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Fake Obesity Experts to the Rescue!
A short video worth watching!
Minty Pina Fresca
So this year, I’m trying to eat healthier, and that mainly includes the snacks and drinks I have with my friends. The hard part is trying to find something healthy to eat when you go out to catch up with mates. This Summer we were in the habit of hanging out at Gelere and I liked their Pina Colada Smoothie with it’s refreshing flavours of coconut and pineapple, but alas that Smoothie is not as healthy as it seems for I know it’s filled with icecream and processed sugar.
Try this recipe at home, which combines the refreshing flavours of coconut, pineapple, and lime with an added flavour of mint for an interesting twist. You can be sure all ingredients are raw, fresh and pure!
This recipe is from Balanced Raw – Tina Leigh
Yes we are also treating ourselves to a small square of raw mint chocolate as well. It’s so good just one square is satisfying.
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup (235ml) coconut water
1 cup (165g) fresh or frozen pineapple chunks
1/4 cup (24g) mint leaves, packed
Juice of 1 lime, about 2 tablespoons (28 ml)
4 or 5 icecubes
In a Vitamix or other high-speed blender, combine all ingredients, blend for 30 seconds and enjoy. (I had to blend for a bit longer to get the consistency smooth.)
Fresca may be blended, refrigerated in glass, and enjoyed within 24 hours. Alternatively, pour into ice pop molds for a healthful frozen desert.
The Dangers of Taking Supplements (all kinds)
This is an issue that I have known about for a while through my research, and while I think there are times when supplementation can be helpful and important (ie. over the short-term to help restore and in-balance, when it is impossible to get a good variety of food, and the exception of vitamin B12 for most people and Vitamin D in winter months with little sunlight) over the long term supplementation can be doing your body far more harm than good! It’s scary how many people include daily multi-vitamins as part of ‘keeping healthy” and looking after yourself.
While reading “Ayurvedic Healing for Women” by Atreya which emphasises treating illness and disease at their root not just the symptoms, the author gives a good explanation of how supplements actually work in the body:
“Let’s look at a simplified version of how synthetic pharmaceutical products work in the body. These products are made to achieve quick, standard, consistent results. This means something that can be measured in one way or another, over and over again. If a substance can be manufactured or isolated ot do this, then it becomes of value to science. These products have to be separated and isolated from other substances in order to measure them effectively. It also allows science to observe the effects of the isolated substance.
Through this process, the substance is rendered inert, dead. It is rendered inorganic (i.e. no longer occurring in it’s original state, as in nature). Its chemical structure remains the same, or extremely close, but it is considered dead by the human body. This can best be defined by its action in the body. They do not work with the body, but rather in spite of it. This is why these products have achieved miraculous effects against disease.
This however, always has a price. This invasiveness – or breaking-and-entering – action always creates side effects. These secondary effects can be known or unknown. Modern science mainly uses one criteria for determining if a substance is safe or not: Is it carcinogenic? The question of whether a substance causes cancer is thus the primary factor in determining if that substance is safe for the treatment of disease. The other side effects are often not measured or investigated due to a lack of time and money. In fact, to know all the side effects of any given isolated substance, one would have to test each system, organ, and gland, and their functions in the body. And you would still never known how the total organic whole would respond to the isolated substance……..
These substances do not have an innate intelligence that tells them which things belong in the body and which do not. They flood the cells (which cells depends on the medication being used) and enter forcibly to do their job……Vitamin C can serve as a valuable example here. Vitamin C is known to be safe and beneficial when used correctly. In this example, we will use a synthetic vitamin C, which is the most common form of the vitamin in the United States. The synthetic form must first confront the digestive tract in order to be dissolved and reduced to a usable form that can be absorbed into the plasma via the blood to nourish the cells. After all, everything happens in the cells. But does your body have the enzymes necessary to break down and digest this man-made vitamin? Certainly a portion is able to be used, because laboratories have been able to observe the effects. So why is your urine always so yellow when you take vitamins? Because you are either unable to use, or do not need, this portion of the vitamin. (Many people find it illogical to think that humans have the inherent enzymes to digest the many synthetic products that appear each year in our food chain. This is definitely worth considering, especially for those who have food allergies or sensitivities.)
When the vitamin (or a percentage of it) is broken down and absorbed into the blood, it eventually reaches the cell, the core metabolic building block of the body. The cell has a wall made up of lipids and proteins that control the absorption of nutrients into the cell. Within the cell wall, there is a jellylike fluid called the cytoplasm. Within this fluid, hundreds of activities take place, according to the function of the cell and its location in the body. In this process, the cell wall or membrane plays a critical role. It allows certain things in and keeps other things out. It allocates certain openings to certain nutrients. This means that vitamin C has special openings and that, when you eat an orange, the vitamin C zooms through the plasma until it finds a cell opening for vitamin C that is free. it then enters and aids the metabolic process for the body.
Unfortunately, the synthetic vitamin C that we are using doesn’t have a clue about these rules and it just pushes its way into the cell wherever it can find an opening. Being man-made, it has not received the instructions from Mother Nature but is either ignorant or inert. This is what natural medicine calls a dead substance, because it does not know how to function with the body; it does not know its natural role. It lacks intelligence. It lacks life. Intelligence and life are two principles that occur together throughout nature…
When the vitamin C floods the cells – as in a high does to fight a cold, or because you think it is good for health – the openings for other vitamins, minerals, and nutrients become blocked. This prevents the other nutrients from being absorbed for as long as the cell wall is flooded with vitamin C. …..
Studied have consistently shown that large, regular intakes of any vitamin actually case a deficiency of that vitamin. Why? Because the body is continually flooded with it and loses the ability to produce it or utilize it from natural foods.
What if we were to substitute the birth control pill for vitamin C? what might be the effect? Or an estrogenic substance/ The target of these synthetic pills is the endocrine system and the cells that life there. Is your body able to effectively use or eliminate this pill year after year? what effect will this drug have on the cell membranes? What other hormones or nutrients is this medication preventing from entering the cell? These are legitimate questions for every woman (and man) to ask herself with respect to all synthetic products – everything from asprin to antidepressants.”
Words on the Ego (The Mirror of Yoga)
I would like to share with you today some notes on the ego from an excellent book called “The Mirror of Yoga” by Richard Freeman in which the author gives an enlightening overview of the many teachings, practices and scriptures that serve as the basis for all the schools of yoga – hatha, bhakti, jnana, karma, tantra and others.
In the quote below, Richard describes the reasons for and the dangers of the Ego:
“…the elusive ego is fed by a need for certainty; thus even within a well-intentioned yoga practice the ego can easily surface if we transform any aspect of the practice into a formula we know.
The ego desperately wants to do this because its entire function is to reduce everything, including the whole yoga tradition, to a formula that it can grasp and know definitively in order to say, “I know it! That way I don’t have to do it. I’ve been there, done that. What’s next” It wants to reduce the truth; it even wants to diminish God to a simple idol in order to be able to say, “i got it!” In this way the ego can reign supreme over all creation.
This, of course, is a perverse extension of what the healthy, beneficial process of ego actually is, which is to give us a reference point from which to begin observation and to maintain the health of the body and mind in relationship with the environment. But with the blink of an eye, the distorted ego is ready to lord over the body, the mind, all others, and eventually all of creation, which is the ultimate goal of every ego run amuck and which, as history has shown us time and again, can become a bit of a problem.”
Yoga, the mind and breath connection
Found this photo on google, obviously not mine, but just thought it was breathtaking so had to share it. Meanwhile I have been reading “The Mirror of Yoga” by Richard Freeman and thought Id share a few words from that to accompany the photo:
“It is said that the mind and the inner breath move together like two fish swimming in tandem; when the mind moves in a particular pattern, the fish of the inner breath moves along with it through the core of the body, hitting deep sensations and feelings as it moves. Likewise, if that inner fish of the breath moves in a certain way, it stimulates or wakes up association patterns of thought or imagination within the mind. The connection between these two fish forms a basic axiom that we use for yoga practice: the joining of opposites. One fish is called prana, the inner breath. Prana is the way we pattern sensations and feelings into recognizable forms. The other fish is called citta, or the mind. It is said that when either prana or citta vibrates, the other does so equally. If we are able to become aware of the vibrations of either prana or citta, or better yet if we can control one of them, then we can have a handle on the other one. This relationship between the mind and the breath is the most elemental trick, the “secret”, of the deep, bodily oriented practice called hatha yoga because by shaping and stretching and thereby freeing the breath we can liberate the mind.”
Vegan Brunch
Who doesn’t love brunch?
I never thought I would see the day when my family could all be eating a vegan brunch and not one complains. When not everyone is vegan they usually feel like they are missing out if they don’t bring their meat or other animal products to the table. But there is still so much variety to vegan food and so many great vegan versions that no one is missing out and for me It is just a nice relaxing energy. For this occasion I made some banana choc chip muffins which I will post the recipe at the end.
1st Up, Coconut Yoghurt (Coco-yo!) fruit and granola parfait served with freshly juiced pineapple, apple and orange….
Next course…
Veggie sausages, roast smashed potato, roast tomatoes, “chicken” poppers, with couscous and buckwheat herb salad (also photo below)
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This was followed by cups of tea and vegan cinnamon buns and chocolate chip peanut butter banana muffins!
for these i followed the recipe on http://vegannskitchen.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/cinnamon-irene-hurricane-buns-vegan.html but i made a traditional vanilla icing/glaze.
The recipes for these muffins can be found http://italltastesgreektome.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/vegan-chocolate-chip-banana-muffins.html
This Is Why Meat Free Mondays Matter
A great non-graphic short clip summing up some of the most important reasons why we should reduce our use of animal products and consumption and how it will benefit the planet and every creature that inhabits it.
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Veganlosophy 