The Fresh Network Blog

"How I do Christmas" by 10 raw food leaders

Back in its Winter 2001 issue, Get Fresh! magazine asked a selection of raw food experts these questions:

Please set the scene as to where you'll be this Christmas and who you'll be with.  

What's likely to be on the Christmas menu this year for you personally and for those around you? 

What are your tips for spending a hassle-free Christmas with people whose food choices are different?

What's made this year a great year for you? 

Any words of wisdom to share with our readers?

Last week we put the same questions to 10 of today's leading raw food experts: Elaine Bruce, Alissa Cohen, Dao Earl, Karen Knowler, Paul Nison, Ani Phyo, Natalia Rose, Shazzie, Pete Vincent and Tera Warner. 

We hope you find their answers as wise, inspiring, funny, interesting and thought-provoking as we did.

When raw meets romance

We finished the Winter issue of Get Fresh! magazine yesterday (pictured left - full information on what’s in it here). My editorial this time is on the subject of what to do when you’re hooked on high-energy living and your partner isn’t. These ramblings introduce a brilliant article on the subject by Raw Food Detox Diet author Natalia Rose. The design of Get Fresh! only allows for brief editorials, and my first draft was too long for the magazine version so I thought I'd share it with you here:

If you’re passionate about all things raw and your partner is too, count yourself lucky. Most raw food fans who are in a relationship are with someone who doesn’t share their enthusiasm for health and high-energy living. 

As anyone who’s been in this situation knows, this is about a lot more than just sitting down to different dishes at mealtimes, or heated arguments about restaurant choices (your beloved voting for dim sum at The Dragon Inn while you’re hankering after sprout salad at The Happy Buddha). Our diet and lifestyle choices don’t just affect us physically – they affect us mentally, emotionally and spiritually too.

They also say an awful lot about our values and beliefs. The wife who makes dietary decisions based only on what tastes good and/or keeps her slim and the husband who is vegan for ethical, environmental and health reasons clearly have two very different world views and sets of priorities.

All other things being equal, it is much easier to be in a relationship with someone who is on the same page as us about life’s biggest questions. But the universe doesn’t always have “easy” in mind for us when it comes to relationships. Many of us, for various reasons, will achieve greater spiritual growth with someone who sees the world differently; challenges our beliefs; pushes our buttons.

But don't assume this path is always hard work. Some of the happiest couples I know are made up of one raw food fan and one standard diet eater respectfully accommodating each other’s habits and idiosyncrasies. 

So that's okay then

I'm passionately into natural health, but purely because I never got around to doing anything about it I still have something in my house which is widely believed by experts in the natural health field to be a very bad thing. Wireless internet.

There are plenty of highly qualified people who believe that daily exposure to "wi-fi" is at the very least a potent energy zapper. Some experts believe its consequences can be a lot worse than that.

Today I called my internet service provider, a leading British telecommunications company, to find out how I can move off wireless. The person who took my call was, insofar as one can tell this from voice alone, not a day older than 20. 

When I explained that I would like to change from wireless broadband to wired he at first replied that I can simply connect using a cable. "But surely the wi-fi will still be in the house even if my computer is on a wired connection?" I asked. He replied that it would, and that if I was worried about someone else hijacking the connection I should password protect it. I explained that my concern was in fact about the health consequences of having wireless at home.

Sun worship

Let me paint you a picture I only wish I could paint more often. I am currently sitting at my garden table, in my bikini, with a parasol shading my laptop, and the sun beating down on my back. It's scorching hot and there's not a cloud in the sky. And it's quarter past six in the evening, for goodness sake!

The south of England, where I live, has enjoyed uncharacteristically high temperatures since last Thursday. I've had an especially lucky time of it because, prior to that, I spent a week in Tuscany – which was also experiencing unusually high temperatures. And I feel better than I’ve felt since…well, since the last time I spent a fortnight in the sun. Coincidence? I think not.

For half of it I haven’t been on holiday; I’ve been hard at work. But whenever possible I’ve been hard at work in my outside office, wearing my summer uniform.

Why? Because the more I study health and meet people around the world who are enjoying extraordinary levels of it, the more convinced I am that getting out in the sun at every opportunity is one of the most health-promoting things we can do. And that whatever ails you, be it physical or mental, there are few things that will make you feel as good, as quickly, as getting out in the sun.

I’m sure there is more to this than vitamin D; I’m sure the sun’s rays bestow benefits on us that science has yet to uncover. But vitamin D is a huge deal and the studies that prove it just keep pouring in. Vitamin D has been linked with bone health, mental agility, immunity and emotional balance. And deficiency has been linked with osteoporosis, dementia, cancer, MS and depression – among other things.

A book that everyone needs to read

I read a life-changing book recently. It is no exaggeration to say it has transformed the way I view the world. It has reshaped my understanding of human history and redefined for me what “sustainable living” means. The book is The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann. The ancient sunlight the author refers to is oil but this book is about a lot more than oil. I’d like to share a little about this very special book and explain why I think it is a must-read.

The books begins by explaining why there is no doubt that we are fast running out of oil, and just how dependent we are on it. According to current estimates, we have around 30 years’ supply left at current rates of use but with an expanding population and oil use per capita increasing in tandem, these estimates could be wildly optimistic.

But oil will become a problem long before the last well runs dry, as our society depends not simply on oil but on cheap oil. Last year, eight UK companies joined together as the Peak Oil Task Force and their report concluded that peak oil – the moment at which worldwide oil production peaks and thereafter goes into permanent decline – will be in 2013 and will “hit society like a tidal wave”.

During the oil shocks of the 1970s, a 5% fall in supply of oil led to a quadrupling of the price. Fortunately, these price shocks were only temporary. But imagine what would happen to the stability of our economies and our societies if the price of oil were to quadruple tomorrow and to continue from there on a permanent upwards trend?

Well, that is what the future holds – it’s not a question of “if”; only of “when”.

Our bodies are supposed to be beautiful!

Eight years ago I was at a corporate event having lunch with a group of female friends when the topic of cellulite came up. It has stuck in my mind because it wasn’t long after this that I discovered, and started following, the raw diet and lifestyle. The conversation went something like this:

“Did you see those photos of [X celebrity] in the papers the other day? She has cellulite!”

“And she’s really thin and she’s always on a diet.”

“It just goes to show it’s true what they say – you can’t avoid it.

“No, every woman has it.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“No, nothing.”

And so we carried on downing our wines and our coffees as we digested the three-course wheat, meat and dairy-based meal we had just enjoyed. And we continued discussing how our thighs had one day been attacked by some mysterious and malign force over which we had no control.

What I’ve since discovered is that once you stop consuming the foods that cause cellulite, you stop having cellulite! But I'll save the rest of my cellulite story for another time...

Today a new book by Susie Orbach, author of the 1978 classic Fat is a Feminist Issue, was released. It’s called, simply, Bodies. Orbach has long been vocal in condemning the pain and suffering women put themselves through in order to conform to the culturally-defined dictates about how the female body should look.

In this new book she argues that this problem is now more all-pervasive than ever. The preoccupation we have with our bodies – which manifests in dieting and gym memberships and also in eating disorders and surgical procedures – is a very troubling collective neurosis, she points out. And one which now affects not only women but ever-increasing numbers of men, too.

Compassion

In the Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet there is a memorable scene where the garden of a Buddhist monastery is to be bulldozed but the monks won’t allow the machinery in until they have spent days painstakingly picking through the soil to remove worms from the danger zone and transport them to safety. We see them gently placing the creatures back into the earth and even thoughtfully sprinkling them with water. (Watch the clip).

Since most of us are not living at a level of consciousness where it would even occur to us to go to such lengths, it is easy to scoff at this as a bizarre cultural idiosyncrasy that has no relevance for us. Yet it shows a respect and reverence for all of life that is sorely lacking in our world. The monks were practicing ahimsa, which is the Buddhist tenet of not causing harm to any sentient being.

Most of us lead lives that don’t permit us to get down on our hands and knees multiple times every day to search out and rescue otherwise non-visible insects or invertebrates that may be lying in our path. Yet if every human being lived with a fraction of the compassion demonstrated by these monks it would transform the world – not because of the way we’d be treating worms but because of the way we’d be treating each other! However, we don’t have to take it that far in order to achieve transformation on a massive scale.

Imagine the world we would live in if enough of us simply decided it is not acceptable to knowingly treat any sentient being, whether human or animal, with disregard for its needs and rights, let alone with any form of violence? And crucially that it is just as unacceptable to buy products which involve such violations as it is to commit those violations ourselves?

Think about it for a moment. If enough of us lived with a respect for the sanctity of all of life, everything would change. Factory farms and sweatshops wouldn't exist in such a world, and neither would famine or war.

If you are conscious enough to recognize dogs, cows and chickens as beings which deserve gentle and kind treatment, how would you ever commit any act of violence or cruelty towards another human being?

You just wouldn't.

You just couldn't.

And I think we can all agree that this world needs more people like that.

Top 5 books on compassionate living

1. Animals Like Us by Mark Rowland

2. The Pig Who Sang To The Moon by Jeffrey Masson

3. Diet For A New America by John Robbins

4. The Great Compassion by Norm Phelps

5. Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Markus

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge

I have an announcement to make. I am about to embark on a nutritional challenge that I feel in my bones will be life-changing.

I am about to go WAY outside my comfort zone around eating healthily, and commit to staying there for at least a month.

But first, a confession.

I'm not proud to admit this and it's not clever, but...

I am a REAL baby when it comes to consuming anything dark green.

Sure, I can eat a mountainous spinach salad as long as it’s liberally adorned with guacamole or something similarly creamy and highly seasoned. I've long been adding a token handful of greens to my staple cucumber-celery juices. Thanks to these virtuous nods to the importance of mineral-rich foliage in the diet, I used to think I had the greens base fully covered.

But I recently discovered that what I considered to be copious quantities of greens was far from that. I first wrote about this topic here (it’s near the bottom of the entry), and ever since then the idea of experimenting with extreme amounts of green has been in the back of my mind. 

It all started when I was introduced to the work of the amazing David Rainoshek, promoter of the concept of juice feasting, and one of the world’s leading authorities on that and other super-nutrition-related subjects. David advises juice feasters to consume at least 2lb of leafy green vegetables each day.

That’s 900g, folks!

Bags of green leafies that you buy in the supermarket or grocery store are generally around 100g-200g. My “mountainous” spinach salads? Anything from 100g-150g. And that, bar the odd sprinkling of herbs here and there, would be it for the day.

Since I heard about this I have upped the green ante, but I am still getting nowhere near David's target on a daily basis. And I can't help wondering how different it would feel to reach it consistently. So....for the next 30 days I will be experiencing life on extreme amounts of green, by committing to meeting David's target every day (or at least having a darn good shot at it and getting there most of the time!)

So, to put this in context, you know the ginormous bags of spinach they sell at your local store? They're probably around 200g, so I'll be consuming the equivalent of 4.5 of those every day.

To do this will be to leave my comfort zone far behind.   

Like most raw food fans I habitually go heavy on the sugar and fat and light on the dark greens.

But my energy levels have been heading south in recent months, together with my concentration, plus I've been suffering from killer cravings. I can identify reasons for all of this, which I will go into in a later post, but for now, the point is: this is a GREAT time to experiment with the super-green, super-nutrient-rich way of eating.

I'm back - with my Raw Guide to Bali

Sarah here. As some of you have noticed, this blog has been dormant for a while. Rather a long while. I have had emails enquiring as to whether I am still alive, and if I am, whether I have decided to opt for a life of leisure. The answer to both questions is yes, but the latter was, sadly, over all too quickly ; )

If you are wondering why this post comes accompanied with a photo of a baby monkey, it's because I recently returned from three weeks in blissful Bali (and a day either side in skyscrapered Singapore). Sometimes a holiday's gotta be a holiday, so I left my laptop behind and re-charged my chi with 21 days of complete R&R. And let me tell you, after a particularly mad, manic and multi-tasking start to 2008, I slept for England.

But enough about England.

Bali: I fell in love with this Indonesion island the first time I visited it, in the year 2000. This latest visit was my third and, wonderful as it was from start to finish, I was in agreement with my five-year old son about the absolute highlight: feeding bananas to the impossibly cute wild macaques (a Balinese breed of monkey) in the Monkey Forest Sanctuary. If there ever was a real-life enchanted forest, this is it, as nestling among the trees and creepers is a lost city of ancient temple ruins. 

Bali... I celebrated my birthday at a beachside restaurant that was all candles, crashing waves and chilled music. No, it doesn't get much better than that. 

But is Bali a good place to go if you want a 'raw holiday'? Well, fresh juice is fairly widely available in restaurants and cafes (much more so than in the UK), within two minutes of where I was staying was a juice and smoothie bar (mostly raw), and across the road from it were two markets selling durian. Young coconuts (you drink the refreshing, nutrient-rich water and then scoop out the flesh) are widely available in swanky hotel bars and humble beach shacks alike.

Our location turned out to be about as ideal as it gets for the raw food fan, but as this is an island where neither juice nor durian nor ripe tropical fruit nor young coconuts are hard to come by, it is hard to go wrong. On the gourmet food front I was expecting slim pickings as I knew from past experience that it's hard to get a decent vegetarian, let alone vegan, meal in most restaurants on the island, whether western or traditional. On the whole, that hasn't changed.

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?!!