So, you are either enjoying a foray into eating a raw food diet, or you are really curious and committed to improving your health and well-being by at least learning more about the ‘raw food’ benefits. You’ve come to the right place at the right time, because I can direct you to the new and improved Monthly Raw Food Mentor Club!

The Monthly Raw Food Mentor Club includes:

A monthly printed newsletter featuring the best information on the raw food diet, shipped directly to your door

Access to monthly raw food menu planners

Interviews with Health & Success Gurus (six times annually)

Professional eBook transcripts of each interview

BONUSES: A beautiful set of smoothie cards shipped directly to your door along with access to several digital bonuses.

Click here to learn more!

Lovely that the new VitaMix 5200 cannister does NOT contain BPA– in fact, it is the FIRST KITCHEN APPLIANCE not to have BPA in its composition.  What is BPA and how does it affect our bodies?

A: Bisphenol A is a HOT TOPIC, and I know that many Care2 readers are very well-informed. BPA has been known to leach from the plastic lining of canned foods and, to a lesser degree, polycarbonate plastics that are cleaned with harsh detergents or used to contain acidic or high-temperature liquids. While most exposure is through diet, exposure can also occur through air and through skin absorption.

The first major study of bisphenol A’s effects on humans was published in September 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The cross-sectional study of almost 1,500 people assessed exposure to bisphenol A by looking at levels of the chemical in urine. The authors found that high bisphenol A levels were significantly associated with heart disease, diabetes, and abnormally high levels of certain liver enzymes.

Animal studies have also suggested that BPA can permanently change the structure of the genital tracts during development, predispose breast cells to cancer, enlarge the prostate, decrease testosterone levels, and change the brain structure.

Studies by the CDC found bisphenol A in the urine of 95 percent of adults sampled in 1988–1994 and in 93 percent of children and adults tested in 2003–04. Infants fed with liquid formula are among the most exposed, and those fed formula from polycarbonate bottles can consume up to 13 micrograms of bisphenol A per kg of body weight per day.

The FDA is still actively investigating this issue. Currently, the FDA feels that FDA-regulated products containing BPA currently on the market are safe and that exposure levels to BPA from food contact materials, including for infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.

This position is consistent with current recommendation in Europe and Japan.

Here’s my thought. Why put yourself at risk? BPA is not essential to your livelihood. Perhaps it makes life a little more convenient at times because of the products in which it is used, but there are plenty of ways to avoid it.

Learn more:
How to purge plastic from your life
Watch out for plastic water bottles

Dr. Brent Ridge is the health expert for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. You can call and ask him a question live every Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern on Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 112 (1.866.675.6675). You can also follow along as he learns to grow his own food and raise goats on his farm in upstate New York by visiting www.beekman1802.com.

Got a health question for Dr. Brent? E-mail him at drbrent@care2.com.

This is so exciting, from Victoria Boutenko’s latest e-newsletter:

Anti Cancer Green Smoothie

Whirl the following up in your Vitamix:

1 pint broccoli sprouts

1 pint ripe organic blackberries

1 cup water

Blend all ingredients well. - Enjoy

Nutritional facts:

In 1992, scientists found that broccoli sprouts are rich in a compound that provides significant protection against breast cancer and colon cancer. The compound is called sulforaphane glucosinalate.

Black raspberries (blackberries) have been shown to reduce the risk of oral, esophageal and colon cancer in animal models, according to the researchers.
Source: http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?docID=610680

As I wrote in my last post, VitaMix is sponsoring a couple of Ultra Marathoners as they run across America as their contribution to finding more solutions around the burgeoning epidemic of childhood obesity across America and the world. VitaMix will be right there with them (I’m thinking in a camper that doesn’t exude too much exhaust– maybe a hybrid?). The runners, Charlie Engle and Marshall Ulrich, will need massive amounts of calories and nutrients to fuel them each 70-mile day. I don’t have access to the soups, etc., that they will eat, but the smoothies are looking like lacto-vegetarian fare. I would think that these would be excellent for your run-of-the-mill marathoner.

I suggest that the absolute best nutrient-dense thirst-quenching sport drink mix can be found here and I have also provided links to the finest sports protein mix on the market. (VitaMix provided the recipes)

Skøl!

Banana Apple Oatmeal Smoothie
1 ½ cups soy milk or low-fat milk
¼ cup oats
1 banana
1 apple, quartered
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup vanilla yogurt
¼ cup almonds
3 cups ice
Yield: 2 (3 cup) servings

Peanut Butter Chocolate Banana Smoothie
1 banana
1 ½ cups soy milk or low-fat milk
2 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tablespoons chocolate syrup
1 scoop protein powder
2 cups ice
Yield: 1 (3 cup) serving

Green Protein Smoothie
1 ½ cups pineapple juice
1 banana
2 cups fresh spinach
1 scoop protein powder
2 cups ice
Yield: 4 ½ cups (1-1.5 servings)

Banana Split Power Smoothie
1 cup tofu
1 cup plain yogurt
½ banana
1 cup strawberries, frozen or fresh
1 ½ cups pineapple, frozen, fresh, or canned
Note: If using fresh or canned fruit, add 1-2 cups
of ice before blending
Yield: 1 (3 ½ cup) serving

Recipe Instructions:
1. Place ingredients in the Vita Mix container in order
listed and secure lid.
2. Select Variable #1.
3. Turn machine on and quickly increase to Variable #10,
then to High.
4. Blend for 45 seconds. Serve immediately

Ultra marathon runners Charlie Engle and Marshall Ulrich are attempting to break the world record, running 3,100 miles across 11 states in 45 days! They will be running to raise money and awareness of childhood obesity—and Vita-Mix will be running right along with them!

Vita-Mix power smoothies, that are rich in essential nutrients and high in energy, will fuel Charlie and Marshall’s journey. (They need a minimum of 10,000 to 12,000 calories per day!) Vita-Mix meals, quick and easy to consume, will keep them running 70 miles each day for 45 days without taking unnecessary breaks. Click here to see their route map.

Go here to read more about Run America and VitaMix’s healthy solutions.

My Excalibur food dehydrator is one of my prized tools. Yesterday we had some folks home for a meal after Church and they all raved about the carrot pulp-sunflower seed pizza crust that I had just taken out of my dehydrator after its twelve hours of drying.

If you are interested in trying some dehydrating but can’t quite spring for a good electric dehydrator just yet, a friend on Facebook posted some information that you might find useful on building a solar dehydrator for about a buck… who can beat that? Click on the image to learn more:

I guess the Canadian government is now in the publications biz big-time… or so it would seem by the recent email I received advertising the Directory for Subsidies and Grants.  Well, not a bad thing to have access to if you are in business… Go here for more information.

In the meantime, if you are interested in starting a business that you can do for a fraction of what it would cost to pick up the more common franchised business (and where you can realize a large profit in half the time it takes someone in a franchise to do so), please take the free, no-risk evaluation here and if you like what you see, submit the request for further information… I'm still looking for my Dream Team! 

I well remember when I saw the first cell phone being used in public– it struck me as quite hilarious…. a person walking through a mall jabbering away with a glazed looked in their eyes, totally in their heads, seemingly oblivious to the crowds of strangers around them eavesdropping on their private conversation.  And then there was the trip in '04 to an underdeveloped country where everyone seemed to be talking to and texting each other, from the mature matron being helped into her chauffeured limo to the wise young kids who spent most of their out-of-school time in the air-con internet cafes in the malls to avoid the intense afternoon heat.  The place was a cacaphony of jazzy ring tones and text buzz. 

Now we're finding out that there are any number of dangerous red flags where cell phone use is concerned:

• Children, under 8, have thin skulls and should not use cellphones at all, except in dire emergencies, according to studies showing of possible side effects from radio frequency radiation.  Read: brain tumors.  A review of several Swedish studies suggests that a particular brain tumor– acoustic neuroma– is on the rise and that anyone who spends 10 or more years using a cell phone.  Children are more vulnerable, of course, not only because of their more delicate physiology, but also because they have been conditioned from an early age to begin to use the mobile phones that weren't even around when most of their parents were their ages.  Their use is projected to be greater and of a longer duration, making them 'sitting ducks' for this cancer that affects the ear-brain connector points.

• It would appear that there are even greater and more profound health issues– that radio wave interference is widespread and that none of us, save perhaps a hermit on some far-flung mountain top (or maybe valley?) is safe.  It would appear that the reason that the largest study, yet, to be undertaken, the INTERPHONE PROJECTinvolving scientists in 13 countries studying epidemics of cancers thought to be related to cell phone-use, is snagged-up with in-fighting: quarrels around the definitions of "safe" and "unsafe" dominating, apparently. 

• Journalist R. Douglas Fields reports in this month's Scientific American Mind that using a cell phone just before bed can result in insomnia– that cell phone signals can alter brain waves and keep you up at night.  120 men and women in Australia took part in a study where cell phones were strapped to their heads while their brain waves were monitored.  There was evidence that the brain's alpha waves, the waves used to lull us to sleep, are overcome in a battle with the electrical interference caused by the pulsed microwave radiation from cell phones.

• A different study in England showed that when people were exposed to as little as 30 minutes exposure to their phone signals in 'talk mode' (meaning that they weren't actually ON the phone– just around it, intercepting the pulsed microwave radiation)– they had twice as much trouble falling to sleep as those who had their phones off or in standby mode.  The scientists believe that it takes the brain twice as long to relax after being jazzed by the phone's electrical field.

What can we do? Personally, I am going to take a very conservative course of actions around the use of cell (and cordless, wireless technology in general).  I know that this technology is already pervasive and that if it is harming anyone, I'm probably also on the target.  Nonetheless, I know that I am NOT committed to using a cell phone.  Like an eight-year-old, I can get away with using one only during an emergency.  When I use my cordless, I pledge to use a head phone that will interfere with some of the interference.  

I am concerned about the younger generations, though– my children and tender little grandchildren are quite inured to any warnings about their beloved convenient cellphone communication.  It's here, folks. The toy companies have jumped on the bandwagon and there are a pile of cell phone replicas for babies, to get them used to the concept… a little like candy cigarettes for my generation, I fear.  WiFi is everywhere, so there is no where to run and hide.  

What suggestions do YOU have?