Larry writes: Hey everyone, thanks so much for hookin’ up with our Raw4Healing blog. I wouldn’t be here today sharing my personal testimony if it weren’t for my wife, Lauren. She is not only the best personal trainer, coach, and health advocate a guy could have, but also inspires me because of her passion for a raw vegan food lifestyle. I personally have been fighting the battle of the bulge in excess weight of around 30 plus pounds for several years now. It has been very hard and nearly impossible to accomplish this weight loss.

But today, is my day! I am proud to share with you that I have not only lost the weight, but feel healthier than I ever have ever felt before! I have a secret I want to share with you: raw vegan food is sustainable energy and good energy equals good health! It’s really that simple.

I want to start by saying click to read more…

Have you heard the latest national ’scare’ regarding families that use drugs for their supposedly ‘ADHD’ children? They are now telling parents, who trusted the drugs to be safe for their kids that they need a ’simple’ EKG to test their heart… And who’s paying for that, may I ask? You can find it on msnbc.com, or any other news site. It was on the morning news, and I have to say that I was appalled!

First off, ADHD is a disease that was ‘invented’ by psychiatrists to categorize certain symptoms that children exhibited while at school or at home. Usually, the teachers are the ones who call the parents to say that their kid is misbehaving, or being disruptive in class.

This happened to my brother when he was in elementary school, around 30 years ago. He was hyperactive (as they called it back then) and the teacher insisted my parents put him on Ritalin. My mother learned that the teacher was putting my brother inside a large cardboard box at the back of the classroom, if you can imagine that! So he was put on Ritalin and I guess it helped.

Fortunately, my parents consulted with a nutritionist who put my brother on a vegetarian diet with lots of vitamin supplements. As long as he stayed on the diet and supplements, he didn’t need the Ritalin. Remember, I said this was 30 years ago, and the quality of our food was not as bad then as it is now.

Fast forward to 2008. “Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term ‘research,’ has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically–the “epidemic” having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between 5 and 7 million today–this remains the state of the ’science’ of ADHD.” http://www.adhdfraud.org/

So after pushing this drug down the throats of unsuspecting children (and adults, too), they’re saying that if the child is susceptible to congenital heart disease, they may be at risk. Do you think they really care?

MSNBC.com says: “Stimulant drugs can increase blood pressure and heart rate. For most children, that isn’t a problem. But in those with heart conditions, it could make them more vulnerable to sudden cardiac arrest — an erratic heartbeat that causes the heart to stop pumping blood through the body — and other heart problems.”

“About 2.5 million American children and 1.5 million adults take medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, according to government estimates. Stimulant drugs, like Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta, help children with ADHD to stay focused and control their behavior.”

Nowhere do I see any mention of controlling this so called hyperactivity with diet and natural food. We already know that most kids consume more sugar and dietary fat than their little bodies were meant to handle. Especially when sugar and fat are hidden in so many foods nowadays. Unless you avoid processed and packaged foods, and fast foods, you can’t get away from it. The only way is to prepare all natural fresh organic vegan foods, and raw foods are even better.

Dr. Fred A. Baughman Jr., is a psychiatrist who claims that ADHD is a fraud, perpetrated on the general public. On his website he says:

“In addition to scientific articles that have appeared in leading national and international medical journals, Dr. Baughman has testified for victimized parents and children in ADHD/Ritalin legal cases, writes for the print media and appears on talk radio shows, always making the point that ADHD is fraudulent–a creation of the psychiatric- pharmaceutical cartel, without which they would have nothing to prescribe their dangerous, addictive, Schedule II, stimulants for — namely, Ritalin (methylphenindate), Dexedrine (dextro-amphetamine), Adderall (mixed dextro- and levo-amphetamine) and, Gradumet, and Desoxyn (both of which are methamphetamine, ’speed,’ ‘ice’). “

It seemed my brother reacted to food colorings and preservatives. Very interesting, since the applications of these chemicals used in processed foods has increased significantly today. Dr. Fred Baughman, Jr., says on his website: “They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive–termed them a ‘disease.’”Children are not born hyperactive or ADD or ADHD, or whatever. These symptoms are induced by the quality (or lack) of the food they are fed. Dr. Fred Baughman, Jr., actually says “these ‘diseases’ were created when the child met 8 of 14 requirements to be classified as ADD or ADHD.”

So now on top of the false diagnosis of ADD and ADHD symptoms as a result of poor food choices, parents are urged to give their children these very potent and addicting drugs, that can cause heart problems in the child. Even though the heart problems may have already been genetically present in the child, taking these drugs aggravate the situation, and adds additional stress to the parents and the children too. Not to mention the cost of the EKG that they are requiring now, as well.

Great stuff, huh?

So what’s the solution? First of all, get your kids off the drugs. Starting kids on drugs at an early age, only sets them up to take more drugs later in life, including illegal drugs. After all, a drug is a drug, right? Soon it becomes a vicious cycle. Second, remove all processed, packaged foods that have man-made toxic chemicals, preservatives, food colorings, fillers, free-flowing agents, MSG or hydrolyzed vegetable protein, malt extract, maltodextrin, natural flavors, pectin, plant protein extract, potassium glutamate, sodium caseinate, soy protein, textured vegetable protein, and so many other hidden names. Just do a Google search for MSG, and learn a whole new language regarding our ‘food’! This is a partial list from: http://www.carbohydrateaddicts.com/msg.html. It has been shown that MSG and their derivatives have been classified as ‘Excitotoxins’. See Excitotoxins by Dr. Russell Blaylock. For more detailed information about excitotoxins, check this site: http://www.dr-jo-md.com/excitotoxins.html. Good info here!

Kids NEED to be able to expend large amounts of energy everyday. It helps their minds and bodies to grow. When they spend a lot of time in front of the TV, or a computer, or a video game, or anything that is sedentary, then they are not releasing the ‘pent up’ energy that needs to be released. Add to this problem the SAD (standard American diet) that most kids are eating, and you have a walking time bomb. I won’t go into the details because I think we all know how disruptive an unhappy and unhealthy child can be.

I remember reading a few years ago about a Natural Hygiene doctor (I think it was Dr. Bernard Shelton but can’t find the web article) when he visited a family in the ’60s with several children. The entire family was totally vegan and he was amazed at how calm, composed and polite the children were. They were aged from infant to 12 or 14, I think. He observed this family quite regularly and the children were consistently very calm and polite, busy with their activities, while looking out for the younger ones. He attributed their polite behavior to the quality of nutrients in their diet, and the lack of junk foods and sugar.

Suffice it to say, that parents need to wake up! They need to connect the dots between the foods their children are eating and their disruptive behavior. It’s so very simple, and yet the medical and pharma industries want to make it complicated. Hyperactivity did not exist before food manufacturing became the norm. Children raised on the farm eating fresh fruits and vegetables, performing chores and lots of other physical activity were normal functioning children, and most grew into normal functioning adults. Unfortunately, those times are gone, just like the farms… All the more reason to encourage your children to get away from the TV and computers and get outside in the fresh air!

Having said that, I think I’ll go outside now and enjoy the sunshine. Yes, it’s finally here!

March 1 - June 2008

Did you get this e-mail from David & Katrina Rainoshek? If not, read on!!

Please join us in whatever way you feel most comfortable. Some of us will want to add in a quart of green juice to your day and keep your diet relatively the same. Some will drink nothing but juice one day a week, some of you will Juice Feast for a week, 10 Days, 30, 60 and even up to 92-Days! We encourage you to just get juicy! If you have Juice Feasted previously and are not planning to do so during the GJF2008, perhaps you would like to lead a support group in your area, by starting a Juice Feasting movement in your area. We have established www.GlobalJuiceFeast.com so that you can create a Group online that everyone can connect through.

This may be a time for you to learn more about juicing, but you don’t quite feel ready to Juice Feast, that is perfect, too. You can follow along in the journeys of others who are Feasting, learn how to make juice, ask questions, get stoked to cleanse yourself and create the space you need for yourself so that you enter into your Juice Feast with confidence and trust. If you are ready to jump right in, jump right in! It will be a very exciting and vibrant time to Juice Feast with many others who are sharing in the journey with you.

Join us on www.JuiceFeasting.com or www.GlobalJuiceFeast.com for support, create a Juice Feasters meet-up group in your area, start a blog to share and document your process, read other people’s blogs, make your juice, and enjoy one of the greatest personal and collective Hero’s Journeys we can possibly experience at this important juncture. Let’s turn this train around as an Act of Love for future generations, and create a story of transformation worth writing about.

Now is the time for legendary work. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

by T.C. Fry

Why should this question arise?

Because the peoples of America and the world suffer grievously from widespread disease. Recent research has revealed that the quality of nutrients we put into out bodies determines the quality of our lives. We are all aware that engines perform well or poorly, depending upon the quality of the fuel used. Few of us realize that food quality directly determines our physical and mental performance abilities.
I frequently receive phone calls and letters that go like this: Is it okay to eat corn? Potatoes? Oats? Bread? Prepared cereals? Beans? Tofu? And many other substances which must be cooked in order to be eaten.

When I facetiously say that it’s not okay by me, I get the inevitable “why?” Then I tell them we are all our brothers’ keepers and if you lose your health, it’s an imposition upon me and millions of other people whose lives your condition directly and indirectly affects.

What questioners really meant was why aren’t these foods okay? I must then tell them of the many evils and curses that result from the eating of foods that have been heat deranged I tell them: “If you can’t relish It in the fresh raw state, you shouldn’t be eating It at all.” To save myself a lot of letters and communications, I will, in this article, spell out many of the salient reasons why “dead” foods should never enter the human mouth.

The First thing I do with writers and callers is present the benefits of the living food enormous diet. For instance I might say:

Live food eaters feel better and are often in a state of euphoria.

Live food eaters have more energy and stamina.

Then I get the inevitable “why” which is a way of saying “prove it.”

I respond: “Just bear with me.” I proceed to heighten their curiosity with further statements like:

Those who subsist on living foods are better rested and better slept in less time.

Those who eat most living foods are more alert, think clearer, sharper and more logically.

Those who undertake the eating of live foods, especially in conjunction with an exercise regime, experience drastic weight loss. This is great for those people who need to lose weight.

Going on a living food diet sets of body cleansing which, at times, can be very intense. Body detoxification may entail some unpleasant symptoms.

Those who rely upon living foods become more active and precise in their motions and actions as well as their thoughts. Hence they perform much better and with more competence.

Living food eaters are less subject to stresses and nervous tensions than conventional eaters. Moreover, if an exercise regime of 15 to 30 minutes a day is followed, they are even less subject to stress.

Best of all, live food eaters become virtually sickness-free!

Of course a great deal of skepticism is often expressed- -after all, they need dispensation as well as justification for their love affairs with pizza, bread, potatoes and so on.

They may even tell me that this is all just anecdotal, that is, just like old wives tales.

I then tell them: “Why not try it yourself and experience the wonderful results. Then you can tell your own experiences anecdotally just as you are now anecdotally expressing your skepticism.” Then I proceed to start putting the clinchers on my case as follows:

In nature all animals eat living foods as yielded up by nature. Only humans cook their foods and only humans suffer widespread sicknesses and ailments.

Only humans regularly and consistently suffer premature death. Natural death in humans is so rare that it isn’t even listed as a cause of death in our almanacs or statistics.

Then the question often arises: “What’s so terrible about cooking foods? Everybody does it.”

To which I respond: “Just about everybody has cavities, poor eyesight that requires glasses, colds and other sicknesses, don’t they?” Then I answer further with some statements and citations that are obviously true:

Cooking is a process of food destruction from the moment heat is applied to the foodstuff. Long before dry ashes result, food values are totally destroyed. If you put your hand for just a moment into boiling water, or on a hot stove, that should forever persuade you just how destructive temperatures for perhaps half an hour or more are! What was living substance becomes totally dead very rapidly with exposure to heat!

Proteins begin coagulating and delaminating, as may be plainly seen in the case of eggs and cheese when their temperature reaches only 118 degrees. At temperatures commonly applied in cooking, they are completely devoid of nutritive values. Worse yet…

Cooked proteins are readily putrefied by bacteria in the digestive tract and give rise to some very potent poisons such as ptomaine’s, leukomaines, mercaptans, indoles, skatoles, ammonias, hydrogen sulfide, putrescine, cadaverine and yet more. These are absorbed into the portal blood and cause myriad’s of disease conditions.

Cooking renders foods toxic! The toxicity of the deranged debris of cooking is confirmed by the doubling and tripling of the white blood cells after the eating of a cooked food meal. The white blood cells are a first line of defense and are, collectively, popularly called “the immune system.”

As confirmed by hundred of researches cited in the prestigious National Academy of Science’s National Research Council’s book, “Diet, Nutrition and Cancer,” all cooking quickly generates mutagens and carcinogens in foods. When you eat cooked carbohydrates, proteins and fats you are eating numerous mutagenic (carcinogenic) products caused by cooking.

Vitamins are rather quickly destroyed by cooking.

Minerals quickly lose their organic context and are returned to their native state as they occur in soil, sea water, rocks, metals and so on. In such a state they are unusable and the body often shunts them aside where they may combine with saturated fats and cholesterol in the circulatory system, thus clogging it up with their cement-like plaque. Over 90% of Americans have plaque in their arteries! Worse yet, inorganic minerals are highly toxic. As an example we know iodine to be an essential nutrient. Yet, in its inorganic state, it bears the skull and crossbones. Take iron as an example. Essential as it is, if taken in the inorganic state it causes hepatitis and hemochromatosis.

Heated fats are especially damaging because they are altered to form acroleins, free radicals, other mutagens and carcinogens as confirmed in the aforementioned publication, “Diet, Nutrition and Cancer. “

Cooked foods not only take longer to digest but often prove to be indigestible and unassailable as in the case of heated proteins. Cooked foods quickly ferment and putrefy in the intestinal tract while living foods are almost totally absorbed before they’re oxidized enough for yeast and bacterial ferments and putrefaction.

This evidenced by the fact that the average conventional eater has about two pounds of intestinal bacteria whereas living food eaters have only a few ounces. About 20% of the feces of cooked food eaters is dead bacteria whereas living food eaters give off only a fraction as much dead bacteria.

If you cook a potato and put it on the counter alongside a raw one, the raw potato will last for weeks and even sprout whereas the cooked potato will ferment in one or two days. This gives you some idea about what happens to cooked foods in the intestinal tract where fermentation and putrefaction that may take place in a day or two in the open occurs in an hour or two in the intestinal tract. Again, indigestion is an indication that fermentation and/or putrefaction is talking place.

When a registered dietitian took Harvey Diamond to task and in effect called him an ignoramus and liar he discombobulated and made her statements obviously wrong with a single question: “Lady, did you ever vomit?”

Thus you can see that dead foods make dull, diseased and sooner dead people.

You don’t have to take my word for It! Get yourself some guinea pigs, white mice or white rats. What humans take years to exhibit, they manifest within weeks. Feed a control group their regular diet in a raw condition. Feed the other control group the same foods but cooked!

Better yet, you can go on a raw food or living foods diet and see the wonderful results enumerated herein for yourself! Of course you may have to go through discomforts when the body, with better foods, begins purifying itself.

I think this rather nicely sums up the most salient reasons why you should shun cooked foods–why you should, if you treasure health and happiness, eat only living foods!

I highly recommend this book Your Natural Diet: Alive Raw Foods, by T.C. Fry and David Klein, and contributing Living Nutrition magazine writers. It has been, and still is, a great resource in my raw living journey. The guidelines, healthy habits, food analysis, keys for success and recipes all very helpful, not only for those new to the raw food diet, but for anyone on the path.

The case for eating abundant fruits is well explained along with the historical background. And the case for eating raw food is well made, including the importance of detoxification and why disease is caused to begin with. It’s an excellent resource and part of my library for life. If you’re looking for the truth about food, disease, illness, diets and your health, you’ll find it here and make it part of your library as well. All the best for your health!

Olivia Wu, Chronicle Staff Writer

Like all canny cooks, Cherie Soria knows how to hook her audience: with desserts.

But Soria doesn’t pull out the stops with butter, sugar, eggs and flour, baking them into fluffy confections.

She makes her magic with avocado and agave syrup — and no baking at all. By the time her students taste her creations, they don’t mind that those unexpected ingredients are the major components of their chocolate mousse.

As Soria would say, “If you can make a raw vegan cheesecake better than regular cheesecake, why would you eat regular cheesecake?”

In no time, she has her students dipping into a layered pesto torta that relies on a cheese made from almonds to replace the usual ricotta, and digging into a lasagna-type dish with a noodle-like layer of pureed cashew nuts stretched over mushrooms, spinach and a killer marinara sauce.

Soria is the pre-eminent teacher of gourmet raw food preparation, and founder of Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in Mendocino County. Now, she’s established the country’s first cooking school devoted to teaching raw and vegan cooking to home cooks and professional chefs.

A place of their own

After nearly a decade of giving classes on the fly, in whatever facilities she could find, to some 800 students, she and her husband, co-director Dan Ladermann, have a place to call their own. The school is now housed in the 6,000-square-foot Company Store on Main Street in Fort Bragg.

With the school, Soria and Ladermann aim to take raw cuisine mainstream. Classes are both demonstration and hands-on; the business also includes a production kitchen and takeout deli. There are no stoves or ovens; instead, dehydrators, high-speed blenders and special climate-controlled rooms for growing sprouts signal this is a raw-food operation.

Power Point presentations are part of the lectures and demonstrations, and six fully equipped stations are set up for hands-on classes.

Roxanne Klein, whose eponymous, exclusively raw restaurant in Larkspur opened to critical acclaim in 2002 is Soria’s most famous student. Klein’s restaurant and takeout deli closed in 2004, but restaurants such as Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco and Berkeley, and Alive in San Francisco, are continuing the trend.

Raw foodists believe that the greatest nourishment comes from food that is not heated beyond 115 degrees. One reason, they believe, is that antioxidants and phyto-chemicals remain intact. They also believe that heat can transform some ingredients, notably oil and salt, into toxins.

While these claims are controversial, Soria, 58, a radiant, small-framed woman who looks much younger than her years, may be the best advertisement for the cuisine and lifestyle. She has been cooking and living the raw food diet for 14 years, teaching classes at retreats such as Harbin Hot Springs in Lake County, and traveling the circuit of vegetarian and vegan national conferences.

When she began Living Light nine years ago, she kicked off with conventional raw dishes. “I taught raw without saying so by making gazpacho and olive tapenade,” she says. Those dishes, followed by raw desserts, she says, won people over.

The menu board of Living Light Cuisine ToGo, downstairs from the school, shows what draws: banana ice cream, carrot apple kuchen, chocolate mousse cup, chocolate cheesecake and frozen fudge bites. Juices and smoothies are listed, but so are entrees such as nori rolls, green burrito, zucchini angel hair pasta and a boxed mezze meal. All of them are made with 95 percent organic and 98 percent raw foods.

At the school, students begin with a required fundamentals class, then advance to associate chef and instructor training levels for professionals. As the classes progress, the format moves from a demonstration to hands-on format. In the past year, most of her fundamental classes have been at the capacity enrollment of 30 students. The hands-on classes are usually full, with 24 to 30 students per class.

Soria says the school enrolls students from an international field, including Lebanon, South Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Europe and South America. Raw food techniques are different enough from standard cooking that even chefs — many of them private chefs for Bay Area families — take her classes, says Soria. Google, the Internet giant in Mountain View, recently hired a chef who graduated from Living Light.

Soria knows what it feels like to be labeled a cultist. “I went from the standard American diet to vegetarian to vegan to raw,” she says. When she began a vegetarian diet in the carnivorous ’60s, “people thought I was going to die.”

She was a vegetarian for 19 years before she attended a workshop in 1992 at the clinics of Anne Wigmore, founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston, a wheatgrass and raw food discipline with an emphasis on using foods to rid the body of toxins.

Wigmore’s regime failed in one respect, Soria says — “Her food had no flavor.” Clients might feel better after a regime of juices, wheatgrass, salads and sprouts, but “they go back home and are bored” with the diet, Soria says.

A mind at work

Soria set her culinary intelligence to work. She based her cuisine on raw vegan “cheeses,” and began — as she did by teaching desserts — naming her dishes after mainstream comfort foods, and making them look like lasagna, pizza and sandwiches. She created raw dishes with cooked textures, such as her “stir, not-fried” vegetables.

She searched for sophisticated cutting gadgets such as a spiral slicer to create long pastas such as angel hair and linguine out of zucchini, and used high-powered blenders to make smooth and creamy textures, such as vegan mayonnaise and aioli.

Nuts and seeds are sprouted, because a tenet of the raw food movement says that eating “living” food is the source of energy. By sprouting nuts and seeds, the living components are activated.

Soria ferments pureed nut milks with beneficial intestinal flora such as probiotic and vegan acidophilus cultures and Wigmore’s invention — Revjuvelac, fermented wheat and rye juice. All this adds flavor and nourishment, Soria says, which helps people feel fuller quicker. During the course of a weeklong class, Soria says, students feel sated and still lose an average of 10 pounds.

Jean-Marie Fayat is such a person — he had tried everything to lose weight. Fayat is executive pastry chef at Draeger’s Market in San Mateo. A chef who came up the ranks of professional trade school in France, he came to the United States in 1976. Like many chefs, he had gained quite a bit of weight. He tried a three-day raw foods workshop and found “those foods were very appetizing.”

Like other individuals and some private chefs in the Bay Area, he learned that with raw food, “You can make a great, excellent meal.” And, he says, “I lost 22 pounds in three weeks.

“It was very dramatic for me. I’m a French chef, and I like my cheese and wine.”

Obesity strategy?

Like Soria, Fayat predicts that raw food will become mainstream because it addresses obesity and tastes good. Soria admits that a raw diet can be challenging: It’s idealto eat 80 percent raw, but she says that most people will benefit from 50 percent raw. Many of her students, she says, strive to maintain a close-to-100 percent raw diet, but will drink hot tea, and revert to the occasional mashed potatoes.

Trying not to sound extreme, Soria says she and Ladermann do eat out, perhaps once a week, and when they do, they have “a nice vegetarian meal” at a local conventional cooked-food restaurant.

Living Light Culinary Arts Institute, 301-B North Main St., Fort Bragg; (800) 816-2319 or (707) 964-2420, or visit www.rawfoodchef.com.

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Raw basicsIn the raw food philosophy, most ingredients supply several nutritional components. Here are the major sources of various nutritional requirements.Protein: Nuts, seeds and greensCarbohydrates: Fruits and greensFats: Nuts, seeds, avocado, olives and cold-pressed oils

Vitamins and minerals: All raw foods

Antioxidants and phyto-chemicals: All raw foods

– Olivia Wu

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Click here for online-only raw food recipes.

Chocolate Orange Mousse with Almonds

Chocolate is a rich source of antioxidants, but can also be addictive, so use it sparingly, says Cherie Soria of Living Light Culinary Arts Institute. The secret ingredient, avocado, makes this mousse thick and rich, but cannot be detected in the flavor.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup agave nectar (see Note)

3/4 cup raw cocoa powder (see Note)

1/2 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice

1 tablespoon evaporated cane juice (see Note)

1/4 teaspoon orange zest

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Pinch salt

2 avocados, about 6 ounces each, peeled, seeded and mashed

1/2 cup peeled slivered raw almonds, for garnish, optional (See Note)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Place coconut oil in a small work bowl and place the bowl in a pan with about 1 inch of hot water. The coconut oil will melt.

Combine melted coconut oil, agave nectar, cocoa powder, orange juice, evaporated cane juice, orange zest, cayenne and salt in a high-powered blender. A regular blender will work, although it may not make the mixture quite as smooth. Puree until smooth; use a small rubber spatula to keep folding the mixture into the center to keep the mixture blending without adding water (you may stop the machine to do this). Make sure cane juice crystals are fully dissolved.

Add the mashed avocado and blend just until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Pour into six 4-ounce ramekins. Serve each portion topped with slivered almonds.

Note: Agave nectar and evaporated cane juice are minimally processed sweeteners. They are available, along with raw cocoa powder, at natural food stores.

To peel almonds, place a heaping half cup of almonds in a glass bowl. Cover with hot water and let soak 15 minutes. Drain, peel skin off of almonds and slice into slivers with a sharp knife. Dry the almonds slightly before using, either by allowing to air-dry for 15 minutes, or spreading on a sheet pan and placing in a 100° oven for 5 minutes.

Serves 6

PER SERVING: 400 calories, 4 g protein, 34 g carbohydrate, 30 g fat (19 g saturated), 0 cholesterol, 17 mg sodium, 7 g fiber.
Click below to find out about Cherie Soria’s latest book:

This is a story about my good friend Petar J.

I introduced him 1987, in Belgrade, when I first started attending seminars and workshops on health foods. That time he was already cured.

In his late forty’s he was diagnosed with Leukemia.

Doctors who diagnosed him told him that he has less than 4 months of life. He started with strict health food diet called macrobiotic diet and with body building.

He stopped drinking coffee, alcohol, milk, and soft drinks. He stopped eating meat, milk products, sugar, tropical fruit, margarine and started exercising every day. I am not sure if it took him 3 or 4 months, but he was totally cured in less than 4 months.

He did not use any of the western medicine treatments.

So, instead of being dead, he went back to his doctor, and doctor made blood test. Results of blood test showed that he was totally healthy. His doctor did not believe him that it was done only with diet and exercises.

His story was published in many Yugoslavian newspapers. The only comment doctors have had on his story was that he have had “spontaneous remission”, and that it has nothing to do with diet or with body building.

His story, and stories published in Michio Kushi’s book “Cancer Prevention Diet“, as well as the story of Dr.Anthony J. Sattilaro, have inspired thousands of people in ex Yugoslavia to try this approach in curing cancer. They were mainly learning from the books.

The first books translated in Serbo-Croatian language were books written by Michio Kushi and by Dr. Sattilaro. Thanks to those books, in Ex Yugoslavia Macrobiotic health food diet was metaphor for “Cancer Diet”.

To understand it better, here is a story about the first health food seminar that Zlatko Pejic and Jadranka Boban were supposed to hold in Belgrade. Few weeks before seminar they were told by organizers that there will be some certain number of people on this seminar. When they came to hold seminar, there was only one third of people that were suppose to come. When they asked where are the others, the answer was: >They are dead.< For most of the people, Health food was the last thing to try, after nothing else worked.

After dozens of people managed to cure cancer by following a Health food macrobiotics diet, most doctors understood that “spontaneous remission” is not a good enough explanation, and that diet is important factor in curing cancer. So, many of them started even recommending it, together with standard therapies.

When my mother was diagnosed with breast tumor in 1989, her doctor did not mind she try with diet.

Petar J. died 1994, after Leukemia returned. That year he was working as salesman in the coffee shop, exposed to very strong smell of coffee. He was not exercising any more. He started with drinking coffee. He forgot his cancer prevention diet. He was emotionally down.

He thought that he was healthy enough to support some coffee and some bad food. But he was not.

Disease did not give him a second chance. He died two months from the moment he was diagnosed. Diet did not help him. There was simply not enough time. His body knew how to cure cancer, but this time he did not have enough time.

But his example has inspired many people in curing and preventing diseases and his life certainly had purpose.

This story is not unique. I have met hundreds of people who managed to cure all kind of cancers. Most of them are still alive.

It is also important to learn that if you once cure cancer, you have to be aware that cancer can come back if your diet and lifestyle are not good enough.

Our body knows how to cure cancer, but only if we give it a chance.

Source: http://curezone.com/diseases/leukemia/leukemia_cured.html

Note: I do not endorse the Macrobiotic diet, but do agree that a change in diet and lifestyle will help to eliminate cancer naturally. I know the body will heal itself if a detox and cleansing program is started, and then only organic fruits, vegetables, green smoothies, nuts and whole grains are eaten.

Child Obesity… it’s everywhere now. Over 1 in 5 kids are obese now. What is happening to our kids?

Things have changed a lot since I was a child, nearly 50 years ago. We had Physical Education in school every single day, it was mandatory. Most of us kids brought our lunches to school, consisting of a healthy sandwich, fresh fruit, homemade cookies, and juice or milk to drink. Or you could purchase milk and apples from the snack bar. Oh yeah, there was candy and Twinkies, etc., But the Washington Red Delicious apples were so good who wanted candy?

After school we’d play tag football or ride bikes around the neighborhood, and on weekends helped our parents with the chores, and then played some more out in the street, or in the backyard with friends. In high school, I rode my bicycle to school, approximately 6 miles from home on a hilly road. Many of my friends had cars, but we couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t like riding the school bus. We rarely had any ‘fat’ kids in school. If there was an obese child, it most likely was a specific health issue.

We didn’t have computers back then, video games, DVR with cable TV, cell phones to text messages on, chat rooms, or movie rentals. The only fast food restaurant that I recall was McDonald’s and it was only on special occasions that we would ever go there. Eating out in restaurants was a treat, but we didn’t do it all that often. Money was tight. It was more practical to buy the ingredients to make a nice meal at home. I loved to cook, and often would use my parents as ‘guinea pigs’ creating unique and interesting dishes. This is a fond memory, because many of those dishes actually turned out to be delicious and I still make them today. When my kids come to visit they always request them.

But I’m getting off topic. I want to talk about child obesity. It’s become the new ‘epidemic’. Everywhere you go, the children are chubby. What is happening to our next generation? It’s been reported that between 5-25 percent of children and teenagers in the United States are obese (Dietz, 1983). The prevalence of obesity in the young varies with ethnic groups. Is it based on economics? Junk and fast food is considered cheaper. It is estimated that 5-7 percent of White and Black children are obese, while 12 percent of Hispanic boys and 19 percent of Hispanic girls are obese (Office of Maternal and Child Health, 1989). Note that this quoted citation is as of 1989, so increase those percentages by another 5-10%, at least, since that was almost 20 years ago!

Is obesity among children on the rise? A study done by the National Children and Youth Fitness Study revealed in their finding that 6-9 year olds have thicker skinfolds than their counterparts in the 1960s (Ross & Pate, 1987). Other studies done during the same period, also disclosed their findings to show a 54 percent increase in the prevalence of obesity among 6-11 year olds (Gortmaker, Dietz, Sobol, & Wehler, 1987).

Defining Obesity in Children and Adolescents

Most folks know what obesity looks like, or what the ideal weight should be for children of a certain age. If not, their doctor will certainly tell them. When the total body weight is more than 25 percent fat in boys and more than 32 percent fat in girls (Lohman, 1987). Although childhood obesity is often defined as a weight-for-height in excess of 120 percent of the ideal, skinfold measures are more accurate determinants of fatness (Dietz, 1983; Lohman, 1987).

Skinfold measures are easy to obtain by a trained technician in a school or clinical setting. The triceps alone, triceps and subscapular, triceps and calf, and calf alone have been used with children and adolescents. When the triceps and calf are used, a sum of skinfolds of 10-25mm is considered optimal for boys, and 16-30mm is optimal for girls (Lohman, 1987).

The Problem of Obesity

I remember when my children were babies. They were just about the chubbiest little babies you ever saw. But they were 100% breastfed for over 6 months, and then gradually began to add bananas, cereal, and fruit to their daily diet. They were breastfed for nearly 2 years, all three of them. They lost their chubbiness when they started walking, and now, they are all in their 20’s and by most standards, would be considered underweight. Today, they are all tall, handsome and beautiful, and not an ounce of fat on either of them.

It’s true that not all obese infants become obese children, and not all obese children become obese adults. But it goes without saying that the prevalence of obesity increases with age among both males and females (Lohman, 1987), and there is a greater likelihood that obesity beginning even in early childhood will persist through the life span (Epstein, Wing, Koeske, & Valoski, 1987).

There are many health risks to the child that is obese. The challenge of dealing with the extra weight into adulthood is only one of the issues. Pediatric hypertension is of the complications resulting from obesity, and this health issue is associated with Type II diabetes mellitus, increases the risk of coronary heart disease, increases stress on the weight-bearing joints, lowers self-esteem, and affects relationships with peers. Obese children also suffer from social and psychological problems and these can cause additional emotional and mental problems long into adulthood.

For more information about Childhood Obesity, check out my book about Childhood Obesity.