tribute to my “grama”
I am in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Washington for the Thanksgiving weekend. The three of us here are 40, 60, and 80 year old women–me running my five miles each morning, my aunt walking, and my grama lying on the couch recovering from knee replacement. It’s her third joint replacement, with a [...]
6 Comments • Continue Reading →what enzymes do to make food digestible . . . part 3
We don’t think of our stomach as being two-chambered, but Howell goes to lengths to document all the experts and studies (including Gray’s Anatomy) saying that it does, in fact, have two distinct parts. And in the upper stomach, or “food enzyme stomach,” gastric juices are not released, and peristalsis is not yet churning [...]
5 Comments • Continue Reading →what enzymes do to make food digestible . . . part 2
Howell outlines three types of enzymes we need: digestive enzymes, which digest food, metabolic enzymes, which run every function of our bodies, and food enzymes from raw foods, which start the digestive process. So what enzymes are involved in digestion? Amylase is the enzyme used to digest carbohydrate, and it is concentrated in [...]
Leave a comment • Continue Reading →defending that my diet’s not all raw
I read the raw foodists all the time (Patenaude, Wolfe, Boutenko, and lots more). I think their diet is fantastic. Sometimes I go all raw, for a few days, weeks, or even months. I wouldn’t criticize anybody for a minute who wants to do it permanently, as some of my friends do–they [...]
40 Comments • Continue Reading →The Essential GreenSmoothieGirl Library . . . part 2
Here are three more of my picks from my Top Shelf–the most pivotal books on health and nutrition: Dr. Robert O. Young and Shelley Young’s books and recipe books: Sick and Tired, The pH Miracle, The pH Miracle for Weight Loss, Back to the House of Health I and II (containing many excellent recipes). [...]
21 Comments • Continue Reading →You don’t eat meat? Then where do you get your protein?
I know, I’ve blogged about this more than any other subject. But I’m going to say a few more things about it today, just in a slightly different way, because of that old statistic that people have to hear something 11 times before they believe it. And because that’s the question we plant [...]
14 Comments • Continue Reading →Need motivation to eat less meat and more plants? . . . part 6 of 12
Are plant sources of protein sufficient? Today, good stats about the need for protein: Protein in human mother’s breast milk: 5 percent of calories Minimum protein requirement according to the World Health Organization: 5 percent of calories U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for adult protein intake: 10 percent of calories [...]
7 Comments • Continue Reading →Relief for intestinal gas and bloating . . . part 5 of 9 on ELIMINATION
A healthy bowel produces minimal flatulence, none of it foul smelling or causing pressure, swelling, or pain. Gas is, as Dr. Jensen describes it, “putrefactive fermentations” of undigested proteins. In other words, proteins sit in the gut and become hosts for undesirable bacteria. The problem is, when converting people to a high-fiber, GreenSmoothieGirl diet, [...]
7 Comments • Continue Reading →Is the China Study bogus?
Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: The Oxford-Cornell China Project is irrelevant to us, because Campbell studied rats and mice, and then Chinese people. Not Americans. Answer: I’m not going to comment much on the notion that Chinese and American people aren’t alike enough to compare. Either we all descended from apes, or we were all [...]
8 Comments • Continue Reading →cardiovascular health: nature vs. nurture
I went to give blood today, hoping that my always-borderline hematocrit was high enough. It was. Though one point lower and I’d have been rejected–again. Like most other things the RDA does, those hematocrit averages aren’t based on the ideal, but rather the average. The averages are, of course, of a [...]
Leave a comment • Continue Reading →