To Organic, or Not to Organic?

Organic is best- for the body, the farmers, and the planet but it can be pricey to always buy organic, and sometimes it just isn't available for your favorite dish. Here are 15 fruits and vegetables that don't always have to be organic.

-Onions
-Avocado
-Sweet Corn
-Pineapples
-Mangoes
-Sweet Peas
-Asparagus
-Cabbage
-Kiwi
-Eggplant
-Cantaloupe (domestic)
-Watermelon
-Grapefruit
-Sweet Potatoes
-Honey Dew Melon

Generally fruits and vegetables with soft skins, and skins you eat should always be organic-- like apples, peaches, berries, nectarines, pears, bell peppers, leafy greens, potatoes, celery, and imported grapes.

Being conscious about our health and the health of the planet and others is important, but remember not to get caught up in worrying about what you eat to the point that you stop eating your favorite vegetable dish at your favorite restaurant, going over to a friends place to eat, or enjoying social occasions with food because it is not always organic. Stressing and isolating yourself from enjoying social occasions is far more harmful than any non-organic bowl of grapes!

to your next shopping adventure!,
Krista

Visit me on Facebook! Happy to see you there!

I want to thank Dr. Andrew Weil for the list of fruits and vegetables listed here. http://www.drweil.com/

Food Cravings

A lot of diets base their approach on deprivation and guilt. The food we crave such as creamy chocolate, salty chips, sweet candy are 'bad' foods that are to be avoided-and that's it, those are the 'rules' of the weight-loss game. This is unrealistic, and anyone who has followed a diet that guilts, shames and teaches you nothing about why you crave these foods, knows that after about 2 weeks you find yourself elbows-deep in bags of junk and feeling like sh*t. You learn absolutely nothing, but that you are a failure according to some book.

Now gather all that shame, guilt, and misery and throw it out- along with the diet books. Instead, lets UNDERSTAND our food cravings.

Food cravings are actually wonderful signals for what is going on it our lives. There are some important questions to first ask yourself and meditate with before trying to cut out the junk.

-How is the love and affection between you and your mate? (Remember, sex and love and affection are different things- discover your health balance).

-How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? What are your first thoughts about? Are they positive and motivating, or depressing and overwhelming?

-What is the source of your negative/lonely/shameful/dull thoughts and feelings. (Allow yourself the time to meditate with this, the important thing is that you begin to question your thoughts and learn about the beliefs you have about who you are, how people treat you, how YOU treat you and about your life).

-How is your mind when you are eating the junk foods? Are you calm and at peace with yourself? Are you in the moment? How are you feeling afterwards?

Now lets understand some clues food cravings are suggesting to us- the mind work is half of it, but now we need to rev up your body with foods that will battle the cravings!

-Depending on junk foods for quick energy makes cravings worse. Every time you eat you send messages to your body teaching it how to function. Essentially, every time you eat you are training your body to either work for you, or against you.

-Food cravings signify a lack of nutrients in the body.

-Cravings for sugary and carbohydrate foods signify a lack of essential nutrients, especially essential fatty acids.
What to do: Supplement with 1 tbs flax oil 2 times a day, or high quality cod liver oil and within days you'll restore proper EFA levels.

-Cravings for salty foods may signify low sodium levels, low mineral levels, and dehydration.
What to do: if you are dehydrated, drink warm water (that has been boiled) throughout the day for 2 weeks. Do not add anything to the water! This wil hydrate you faster than any other way.
Incorporate seaweeds into your diet. Seaweeds are high in mineral content and are so good for you! There are plenty of seaweed salad recipes online. My favorite is adding Dulse to my salads- it is salty and 2 tbs of small bits is great with tomato and avocado. I buy mine at Whole Foods.

-Chocolate cravings signify vit-B and/ or magnesium deficiency.
What to do: Supplement with Vit-B and flax oil to restore essential fatty acid levels, especially if you are a vegetarian. I love using Nutritional Yeast in place of parmesan cheese. It is high in protein and Vit-B. I buy mine bulk at Whole Foods.
*Remember, dark, organic, fair trade chocolate does have it's health benefits. So enjoy it once a week or so if it is something you love!

Anything can be eaten in moderation, which means you do not abuse the food and use it to aid emotional sorrows, fears, or as a saboteur. Food is love, so enjoy it!

to discovering the meaning behind your food cravings,
Krista.

Spring Salad Goddess

Time for spring salads! I make a simple dressing of balsamic vinegar, fresh garlic, and olive oil. Blend this up until a smooth chocolate colour and enjoy!

Chocoate Season

It's definitely that time of year. I can feel it in my taste buds and I think about it late at night... It's the time of year where we all need a little more warmth, sweetness, and plain delicious chocolate! I have been eyeing-up the organic pure milk chocolate bars at Whole Foods in a bad way until I found the perfect fix. I bought organic, dark, pure, and fair trade coco powder and I mix it with hot water, almond milk and agave.
It's delicious!

From Tit to Tit.

I just read an article in the Huffingtonpost by John Robbins about female infants growing breasts! The cause: cow milk consumption and cow milk products used in baby formula. So far, it's "not only legal, it's routine in all 50 states" to use bovine growth hormones in dairy cattle that cause infants as young as 4 months to grow breasts! Bovine growth hormone (BGH) is developed by Monsanto a.k.a "The Devil": enough said. So far Canada has banned the use of BGH (Go Canada!), but China and the US routinely use it with their dairy cows. I remember years ago two news reporters for FOX News (don't stop reading, I know it's FOX, but stay with me) wanted to report about the terrible truths of BGH. When their initial report was put through final editing and the lawyers at FOX, it was ripped apart basically for the reason that they did not want a lawsuit with Monsanto. The two reporters were offered large sums of money to keep quiet about what they knew. Read about this story here.
What happened to the news informing the public? I know it's FOX and we can't expect much, but the intentions of these brave reporters went unheard and unseen, and still young infants, children, you, and your neighbor (at least if you live in the US or China) drink gallons of BGH laced milk every day. So on your next visit to the US, pass on the milk, or else, make sure it's organic or certified BGH free. Good news! Starbucks and Ben and Jerry's DO NOT use BGH milk products. mmm... lattes...
I would still promote using soy milk in those lattes though. Just thinking of a hot steaming milky latte leads me to wonder how all those millions of dairy cows are doing and what it would be like to be constantly kept pregnant in a bared cell that I couldn't turn around in, with swollen, red nipples hanging down to the floor.
One last note about the article: Because the cases of infants growing breast tissue are in China, one of my thoughts was that it could be caused by soy products which I've heard cause elevated estrogen levels in femals. But as the article reads, cases similar were reported in Puerto Rico, and when those children there were taken of fresh cow's milk, symptoms regressed.
I really enjoy reading John Robbins articles. He has some books as well: "Diet for a New America", and "The Food Revolution."
I will also take this moment to give a shout out to beautiful Gisele Bundchen for saying that all mothers should breast feed their children for at least 6 months. Whoop!

Plants!

Plants: Eat more, live longer, live better.

Some great quotes by Mark Bittman from his TED Talk, "What's wrong with what we eat."

"Half the people who comprised the Food Pyramid, have ties to agro business."

"There is no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 Billion a year." (number just in the USA)

"If you strung all together the chickens, cows, pigs, and lams to the moon they would go there and back 5 times... now my math is shaky, but you get the picture" (each year the animals we eat).

"Lets get the number of animals we consume down, and then worry about how we treat them."

"In the 1930's an orange was a common Christmas gift because it came all the way from Florida."

The Book I Can't Wait to Read

I am so fortunate to be enrolled and studying at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in New York where I listen to lectures by some of the world's best leaders in health and nutrition. I listened to a lecture by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. who wrote a book with his son, Thomas M. Campbell II, titled, "The China Study."
The book discusses numerous scientific studies concluding the correlation of a diet high in animal products with disease. It's the most comprehensive book to discuss this correlation with scientific studies that I have found. During the lecture, I was able to see some of the charts from the studies comparing diets from countries around the world to chronic diseases such as breast cancer. The results were astounding.
No matter what your eating beliefs or current diet is, I believe this is a must-read for all! If hearing the words, "no animal products", "vegan", or even, "vegetarian", make you cringe and roll your eyes and think, "I'm not a hippie!", or "I need protein", I would STILL strongly suggest picking up this book and reading it. Why not learn everything you can about what you're eating and fueling yourself with? Why not dive into an amazing book about the science behind nutrition? Why not learn something new? You never know when you'll be stuck in a room full of veggie-munching hippies and need something to talk about!
The charts are easy to understand, and T. Colin Campbell speaks as though he was born to do this, and I'm sure he will write just the same.

"If one opens a book to learn and discover with an open mind and heart, good things will always flow in."

Jamie Oliver TED Talk

Jamie Oliver TED Talk Link

This is a great talk from Jamie Oliver on the scary situation in America (and is spreading around the world- England being right behind the US). I think the real sad part behind all of this is that families after communities have lost their passion for cooking and eating healthy, earth grown foods. It just seems bizarre to me that the people in the position to make decisions based on school meals are failing so terribly that they can call french fries a vegetable!
What if schools taught about food nutrition, banking and how to manage money and how credit cards and debt works, and a variety of physical education way beyond the 30 mins a week required on average for students to graduate.
I love Jamie's vision of teaching just 10 recipes to students and adults... it really doesn't take much to turn things around when it has gone this far.
Happy chewing only happens when we eat earth grown healthy foods made at home.

Just Another Day Shopping

On the weekend I went to an area in Copenhagen I like to call, "China Town". Pictured on the left are the foods I purchased. Whenever I say to anyone where I am going, they slowly nod their head, and if they are danish, usually have a look on their face of confusion that I know more about Copenhagen than they do. But in the infamous China Town of Copenhagen you will find the most interesting food items in the most cramped, old stores, themed Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Indian, etc. I love going into all the small shops and looking at the food from all around the world. I love the smells, the people, and the extremely small spaces in which to shop in. Many of the shops have small rooms leading into smaller rooms- kind of like a maze in which just around the corner through the dirty clear plastic drapes are rooms with animal carcasses sitting on bloodied white cutting boards ready to be chopped and sold. Shyly and ignorantly coming from Canada where sanitation is on steroids, I pretended not to see and carried on, passing the fish room similar to the room where the dead cow was. Hey, at least they are keeping the animals separate.
I was happy when I found frozen Falafel from Egypt made with the most natural ingredients, and I was even happier that they wrote the ingredients in English. Just as I found my diamond food item in the rough, to my left in the "Canned Food Aisle" as my mom always called it, was a Muslim man praying right there, in the middle of the store. He was so focused and serious. I felt his presence and his devotion, and it was something to be admired. I couldn't help but smile my way to the registrar where after making my purchase was offered a walnut (my favorite!). I chose the biggest one and popped it into my mouth and made my way through the group of Middle Eastern men speaking words I will never come to understand. I was completely out of my element, but felt right at home.

Worth Burning My Tongue On...

What I made for dinner last night:
A "meaty meal" of green lentils, pan fried mushrooms, leeks, zucchini, and celery with thyme and cayenne pepper, lemon juice and lots of garlic wrapped together with cold pickled red beets in home made spelt and flax seed wraps. This was absolutely amazing and so filling! Eating easy and cheap tastes good...