it's even a viable question to put on the table. But wait a minute, I learned that from Men's Fitness so it must be true. Amazing. I feel like telling these people that protein isn't as important as you might think. Or I feel like telling them "oh I get it from E3 Live, Spirulina, Chlorella, Wheat grass, Hemp Seed Powder etc." But hell they don't know what that is! So I usually just say "I get it from nuts and seeds." Even though those are more a source of fat and not protein. So that usually gets them off my back.

For the most part I don't like talking about it and am really shy about it. I mean if somebody is genuine and really wants to talk about it, I'd be stoked. But mostly they just regurgitate what they hear from their trainers and aren't really interested in learning. So in that case, I just give them something that will keep em quiet so we can talk about something else.



Not only can we get all the protein we need from leafy greens and the foods mentioned above we can get more than we need and in the available form we need it in. I've actually never been strong in my whole life. In my 10 years of working out I'm stronger than ever but 5 pounds lighter. Go figure.

So in my research and experience, the whole fixation on all this necessary animal and dairy protein is a total myth. We can't keep eating processed, civilized, western death food. If we want something different than what the other guy has (personally I've seen enough people with heart disease and cancer thank you very much) we have to do something different everyday. Maybe even 3 times a day. :)

Inspirational Teachers

I've been really busy lately and have not had time to post! But I've been thinking a bit lately about how in order to continue down the path of doing raw foods you really need the education on top of actually doing it. I like to listen to information I download off the internet like on thebestdayever.com. I'm more of an audio learner. I also like to read as much as I can to learn more and more about how this diet affects people and diseases. We all have people who inspire us and people that we learn from. I have a lot. And there are probably more than I can list here but I thought I would share all of them with everybody. So for what it's worth, these are the people who have affected my life and people who inspire me and people who I've learned a lot from.

Viktoras Kulvinskas

www.viktoraslive.org

Brian Clement
http://www.hippocratesinst.org/

Daniel Vitalis
http://www.elixircraft.com/

Gabriel Cousins
http://www.treeoflife.nu/

David Wolfe
http://www.davidwolfe.com/

Robert O. Young
http://www.phmiracleliving.com/

Bob Marshall
http://www.healthline.cc/

David Jubb
http://www.lifefood.com/
http://www.jubbslongevity.com/index.html

Annie Jubb
http://www.anniejubb.com/

Norman Walker
http://www.nwjcal.com/index.htm

Peter Ragnar
http://www.roaringlionpublishing.com/indexstore.html

Arnold Ehret
http://www.arnoldehret.org/index.html

Jay Kordich
http://www.jaykordich.com/

Truth Calkins
http://www.thebestdayever.com

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com

Storm Talifero
http://www.thegardendiet.com

Barry Carter
http://www.subtleenergies.com/

Don Jansen
http://meetdonjansen.wetpaint.com/?t=anon

Dr. Lindsey Duncan
http://www.askdrlindsey.com/
http://www.genesistoday.com/dr_lindsey_duncan/

Jack LaLanne
http://www.jacklalanne.com/index2.htm

Gary Null
http://www.garynull.com/

Starting a Garden

I've been dreaming lately about starting a garden. There is a little side of me that wants to be totally off the grid. It's funny I live in sort of two different worlds. In one world I want to be as productive as possible and live/function in society like any normal person. And another part of me just wants to have my little plot of land and live off of it. So at some point I'm going to have to stop dreaming and hybridize the two. I found this video and thought it was fascinating what this guy was able to do on relatively little land area. I thought we should all be doing this. Check out his site here

Anthony over at RawModel.com is going to be doing an eco project that I think involves doing a lot of this. One day I know I'm going to have a big plot of land and grow most if not all my food off of it. It's going to be amazing. And I know exactly where this plot of land is too. It's right by the beach. :)

Imagine not having to go to the store to get fruit or veggies! Wake up and have no fruit for your green smoothie that morning? Forget going to the supermarket and standing in line, spending money on fruits. Stuff that! Just walk out your backyard, pick a few things and get right back to your vitamix. Ahh the good life. One day it will happen...

Here are some good websites to know about:
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/index.php/Video/
http://earthbox.com/
http://www.victoryvegetablegardens.com/

We are the world...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XPCOGSnjP5w
(Dr. Weston Prices Video)

Remember that song from the 80's and how inspirational it was? I remember that. Those were the days! You had Bono there, Sting etc, all singin about how the kids are our future. Which is true. But the other month I ran across this video that remains in my subconscious because of A) how powerful it is and B) what its implications are. The video talks about Weston Price and his studies on teeth. And how our diet affects the type of offspring we have. Our diet affects literally how our bones are formed and how are teeth are formed. It's really quite amazing. The implication is that if somebody has a susceptibility to cavities (thin layers of dentin around the teeth) this can be genetic. Meaning that the mother can by her diet pass that on to her kids by the level of genes that she passes on at the time of conception. WOW. And this is passed on by how she feeds her kids.

So what this can mean is how we eat now is going to have an impact on how future generations turn out. Low minerals, high sugar has the possibility to produce kids that have weak immune systems, childhood diseases etc. So in essence each generation is or can become weaker and weaker. This is manifested in how close are teeth are together, our body types, bone density and more. Amazing.

So many times we get caught up in how are diets are affecting our own health. But we forget that we need to eat this way for a sustainable future for the planet as well as for our kids and family. Our diet and the foods we eat affect way more than just if we feel good or not. It's much broader than that.

Just think of the possibilities. Imagine a culture of people that not only raised their kids raw but actually took the time to do some cleansing and really cleaned themselves out and ate the best raw organic superfoods to prepare for a pregnancy? Imagine what types of kids and future generations that would produce. Think about it. Now that sheds a little more light on focusing so much on ourselves. We can eat to create a more powerful generation that comes after us.

Milk It Does A Body Good?

Here is my milk. Looks just like milk doesn't it? I love putting things into containers that mimick the ones we are used to. I'm sure the platic leaches into my body. And I don't think Masaru Emoto would be proud. His work showed that the molecules in water can actually change by speaking to water, praying over it or even writing messages on the side of your glass. Now that is amazing! But I think it looks cool and one day I'll have it in glass or something. :) Maybe I'll put them in bottles like in Leave it to Beaver. But the above photo is just almond milk mixed with coconut water. Soooo good!




There is a great website called. http://www.notmilk.com/ and it's all about how HORRIBLE dairy products are for you. I love it and feel so much better for giving up all dairy. However I must admit I have a similar story to my hero David Wolfe on this. It was the milk that triggered my need to change my diet. It took years of trying to change and reading Fit for Life. But when I was having problems with milk I KNEW I needed to change something in my diet! So big ups to MILK! :) Hey sometimes it takes the worst things to show us we need change!

Inspirational Video...

I thought I would post this video as I really enjoyed it. It really has nothing whatsoever to do with raw food. But in a way it does. I'm a christian so something like this really resonates with me. Although I'm not a very "hard core" christian. But that's neither here nor there.

I think what we're all trying to do with raw foods is 2 things. On the more immediate front we are trying to accomplish some short term goals. They might be anything from losing weight, getting rid of food allergies, trying to overcome or prevent certain diseases, gain more clarity etc.

But then I think we lose sight of the bigger picture. Those are all fine and great but what we are trying to do in a much larger sense is to actually transform ourselves. As David Wolfe would say "become superheros" or to gain our "powers" back. Or in a religious sense to accoplish the will of God here with our lives on earth. We are changing our entire way of looking at the world. We are not our food. Sometimes we get obsessed with FOOD. We are eating this way so we can be healthy enough to fulfil why we are on this planet. Our mission.

Are we doing only what we love with our lives?

And in this way raw food marries very nicely with religion, sprirituality, consciousness etc. I think we all have a higher calling and after watching this video it reminded me that we are here for a much larger purpose and there are people who have much more to bear than we do. We complain if it takes us 20 minutes to make a smoothie!

So I think that we need a broader picture of what we are doing with our lives. We are not our fears, we are not our frustrations, we are not our desire to be raw foodists. It's much more than that. So all that to say I thought this video was really great and inspirational. I hope you like it!

Let me know your thoughts!

Some Good Raw Food Goals. Direction Determines Destination...

Here are some things I like to try to do everyday if I can. A lot of times I can't and that's okay. I don't beat myself up about it. Actually it's better to move in cycles. Eat what's in season, eat locally (except superfoods obviously) etc. It's good to eat in cycles because food is in a lot of ways a drug and you don't want your body getting too used to any stimulant. So it's good to switch it around every so often to keep your body guessing. It's like lifting weights. Ya gotta switch it up. I'm trying to get better at that actually. I like staples in my diet and I'm a creature of habit.

Once you create a new habit you are more likely to create another one. Your health must be earned it's not given to you. It's like waves crashing against a cliff, over time the waves can actually reshape rock! Over time you'll start doing more and more things each day and after 2,5, 10 years you're a completely different person than you were before. It's amazing!

So here are some basics I try to do:

• First thing when I get up (that's when you're most dehydrated) is to have a big glass of water (with sea salt, msm and lemon in it) with an enzyme. Some people like to have warm teas too and that is also really good.
  
• Have a green juice everyday if you can.
  
• If you eat cooked food have an enzyme with it.
  
• If you eat cooked meat, have some lemon on it, or some Cayenne Pepper suppliment with it. It helps is to digest. According to Donna Gates in The Body Ecology Diet, eat meat in the earlier part of the day if you can.
  
• Food combine as much as you can. Seperate carbs from proteins to allow your body to have more energy. They talk alot about this in Fit for Life
  
• Have at least 1 salad per day, 2 if you can. 1 with every meal if possible. This will help to at least make each meal more alkaline. Having a good acid/alkaline balance is key.
  
• Have a green smoothie everyday. I have mine for breakfast. Usually I have fruit in it (whatever is in season), with half an avocado (to make it more filling and slow the release of sugar), and any type and as much green leafy vegetables as possible. I also add in some lemon. This helps to remove the taste of bitter greens. Then for kicks I usually add some sort of frozen berries at the end, just because they are low in sugar, high in antioxidents and turn a green smoothie into a purple one. :) I also add in any superfood powders on hand.
  
• Have a chocolate superfood smoothie everyday if you can.
  
• Have a wheatgrass whenever possible.

That's pretty much the basics of what I try to do. But I'm finding that as time goes on, I don't require as much food and my addictions have diminished almost 100%. It's really great how that happens! So keep it up people! :)

- Justin

God's Healing

So this is a picture of my mom, my wife and I. My mom had non Hodgkin's lymphoma back in 1995. It was intense. She went thru the chemo and radiation treatment and she lost all her hair and spent months at The City of Hope. It tweaked her so incredibly bad. Then since then she's had lung cancer back in 2001 for which she had a whole lobe of her lung removed and they cracked her ribs open for surgery. I was traveling around the world at the time but I guess it took her 5 months to recover from that. Then a couple years ago she had a heart attack and they did surgery again and put a stint in her heart and all that.

So I felt I had to learn more about diet in order to get her on the healing path. She's super into raw foods and juices and all that. She's making the transition over to raw like I am. But now she needs to be more aggressive about it. :)

The past two years they've been monitoring spots on her lungs and they've been dormant. But recently it doubled in size and activity. So they think she has lung cancer again and want her to go into surgery.

Please if you can pray for her. I trust that God will do miraculous things in her life and get her thru this. I am a firm believer in prayer and healing thru prayer and belief in God.

Thanks everybody! :)

- Justin

Raw and Living Superfood Chocolate Shake...

This shake or smoothie is a staple of mine. I have one everyday! :) Sorry I didn't put any measurements down. I usually just do spoonfuls of each one. I'm horrible at measuring! I know bananas aren't the best for you but those along with the avocados really make it filling.

Sometimes I have it with a salad and that'll fill me up for hours. It's crazy. I also put in there any other superfoods I have on hand.

CHOCOLATE SHAKE
Cacao Powder
Cacao Butter
Hemp Seed Protein Powder
Frozen Banana 1
Agave Nectar
Almond Milk
Coconut Milk
Raw Honey
Mint Leaves
Coconut Meat
1/4 or up to an entire Avacado
Maca

Brian Clemente of the Hippocrates Health Institute...

This is a great lecture. This guy is amazing. I highly recommend taking the time to watch this video clip. He as many many good things to say. I think it would be very wise for all of us to really take to heart our mission on earth and finding out what that is so that we can find and live in a more joyous and fulfiling way. Here is his website. It was featured on the crazy sexy cancer dvd as well.

http://www.hippocratesinst.org/

If for some reason you can't view it click here

Raw Chocolate Fudge!

Put all ingredients into a bowl and mash together. If you want you can also form it into the size of snickers bars and freeze it in the freezer. Then you can have raw chocolate bars. Pretty sweet. This is one of my favorite things to make, it's so good for you and tastes amazing!

DRY INGREDIENTS
1 TBS Cacao Butter
Pinch of Sea Salt
1 Big Spoonful Cacao Nibs
1 Big Spoonful Cacao Powder
1 Small Spoonful Hemp Seed Powder
1 Small Spoonful Carob Powder
10-20 Raw Natures First Law Peanuts or any raw nuts
1 Small Spoonful Ground Flax Seeds
Small Handful of Goji Berries
1 Big Spoonful Dried Coconut Flakes

WET INGREDIENTS:
Cashew Butter (Spoonful)
Almond Butter (Spoonful)
Coconut Butter/Oil (Spoonful)
1TBS Agave
Spoonful Honey

Traveling with Raw Food...

Here is my wife and I hiking around Manly Australia
Drinking a carrot, apple celery juice in Harbord Sydney, Oz
Hanging out with My uncle and his wife...
Hanging out on Green Island Australia with my wife...

It's not easy traveling and trying to do raw food. But thanks to people getting the word out there it's getting easier and easier. More raw foods are becoming more and more available all over the world.

I hear it's also better to fly at night. The reason being is that the ultraviolet rays that hit the plane at that high an altitude is like a microwave oven as far as radiation goes. So less sun = less radiation. So I try to get night fights if I can but can't always. I learned that from Dr. Bob Marshall.

I also learned that there is something that I heard of called the Shuman Resonance Device. The theory is that the earth puts out a resonant frequency of 7 hertz or so. And when you are removed from the earth (in a plane at 35,000 feet) that resonant frequency doesn't penetrate your body and therefore you feel jetlag. Sounds interesting and I'm sure it's true but I don't have the device. Apparently it's something you wear like a necklace or something. If anybody has one please let me know and let me know if it's worth it to buy one! :)

Thanks!

- Justin

Motivation to continue eating raw and living foods...

(Lip Cancer from smoking)

So this year, my wife's grandma was diagnosed with terminal brain and lung cancer, my mom had her cancer come back in her lungs and my friend Kristy's dad had emergency surgery on his intestines because they had holes in them. I talk to so many people who say that it's not caused by our diet or "we just don't know why these things happened to people." But I have an idea. It might have to do with the years and years of poisoning our body's with dead denatured food and we wonder why our bodies don't work or react the way that they should. Now don't get me wrong I have incredible compassion for these great people I know. But I wish I could shake them and tell them what they're doing to their bodies I love them so much. I hate to see people in so much pain and they don't even know why.

Sometimes I am eating with people and secretly wish I could be eating the same things they are. But then when things like this happen a bell rings true in my head and I know I am doing the right things by eating this way. WE WILL PAY THE MONEY, EITHER FOR THE FOOD NOW OR TO THE DOCTORS LATER. But we will pay. I am so fortunate to have found the raw food path. Keep chargin people!

Saunas For Health

I hear you can burn up to 600 calories per hour just sitting in a sauna. Here I am on the right hanging out in a Sauna on Kona Hawaii. I ate tons of wild coconuts there. So much fun. But each fall and winter I try to utilize them more often to sweat out the toxins that build up.

I hear a good thing to do is to eat fats all day, like avocados coconut meat, oils etc and then sweat it out in the sauna. I do that every now and then. Some toxins are not just water soluble but are only fat soluble. So the fat that you eat actually attaches to the toxins and then you sweat it out. Interesting..

Making an Ormus Blender

I'm still in the dark a little bit about what exactly Ormus is. But I believe it's some sort of polysacharide that is present in some selected highly charged raw foods. But after watching this video I went to the store and actually bought some magnetic tape strips and put 4 of them on the outside of my blender. So I'll put my bet on the fact that it actually works. I notice no effect but heck if it works, then it's good for me. :)

Raw Chocolate Chip Mint Ice-Cream...

This Raw Mint Chocolate Chip Ice-Cream is insane. I actually got the recipie from the book Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow and it comes out perfect. I only added some Spirulina to make it green, some raw cacao nibs for the chips and then some mint leaves and a few drops of peppermint oil to make it taste like mint. We have it all now...

RAW VANILLA ICE CREAM
2 cups soaked cashews
2 cups coconut meat
1 cup water
2 thirds cup agave nectar
1 cup coconut butter
1 Big Spoonful of honey
2 tablespoons vanilla extract or seeds of half a vanilla bean
Half tablespoon sea salt
Any other superfoods/seeds on hand.

Directions:
Blend in a vitamix until smoothe. Chill in freezer for about 45 minutes. Then process into an ice-cream maker according to instructions. :)

My Favorite Appliances...

In this post I wanted to go over some of the kitchen appliance I use to make my food and drinks. Stuff I would have a hard time living without. I use this stuff on a daily basis and highly recommend buying some or all of them!




This is the juicer I have. I love it. It's actually really easy to clean up, takes about 10-15 minutes to make a ton of juice. Knowing what I now know I would like to have the Greenstar juicer. I guess I'm torn because although the quality of the juice that the greenstar makes is much healthier and better tasting (it's extracted using the crushing technology instead of the shredding way that this machine uses) it's feed tube is much smaller. And that means you would have to spend much more time cutting and prepairing your juice. So it would take longer but it would last longer and is better for you. AND there are more parts to clean with the Greenstar. BUT then again, you can make nut butters, ice-creams and wheatgrass juice with it. So in the long haul I'd prefer that one. But the Breville is a close close 2nd and it's absolutely amazing. I love it!


What can I say about the Vitamix? It's an appliance I've wanted to for so long but never wanted to spend $400 dollars on it. Now that I have it, I could not live without it. And if I didn't not have it, I would have to buy one immediately. It's the best kitchen appliace I've ever owned and I used it at least 2 to 3 times per day. I got it as a Christmas gift. The thing is unbelievable.

I just got this Viking Food Processor for Christmas and it's unbelievable. I went back and forth which one I wanted between this and the Cuisinart. I read all the reviews on both ad naseum. But I think when you forkout $300 bones on an appliance like these, you can't go wrong. I think both of them would have been great. This thing is whisper quiet, easy to clean and looks great on the countertop. Plus it has wheels on the back so you can move it around the coutnertop pretty easily. The thing is beefy. I dig it and use it ALOT.

I am really happy with this dehydrator. The only thing I wish it had was a timer on it. One day I'll get the 9 tray one with a timer but for now it's just my wife and I and I think I've only once had all 5 trays being used up at the same time. So there is no reason I need the bigger one right now. It's pretty quiet but we run ours at night anyway mostly. I couldn't live w/o this thing.



I use this baby all the time. I make all my nutmilks with it. Usually I only make almond milk with it but I have also made other seed milks with it too. It's a pretty cool thing. I used to just soak the nuts/seeds overnight and then blend it up in my Vitamix and then use a nut milk bag and strain out the juice. That works pretty good too but just takes a little longer. These things are about $100 bucks from Tribest I think. I got mine off 1877myjuicer.com I think. The only downside with it, is that I wish it blended the nuts up more than it does. But it's still pretty cool. What I do is open about 5 coconuts and mix that water with a full container of Almond milk and put that into an empty 1 gallon milk container (don't worry I didn't drink the milk it came in!) and that's my milk for the week! Then I'll take the soft/wet almond pulp and dry that out and once it's dried I'll pop it into the vitamix to make a fine almond flour that I'll keep in the fridge to put into smoothies or crackers. Pretty tasty.

The Website That Changed My Life...

I have to say that this site changed my life in an amazing way. I am a voracious reader and have read a lot of the raw food books. I love them and they are very inspiring. But one day I was listening to Coast to Coast and as God would have it, David Wolfe was on. I liked Dr. Andrew Weil at the time and thought they should have a more polished older "more educated" guest on talking about health.



Listening to this, changed my life. Then from there I read The Sunfood Diet Success System and in there he talks about saturation and just bombarding yourself with information. So I decided to subscribe to TheBestDayEver.com and since then, it's been all downhill. I have listened to each lecture probably around 10 times each and have it playing all the time on my Ipod. I highly suggest you signup. You will not regret it.

You can signup with this link: http://www.thebestdayever.com

Living On Live Food With Alissa Cohen...

I thought I would do a product review for this post. I must say I am very very impressed with this 2 disc DVD collection! I hope she comes out with another one. I got this for Christmas and watched the whole thing 2.5 hours the first night and have already made a few things from her DVD's. I do not have the book but the DVD's are great! I HIGHLY suggest heading over to AlissaCohen.com and picking these up. I think they would be great for people who want to introduce living foods to people who are semi interested and want to learn more. Seriously check em out. They're really good...

Raw Burgers With Mayo...

Hey everybody. Yesterday I made some living food burgers with mayonaise. The raw burgers were pretty easy to make and the mayo was made using Julianos Book, Raw: The Uncook Book It's all pretty easy really. These are super tasty and really filling. Here is the recipe for the living burgers:

Living Burgers:
1. Half Cup Almonds (soaked)
2. Half Cup Sunflower Seeds (soaked)
3. Pulp from -
4. 1 Carrot
5. 4 Ribs celery
6. 1 Green Apple
7. Small Hanful of chopped parsley
8. 1 big basil leaf chopped
9. Squirt of Flax Oil
10. Few Shakes of Dried Garlic
11. Few Shakes of Cumin Powder
12. Pinch of Sea Salt
13. Dulse With Cayene
14. Kelp with Garlic
=======
Optional:
15. 1 pack stevia
16. Oregeno
17. Thyme
18. Lemon Pepper
19. Italian Seasoning
20. Flax
21. Cilantro
22. Agave
23. Coconut Flakes
24. Cucumber
25. Zuchinni
26. Pumkin Seeds
27. Olive Oil
28. Salad Lettuce
=======
Directions:
1. Almonds/Seeds into food processor
2. Veggie Pulp into food processor
3. Put all into a bowl and mix
4. Put greens salad mix, parsley, basil into food processor and add to bowl
5. Roll them all into a burger patties and dehydrate for about 8 hours at 110 degrees or until soft (but not hard!)