Forks Over Knives Trailer.....

The feature film Forks Over Knives examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods.  Take time to watch this amazing documentary.  It no doubt helped me to refine my food habits!  Plant based diets have proven over time to help people remain healthy and even reverse degenerative disease.

You can watch the movie on several online places including Netflix.  Movie2k has also it posted for free.

Hot Lemon Tea

Ingredients
8 oz hot water
1/2 fresh squeezed lemon
1 T raw honey

Combine ingredients in your favorite mug. Enjoy!

Benefits of Lemon Juice
Powerful antibacterial
Can help relieve digestion problems
Acts as a blood purifier
Helps relieve constipation
Decreases the amount of phlegm produced by the body
The potassium in it helps control high blood pressure
Helps flush bacteria and toxins out of the body
Just to name a few.........

Thank you to Molly Mogridge for bringing me the ingredients and
for sharing your amazing raw honey.  What a kind gift!

Live Active Nutrition Instead of Coffee

Try starting your morning with live active nutrition. This morning we made Carrot Spinach Apple Juice in the juicer. It will give your body energy and feeds your cells living nutrition to get you started right! It helps to turn your body alkaline.

We think coffee gives us the boost we need to get our body and mind going but actually it has a negative affect on the body. It turns the body acidic which produces an environment that disease thrives in. It also acts as a diuretic contributing to dehydrating your body. It can contain caffeine which is NOT a nutrient. It is a stimulant which actually triggers your body's stress response.

Your body adapts to the stress by stealing nutrients and energy from a system that does not have to have it for immediate survival. Essentially you are robbing one system to pay another which is not a longterm strategy to keep your body healthy.

For true sustainable energy you want to give your body excellent nutrition on a daily basis. This will decrease your need for outside stimulants to give you a boost.

If Food Products Were Honestly Labeled

I ran across this cartoon from Natural News.  I have learned so much from reading food labels, mainly that I need to stay away from many products that have a list of ingredients!  This is what has spurred our family on to eat more whole foods, grind our own grain, and come up with ways to make the prepackaged items that we like from scratch.

Start reading food labels and google the words that you are not sure what they mean.  I think you will be inspired as well!

A great resource for examining food additives is a book by Dr. Russell Blaylock called Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills.

What's Wrong With Our Food System - A Smart Kid's Perspective

Thank you Millie for sharing this story with me!  I just learned about Birke Baehr - a kid who started transforming his mind to a different way of thinking about food than most American kids. Check out his YouTube Tedx Talk.
Okay Families!  Let's don't give in to the Marketing Strategies of companies that care nothing about your family's longterm health.  If an 11 year old is that reasonable and motivated, we can be too!!

"While traveling with his family and being 'roadschooled', Birke at the age of 9 began studying sustainable and organic farming practices. Birke has visited and worked at Full Moon Farms Co-op, Athens, GA; Sequatchie Cove Farm, Sequatchie ,TN; Sapelo Farms, Brunswick, GA; and the organic gardens of The Hostel in the Forest in Brunswick, GA. He also attended a full day seminar with renowned farmer and author, Joel Salatin at The Farm in Summertown, TN. Mr. Salatin has continued to mentor Birke in his pursuit of new thinking about food and agriculture. Birke has also participated in The Sequatchie Valley Institute's annual 'Food for Life' gathering for the past two years. At these workshops he’s studied composting, vermiculture, canning and food preservation methods, sprouting and tea. This year Birke has enjoyed tending a garden with his Granddaddy, growing tomatoes, beans, okra, potatoes, cukes and more. 


Birke has attended the Barefoot Farmer's Biodynamic Conference where he spent time learning from farmer, Jeff Poppen on his farm. Birke intends to continue his education in this genre and expects to be a sustainable organic agriculturist in the future. He also has a passion for educating others, especially his peers, about the destructiveness of the industrialized food system and the enlightening alternatives of sustainable and organic farming, food and practices. Birke has also volunteered at the Humane Society and loves working with animals. 


Birke was the youngest presenter at the TEDx Next Generation Asheville event where he gave a talk about. "What's Wrong With Our Food 'System'" which has become the most viewed TEDx Talk on YouTube of all time. He recently attended a two-day workshop called, "Deepening Roots" which focuses on health/wellness, community, empowerment, sustainable agriculture and meditation. He continues to find learning and teaching opportunities for his message."

Mixed Messages

I found this billboard and just had to post it.  Our society is sending so many mixed messages to families and kids.  I was reading a message referencing someone making a trip to eat fast food that day.  A friend  commented "get ready....you will be taking your kids there all the time."  Really?  Do we have to make that the norm for us personally?

If we do, we will certainly pay the price at some point in time and our family will as well.  The way you can get serious about obesity and the health crisis our nation is entrenched in is by considering everything you choose to put in your mouth and allow your kids to eat.  Will it bring life and health to your cells or are your feeding a disease just waiting to come forth in your body?

What brings health?  Real fruits and vegetables and whole grains; water; exercise; and proper sleep.

I am certainly not talking about the occasional run through a fast food dive or ice cream after a movie.  I am talking about what you are CONSISTENTLY doing to take care of your cells.

I started to say, "Shame on the company for producing food that is slowly killing people."  But really it is shame on us for being poor consumers.  If we did not eat the food, they would not stay in business. WE DO HAVE A CHOICE!

What is your "kinda shoppin' spree"?

Vinegar & Honey Drink

Many drinks that we consume on a daily basis in America taste good, and we desire them often but have a detrimental effect on our health.  Here is a drink that actually benefits the body and provides balance and healing.  You can make it one glass at a time, but we have found it more effective to make a quart and keep it in the refrigerator.

Apple Cider Vinegar & Honey Drink
1/4 cup Braggs Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 cup Raw Honey
30 ounces of filtered water

Pour the Raw Apple Cider Vinegar into the jar along with the Raw Honey.  Shake until blended well.  Add filtered water and refrigerate.  If you are used to drinking sweeter drinks, add a little more honey until you develop a taste for the original recipe. (We actually double our recipe in one jar and just fill our drinking glass with 1/2 Vinegar Drink and 1/2 additional water.  That way we do not have to mix it as often.)

This recipe is similar to the one on the www.bragg.com website except I multiply it by 4 to make it last longer!

Because of the amount of white flour, white sugar, and processed foods that many people eat, their bodies do not have the live active nutrition you get from real living foods.  Our bodies thrive on living nutrition which is not found in the S.A.D (Standard American Diet) consisting mostly of dead foods.

Thus our bodies become very acidic.  Disease thrives in an acidic environment.  What this drink does is helps to turn your body more alkaline.  Disease cannot however thrive in this environment.  Raw Apple Cider Vinegar has living enzymes and nutrients that the body is craving.

Now for many people who eat and drink based on what they initially like the taste of, this drink might not suit them at first.  When we are changing to a healthier way of living there will be many times that we have to eat and drink things that are not at first what we would normally like until we come to the point where we develop a taste for new healthier options.

I look back and think about times I refused to eat foods that were "different" and did not taste like the feel good foods I had been used to eating.  I was not doing my health any good with that attitude!  It was not until I started being open to understanding what was actually in the food before I made a decision whether I was going to eat it or not that my health began improving.

On a side note, my grandmother drank this drink every day and lived to be 97!  I am not saying that this will do the trick for everyone (other lifestyle choices are very important as well), but I do think it is a testimony for keeping your body alkaline on a daily basis for the long haul.

Water - it affects every funtion of your body.....

Did you know you can live 5 to 7 weeks without food but the average adult cannot last more than 5 days without water? It is one of the Building Blocks to a healthy life. Water plays a vital role in regulating our body temperature, transporting nutrients and oxygen to our cells, removing waste, cushioning joints, and protecting our organs and tissues to name just a few. For the most part, your body is about 70% water!!!

So why don't we realize it's importance? Why do many of us just drink coffee, sodas, juice, tea, etc? Why do we say, "Well I don't really like the way water tastes?" It seems that many times we are more interested in feeding our taste buds than we are feeding our cells. God designed our bodies in amazing ways to thrive, grow, and resist illness and disease. But guess what? It cannot do it if we are not willing to give it what it needs to function properly!

Do you want to be healthy? You must have enough water on a consistent basis to maintain your health for a lifetime. Today, stop making excuses for why you don't drink water and just drink it! You should be consuming 1/2 your body weight on ounces per day (ie - 150 pound person should drink 75 ounces per day). Don't try to do it all at once though. Just take a gallon jug and fill it up with the ounces you should drink per day. Just drink a little more per day until you reach your goal.

Did You Know....

• Once you feel yourself getting thirsty you are already on your way to being dehydrated.


• When the body is mildly dehydrated, it may restrict blood flow to nonvital areas in order to concentrate it on the vital organs? When you drink enough water constricted blood vessels usually begin to open up, lowering blood pressure.


• Without adequate water, the whole digestive system goes into emergency mode that can result in heartburn, indigestion, constipation, hemorrhoids, etc. The mucous layer of your stomach that protects against stomach acid is 98% water. Without a thick layer of mucous, you may have chronic burning when you eat.
• Water is the main lubricant in the joint spaces and helps prevent arthritis and back pain.


• Water increases the capacity of the immune system.
  

Those are just a VERY few of the things that water does......... So what do you need to do? Get to drinking!!!

February - The Month to Think About Your Heart.....

Your heart is considered the Wellspring of Life for many reasons. Physically it is the “main engine”. It nourishes our tissues with blood and sets our rhythm with a pulse. Spiritually it is to be guarded because of the life giving nature of it (Prov. 4:23).
On the American Heart Association website there is a section entitled “Heart Attack, Stroke and Cardiac Arrest Warning Signs.” Yes, it might be helpful for us to be aware of these things but wouldn’t you rather do what you can today to DETER this from happening? YOU CAN! The question is will you make the changes necessary for this to occur?
A few simple things can help you get started:

1) Start eating more raw vegetables each day. An easy way is to eat a salad full of raw vegetables each day. Add nuts or seeds. Sprinkle your favorite seasoning instead of adding lots of dressing. Why raw? Anytime you cook, can, process, or freeze vegetables, they lose much of their nutritional value. The enzymes that are needed for digestion are killed! Your body is begging for these nutrients in order to function properly.
2) Don’t think about a no fat or low fat diet…Think about a right fat lifestyle! Your body needs fat to absorb vitamins such as A, D, E, and K. But all fats are not created equal. Some are much better for you than others. What are the right kinds of fats? It is best to reduce saturated fats (primarily from animal foods) and increase monounsaturated fats (olives, avocadoes, almonds, peanuts) and polyunsaturated fats (soybean, safflower, sunflower, corn, and cottonseed). It is also important to increase Omega-3 fatty acids (fish such as tuna & salmon, flax, soybeans) and decrease the consumption of Omega-6 fatty acids (land animals and polyunsaturated oils in processed foods.) It is best to eliminate all hydrogenated oils knows as transfats from your daily routine!
3) Drink more water. All body functions depend on water and the lack if it plays a major role in premature disease and aging. The heart is a muscle. Muscles consist mostly of water! Water is essential for our hearts if they are to function long-term to the fullest capacity. How many glasses of water do you drink a day? (coffee, tea, soda, and juice don’t count J!) Begin today adding an additional glass of water until you are drinking half of your body weight in water each day.
4) Exercise. Exercise is a key to proper metabolism. We are able to burn fat and calories, increase our circulation, and it helps us have more energy, stamina and mental clarity! Exercise boosts the supply of oxygen to the heart muscle by expanding the existing arteries and creating tiny new blood vessels. It may also prevent blood clots or promote their breakdown. Exercise helps to regulate blood pressure. What kind of exercise is best?……….Whatever you will commit to do. The best thing is to just get moving…………

Don’t forget: You may think that you are far from the onset of

heart disease but remember:
Diseases usually start to develop in your body MANY years before the onset!
That is why it is vitally important to change your habits today.
They will determine your future…………

What are Phytonutrients?

We now hear the word "phytonutrient" used frequently. What is a phytonutrient, and is it helpful to you? The term "phyto" originated from a Greek word meaning plant. Phytonutrients are certain organic components of plants. Fruits, vegetables, berries, grains, legumes, nuts, and teas are rich sources of phytonutrients.
What do phytonutrients do in the body? The following are commonly proposed ways by which phytonutrients may protect our health.

• Serve as antioxidants


• Enhance immune response


• Enhance cell-to-cell communication


• Convert to vitamin A (beta-carotene is metabolized to vitamin A)
• Cause cancer cells to die (apoptosis)


• Repair DNA damage caused by toxic exposures
• Detoxify carcinogens

So, yes they are VERY helpful to you! They are a must if we would like to reduce the cell damage that goes on in our bodies each day and reduce our. Start today adding more phyto's to your daily routine through eating fruits, veggies, nuts, whole grains, beans, and berries!

Cancer Prevention

The American Cancer Society website states that “today the evidence is even stronger that a diet high in fruits and vegetables can help prevent cancer over a lifetime”. www.cancer.org

Allyson's interesting health facts....

Did you know:
1500 people die from cancer every day
1 in 3 and 1 in 2 men will have cancer in his or her lifetime
1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer
1.1 million Americans have a heart attack every year
500,000 heart attack victims in America die each year
Americans spend $330 billion per year on heart disease
64% of U.S. adults are obese
Diabetes will increase 165% over the next 50 years
33% of Americans suffer from Arthritis

Why settle for being part of these statistics? Start today taking control of your health by eating more raw fruits and vegetables and drinking lots of water! What you do determines what will happen with your health.....