The Fresh Network Blog

Reason to eat lots of fruit and veg no 7,309

From today's Sunday Times: "Celery may not only be good for diets but also help safeguard mental health. Researchers have found that it generates compounds that can fight Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.

The compounds luteolin and diosmin appear to block the inflammation that causes the brains of victims to start shrinking and dying. In animal experiments they reduced the levels of amyloid beta, which forms the sticky deposits that build up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s.

The chemicals belong to a group of plant-based compounds known as flavonoids. “Luteolin and diosmin could be used in purified form as therapeutic agents,” said Dr Terrence."

Read the rest of the article here. It includes this quote from a Dr Susanne Sorensen of the Alzheimer’s Society: “We know a healthy balanced diet can reduce dementia risk. This work reinforces the need to eat a diet rich in fruit and vegetables.”"   

Indeed - as if it needed reinforcement! Aside from the enormous body of evidence that now exists, scientists are constantly finding new antioxidant or phytonutrient compounds in fruits and vegetables that work against disease and degeneration, protect us from stress and pollution and perform a multitude of other vital functions. These substances can be extremely fragile and very easily damaged by heat so eating your fruit and veg raw wherever possible is not a bad idea!

It makes you wonder why the official advice is still that "five a day" is enough and further that it doesn't matter whether that's raw, lightly cooked, boiled to a mush, baked to a cinder, tinned and then microwaved or frozen and then deep fried.

It's safe to say that during our lifetimes science will not come close to identifying all of the miracle compounds in fruit and vegetables and the functions they perform.

Even those of us on raw or high raw diets can get stuck in a rut as to which varieties of fruit and vegetable we eat on a daily or weekly basis. But without knowing whether it will be kale, kohlrabi or kumquats that will be next be to discovered to perform previously unknown functions, possibly the very ones our bodies most need, forgive us for stating the obvious when we say the best strategy is to eat as wide a variety as possible!

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 27

I'm going wild for greens!

So my planned 30 days on super-high quantities of raw greens is drawing to a close but the experiment does not end here, and nor will my musings about it. I'm going to continue consuming around 2lb (900g) of raw greens a day. Why? Because I intuitively know I need to. It has been the missing link in my diet and I needed to change my conditioning around what volume of this rather important food group I need to consume in order to feel my very best.

Raw greens are loaded with minerals, especially hard-to-get-hold-of magnesium. Studies consistently show that around two thirds of us don't get enough of this essential mineral. I know of a leading and highly respected authority in the raw food arena whose diet is as healthy as it gets but who was found to be deficient in magnesium when tested. 

So knowing what the average diet is like, and having studied nutrition and learned how depleted the soil in most areas now is in magnesium, I am convinced that the notion that a third of us are getting enough magnesium is an over-estimate. It is my theory that virtually no one is getting enough and that is why signs of magnesium deficiency are everywhere.

Magnesium is called the anti-stress mineral because it promotes relaxation and restful sleep. You may already know that but did you know that, more to the point, it is also needed in order for cells to function normally? Without it, they can't complete the daily cycle of detoxification that is so essential for excellent health, strong immunity and high energy levels. And how many people do you see around you who demonstrate all of those qualities? Magnesium deficiency causes waste to back up in the cells, and everything that goes with that on the physical, mental and emotional levels.

When you go raw or high-raw your body will be doing more detoxifying than the average person's because it isn't just trying to do its basic daily house-cleaning routine; it's trying to build a brand new house. This means that people eating raw or high raw need even more magnesium than the average person.

As a food group, raw greens are the richest source of magnesium on the planet. The chlorophyll in green foods - the blood of the plant - is very similar to our blood. The only difference is that the nucleus of blood is iron whereas the nucleus of chlorophyll is magnesium.

So four weeks on how am I feeling? Let me first repeat that "going green" has been a lot easier than I was expecting thanks to two very handy inventions: the juicer and the blender! But how have I been feeling?

The honest truth?

Good - very good a lot of the time, and great only some of the time.

However, to put the above in context this is a very challenging time in my life. I am dealing with a lot of stress right now, some of it of the good, high, exciting variety, some of it not. All in all, it's a time of not enough rest, sleep or peace of mind so in the circumstances I should be feeling a lot worse and a lot more run down.

You could say doing this experiment now has been bad timing and had I known the surprises life had in store for me I might not have undertaken it. But from my point of view it has been great timing because I feel a lot better than I would if I was not fuelling myself on the highest-octane nutrition.    

The most challenging thing about sticking to this new way of eating has been organizing myself on the shopping front so that I always have a variety of greens in my kitchen.

But that just got easier as, dear reader, I have taken my first baby steps into the world of wild foods! For a long time I've known intellectually how good it is to eat wild plant foods. But as a city dweller until recently, I just couldn't get my head around the concept that procuring one's food doesn't always have to involve a shop and the handing over of money. Planting some vegetables in my garden was the first step, and last Saturday I took the next one: eating true natural foods that grew all on their own, without human intervention.

Walking with my son in the woods I had an urge to pick nettles - not an urge I have ever had before! When we got home we juiced them and ever since then it has been a daily ritual for us to go and pick our most nutritious meal of the day. We live in magical, untouched, untamed Ashdown Forest where you find "thickets" of nettles that are taller than people and they are my new best food!

For me this one food feels more powerful than any other I have ever consumed. It could be my imagination but soon after I drink nettle juice I swear I can feel it prickling through my veins as if it is stinging me back to life - in a good way! I mix it with carrot, lemon and celery juice and if I down one of those babies at night when I am starting to flag, I am suddenly switched on again and raring to go.

The next topic I'll cover in this series - the high green diet from a different angle: why what you aren't eating is as important for your health as what you are eating...... 

The verdict on London's very first gourmet raw restaurant

The London branch of Chad Sarno's Saf restaurant, located in the Shoreditch area to the east of the capital, has been open for just under a month. As UK raw food fans flock to Curtain Road to experience it, and others even fly in from abroad to do so, we have been busy collecting verdicts. And we can report that across the board Saf is getting top marks for food, drinks, service, ambience and venue.

Saf restaurant is backed by a company named The LifeCo, headed up by Turkish entrepreneur Ersin Parmuksuzer. Parmuksuzer started The LifeCo after being so impressed with the results of his first ever raw detox that he decided he wanted to share the benefits with others.

His vision for the group's restaurants (the London venue is number four after two openings in Istanbul and a third in Munich) is that they deliver pure, healthy food in a way that makes customers feel they are not missing out on anything - and that means not just that the food tastes great, but that the ambience is just so too.

The London restaurant is the group's flagship so top architects were brought in a year ago to design the space and number 152-154 Curtain Road was built from the ground up on the site of an old, disused car park. These pictures tell you more about the result than words could.      

One of the comments we've heard most often from raw food fans who have dined there is what a great place it is to take people who are not into raw food! And that is the beauty of Saf. It is a place you can go with anyone, whether they're a plant eater or a meat eater, and whether they are interested in eating healthily or simply want to eat well.

Although the menu is 100% plant-based, it is a million miles away from what most people think of when they think of vegan food. There are cooked choices for those who would baulk at eating all raw, and an impressive drinks list for those for whom dinner out is not complete without a great bottle of wine.