The Fresh Network Blog

Why I'm getting things done (plus random ramblings about Christmases past and present!)

I just love this time of year and always have. I enjoy the celebration, the get-togethers with loved ones, the excitement, the anticipation and (since Christmas 2002) the sheer magic of experiencing it all with a small child. And almost as much as all of the fun stuff, I enjoy the natural urge to take stock of the year that’s closing and to plan for the one about to begin.

But for me, until a few Christmases ago, my enjoyment of all of the above was curtailed by the fact I invariably spent this season in a junk food-induced fog. I’d exist on a diet based around canapés, mince pies, chocolates, cake, cheese, wine, champagne and more chocolates.

I’ve been ‘health conscious’ since the tender age of 14, but until my 'rawakening' I’d invariably assume a different personality over the festive season...one that wanted to consume its weight in marzipan and Milk Tray! Over the last six years that has all changed, and during that time I’ve been lucky enough to make many friends who have walked just the same path as I have, with the same happy results.

Like all of us, I also have a few people in my life who remain genuinely perplexed as to why I eat the way I do. I wish I could make them understand I’ve had hands down the best Christmases ever since I banished junk food from my life! The fog I used to be in for the whole of December and into the new year? I still remember exactly what it felt like... Yes, I had fun, but once you really experience that you can have all that fun and more without the negative side effects…well, why wouldn’t you?!!

Energy soup for the soul

Those of us fortunate enough to own computers don't lack for food to feed our bodies. But our souls often do hunger for nourishment, and perhaps especially so at this time of year. This is a period when we naturally reflect on what the past 12 months have brought - the joys and triumphs, and also the things we plan to do differently in the future. If you are anything like me you probably find yourself coming over all deep and philosophical as the year draws to a close. So my gift to you this Christmas is a selection of my favourite quotes: 

“Those who dream by day are cognisant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” Edgar Allan Poe

“Walk with those seeking Truth. Run from those who think they've found it.” Deepak Chopra

“Money often costs too much.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right.” Henry Ford

“Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.” Jesse Jackson

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

“If you can’t, you must. If you must, you can.” Anthony Robbins

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw

“There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” Mother Teresa

“We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.” Marianne Williamson

“As we become purer channels for light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.” Marianne Williamson

And I'll leave you with this one, which I received on an e-card a few days ago:

“YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE…this is the universe speaking!

Today I will be recording your EVERY thought and emotion…no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’, no matter how generous or stingy, and no matter how helpful or hurtful they may be. And everything I record will be played back FOR YOU, as soon as possible, as some type of manifestation in time and space.

Thank you…that is all.”

We wish you a merry Christmas!

We're busy enjoying tinsel, mistletoe, parties and nice, relaxing lie-ins. Which can mean only one thing: it's that time of year when we close our doors and put our feet up for a while. Although we won't be around until January 2 you can still order anything that takes your fancy, and we promise we'll have your chosen items winging their way to you just as soon as we return. So if Santa doesn't bring you what you wished for, why not take matters into your own hands and treat yourself!

And be sure to pop in and visit us here whenever you have a spare moment or simply want to escape from crowds, noise or certain relatives. We can't offer you gold, frankincense or myrrh but we can promise you gems of wisdom, inspiration and festive cheer. 

How to have a happy AND healthy Christmas.

This is my sixth Christmas since I started experimenting with eating raw. First off, I am not going to tell you how to be 100% raw during the festivities nor even that you should try to be. A much better goal to have is to eat in the way that best serves you, wherever you as an individual are at this point in time physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and also geographically. I have never had a 100% raw Christmas and this is primarily because I live in the UK, where it is freezing cold at this time of year. I don't care what anyone says – this is a serious obstacle to being 100% raw, and healthy and happy with it! And it isn’t just psychological, or something you can ‘get over’. It’s actually to do with the fact that we are designed to eat seasonally, and ideally to eat what is growing in our locality at any given time.

With this in view, eating a plate of tropical fruit that had to be picked two months before it was ripe in order to be shipped half way round the world to you, where it is now snowing outside, suddenly doesn’t seem so natural! That's not to say there's no place for it in your diet during a cold winter; simply that you're unlikely to feel great if you attempt to base your diet on foods like this.    

This is a topic for another post, but I don’t believe we humans thrive in cold weather. It is not the climate for which we were designed and we have to go to all sorts of lengths to even survive in it: central heating, layers of warm clothing and, for almost all of us, including cooked food in our diet. While being raw through an icy UK winter is not something I aspire to, living somewhere warm and sunny most definitely is!

Don't get me wrong. The ideal diet for everyone, wherever they reside, will contain A LOT of raw food. But as I have yet to meet anyone who can happily get through a cold winter on fruit and salad, the question comes down to whether it is better to round out that lighter fare with large amounts of nuts, seeds and/or dried fruit, or with cooked vegetables, or with a judicious combination of the two. We're all different in terms of what works for us and what doesn't. Personally, I would go for either of the latter choices over the former any day.

This year, I naturally found myself in a period of eating 100% raw for quite some time until the nights got longer and the frost more frequent, and my body told me, in no uncertain terms, that it wanted something different for a while. One of my five-year old son’s favourite times of day right now is when we make vegetable soup together for dinner. I chop, he stirs, and as long as I manage to stay in charge of the seasoning too, between us we make a great team! I've spent quite a few evenings in London in the last couple of weeks, for Christmas parties, various get-togethers with friends, and, last night, the journalists' carol service at St Brides on Fleet Street. It's been bitterly cold the whole time but I've felt great on my high-raw-with-strategic-additions-of-cooked-whole-foods regime.

But to get to this point I tried it all! I’ve done many a Christmas on the standard diet and on the vegetarian version of the standard diet. Since learning about raw food, I've done Christmases where I based my diet around loads of fruit and salad and piles of nuts and seeds and dried fruit, and ended up supplementing that with whatever cooked food everyone else was eating because my blood sugar was completely out of balance. Some time later, when I worked out what would constitute a balanced raw diet that would suit my constitution, I simultaneously figured out that this was not going to sustain me through an icy British winter.

These days my December fare consists primarily of lots of green juices and raw salads, small amounts of fruit, and cooked vegetables in various guises whenever I desire them, plus of course some festive 'fun' foods, including raw sweets and desserts, and the healthiest cooked vegan indulgences I can find.

New raw food networking site - and it's beyond brill!

Have you heard about Give It To Me Raw? It's kind of like MySpace or Facebook, only raw style! It went online five days ago and I took the plunge and joined this morning, becoming member no 329. That's an amazing turn-out in such a short time; how big will it be by this time next year, I wonder?!! It also has a discussion forum, currently boasting five sections: general chat, recipes, introductions, super food and announcements and feedback. It really is the most all-singing, all-dancing raw networking site ever and it's sure to be a great way of meeting lovely people, both offline and online. Congratulations and THANKS to creator Dhrumil Purohit and the rest of the team! 

More scary stuff about cooked food

If you're not 100% raw chances are you still consume some canned food. And with the powers that be telling us that cooked and preserved produce from a vacuum-sealed metal cylinder absolutely counts towards our 'five a day' it is easy to be fooled into thinking this is a good alternative to fresh fruit and veg.

If you're health-conscious you've probably already ditched fizzy drinks and the kind of canned food that that is loaded with trans fats, salt, sugar and E numbers. But what could be a healthier cooked choice than a home-made hummus made with mashed chick peas (garbanzo beans), olive oil, lemon juice and fresh garlic? Or lightly cooked vegetables in a tomato sauce? Of course it is so much quicker to grab a can of chick peas than to soak them overnight and cook them yourself. And it is much cheaper and easier to crack open a tin of chopped tomatoes than to buy fresh organic tomatoes and chop them by hand.

But here's some information that may make you look at canned food in a different way from now on. A study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) investigated the presence of a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) in canned foods. BPA is a key component of the epoxy resins that line the inside of most food and beverage cans. It is also a chemical that has been reported as a dangerous toxin in over 100 peer-reviewed studies, although safety standards have yet to be updated in line with these findings.

The results of the recent study? BPA was found in over 50% of the canned foods tested (just to be clear that means in the FOOD itself, not on the can). For 1 in 10 cans of all food tested, and 1 in 3 cans of infant foods, a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels more than 200 times the US government's traditional safe level of exposure.   

Fresh fears over the safety of cooked foods, part II

If you haven’t read the post below yet, scroll down and read that first in order to make full sense of this one! ;)

I’ve been reflecting on today’s news (technically yesterday's as it is just after midnight as I write this) and this thought occurred to me… Five and a half years ago, when I first started seriously researching raw food, I remember reading in various places that baking a potato leads to the formation of 400 chemicals not found in the raw version. Well, yikes of course, but whether this claim is backed up by solid science or not I do not know. Let’s be honest: the raw food world has, over the years, been plagued with a good deal of pseudo-science, so it may or may not be.

However I do know this.

With the enormous variety of ‘foods’ that we as a species heat every last nutrient and enzyme out of, and the many methods of doing that, from boiling and baking through to grilling, frying and microwaving, it's not as if acrylamide is the only harmful chemical in cooked food. It's just the most well-researched and publicized one. How many more have not yet been discovered and documented by science? Could we count them all on the fingers of our hands? Do they number in the tens, or do they in fact reach to the hundreds as various raw food authors have suggested? We just don’t know.

But there is at least one other group of harmful chemicals formed during cooking that scientists have been aware of for a while, though they remain largely off the public radar: heterocyclic amines, or HCAs. What are they? They’re uber-scary substances formed when meat is heated to high temperatures, for example during frying, grilling or barbecuing. If you want more information, a Google search will bring up tens of thousands of pages on the subject.

By pointing all this out, am I suggesting that being 100% raw is the only safe option? Actually, no, not at all. But I do believe this research is simply the latest piece of proof that the more of our food we can eat in its natural, raw state the better.

With the scientific evidence pouring in about both the health AND the environmental benefits of eating a plant-based, whole foods diet do you sense big changes just around the corner? I do! There's the standard diet and there are the vegetarian and vegan versions of that which may be a world away ethically but are only marginally better for your health. There's the Atkins diet and the Zone diet and the South Beach diet and the Eat Right For Your Type diet and an infinite number of other radical fad diets. And none of them is the answer. There is but one way of nourishing ourselves that is best for us and it also happens to be best for animals and the environment too.

Give me an "R", give me an "A", give me a "W" :) 

Fresh fears over the safety of cooked foods

This phrase, or variations of it, is to be found across the mainstream media today. The reason? Yet another study which established a link between acrylamide – a chemical formed during cooking – and certain cancers.

Here's an extract from an article in today's Telegraph...

"Fresh fears have been raised over the safety of cooked foods as a wide-ranging study found for the first time that a common chemical caused by frying, roasting or grilling can double the risk of cancer in women.

Five years ago, scientists sparked a worldwide alert when they disclosed that many household foods contain the substance acrylamide, which was thought to be a probable cause of the disease.

Now a study involving 120,000 people - half of whom were women - has established a direct link between consumption of the chemical and the incidence of ovarian and womb cancer. Research has shown that acrylamide is found in cooked foods such as bread, breakfast cereals, coffee and also meat and potatoes which had been fried, baked, roasted, grilled or barbecued.

The Dutch study found that women who absorbed more acrylamide were twice as likely to develop ovarian or womb cancer as those who ingested a smaller amount. The higher amount eaten by the women involved was the equivalent to a single packet of crisps, half a pack of biscuits, or a portion of chips a day.

The EU has now advised people to avoid burnt toast or golden brown chips because they contain higher levels of the substance acrylamide. They have also recommended eating home-cooked meals which contain much lower amounts of the chemical than processed products, fast food and restaurant meals."

What will it take for one of these men (or women) in white coats to step up to the plate and actually utter the startling words: "Or people could eat their food raw"?!?!

Instead, the verdict from a Food Standards Agency spokesman was: "Since acrylamide forms naturally in a wide variety of cooked foods, it is not possible to have a healthy balanced diet that avoids it.”

We refer this expert and others like him to our magazine, our blog, our website and to the blogs and websites of all the other companies and individuals working to spread the word about raw food! And to the thousands of people alive today who are walking, talking, glowing testimony to the fact the above statement is false!

   

Our new online store!

After months of hard work behind the scenes our brand new online store went live this weekend and oooh, it really is the bee's knees :) Check it out! Not only is it easier to navigate and more lovely to look at than its predecessor; we have also added a veritable cornucopia of new products. There are exciting times ahead for our customers as we'll not only be continually expanding our range but also surprising and delighting you with special offers.

So what, exactly, is new? Well, at long last it is possible to subscribe to Get Fresh! magazine online at the discounted prices we brought in earlier in the year. Just go here to see the options for your part of the world. Our winter issue was out yesterday and we have already started receiving delighted feedback from readers about how utterly brill it is from cover to cover!

Other exciting new offerings include:

• Seven products from the top-quality LifeGive range of plant-based supplements formulated at the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida. Six here and the other one here.
• The entire Live Native range of raw beauty products, newly launched by an Isle of Skye based company with the highest standards in purity and quality. Seven gorgeous concoctions including special formulations for men, women and babies and one for 'Everybody Every Day'. Go here to read more about this exciting new range.
• Tonya Zavasta's 'Your Right To Be Beautiful' face cream With its gorgeous vanilla scent and whipped-cream-like texture this anti-aging moisturiser is a seriously luxurious treat. Available in the UK for the first time ever - read all about it here.
• Ani's Raw Food Kitchen Show Award-winning DVD by Ani Phyo, the celebrated chef and author of a book of the same name. Read more about the DVD here and the book here.
• And while you're at it why not browse our massively expanded range of books here. 
• Detox Your World's Raw White Almond Butter and Raw Hemp Seed Butter. Not only are they pure loveliness in a jar; at long last we Brits can get raw nut butters without the air miles!
• And many, many more exciting new products which you'll discover if you hang out in our new retail space a while, kick off your shoes and make yourself at home.

If there is any product we don't carry which you would like to see in our shop email us and we will take your request very seriously. There's a good chance it is already on the long list of products we'll be adding in coming months but there are sure to be fab things not yet on our rawdar. We are always delighted to receive your requests and ideas as to what else you'd like to be able to buy from us, so don't be shy - we'd love to hear from you!