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). Dr. Young, with multiple PhDs, is the most credible authority on why an alkaline diet is the most important aspect of disease prevention and treatment. His ace-in-the-hole over other authors is that his wife is a recipe developer and therefore gives practical help in addition to this century’s leading-edge nutrition theory.
Dr. Colin Campbell’s The China Study, the largest and most comprehensive nutrition study in history conducted jointly by Oxford and Cornell, the most empirical evidence ever gathered validating a plant-based diet.
Colin Campbell is a professor of nutrition at Cornell University and has sat on the highest nutrition governing boards in the U.S. He is the son of a cattle rancher and believed, in his early nutrition research, that he would find lack of protein to be the cause of childhood liver cancer in the Phillipines.
He found just the opposite: the wealthier children with good access to meat/milk were dying of liver cancer, not the poor children who could afford only plant food. Time and again, Campbell and many other researchers discovered the same results: that in animals and humans, high consumption of animal protein causes all the modern Western diseases, including cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and much more.
The rodent studies are fascinating: two groups of mice are put on 5% animal protein pellets (casein, from milk) and 20% animal protein pellets, respectively. That parallels an almost-vegan diet versus the typical American diet. At the typical rodent lifespan, the 5% group were lean and healthy and the 20% group were full of cancerous tumors and many were dead (all would die early).
Even more fascinating is how the researchers could SWITCH the groups’ diets. Lean, healthy rodents develop tumors and die when placed on the 20% animal protein diet, and formerly cancerous rodents lose weight, tumors are eliminated, and they live and thrive when placed on the 5% animal protein diet. These studies were duplicated with the same results, by other researchers all over the globe.
Campbell went on to conduct the largest, most longitudinal, most comprehensive nutrition study in human beings, in history, yielding hundreds of statistically significant correlations. He has been studying 6,500 people in China for about 30 years now. Whether or not you completely eliminate animal foods from your diet, this book is so compelling that you will be motivated to make a commitment to a plant-based diet and share the message with others.
Posted in: Tools & Products, Whole Food
Thank you for these recommendations.
I think it is important to point out that the rat studies that Dr. Campbell lead demonstrated that it was not only the *quantity* of protein, but also they *type* of protein that mattered. When they compared rats on diets consisting of 20% plant protein and 20% animal protein to the 5% protein group they found that, while rates of cancer initiation were slightly higher for the 20% plant protein group than the 5% protein group, they was still well below the rates of the 20% animal protein group.
Wasn’t it the peanuts (peanut butter) that was causing the kids liver cancer?
It was aflatoxin, a carcinogenic mold that grows in peanut butter that Campbell used as the tumor initiator with the rat and mice studies. He would initiate the cancer (the point being that we all encounter carcinogens) in the rats and mice, but then the ones on the plant-based diet did not have the internal environment to encourage tumor growth. Those on the high animal-protein diet did.
(The kids in the Philippines with liver cancer, no–that wasn’t an aflatoxin-induced cancer. What he observed is that the kids getting cancer with the WEALTHIER kids who ate lots of meat–the poor kids whose families couldn’t buy meat weren’t getting cancer.)
I have a question about the aflatoxin. Does it grow in all peanut butter?
No. Buy peanut butter fresh (and organic wherever possible–I like what they sell at Costco), but know that aflatoxin is a mold that grows on other foods, too–it just really likes peanuts. Some people will tell you that peanut butter is bad because of the aflatoxin risk. I believe it’s a good food without sugar and extra (usually hydrogenated) fats added.
Never serve your family rancid peanut butter, of course (or any rancid seeds, nuts, grains, or oils). ALL vegetable oil that you buy in the store (refined) is rancid–it doesn’t taste like it because it’s been so refined and deodorized, but it is.
Hey Robyn
Love the blog! Only just found it through my google rss feed…
You’re spot on about Dr Young in my opinion, and the findings from the China Study (even just the snippets discussed in your comments here) totally validate the basis of the alkaline balance theory as far as I am concerned. The comment you made:
he ones on the plant-based diet did not have the internal environment to encourage tumor growth
totally backs this theory of the terrain being everything. If we create a healthy, vibrant internal environment then disease cannot get a foothold.
Anyway, just wanted to say hi and let you know I love the blog. Also digging the blog skin – I used this one for years!
Oh and also, check out Dr Greg Emerson (search google). He’s an Aussie Dr who has become totally convinced by the acid/alkaline approach and is now a practicing blood microscopist. His site has LOADS of great info on it!
Have a great day! I’ll be sure to stop by again soon!
Ross
hey Robyn- what is your calorie intake eating this way?
and what pertentages of callories do you recommend? as in the normal recommend is 55% carbs, up to 30% fat, 20% protein….do you recommend 30% fat if it’s ALL healthy fats?
I am wondering becuase I have been eating like this and have now gained like 10lbs since nursing my daughter. I had been writing my food intake down becuase we cut diary for a suspected allergy in daughter..
i input the calories the other day and we are ranging from like 800-1100 calories a day (while I’m nursing) I know this is way too low–but I feel satisfied with what I eat—11 cup of brocolli only has 22 calories—how will I ever eat enough of very healthy food to up my calories so I can LOSE weight?!! THANKS
1 cup brocolli- sorry
and i calculated my green smoothies up and even with flax oil in it—they are only up to 200 calories (usually 130) (mind you I share it in 3rds with my hubby and son)
Hi Robyn, I saw that you planted goji berries. I would like to do the same. Where did you get the seeds?
Also watching your video you mentioned that goji berries have the most amount of antioxidants of any food measure. I have read that raw cacoa has more. What do you think?
You can get goji plants at Timpanogosnursery.com. Yeah, the people selling chocolate say that it has the highest ORAC score. Which one wins, I don’t know, but they’re both good foods. (The problem with chocolate, of course, is the OTHER stuff that comes with the chocolate–sugar, emulsifiers, yada yada). If someone put a gun to my head and I had to pick only one of those two foods, my choice would depend on whether I was suffering from PMS at that time. (If not, hopefully I’d go with the logical choice, goji berries.) 😉
Lala, my body burns 1600 calories a day (I’m 5’8″ and 132-136 lbs.) if I do no exercise beyond the usual walking around to complete daily tasks. I can eat 1900 to 2000 calories a day when I work out.
(I know this because I once got very scientific by plugging everything I ate and everything physical I did into Diet Power for five months. I never want to do that again–too obsessive–but the results were interesting.)
The 10 percent fat recommended by the GOOD diet docs (Ornish, Fuhrman, McDougall, etc.) is on the low end for a person at a good weight, but perfectly appropriate for someone with a heart condition or trying to lose weight.
But 30 percent, no, that’s too high. A better percentage to target, if you’re really going to worry about stuff like that, is 20 percent. The only way you’re going to get out of control, fat-wise, eating a whole foods diet like I promote is with too much oil for cooking or eating LOTS of nuts/seeds.
If you follow my recipes, you’ll be fine. It’s like I tell my 13-y.o. daughter, who frustrates and worries me when she talks and obsesses about her weight and won’t eat anything for dinner besides salad because of it. I tell her, you just eat as much as you want of what I feed you instead of what everybody outside this house wants to feed you, and you DO NOT NEED TO COUNT CALORIES. You’ll be just fine! Enjoy your food. People who eat whole food tend not to overeat because it does not contain addictive or metabolism-suppressing chemicals.
Thank you!! and I guess it’s hard not to kind of freak out with the weight I’ve been gaining with the low calories I’ve been having—is there a way I can get the amount of calories I burn a day checked? is it possible to be lower than 800 and that’s why I’m gainging weight (have you seen that in your goings?) are you a professor at BYU? do you teach nutrition or something else?!! I really have benefited SO much from all you have taught here! THANK YOU!!! (now I just need to get weight off somehow to lower my risk of diabetes–I feel like i have protection from all the other diseases–but with excess weight–diabetes is a concern. THANKS again
If you’ve been eating 1100 calories daily and not losing weight, I suggest having a full panel blood test at Wellnique in Orem (Francine Opfar) or another hormone clinic specializing in bioidenticals. As for checking your calorie burn, DietPower is not very expensive.