The Fresh Network Blog

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...... 

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 11

First things first: to those of you following this little adventure of mine, apologies for the long hiatus since I posted the last update. Life has been super busy but the beauty of that is that I have discovered that this regime is easy to stick to even when you are on the run - just as long as you remember to get the green juices and smoothies in before you head out.

So yes, on Day 11, I - former greenophobe - am officially in shock at how easy it is proving to consume vast quantities of greens (2lb/900g per day).

My only question: why didn't I try this before? I have tried every other way of being raw, and with varying degrees of success: high fruit, no fruit, high fat, low fat, simple (just fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds) fancy (to the point I started to wonder about the carbon footprint implications of having my dehydrator running day and night) and every combination of the above.

The only thing I hadn't ever tried was consistently consuming a huge quantity of mineral-rich greens and building the rest of my diet around that. This experience is suggesting that when you do this, the rest naturally falls in place.

They say it takes 21 days to establish a new habit, but I feel as if I have been working up to this one for the last 5.5 years - in other words, ever since I first started eating predominantly raw foods. Putting away this volume of greens would not - could not - be anything resembling easy if you attempted it without first transitioning away from the standard diet.

But if you have been raw for a while you are probably consuming significantly more greens than the average person anyway (not hard when the average person's raw greens consumption hovers somewhere between 0 and 10g a day!) so you're already on your way.

I am not going to post my food diaries this time since I can't imagine anyone would be interested in trawling through eight days' worth! So instead a summary:

• I have been basically doing as on days 1-3 only with even more seaweed (anyone else out there who has eaten a whole bag of dulse in a day?!?) and, since a big delivery arrived from Aconbury Sprouts last Wednesday, huge volumes of sprouted greens, which means...
• I've been having one or two 2oz shot of wheatgrass a day (and I don't even know how I'd calculate that as part of the 2lb since it is often claimed that a 1oz shot of wheatgrass is nutritionally equivalent to 2.5lbs of organically grown vegetables!)
• I have also been drinking pints of my favourite juice of all time: cucumber with sunflower greens.

I first tried the above drink at the Hippocrates Health Institute when I was there in late 2006. Smells and tastes often carry with them powerful associations about the times and/or places we first encountered them, and the attraction of this juice is no mystery as with every sip I feel transported back to the Florida sunshine!

And it clicked with me last week that this is not, in fact, the first time I have enjoyed such extensive interaction with all things green and leafy. Although the folks at Hippocrates are smart enough not to tell guests what volume of raw greens they will be consuming, it has dawned on me that if you follow that program properly you are actually eating way over 2lb/900g a day.

The daily diet at the Hippocrates Institute can be summed up as twice daily wheatgrass shots, two big glasses of green juice, and two visits to the buffet, which is basically a showcase of green and leafy in all its various permutations, from spinach and lettuces to sprouted greens of every variety to sea vegetables.

This is not just the Hippocrates Institute though. It is a description of the food served at all of the most cutting edge health and healing centres in the world.

So what's changed in my world as a result of taking green to the extreme? In a nutshell:

• I've felt super-focused. For example, I have recently moved house but it is only since I started on the green regime that I've been able to face tackling piles of still unopened boxes. I haven't merely been unpacking them; I've been joyously creating order and serenity around the house, room by room
• I've been on a consistent and seemingly unshakeable natural high
• I have officially "got the glow" and I'm getting the comments to go with it : )   

More soon...    

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 3

Although this is Day 3’s write-up I am writing it early in the morning on Day 5. And five days in I can say that it is NOT DIFFICULT at all to eat this many greens.

I am amazed!

It is partly because of the way I am doing it, which I think is probably pretty essential in order to stay in the happy zone with it – I’ll tell you ALL about that below.

To my surprise, mega amounts of greens are going down VERY easily – all it has involved is a change of mindset. When I am ready for a meal or a snack, instead of asking myself: “What do I want to eat?” I am asking “What do I want to eat that contains loads of greens.” : ) And thanks to the way I am doing it, there are enough choices – sweet and savoury, light and satisfyingly filling, simple and spicy – to cater to any mood.

So here is the secret to easily getting seemingly impossible quantities of greens into your diet every day... 

Use or adapt David Rainoshek’s “FOUR WAYS” approach.

1. Eat your greens
2. Make blended green soups
3. Make green smoothies
4. Juice them

Now personally I adapt this system rather than follow it to the letter. First off, David recommends only low-glycaemic fruits in smoothies, and there are very good reasons to avoid high-glycaemic ones. However, for now sweet fruits are the all-important “spoonful of sugar” that helps my green medicine go down, so I am enjoying pineapples, oranges, bananas and so on in my juices and smoothies.

Secondly, I just can’t do hard-core green soups. If it’s blended cucumber (one of the most popular bases) with some dulse and sprouts and other ‘tame’ veggies, no problem, but add more than a small handful of strong greens to that and it’s NO THANK YOU from me! : ) I physically can’t get them down. Maybe that will change over the course of this trial...    

So anyway, without a doubt, the best way to consume large amounts of alkalizing, nutrient-rich, enzyme-rich greens on a daily basis is to have some of them juiced, some blended (into soups or smoothies, or a combination) and some whole.

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 2

This is a quick round-up of day 2 of my challenge to eat at least 900g of raw greens a day. Amazingly, I exceeded the target by quite a margin. This was not down to over-enthusiasm so much as poor fridge management; I am still getting used to the technicalities of shopping for this quantity and variety of short-shelf-life fresh greens, and I had stuff I had to either eat yesterday or ditch.

In the past I've been as bad as the next person for throwing food out. Polls consistently show that in the UK we throw away on average ONE FIFTH of the food we buy. I cannot claim to being any better than that statistic in the past, but all that changes now. I am upping my game; not just on the nutrition front, but also on the 'being a good citizen of the planet' front. Which means not buying bags of produce, often shipped in from other countries, only to forget about them and end up throwing them out.

I am not about to start chowing down on rotting greens, but I am keeping a much closer eye on the contents of my fridge to avoid the likelihood of finding nasty unidentifiable objects in there.

Sarah's "Extreme Green" Challenge - Day 1

Raw green foods are the NUMBER ONE missing link in the modern western diet.

Whether someone is on the standard diet, is vegetarian or is vegan, it is almost guaranteed they are eating too much fat and sugar and not enough vegetables, of which greens are the most nutritionally potent.

And most people continue to eat in this way when they go raw - just using different foods to get their fat and sugar fix, and favouring these "instant satisfaction" foods over the less appetizing green veggies. 

We have been conditioned to think that five small servings of fruit and vegetables a day is enough and that is still the official word from most western governments. Chances are, if you have been researching raw food for a while, you already know that is rubbish!

In restaurants, it always amazes me to note that the average person will polish off every morsel on their plate except for anything green and leafy. Lettuce leaves or sprigs of herb that the chef added "as a garnish" (since of course this "rabbit food" is not an essential nutritional component of the meal) are usually to be found neatly pushed the side of the otherwise empty plate.

Greens are the missing link in the diet for two reasons: the MASSIVE amount of nutrition they provide with NO undesirable trade-offs, and the fact that when you are consuming them in large quantities you'll naturally be eating less - a lot less - of the foods that don't serve you.

Greens are also the ultimate BALANCING food. Eat enough of them and they balance your appetite, they balance your blood sugar, and they balance your mood, all of which helps you to achieve balance in your external world : )

More about all of these subjects soon. For now, here are the results of day 1 of the challenge... 

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.