Kidney Bean Salad with Mediterranean Dressing

Prep and Cook Time: 15 minutes

Salad Ingredients:
1 ear of raw corn kernels
1/4 cup minced red onion
1 15oz can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 medium tomato, chopped
2 TBS fresh parsley or cilantro, minced

Mediterranean Dressing Ingredients:
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped or pressed
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
sea salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Combine all ingredients and toss with 1/2 cup Mediterranean Dressing.

Mediterranean Dressing Directions:
Press garlic and let it sit for 5 minutes.
Whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, sea salt, and pepper.
Slowly pour the extra virgin olive oil into the mixture while whisking constantly. The more slowly you pour and the faster you whisk, the thicker and creamier the dressing will be.
The dressing will store in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. It will solidify so you will need to bring it back to room temperature before using.

Recipe By:  Tea Perron
Taken From "The Good Witch's Farm House Kitchen Facebook Page"

Have You Heard About Denmark's New Fat Tax?

Thank you to Fooducate which is where I first heard about this story. It was originally reported by the BBC over the weekend. Apparently, the country of Denmark has passed the world's first 'Fat Tax'. Starting soon all foods with a saturated fat content of greater than 2.3% will carry a tax of aproximately 8 cents per ounce.

Oh, this is wrong on so many levels. I was rather angry when I first heard about the tax because it doesn't make alot of sense to me. The tax is only on products containing SATURATED fat. The types of products to be taxed will be items like butter, coconut oil, lard, some meats, cheese and full fat milk and the products that contain them like ice cream and pizza. It means that candy, chips or french fries fried in soybean oil, cakes and cookies made with canola oil or deconstructed fat free milk products will remain untaxed.

The items to be taxed are largely unprocessed items that my healthy weight family eats every week. Meanwhile the products that we avoid to maintain our health, like chips and cookies will remain untaxed!! While I am sure that some processed products will be taxed, it will be quite easy for food companies to reformulate those products and circumvent the tax. Manufacturers of butter would be unable to reformulate, of course. The tax means that a pound of butter will cost about $1.28 more! Raising the price of unprocessed food seems counterintuitive. Don't we want people to start making their own food rather than letting some unknown company do the cooking for us? Food is expensive enough already, levying a tax on so many unprepared foods makes little sense to me.

Perhaps it surprises you that I am against this tax? Actually I am all for taxing unhealthy foods. I fully support the once proposed NYC soda tax. I supported the once proposed ban of sugary beverages from being part of the SNAP benefit plan. I just disagree with the item being taxed here. If you want to address obesity, tax sugar. Our bodies need fat, even saturated fat. But our bodies don't need sugar at all!! Obesity is undoubtedly a complex problem. It is not one that a single bad ingredient or food caused. The causes of obesity are cultural as well as food related. But it makes no sense to me to blame the foods that we have been eating throughout history.

I don't anticipate additional countries following suit. I will be curious if the law even lives. Sometimes bad international press can turn the tide against such laws. This could be a difficult additional expense for the average Danish family. Suddenly your meat, milk, butter and cheese have an added tax. It could end up being $5-10 a week on otherwise unprocessed healthy foods. Over the course of a year that could mean an extra $250-$500!!!

It is clear to me that many people in positions of authority do not understand nutrition. Many folks do not understand the partnership between healthy fats and satiety. Meanwhile, how many hundreds of calories could you ingest of saturated-fat-free potato chips before you burst? I think the Danes got it all wrong. If the government should have any say over our diets, it ought to be them standing strong against sugar and banning non-food chemicals from the food supply. This tax is completely off base.

Do you agree with government taxes on food items? Why or why not?

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

'Hoarding Food' or '5 Ways to Stock Up for Winter Even If You Don't Have a Garden'

Indooring gardening failures aside, I am quite concious of the challenges that await me during the winter months ahead. Last year we had trouble eating locally and seasonally during the off season. The winter was long and punishing. By January we were seriously tired of winter vegetables. By February our Winter CSA share was over. And by March I had virtually given up. Deeper into the season, it seemed like every vegetable we bought was from California save our apples, onions and potatoes, oh and the occasional butternut squash. Pastured meats and milk are available year round, but instead of a 50/50 farmer's market/ grocery store split to my food spending, it ended up being more 25/ 75. I prefer to buy local, but that wasn't the biggest issue. It was that in an attempt to eat more local, we ate fewer vegetables overall. Winter veggies are hard to prepare. They require chopping and peeling and boiling. And insanity or not, I felt some guilt buying things that were technically out of season for my locality. But eating locally just wasn't working for me 100%.

So this year I am trying to take action now. I only have one fridge and in it a moderately sized freezer. I store all our meat in the freezer which doesn't leave a ton of space for frozen vegetables but I am trying to stock up on items that I know we won't have in a couple of months.

1-Frozen Greens I have mentioned it before, but we have gotten alot of greens this summer at our CSA and I haven't quite gotten through all of them. So I have chopped and frozen much of the kale I got this year. I have made pesto from the basil and spinach. And I have heard that one can even make pesto from swiss chard. I have to try that since I have two bunches of chard on hand and I am going on vacation soon. Pesto freezes so beautifully! That'll be delightful on a pizza in mid winter.

2-Chicken Feet Pastured chicken is a truly seasonal item, available only in the summer and early fall. I have mentioned before that we just don't eat as much chicken these days. Chickens are expensive to raise ethically. I find the pastured varaities for around $8 a pound. That's high, but then you have to buy a 5 pound bird? There you have a special occasion, $40 meal. Then consider that much of the bird is inedible, even if you make stock from the bones. That's the reason we are eating more pastured beef. Beef is cheaper and I can buy a pound at a time as I like. But chicken feet are a wonderous thing! The dairy farm that provides my milk also raises pastured chickens. And while the feet would be throw away parts for many producers, they make the BEST chicken stock! I regularly buy up all of her feet. And at $6-$7 for a bag of feet that produces 4 quarts of stock that stands up as thick as jello, I'd say that's a bargain. But the chickens will only be around a few more weeks. So I need to stock up on feet if I want them during the winter.

3-Pasture Butter I normally buy Organic Valley's Cultured Butter, a great product. But every summer they produce a green foiled Pasture Butter. It became available in June and when I first bought it, I noticed the difference right away. The smell is sublime and the color is a deep yellow like egg yolks when the butter is melted. I don't have access to pasture butter year round. My dairy does not currently produce butter. And while I could make my own from the Milk Thistle cream, $8 for a half a pound of butter seems especially steep when I consider the effort expended. I mean, I do have a full time job and two kids. If I ever win the lottery maybe I will start making my own butter. But until then I don't think it is a viable solution. Even the local butter by Ronnybrook Dairy (another exceptional dairy) is only okay. It is good, but I happennto like the OV Pasture butter better. Since it is a seasonal product I have been slowly stocking up all summer. I currently have 7-8 pounds of butter in the freezer. We go through about 1/4-1/2 a pound of butter every week (who am I kidding, 1/2 a pound) so I figure I have 14 weeks of butter. I think I'd like to get just a teensy bit more. Thank goodness my ice cube maker isn't working because that has freed up space for butter storage.

4-Sweet Corn Corn is such a wonderful thing. This summer it has been especially plentiful and exceptionally sweet. Our CSA has been providing 4-5 ears per week. That's enough to feed our need for corn on the cob, but not enough to store. So I hve started to buy extra ears at the FM. I plan to take the corn, cut it off the cob, blanch it in hot water for thirty seconds and then cool it, bag it and freeze it. So far though all those extra ears of corn have just gone into my family's bellies.

5-Dried Herbs Fresh herbs have been so wonderful to have around this summer! I have enjoyed dill in my potato salad, hottttt cilantro and jalepeno salsa and basil and kale pestos. But all good things must come to an end. So slowly I have been trying to dry the inexpensive bunches of fresh herbs that I can get at the farmer's market, dill, basil and even chamomile. I have saved some small glass spice jars for storage. Though it has been tough. Drying the herbs means that I can't just eat them fresh.

So there you go! 5 Ways that even a city girl with an itty bitty freezer can store local foods to get ready for the winter. Thus far my husband has been very supportive of my 'crunchy' eating habits, but he has been unwilling to buy a stand up freezer to compliment the tiny one we already have. His biggest problem? That the freezer won't fit in the kitchen and would have to live in the living room. Well...I guess he has a point!!

This post is shared with Real Food Wednesdays and Healthy 2Day Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fresh Bites Fridays and Fight Back Fridays

Reader Reaction: The Stigma of Being Fat

After my post The Stigma of Being Fat published, I had a conversation with a long time friend. She had so much to say about my post that I suggested that instead of commenting, that she should email me and I would post her comments in their own post. I think her perspective is important and not isolated. And the discussion surrounding the stigma and discrimination of obesity is one that I think we need to have as a nation. So I'll start here.

Speaking as someone who was an obese child and is now an obese adult I say that I really hope no one wants us to accept being fat as viable way of life. It sucks on so many levels. That said, I have never had a bully express their concern for my health or quality of life. They tell me and other obese individuals, in no uncertain terms that we are not as good as they are. We are less than. We are not lovable. We don't perform as well in the work place, we are simply not worthy of the space we inhabit. When I am bullied in my life it makes me feel so low, so hopeless and desperate that I feel the need to drug myself to escape the pain. My drug of choice?? Pizza, Cake, Cookies...all manner of highly processed, sugar and fat and chemical laden yummies that I'm told through advertisements will alleviate my worst pains and make me happy. So the stigma against fat people MUST GO. It's un-Christian, inhumane and mostly it is unhelpful.

I hope you don't mind if I reveal something personal from both our lives, COB. When we were roommates in college you were the most loving and supportive friend I've probably ever had. You encouraged me to love myself and care for myself. And what happened? World! Hear me now! I began a journey in which I lost 75 pounds. I began to exercise. I kept it off for several years. I felt great. I was the happiest I have ever been in my life before or since. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sustain it over the long haul due to some very deeply-seated issues and bad habits and blah blah blah. That's not the point. Obviously anecdotes do not count as research except in our own lives. My research leads me to believe that the only way out of this miserable fat life is up. I must love and accept myself before I can heal and be healthy.

Let me preface my next statement by saying that I do not blame anyone but myself. I make my own choices. But that doesn't mean there aren't a whole host of contributors and challenges to my personal goals. My drug of choice is everywhere! Restaurants, advertisements, pushers in the form of coworkers, friends and family, it’s virtually inescapable. To be fair, drug addicts don’t have to contend with the constant barrage of images of their drug. It’s not sold literally on every single corner or in drive-thrus (or is it?). And there are people everywhere telling me I don’t deserve even my own love because of my obesity and in low moments I believe them and turn to my ever-present and reasonably priced drugs. How can I possibly lose weight and lead a healthy life in such an environment?! Even having a best friend on a whole food crusade has not alleviated my problems.

Yes I joined a CSA, I’m eating more veggies than ever before. But I truly struggle at the grocery store or the restaurant to make the choices I know are better for me. On the one hand I’m disgusted by microwaveable low-fat, low-carb “health” meals…but I still buy them sometimes when I’m at a loss. Why on earth am I telling you all of this? Because I truly believe it matters. I am living proof of our country’s failure when it comes to food and diet. I am the end result of everything the whole-food movement is trying to combat. I wish my parents had tried harder to get me to eat healthily. They openly admit they gave up trying to make me eat vegetables at around 4. I vividly remember our fridge was full of real Coca Cola, Oscar Meyer Bologna, Lays potato chips and Ruffles and Doritos. Then in the late 80s there was a shift…to Diet Coke, Lite Bologna, Miracle Whip, Baked Chips. We stopped having Tyson Microwaveable dinners and started having Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice. And we all gained weight.

Most of America, I believe, is living in a delusional state where they don’t believe or accept that they are eating unhealthily. That they are contributing to their children’s obesity. They DO need a wakeup call. That is my opinion. But even being awakened, as I feel I have been, is only the first step, not the answer because we will struggle between knowing what we should eat: whole foods, and wanting so badly to eat the foods we grew up with, the foods we’ve been conditioned and programmed to eat for the last 30 years. We will stand in the supermarket trying to decide between the bagged organic baby greens and the low-fat, low-calorie, low-sodium can of soup. And in frustration we’ll say “F*** it!” and grab a burger instead.

What we need is a revolution! We need, as a society, to create an entirely new environment of understanding and support. We need to reject, as a whole, these nonfood options. We need to demand real food. It should be everywhere. It should be the cultural habit to eat healthfully and wholly. If it’s everywhere, if it’s the norm, not only would today’s children have it easier when they become adults, but those of us fighting our bad habits and compulsions would surely have an easier time making decisions if the options were fewer and healthier in nature. If my choices were between Kale, Chard and Collard Greens it would be much easier to choose the healthy option than when my choices are fast food, packaged food and salad. But maybe I’m the one who’s delusional because this all seems way too much to ask of our head-in-the-ground society.

Egg Yolk for Baby

Egg yolk should be baby's first solid food, starting at 4 months, whether baby is breastfed or formula-fed. Egg yolks from pastured hens will contain the special long-chain fatty acids so critical for the optimal development of the brain and nervous system. The whites may cause an allergic reaction and should not be given to baby until he is at least one year old.

Ingredients:

• 1 organic egg from a pasture-fed hen
• 1/2 teaspoon grated raw organic liver, frozen for 14 days Note: It is VERY important that the liver be frozen for 14 days before using.

Instructions:

• Boil egg for 3 1/2 minutes.
• Place in a bowl and peel off shell.
• Remove egg white and discard.
• Yolk should be soft and warm, not hot, with its enzyme content intact.

**If you wish to add liver, grate on the small holes of a grater while frozen. Allow to warm up and stir into egg yolk.

Moderation - Junk Day!

Okay, so you're reading through this blog and thinking, "Sure, this is all well and good, but I like a doughnut once in a while too, I like not having to think about what's in it and think about what tastes good!" And trust me, I understand that! I'm personally ADDICTED to McDonald's Mocha Frapees! My kids love fast food. And if it were up to my husband, we would never eat anything but burgers, smothered in cheese, hold the veggies! SO, I can completely understand the want to just kick back and eat junk! BUT, you simply can't live that way every day.

So if you're like me and your trying to change how your family eats, this is one of the greatest things I have found... Moderation! Alright, we've all heard the "All things in moderation" saying, but what does that really mean? Well, it means that MOST of the time, we do what we know is healthy, and once in a while we give ourselves a treat!

Now if you're like me that "treat" is fast food. But really, it could be anything! So how do you get started and make sure that "moderation" doesn't turn in to once, or even twice a day? Well, the best way I found was to make a "Junk day" each week where we could eat just about anything we wanted to and not fret about workouts or whatever. And I'll be completely honest, once the kids get past the fact that they can't have the junk every day, they will actually get to where even on Junk Day they are asking for the good stuff!

For us, Sunday is "junk day" but it's really easy to just pick a day and put in on the Calendar for once a week or once every two weeks and trust me, you will not regret it. For six days a week, do your workout, pick your meals by what's healthy and makes you feel good... Fruits, Veggies, Whole Grains... Good healthy food! Then, day seven, kick up your heals, take your kids to dinner at some Buffet and spend the evening watching movies or playing board games. Honestly, it will change your world!

The Hanging Gardens of Washington Heights

I have been talking about how to grow tomatoes indoors since last summer. As I have mentioned, I live in a 1000 square foot space in New York. Our apt faces East and so we have lots of light. But our outdoor space is shared and I cannot just go and plant tomato plants wherever I please. So I got the crazy notion to try indoor growing. The intention was to plant them in late April like the guy at the farmer’s market said I should. But things slipped through my fingers due to busy schedules and general laziness. So now, I proceed even though it was late May.Recently I purchased two Topsy Turvy indoor tomato planters, two heirloom tomato plants (one yellow oxheart and one Abe Lincoln) and 10 pounds of dirt from the lady at the Union Square Farmer’s Market. The dirt contained 6 months worth of compost she said. When we arrived home, Thing 1 about burst out of his clothes to get me to start in on planting them. And though we didn’t follow directions to the tee, my plants were quite large with flowers on them when the planter specifically warns not to do so, yet after a little jiggering and gentle pulling, our new friends were planted and upside down in no time.

But what to do, what to do? The planters were heavy, 5 or 6 pounds, and I needed to add more dirt making them closer to 10 pounds. Hanging them from my plaster ceiling now seemed like a bad bad bad idea. I thought, ‘What about a couple of two by fours?’ We could affix the two by fours to the ceiling with anchors and then screw the planters into the wood. DH thought that was a marginally better idea than screwing them into the ceiling, but he still didn’t declare it a solution. Finally he got a great idea (he usually does). He went to Home Depot and bought one of those metal industrial kitchen shelving racks. He bought wheels so that we could move the rack around for optimal sunlight, and out of the living room altogether when we have company.

So now I have my two little beauties hung. But has this been cost effective? Not so much. The planters, the plants and the dirt cost almost $40. The rack and the wheels cost another $80. Yipes! If like the box says that the average tomato plant can produce 30 pounds of tomatoes a year, then my 60 pounds of tomatoes will cost me $2 per pound. That’s cheap for heirloom tomatoes, but far from free. And that is only if I can get them to produce. So far I have had three flowers fall off from the stress of being planted. Now that they are cozy and getting sun every day I am seeing new shoots. That is a good sign.

The first step in getting more familiar with what one eats is to start shopping at a farmer’s market. Get to know what is being grown in your area. From there you can join a CSA, find local meats and other various local foods. But the next logical thing one does is to grow one’s own food. If I lived in a house on even a quarter of an acre I would likely have some kind of a garden. And much to the chagrin of my neighbors I might even try to keep chickens. But that is not an option for me right now. I love my home, I love my neighbors and I especially love my commute. And when you consider that it is *only* 45 minutes each way, then you start to see why moving even further outside the city creates its own challenges. My hanging garden is one way that I am trying to grow my own food and doing it with what I have, fresh air and sunshine.

My rack is big enough to add at least two more Topsy Turvy planters. And thus far the plants themselves have started to grow up, so I think they won’t be as big as I first thought. Which means I can add peppers or cucumbers or eggplant next year if things go well. I would like to try and add strawberries this year if it is possible. I am not sure if they do well indoors. This is an exciting adventure. My goal is to grow enough fresh tomatoes to have enough to sustain us throughout the winter. Perhaps, since they will be inside in the heat, my plants will continue to produce after the first frost? I don’t know. I wonder will they produce at all? We will have to take this one day at a time.

The USDA's New Food Icon: My Thoughts

By now you know about the new USDA food icon, a really easy to understand plate. The icon has in the last several days received some accolades and some flak, though not usually both from the same person.

The pyramid was AWFUL. It rooted grains at the base of our eating. And by looking at the food of an entire day, it allowed one to overeat in certain categories with the idea that deficits could be made up later in the day. And it did nothing to help people learn how to properly build a meal. Although I have often said that no one food is good or bad as the day in which it was eaten, the fact that the pyramid offered little suggestion on how to build a meal trumps any discussion it might have raised about examining a whole day’s foods.

The USDA introduced today in Washington DC this icon.

Things I do like about the icon:

*It is very easy to understand. The icon helps even children to visualize what a meal should look like. Visualization is KEY, because in many cases pictures can communicate ideas better than words can. Words are open to interpretation. And although it is written in English, I see that the tool could easily be used for those who do not speak English. It is easily transferrable into many languages.

*Fruits and veggies should compromise half the plate. I like that. We need additional help getting more veggies in our diet.

*Dairy is off to the side as a compliment to a meal. As devotional as I am to dairy, I recognize it plays a supporting role in nutrition and one can get along without it. However, cheese is not a meat substitute as many of us have been raised to believe. If only I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say “Pizza is a complete food-grains, veggies (sauce and toppings), meat (pepperoni, really?) and dairy!” Cheese, when eaten in excess, has its own health issues and is not a meat substitute.

*There is no discussion of servings or milligrams or portion sizes and I love that. People should be encouraged to use more intuition when it comes to food. Portion size is not the same for a 100 pound woman as a 225 pound man, nutrient needs are different. But what should be driven home is a discussion about food not nutrients.

*The icon addresses meals and not snacks. I think the fallacy of ‘eat 5 small meals a day’ has served to increase food sales, expand our nation’s waistlines and justify all day noshing. Quit snacking and eat real meals. If I don’t eat enough real food to last me for the 6 hours in between lunch and dinner I need more food at lunch, period.

Things I do NOT like about the icon

*I don’t like that fruit makes it on the plate at all. It should be off to the side with milk. Fruit certainly is not necessary at every meal.

*I understand the need to follow the icon us with some words and explanation. But the VISUAL tool will be the most important part of the whole thing. The words will likely be lost.

*Protein should really be listed as ‘Proteins’ because there are a various array of them, the same as ‘Vegetables’ and ‘Grains’ are displayed. Although perhaps that is because the USDA does not want to encourage us to eat multiple sources of protein as our diets are not really protein deficient at all?

*The icon doesn’t address processed foods at all. Big surprise.

*The USDA is still ramming the questionable health of low fat dairy down our throats. Switch to whole people, and when you hear 10 years from now that whole was always actually better for you, send me an email.

*THERE IS STILL NO DISCUSSION OF SUGAR!!! ARRRGGGH! There is one crummy mention of reducing sugary drinks, but I think sugar as a total is worth mentioning. Will it ever happen? Probably not in my lifetime.

What do you think? Is the new icon a step in the right direction? Or a leap backwards?

Your Food and Radiation

Because of the risk of Cesium 137 being present in plumes of radioactivity, it is wise to consider the effect on food.  Cesium 137 is attracted to soil and it can get into the food chain through plants, grass eaten by food source animals, and in many other ways.  This radioactive element has a half life of 30 years which means that just half of the radioactivity will be gone in 30 years.  Another cycle or so will be needed to eliminate all of the cesium from the soil.

Since cesium acts like potassium in your body it is wise to eat potassium rich foods and perhaps use potassium supplements. This is a risk to your kidneys.

US foods in some categories like canned fish and sodas are exposed to gamma radiation before the products are shipped from factories.

Last Friday's earthquake woes continue for Japan. The radiation threat from a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, where fires have already exposed radiation waves as far out as Tokyo, isn't abating, and the U.S. has issued evacuation orders for everyone located within a 50-mile perimeter of the reactor. As uncertainty remains, countries that import Japanese food are on alert for possible contamination.

Those nearby, such as Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Singapore and parts of China, have begun screening the imported Japanese food for radiation, and Italy has banned all Japanese food imports outright. Tuesday, the European Union issued an alert recommending radiation checks on all imports that have come out of Japan since March 15. 

Contaminated food continues to emit radiation -- the stronger the level of radiation, the longer it lasts. Any exposure to radiation increases the risk of cancer.

What types of food is implicated? Anything grown or produced in the fallout area -- and affected areas continue to spread. Most at risk are living foods such as plants and animals, which could absorb radiation through the ground, reports the Wall Street Journal. "Immediate contamination could occur from particles from the air settling on plants or feed, or in the longer run radioactive elements could get washed to the soil where plants grow," states the Journal. This would affect fresh foods as well as animal products from affected livestock such as milk and cheese. Non-growing foods kept in warehouses and silos should be protected.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters yesterday, "The agencies that check food imports do that every day and of course are aware of what has happened in Japan and will be checking food accordingly."

Read more: http://www.slashfood.com/2011/03/17/japanese-food-imports-tested-for-radiation/

NB: Radioactive Cesium was the main cause of death following Chernobyl.
Photo Credit: http://www.periodictable.com/

Food is a Socio-Economic Problem, Part Two: How Processed Food Began

Food is a socio-economic problem. The more wealthy you are in the United States, the more likely that you will eat nutrient dense food. Poor nutrient quality food, excessive sugars and overly processed fats are omnipresent in the diet of low-income Americans. That is not to say that every person of meager means is eating a crappy diet of cola and fast food hamburgers. So no need to write me any letters scathing me for being elitist. But being low income increases the likelihood that you will be eating lousy food, simply for financial reasons.

I have been interested in how we got here. If you read Fast Food Nation then you know the story about McDonald's being started in Southern California by the McDonald's brothers. They had a restaurant or two, were making a good living flipping burgers. And they ordered a ton of ice cream mixers made for milkshakes. The mixer salesman was so intrigued by the large mixer orders that he went down to check the place out and he discovered a gem. Ray Kroc was the mixer salesman and shortly after meeting the McDonald brothers he bought them out. Now I wrote that from memory, and I read the book 6 years ago, so please correct me if I am wrong. But I tell the story because how does something grow from a fun diner you hang out with your friends to becoming the nations largerest purchaser of beef and potatoes? How did they go from being a charming burger stand to a national pariah sickening hundreds of thousands with their low quality fare?

My honest opinion? It wasn't their fault. I cannot blame McDonald's for being McDonald's. And in my mind it isn't even them that is the problem. They are part of the problem, one finger of a national body of problems that is our sickened food culture. But I repeat, how did we get here? How did we go from homemade healthful food to soda and fake food in a mere 100 years? Baby steps, baby steps.

I have been reading an interesting book recently: Something for the Oven by Laura Shapiro. The book examines food in the 1950's, largely from the perspective of the women cooking it, but also with a fair amount of company insight. I admit, when I began reading I had some preconceived notions about how processed food evolved. I thought (as I bet 90% of you guys do) that processed foods like TV Dinners and cake mixes began when our environment began to modernize and consumers began to demand faster products. But Shapiro corrects me. That wasn't exactly how it happened, that is just what the food marketers want you to believe.

In the beginning of the 20th century the average homecook was spending virtually all her food dollar on food that she prepared from scratch. If she lived in the country, she was shopping locally, gardening and canning much of what she grew. She was doing alot of work, defeathering chickens, fileting her own meats, trimming and washing all her vegetables, etc. Major advances in freezing (I'll write about that later) and canning created companies that had vision for America. Food companies realized the potential for their time savers: frozen spinach that was washed and chopped and ready to use, canned macaroni and cheese, complete dinners prepared and frozen solid? Many manufacturers assumed that this would be something that the average housewife could not resist! More leisure time? Yes, please!

But the average housewife did not care for the first processed foods. However in a sea of canned hamburgers and frozen tasteless peas, there were certain stand out favorites. TV Dinners eventually took off, but the average family reported using them for a meal fix. For example she might buy them for the children to be eaten on a night that husband and wife were going out rather than far Sunday dinner or when you had company coming over. Other products also took off, frozen orange juice concentrate, cakes mixes, etc. After reading the book what stands out to me is that the products that took off were products that tasted reasonably good and replaced very time consuming things that most women really hated doing, like juicing oranges and baking cakes. If you think about it, these products are largely unnecessary, yet making them is difficult. I like having dessert at a meal, but if I am too busy I simply will omit it. For a food company, making dessert easy makes it more likely that someone will prepare it (or buy it) at all.

It steamed the early food companies that women looked down upon ready made food like a second class citizen. If you really wanted to show your love for your family, you made a from scratch dinner. You didn't open up a can and just throw it onto a plate. Most women liked cooking above other household duties, and early processed foods took away their most pleasurable chore. And if it didn't taste good why on earth would you accept that? Not to mention that many women experienced guilt in serving food that was so easy to prepare. The food companies knew that these issues were inhibiting sales. So they worked hard on their marketing.

Glamorizing was the tool that food companies latched onto that really helped sales. Glamorizing is what takes time saving into the socio-economic realm. Glamorizing is the art of taking a simple box of cake mix and dressing it up with homemade frosting and fresh fruit, for example. A woman could buy canned soup and add a little cream and voila! A homemade delicacy that required real creative ingenuity! This is where processed foods finally found their niche and acceptance. For the homemaker, the guilt was removed, because she was contributing to the final product. Now a cake mix could be used for company, because the cake could be adorned with coconut, or pecans or whatever! Food companies heavily marketed glamorizing to low and middle income women, because it allowed them access to the other food trends of the 1950's, cooking with wine and cognac or more difficult french recipies, all that were time consuming and challenging. Shapiro states "Glamorizing sounded expensive, but it was utterly democratic".

Once the door had been opened for packaged and processed foods, their rise to the top could finally begin. "As the concept of easy haute cuisine spread from kitchen to kitchen, often via pantry shelf items, it banished the dowdy image of packaged foods and gave them a powerful boost toward the ranks of company cooking", Shapiro states. I have mentioned before that the journey forward then becomes generational. Children of the Fifties remember the special occasions that they ate TV Dinners and they readily served them to their children. Their children of the Seventies and Eighties ate and loved processed foods, however they were expensive. But by the time they had children in the new century, that had changed and now delicious packaged fare was cheap. Not to mention that our lives are now filled with new activities like talking on cell phones and texting and Facebook! Who has time to cook anymore?

And by the time we got to this new century, there were few home cooks left to teach kids how to cook from scratch. My own mother "cooked from scratch" with canned vegetables. She is turning over in her grave right now because I have just told the world that she didn't cook from scratch. But truthfully, while my mother did cook from scratch to the best of her ability, she bought such fine ingredients as Velveeta Cheese and Tater Tots and Crisco Vegetable Shortening. I always had a hot (and usually homemade) dinner on the table every night, but we ate the same way as other middle-class Americans did. With no Internet, we didn't have the knowledge that certain groups of people were starting to see that this fake food was hurting us.

Food is a socio-sconomic problem. It always has been, since the days when being poor meant being hungry, to today where being poor means that you are more likely to be diabetic. Our culture needs to be examined. We seriously need to look at our taste buds, our food policies and our defense of all things drive through and fastfastfast! This is a bigger problem than just McDonald's and soda. It is a cultural issue.

Thinking of Food: Overeating Tip

Since it is once again the overeating season, I know many people face indigestion this coming week and over the next many weeks, concluding with that New Year's Day feast.

A sensible rule is to try an eat less, about 25% less than normal.

Eating till overly full makes your stomach and intestines work overtime, and done regularly can lead to a number of digestive and intestinal disorders.

If you start feeling uncomfortable and bloated you might think of my now grown daughters who used to go the the Ladie's Room to press their little tummies on the edge of a sink.  This seemed to be something they concocted so they could return to the dining room for more.

Growing up in a home that was always prepared to feed Cox's Army on holidays discomfort was common, albeit unspoken.

So what might you do?

Of course it is wise to pace your eating and try to remember to move away from the plate when you feel the slighest bit of fullness.  You can chew slowly and refrain from liquids while you are trying to down that turkey leg or just more stuffing and mashsed potatoes.

Try also to have a few digestive enzymes, some probiotics, and extra Betaine HCl on hand.  Even one teaspoon of raw, apple cider vinegar in a glass of water before you eat can help.  And then there is trusty, old baking soda if you have nothing else.

If this fails try this approach from Oriental Medicine - 

First, warm your hands by rubbing them together.  Then, in the direction of your larger intestine, starting at the lower right side of your abdomen, slowly massage your bellly, around and around, a few times until you feel relaxed and unbloated (10 minutes or so).

You can learn more here - STOMACH MASSAGE

Eat raw pork pancreas daily, live longer

I still do not have the time to post the wealth of information which Dr. Dy Liacco shared with us during the Power of Natural Healing Seminar we organized early this month and held at Goodwill Bookstore.  However I just came across a write up he did late last year which he also discussed during his talk with us.  Let me share this with you.

By Jimmy Dy-Liacco (The Philippine Star) Updated September 26, 2009 

from the Philippine Star

Heal the world naturally: My mission is to spread the good news of natural healing to as many people as possible.

MANILA, Philippines - What prompted me to study natural healing was my getting prostate cancer in 1994.  Like everybody who gets cancer, I was terrified, but doubly so because my older brother died after 18 months of battling lung cancer, but his MD son says my brother did not die of cancer.  He died of kidney failure because the chemo destroyed his kidneys. 

Everyone who’s stricken with cancer is terrified because we all know that doctors don’t know how to cure cancer.  If they did, nobody would get terrified.  I felt I would be a fool to go down the same costly, painful, inutile road my brother took.

So I went to search for alternative options.  But I found there were so many it was very confusing.  There are the Gerson therapy, the Reishi mushrooms, the macrobiotic diet, maitake mushrooms, Essiac Tea, etc.  A 17,000 stage 4 cancer study in California found the five-year survival rate for cancer was only six percent.  The Gerson therapy was found to be six times better at 36 percent.  But that was not good enough for me.  What if I belonged to the 64 percent?

Pancreatic Enzyme Therapy

So I kept searching until I found Dr. William Donald Kelley, who had 1.5 months terminal pancreatic cancer, researched the medical literature and found the scientific basis for the pancreatic enzyme therapy, which he developed to cure himself in 18 months. He survived for the next 43 years until he died of congestive heart failure at 80 in January 2005. In the 43 years that he lived, Dr. Kelley cured more than 33,000 terminal patients of all kinds of cancer with the same pancreatic enzyme therapy.

In 1980, Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital, the top cancer hospital in the US East Coast, sent a doctor to Kelley’s clinic to study his cases with a mandate to submit a report after a month saying that Kelley was a No. 1 quack.

But the doctor, Nicholas Gonzalez, found thousands of documented cases, which took him five years to study. He returned to New York in 1986 and submitted a 301-page report that if people followed Kelley’s protocol strictly, the cure rate for pancreatic cancer was 100 percent, and for all other cancers, 97 percent.

So the Kelley protocol was what I followed, and cured my cancer in six months without surgery, chemo, radiation.  Kelley found cancer was just a nutritional deficiency of the pancreatic digestive enzymes and the vitamins and minerals that make for a strong immune system which, however, cannot kill the cancer cells unless its outer protective animal protein coating was first digested by the pancreatic enzymes.

My getting cancer and being cured of it naturally was what got me interested in natural healing, no longer just for cancer but for all diseases. 

Healing Cancer Naturally

Natural healing has become popular in the modern world because of the fact that it heals faster, better, and cheaper than synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, without the side effects that all drugs have.  For the Philippines, this is of paramount importance.

In 1997, the Philippines was blessed with the passage into law of the Traditional & Alternative Medicine Act of 1997, which established natural healing as a legal system of medicine side by side with pharmaceutical drug-based medicine.  The preamble of the law says it is the policy of the state to accelerate the development of traditional and alternative health care and to integrate it into the national health care delivery system.

This law was passed because 70 percent of our people do not get adequate health care for three reasons: 1) We don’t have enough doctors and the supply is dwindling because we are losing doctors to the United States and to the nursing profession, 2) Most doctors prefer to practice in urban areas, and 3) Drugs, medical procedures, and hospitalizations are priced way above what people can afford.

The message I would like to send out to my countrymen is that natural healing with food and food supplements heals faster and better than synthetic drugs, without the side effects of synthetic drugs. 

I’d like to tell them how raw pork pancreas and raw beef liver with coffee enemas and food supplements that clear up the arteries of blockages, clear up the body of toxins, and a 100-percent raw foods diet (which I call the Adam & Eve Diet) have cured terminal cancer patients of leukemia, brain cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer in two to seven months. How a scan by an oncologist in a top-rated hospital found a pancreatic cancer patient’s 7.8-cm. tumor shrinking to 4 cm. in just 1.5 months with raw pork pancreas and liver. And how the oncologist told the patient to continue taking the pancreas and liver and she won’t need any chemo anymore. I’d like to tell them how the cost of this natural treatment for cancer has ranged from P2,000 to P25,000 a month.

Raw Pork Pancreas and Raw Beef Liver

I’d like to tell them how three glasses of water, half a teaspoon of rock salt, one saba banana, and siling labuyo took out a hypertensive patient’s crushing headache and brought down her blood pressure from 240/140 to 115/75 in five minutes. And how it has done the same for other hypertensive patients.

I’d like to tell them how three people scheduled for leg amputation for diabetic gangrene got the gangrene cured, the very high blood sugar normalized, and the amputation cancelled in one week with the use of six mineral food supplements, raw pork pancreas which are very rich in natural insulin, raw garlic plastered over the wound to kill any infection, and 6,000 mg. of vitamin C daily to accelerate the healing of the wound, all at a cost of only P1,300 for that one week.

There are many more things I’d like to tell them, which is why I am happy to accept invitations to give natural healing lectures for free.

My mission is to spread the good news of natural healing to as many people as possible, and I am doing this together with the Philippine College for the Advancement in Medicine (PCAM), a non-profit foundation founded in 1995 by seven medical doctors who have been practicing alternative medicine since the 1980s. 

PCAM now has hundreds of members throughout the country.  It holds monthly seminars on various alternative therapies, and a national convention every November on the power of natural healing.  November has been proclaimed by the President as the month of traditional and alternative health care since 2004. 

PCAM is the local counterpart of the American College for the Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), which now has thousands of MD members practicing alternative medicine in the US.  This year, PCAM’s convention will be held on November 9-17 at the Club Filipino. All are welcome, members and non-members alike. Pre-registration can be done by calling the PCAM secretariat at 381-5210 or 0917-833-3828.

Times are changing as the world rediscovers the power of natural healing.  In the United States, 125 medical schools, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins, now include alternative courses in their curriculum. 

There is now a university outside Seattle, Washington called Bastyr University which exclusively offers four-year and higher-degree programs in natural medicine.  In the Philippines, UE’s Ramon Magsaysay Medical Center started last year a two-year masteral degree program in alternative medicine. 

Since the Philippines tends to follow US trends, perhaps our medical schools will sooner or later also start including alternative courses in their curriculum.  It is a consummation devoutly to be wished for the good of our people.

Why you must avoid SOY

Further to my earlier post on the Adam and Eve Diet where the dangers of Soy was mentioned by Dr. Dy-LIacco, let me quote sinippets from the article of Dr. Mercola on the dangers of Soy products. He mentions that Soy can cause:

• Breast Cancer
• Brain Damage
• Infant Abnormalities

Dr. Mercola uncloaks the so called health benefits of Soy as follows:

Asians consume large amounts of soy, that's why they lead long, healthy lives. 

The report How to Get the Benefits of Soy Without All the Health Risks tells you that they are consuming far less soy than Americans! In fact a Japanese man consumes about 2 teaspoons of soy in a day, far less than Americans, who guzzle soy milk by the gallons and have substituted meat with processed tofu (so they can feel that they're not missing out). Find out why moderation is actually the key to the Asians' healthy diet.

Modern Soy Foods have the same benefits as Traditionally Fermented Soy.

Most modern soy food from soy milk to soy burgers are processed, which means they contain natural toxins called “antinutrients”. Learn what these antinutrients can do to your health and how much danger they pose. Learn why traditional, fermented soy disposes of these natural toxins to make for “healthy soy”.

Soy formula is safe for infants.

Learn how mega doses of phytoestrogens in soy formulas are putting your infant's normal sexual development at risk. The report How to Get the Benefits of Soy Without All the Health Risks will show you why your infant should be off Soy Formulas! You'd be shocked to know that you are feeding your baby with 5 birth control pills worth of estrogen with soy infant formulas. Just imagine how that much estrogen can mess up your baby's sexual development.



The Chinese did not eat unfermented soybeans as they did other legumes such as lentils because the soybean contains large quantities of natural toxins or "antinutrients". First among them are potent enzyme inhibitors that block the action of trypsin and other enzymes needed for protein digestion.

These inhibitors are large, tightly folded proteins that are not completely deactivated during ordinary cooking. They can produce serious gastric distress, reduced protein digestion and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake. In test animals, diets high in trypsin inhibitors cause enlargement and pathological conditions of the pancreas, including cancer.

Additionally 99% a very large percentage of soy is genetically modified and it also has one of the highest percentages contamination by pesticides of any of our foods. Soybeans are high in phytic acid, present in the bran or hulls of all seeds. It's a substance that can block the uptake of essential minerals - calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and especially zinc - in the intestinal tract.

Soybeans are high in phytic acid, present in the bran or hulls of all seeds. It's a substance that can block the uptake of essential minerals - calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and especially zinc - in the intestinal tract.
Although not a household word, phytic acid has been extensively studied; there are literally hundreds of articles on the effects of phytic acid in the current scientific literature. Scientists are in general agreement that grain- and legume-based diets high in phytates contribute to widespread mineral deficiencies in third world countries.

Analysis shows that calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc are present in the plant foods eaten in these areas, but the high phytate content of soy- and grain-based diets prevents their absorption.

The soybean has one of the highest phytate levels of any grain or legume that has been studied,16 and the phytates in soy are highly resistant to normal phytate-reducing techniques such as long, slow cooking.17 Only a long period of fermentation will significantly reduce the phytate content of soybeans.

When precipitated soy products like tofu are consumed with meat, the mineral-blocking effects of the phytates are reduced.18 The Japanese traditionally eat a small amount of tofu or miso as part of a mineral-rich fish broth, followed by a serving of meat or fish.

Vegetarians who consume tofu and bean curd as a substitute for meat and dairy products risk severe mineral deficiencies. The results of calcium, magnesium and iron deficiency are well known; those of zinc are less so.

He however mentions that if there is also the healthy type of Soy such as:

Please take not that the Soy Sauce above is fermented and contains no other chemical and msg.

You can download the free report of Dr. Mercola  on SOY — THE LURKING DANGER IN AMERICA'S FAVORITE HEALTH FOOD here.

Adam and Eve Diet: Going back to Nature to make us healthy

Although  I have posted on some of the points below in the past, I would like to post the whole Adam and Eve Diet as recommended by Dr. Jaime Dy Liacco.  Here you will learn the following:

• The use of raw pork pancreas, raw beef liver, raw garlic and raw cassava juice to kill cancer  cells and live a healthier life
• How the simple water and salt are the main foundations of this diet 
• Why distilled and reverse osmosis water is bad
• Why most artificial sweeteners are bad and cancer causing but there are two types which are safe 
• Why Soy is cancer causing
• Why an alkaline stomach is not ideal
• What fruits to take to have a better digestion
• What food, not a fruit is good for dessert, even for diabetics

Adam & Eve Diet: by Dr. Jaime E. Dy-Liacco, M.M., trustee Philippine College for the Advancement in Medicine, former acting Director General, Philippine Institute of Traditional & Alternative Health Care, Department of Health.

This diet is to be taken with the raw pork pancreas, raw beef liver, raw garlic, and raw cassava juice needed to kill cancer cells, daily coffee enemas to remove the dead rotting cells, and using an electronic zapper to kill whatever parasites come with the raw meats.

The dosages are as follows:

Raw pork pancreas. 

2 tablespoons with every meal (3x a day), and 2 tablespoons on an empty stomach one hour before every meal and just before bedtime (4x a day), for a total of 14 tablespoons daily.

Raw pork pancreas are very rich in the pancreatic enzymes (chymotrypsin and trypsin) that digest animal protein. They will digest the animal protein outer coating of the cancer cell and remove its negative ion charge, so the immune system cells which also have negative ion charges, can now enter the cancer cell and kill it.

Unless this outer coating is digested and the negative ion charge removed, the immune system cannot kill the cancer cell, because two negatives repel each other.

Raw beef liver 

3 tablespoons at lunch only (1x a day). This is very rich in vitamins and minerals, and is the best blood  builder there is. It will strengthen the immune system so it can kill the cancer cell once the cell's outer protective
coating has been digested.

Raw garlic

One clove of crushed raw garlic with each serving of raw pancreas and liver to kill the bacteria and viruses that might be in the raw meat.

Raw cassava juice.

One 8-oz glass after breakfast and one glass after dinner. This is very rich in Vitamin B-17, which enters
the cancer cell after its outer coating has been digested by the raw pancreas, and together with a strengthened immune system, kills the cancer cell.
.
When the cassava enters the cancer cell, an enzyme, beta-glucosidase, which cancer cells and not normal cells secrete in profusion, breaks it down into two molecules of glucose, and 2 molecules of strong poisons, benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, which kill the cancer cell.

Normal cells secrete a different enzyme, rhodanese, which the cancer cells do not. This enzyme turns the benzaldehyde into benzoic acid, an analgesic, which eases the pains ofterminal cancer patients, and which turns the hydrogen cyanide into thiocyanate, a harmless substance which is a natural regulator of blood pressure. Thus, cassava juice not only acts like a target-specific smart bomb in killing the cancer cell,but it also has beneficial side effects for the normal cells.

Take these dosages for 25 straight days, then take a break for 5 days. During the break, continue to take the 2 tablespoons of raw pancreas with your meals to help digest the food. The break gives the body a chance to get rid of residual dead cancer cells which may not have been removed by the daily coffee enemas.

Follow this 25 days-on, 5 days-off cycle every month until you are cancer free, then continue the same for another 6 months. 

If you continue to be cancer free after 6 months,drop to a maintenance dose of only 2 tablespoons of raw pancreas with every meal and the 3 tablespoons of raw liver for the rest of your life.

Coffee enema.

This is a high (a 15" catheter goes into the colon), 15-minute retention enema that circulates coffee in the colon (5 minutes lying on the left side, 5 minutes on the back, 5 minutes on the right side) to make the coffee hit the liver and gall bladder areas.

When it does that, the liver and gall bladder contract, dumping into the colon all the dead rotting cancer cells which the liver had filtered out of the blood. You then dump them into the toilet.

Once you start eating the raw pancreas and liver, you'll start killing cancer cells by the millions, and these dead cells will start rotting in your body, making you feel toxic (dizziness, headache, fever, muscle aches, joint pains, nausea, even vomiting). This toxic feeling lifts instantly when the enema is done.

Do the 1st enema upon waking up in the morning, before breakfast. Be sure to defecate 1st so that there is no obstruction to the circulation of the coffee. If you cannot defecate, do a water enema first to clear the colon of waste, then follow it up with the coffee. You may have to do more than 1 enema a day, because as the day progresses, you continue to kill cancer cells. So play it by ear, do an enema whenever you feel intolerably toxic, because it means you are killing cancer cells faster than you are removing them.

Bio-electric Zapper


 This is an electronic device that runs 1 milliampere of current through your body, not enough to kill a cockroach, but enough to kill all viruses, bacteria, worms, all other parasites. Use it every day to keep yourself free of all these parasites. Parasites can injure tissues, and injuries to tissues trigger the growth of cancer.

You can choose from two recommended zappers, both of which come with detailed usage instructions. One is the Mayco zapper, locally made by Msgr. Howard May and the other imported from the U.S. from Dr. James R. Overman. The difference between the two is the current from the Mayco zapper penetrates the intestines and kills the good bacteria as well, whereas the Overman zapper does not to avoid killing the good bacteria.

If the Mayco zapper is used, take a probiotic (example, a bottle of Yakult 3x a day) to replenish the good bacteria in the colon. If the Overman zapper is used, and there are parasites in the colon that need to be killed, take Preventa SC, a herbal  supplement to kill the parasites in the colon, and/or Wormex if there are worms. If there are no parasites in the colon, there is no need to take the herbal supplement, just use the zapper. For more information on the zappers, contact the author.

How to Prepare the Raw Pancreas and Liver 

1. Buy them early morning from the wet market, so they are freshly butchered. Do not buy more than a week's supply.

2. Wash them clean. Then soak in a basin of water for 10 minutes with 1/2 half cup of rock
salt to disinfect (Do this washing and soaking of all raw foods that you eat, including raw
vegetables.) After the soaking, rub the meats with more salt.

3. Rinse out the salt and cut the meat into small cubes so you can easily measure it by the tablespoonful.

4. Wrap up the pancreas 2 tablespoons per packet (you can use a small plastic bag), and the liver 3 tablespoons per packet. Do not season all the meat yet.

5. Put the packets in the freezer, and get them out to eat one at a time as needed.

6. Season each packet just before eating, whichever way you want to make it palatable. Just do not use meat tenderizer (MSG) or cook it. Some mix it with wasabe like sashimi, some make it into kinilaw, like marinated mackerel, others like to chew it fresh frozen (it has a nice cool clean taste) which melts in the mouth, sometime dipping it in rock salt.

How to Prepare the Raw Cassava Juice

Get a freshly harvested cassava root (kamoteng kahoy), white, without spots. Cut off 4
inches and slice it thinly. Put in a blender with 2 8-oz glasses of mineral water. Blend at the
highest speed for not more than 10 seconds, just until it is liquefied.

Put in a glass jar in the refrigerator for 2 hours, until the starch settles to the bottom. Strain out the starch. Keep the juice refrigerated. Drink 1 glass after breakfast and 1. glass after dinner,


Basic Foundations of the Adam & Eve Diet -- Water and Salt 

The body is made up of 25% food and 75% water. You got sick because of the foods you have been eating, and the failure to maintain your body's water level at 75%. Water is to the body what oil is to a car. Without sufficient oil, a car will break down, no matter if it always has a tankful of the finest gasoline, is always washed and greased, and always has new spark plugs. Without sufficient water, the body will break down, because all the cells, the blood, the tissues, the vital organs will get dehydrated. When the water drops below 75%, the immune system drops with it. Drink at least 10 8-oz glasses of mineral water a day (15 glasses if you have high blood pressure) to maintain your body's water level at 75%. Do not drink distilled and reverse osmosis water. They have no minerals. Because water has a natural affinity for minerals, they will draw minerals from wherever they can and will strip your body of minerals. A cancer patient is already very deficient in minerals.

Distilled and reverse osmosis water will aggravate this deficiency and worsen the cancer. Increase your salt intake by at least 1/2 teaspoon of rock salt daily to be able to retain the water (otherwise you'll just keep urinating it out). Water and salt are basic components of the Adam and Eve Diet. Without them, the Diet will not work.

The Adam & Eve Diet 

Change your eating habits to the Adam & Eve diet This diet will not just make you very healthy, it will rejuvenate you and make you younger. Here's how:

For the 1st 6 months. Eat 100% raw foods. I call this the Adam and Eve diet, because in the Garden of Eden, there was no stove. They ate 100% raw, and they lived 930 years.

After 6 months. You can eat cooked fish and chicken, but not after 1 p.m. This way you will have 18 hours until breakfast when the enzymes from your pancreas. can be used to digest cancer cells and not animal food. Avoid cooked red meats. They are the hardest to digest.

Always eat raw foods first, so your stomach will have the enzymes from these foods to help digest the cooked foods that follow, requiring less work from your own pancreas. Although you can now eat cooked foods, still eat as much raw food as possible, at least 70-90% of your diet. Today, the longest living people on earth are the Japanese. In September 2006, Japan had 28,395 citizens aged 100 or older, according to the Health Ministry. The UN estimates that by 2050, Japan will have one million centenarians, the world's largest population of such.

The Japanese eat a lot of raw foods. They eat raw vegetables and fruits for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, not just raw fish and raw shellfish. In a Japanese restaurant you can eat 100% raw. Start with a green salad, follow with sashimi, and end with a fresh fruit. In the Philippines, you can also eat 100% raw.. Start with a vegetable salad, follow with kinilaw na tanguingui (raw, marinated mackerel), and finish with a raw ripe mango or a banana.

" Raw foods are living foods, cooked foods are dead food. If you plant a raw kamote (sweet potato), after 2 weeks life will be coming out of the soil. If you plant a boiled kamote, it will rot in the soil just like any dead body."

We get sick as we grow old because all our lives we keep planting dead food in our bodies. Anything cooked above 40 degrees centigrade loses its enzymes, vitamins, and its minerals become inorganic which the body cannot absorb. Cancer develops when the pancreas have been so worn down by hard to digest foods that they can no longer produce enough enzymes to digest the outer coating of cancer cells as they come along.

Avoid dairy products because they are also hard to digest, like milk, cheese except cottage cheese, ice cream. Avoid all foods made with white refined flour, like pan de sal, white sliced bread,cakes, pastries. Rye bread, wheat bread that doesn't use hydrogenated vegetable oils are OK. Instead of white refined rice, eat brown rice mixed with red-malagkit (sticky rice).

The ratio is 1 cup of brown rice mixed with 1 tablespoon of red malagkit. Avoid foods and drinks made with white refined sugar, like candies and soft drinks. Cancer thrives in a sugary environment. If you need sugar, use raw muscovado sugar, or raw honey, or maple syrup.

Avoid artificial sweeteners like aspartame (Nutrasweet), found in diet soft drinks and Equal. The body converts aspartame into formaldehyde, a chemical used for embalming corpses. It can aggravate diabetes and cause brain tumors.Natural non-sugar sweeteners like Stevia and Xylitol are OK.

Avoid all soy products, except possibly small amounts of fermented soy, like miso, natto, and dark soy sauce (avoid light-colored soy sauces which are highly processed).

Soy promotes cancer because:

(1) It is high in estrogen-mimicking compounds which fertilize the growth of cancer cells.
(2) It blocks the action of enzymes that digest proteins, preventing the digestion by the
pancreatic enzymes of the animal protein outer coating of cancer cells.
(3) It blocks the absorption of essential minerals, aggravating the mineral deficiency of cancer patients
(4) It has hemaglutin, a substance which promotes blood clots because it causes clustering of red blood cells/
(5) The clustering also prevents the cells from absorbing oxygen properly, and cancer
thrives in an oxygen-starved environment.

The usual argument for soy is that the cancer rate in Japan is low because the Japanese eat a lot of soy. Not true. They eat only small amounts of fermented soy with servings of meat or fish which minimize the mineral-blocking effects of soy.

There is more soy consumed in America, like soya milk, soy flour, soy oil, soy ice cream, soy burgers, soy oil-based salad dressings, soy-oil based vitamins. It's in snack foods, fast foods, cereals, pre-packaged foods. Check labels for soy content.

Sample Menu ‡

Here is a sample menu for your 3 meals a day, incorporating the raw pancreas, raw liver,
raw garlic, raw cassava juice:

.Breakfast (100% raw)
1 capful of Goji Juice, 5 minutes before the meal
1 orange or grapefruit or a pomelo
1/2 of a big papaya laced with 3 cloves of crushed raw garlic (delicious with garlic) 2 tablespoons of raw pork pancreas seasoned according to your taste 2 raw eggs with a pinch of rock salt in each

2 heaping tablespoons of Superfood in a glass of fresh, fruit juice _
1 bowl of raw cereals (hulled barley, spelt, whole grain wheat, steel-cut oats, buckwheat
oats, millet, quinoa, amaranth), pine nuts, raw pepitas and sunflower seeds.

Put the cereals, nuts, seeds in a bowl in equal proportions, like a teaspoon each. Soak the mixture overnight in warm mineral water. The soaking starts germination, which makes them more nutritious, and soft enough to chew in the morning, but still deliciously crunchy. Strain out the water. Sweeten with slices of latondon banana.

Lunch Start with a large bowl of fresh-vegetable salad.. Have many different vegetables,. like green and purple leafy lettuce, bell peppers of all colors, carrots, cucumbers, turnips (singkamas which is rich in B17), chunks of apples, red seedless grapes, 3 pieces of raw okra.

Make it as colorful as possible. The nutrition is in the color. Avoid the white iceberg lettuce used for Cesar`s salad. It has no nutrition. The red seedless grapes will serve as the dressing. But if you wish, use a dressing of vinegar and oil. The healthy oils are extra virgin cold pressed coconut oil or extra virgin cold pressed olive oil. The healthy vinegars are sukang Ilocos, or sukang niog, which are raw. Avoid the highly advertised vinegars which are highly processed.

After the salad, 2 tablespoons of raw pork pancreas and 3 tablespoons of raw beef liver, with 3 cloves of crushed raw garlic,  a cup of blanched saluyot or spinach or kangkong or kamote leaf tops, and brown rice with red malagkit. You can have bagoong with the blanched green leaves to make them delicious.

If after this, you're still hungry, you can have any cooked food (fish, shell fish, chicken) but no red meats. If you are a cancer patient, remember, eat 100% raw for the first 6 months. Finish with a fresh ripe mango or with a raw ripe saba banana. Raw saba has 3x the potassium of latondan and 6x of lakatan.

Dinner  Same pattern as lunch. Be sure to eat the raw foods first ahead of the cooked foods to have enzymes already in the stomach to help digest the cooked foods that follow.

ACIDIC AND ALKALINE FRUITS 

Eating fruits for dessert is good, not bad for the digestion, depending on the fruit.

Do not eat fruits that make the stomach alkaline because an alkaline stomach cannot digest food, and undigested food ferments and generates gas. The stomach must be acidic, with a pH of 5.5, to digest food. That's why God made  our stomachs secrete hydrochloric acid and pepsin which are digestive enzymes that make the stomach acidic.

What are the fresh fruits (not cooked) that make-the stomach alkaline? 

All citrus fruits,durian, pineapples, lanzones, lakatan bananas, cavendish bananas, green mangoes, unripe papayas, pears, langka or jackfruit, atis, just to name the more popular ones. Avoid them for dessert. They can bloat your stomach with gas from the fermenting undigested food.

What are the fresh fruits (not cooked) that make the stomach acidic? 

Ripe, sweet  mangoes, water melons, all other melons, raw ripe sabas, latondan bananas, grapes both green and red, mango steen, santol, sampaloc, strawberries, guavas, chico, rambutan, pineapples sprinkled with rock salt (not refined table salt which is synthetic and which will make the stomach even more alkaline than with pineapples alone), prunes both fresh and dried, ripe papayas, all kinds of apples, just to name the more popular ones. Eat these fruits for dessert.

They will aid the digestion.Now you know why an apple a day keeps the doctor away. There's another food, not a fruit, which makes the stomach acidic and therefore good for dessert, to aid the digestion. That's dark chocolate ice cream, like Selecta's Super Chocolate, Hagen Daz's Choco Chip and Belgian Chocolate, frozen yogurt's Black Forest.

All other ice cream flavors and all sugarless flavors withNutrasweet like sugar free frozen yogurt will make the stomach alkaline, so avoid them for dessert.  In fact, avoid anything with,Nutrasweet or aspartame, like diet soft drinks and Equal.

The body converts aspartame into formaldehyde which is used for embalming corpses. It aggravates diabetes and can cause brain tumors.