I can see how confusing it is when you get thrown all sorts of gargle at you. Everyone has ideas about how to get this mineral or vitamins or how to combine foods to get the best phytonutrient absorption. For Pete’s sake, just relax!

Here are what I think are the most basic of health principles.

1. The closer the food is to it’s original form the more healthy it is for you. When you eat whole foods you give your body the maximum nourishment available. Even eating more raw food will help you reap the total benefits of the food you eat. Heat can often times kill or deactivate enzymes in our food.

The bottom line is: when you are adequately nourished you will consume less and maintain a healthier weight. So make your meals from scratch and stop eating out of a can or a box!

2. Artificial sweeteners etc. do not stop you from losing weight. Studies show that artificial sweeteners actually cause weight gain. When you eat garbage like diet pops you are assaulting your digestive system and that affects how your metabolism works. You will gain weight and could cause damage to your body. There have been studies that show that when rodents are exposed to artificial sweeteners they develop tumours and have babies with birth defects.

You can read the article and view the comments on my artificial sweeteners article for starters.

3. Try to eat less sugar (even natural sources of sugars (not including fruit)). Sugar suppresses your immune system and makes you more likely to get sick. It also affects your mood in a negative way. You’ll be happier without that box of chocolate chip cookies. Trust me.

Cut out all forms of sugar for a week or two and you’ll be able to eliminate the craving. If you choose to do that just be aware that there is sugar in all  sorts of items you wouldn’t automatically think of…like bread for instance.

4. Watch your portion sizes. Meat is one of the items that is often over eaten. I am quite serious when I say that meat will kill you. You would be better off switching to plant sources of protein. These help fight disease instead of encouraging it’s growth and will help keep your digestive system more regular and healthy. Try to incorporate more vegetables into your diet. These are your disease fighters! Plus they keep you regular and that is a major component to good health.

5. Make better choices by reading labels. Let’s say you really want a salty treat. Potato chips are out. See my post on MSG. You can substitute with some tortilla chips (I choose one that uses organic corn because I try to avoid GMO when I can) and some homemade or organic store bought salsa or guacamole. I really try to advocate for making your own food but certified organic can be almost as good since they can not use chemical preservative etc. When it’s organic it has to be food! You can’t have organic chemicals.

Just find a better alternative to your craving. An organic dark chocolate bar instead of a Snickers, a cup of fruit juice instead of pop.

6. Get some fresh air and sunshine. This will make you happier and therefore healthier.

7. Try to use less chemicals in your home.  I have been cleaning with lemon juice, baking soda, vinegar and cream of tartar for over a month now and it works just as well. If you clean with vinegar though, make sure you air out the room before you have company over. The smell does linger a bit. But it’s still better than that stinging Windex smell to me.

But most importantly, just enjoy your food. Don’t get frustrated that you don’t know which salad to eat. Just take it one day at a time.

Ok, I was bored tonight so I went on the PETA website. If truth be told I was actually going on there to see if it was time to vote for the sexiest vegetarian of the year. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be. This is the only time I even do anything remotely close to this. I just like seeing the long, long list of names for veg*n actors, athletes, singers and all the other famous people.

But while I was there I started checking out the newest animal rights issues.

PETA is taking on the Canadian Fur Council right now. I wrote to the CFC a while back because I was appalled by their full page ad in the National Post about how fur is the eco-friendly choice for winter wear. What?!?

They wrote back to me (enough to fill a book by the way) about how it is eco-friendly. Cause you know, synthetic, cruelty-free fabrics are made from petroleum products. Well, maybe they are overlooking a major fact. To condition fur or leather so that it doesn’t rot (as all animal remains naturally do) they have to be conditioned with very potent, very toxic chemicals. These tanneries aren’t even allowed to exist within communities because they pollute water supplies and the environment around them. After I found out what they use to tan leather I really felt sick about the leather couch we bought before we became vegetarians. Ever since we became veg I felt guilty about owning a big leather couch (I thought about getting rid of it but I couldn’t see how that would atone for those cows anyways) and then when I found out the toxins on the leather I felt contaminated!

So the eco-friendly (socially responsible) choice for fashionable wear is dead animal skin? Just so we are clear, there has been a group of Canadians that have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau on the grounds that it’s wrong for the CFC to use the eco-friendly claim to bolster sales when that claim is far from true. That is what the campaign is really addressing.

I am so glad that PETA is taking these jerks on! You can see some of what they’re up to here: http://blog.peta.org/archives/2008/04/is_the_canadian.php

You can send a letter of protest here (just fill your name in): http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/fur_council_canada

PETA has also been working hard on the animal testing front. I have a blog entry from a while back where I address animal testing. You can check that out if you are unsure about the controversy of animal testing, mainly about how it is often unnecessary because it doesn’t affect outcomes or drugs, products etc. Another reinforcement of that idea would be the countless rodents who died in lab tests to prove that aspartame is indeed not safe and yet it’s in everything! Same thing with cosmetics. Anyways…just read it if you want to get the scoop.

I have one rant for today: Margarine!

Margarine has always felt wrong to me but I didn’t know why until, about two years ago, I was reading Dr. Ogi Ressel’s book entitled Kids-First: Health with No Interference.Dr. Ressel is a father of three, a chiropractor, a researcher, a lecturer and a pediatric and x-ray expert, living in Ontario. He has also been a staff writer in Alive magazine (which I highly recommend) and Canada’s Healthy Living Guide magazine.

I have never been able to find a copy of this book on Amazon but here is the link from the publisher: http://www.longlifecatalogs.com/SHOP/STORE/viewItem.asp?idProduct=211

It’s a great book and it has great information about behavioural drugs and asthma and anything pertaining to children’s health. The part I want to talk about today is what he says about margarine.

Margarine seems OK in theory but it is its processing that makes it unhealthy. Vegetable oils are heated to very high temperatures which causes the oils to become rancid. Dr. Ressel then says that a Nickle catalyst is added with hydrogen atoms to solidify this rancid oil garbage. Then deodorants and colourants are added to take the smell away and make the grey solid turn into that lovely, appetizing cream colour.

The solidification process causes harmful trans-fat acids to be formed. These are carcinogenic, mutagenic and difficult for the body to digest.

Dr. Ressel states that once finished, margarine is one molecule away from being plastic. We’re supposed to store food in Tupperware containers not spread it on our toast! He also issues a challenge. He says that if you don’t believe him you can leave a container of margarine out in your garage and even after months it won’t have changed. Flies won’t eat it and bacteria won’t grow on it. Does this sound like something you want to be ingesting?

I was looking on the Alive website today and they had an interesting statement. Trans fatty acid content does not have to be disclosed on labels in the US or Canada. Hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids are included as polyunsaturated fats (the source material) so that manufacturers can maintain saturated fat-free claims for their products. So the whole idea of margarine being better for you is total garbage. You can read the article here: http://www.alive.com/3631a4a2.php

The article also states that margarine will increase your levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower your levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL).

Butter on the other hand is a much more suitable spread/cooking medium as it is stable at high temperatures. Alive magazine as well as many other resources state that butter and coconut oil are the most stable frying oils. Olive oil ranks really well as well but canola oil and most other inexpensive oils will begin to develop carginogens due to the heat way before they fry much of anything. So in low temperatures they are OK (as in vinaigrettes) but I don’t bother stocking them at all. The processing makes a difference in the quality and health factor of the oil and since they don’t usually specify the methods of extraction on these oils, I don’t buy them. When cooking you’ll want to use a virgin or extra-virgin olive oil that has been cold pressed (or unrefined) or you can use butter.

Butter also has stores of vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and cholesterol. Although a diet high in cholesterol is bad for you, a little butter won’t be harmful in a properly balanced diet. In fact, children need fats in their diets and as a vegetarian family, fats are never a concern.

I do try to use butter as little as possible and substitute all I can for oils. This is only because dairy farms are big contributors to animal suffering. After all, your veal comes from the males calves of dairy cows. Dairy farms have no use for male calves and since they can’t be milked they are either chopped up into dog food in their infancy or raised in tiny crates for veal.

One more thing to add about aspartame from Dr. Ressel’s book, he writes: Methanol, from aspartame, is released in the small intestine when the methyl groups of aspartame encounters the enzyme clymotrypsin.

Free methanol begins to form in liquid aspartame-containing products (ie. pop, juices etc.) at temperatures above 86 degrees F also within the human body which is at 98.6 degrees F.

The methanol is then converted to formaldehyde. The formaldehyde converts to formic acid, an ant sting poison. He goes on to say that toxic formic acid is used to strip epoxy and eurothane coatings and that it can’t be good to be ingesting it. That only accounts for 10% of aspartame’s toxicity! There are other parts of aspartame mentioned in his book that are even worse than what is mentioned in the excerpt above.

On to some positive stuff. One of these days I will talk about all the good things hidden in our fruits and veggies but that is much too much work for today.

I will talk about seaweed though. Seaweed is a power house of many amazing minerals. It is chlorophyll-rich and one of the best sources of electrolytes! Brendan Brazier states in his bookThe Thrive Diet that they have 10 times the calcium of cow’s milk and several times more iron than red meat.

My favorite way to eat seaweed in is sushi! I love avocado sushi but you can add anything from veganaise, carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, sprouts, lettuce, peppers, anything you can think of. I have even tried tofu slices wrapped in arrowroot powder and fried in olive oil (see your health food grocer for arrowroot powder). They make a decent substitue for fried shrimp.

I found a website with good instructions for rolling sushi. See it here: http://sushiday.com/archives/2006/10/26/how-to-roll-maki-sushi/ 

The only thing I want to add to these instructions is that I always use water to seal the flap that end the sushi roll. It helps to keep your sushi roll from falling apart. Then make sure to use a really low sodium soy sauce (the regular stuff tastes too salty and detracts from the sushi) and some wasabi (you’ll find it on the shelf beside the nori sheets but it must be refrigerated after opening). Yumm…wasabi! I know what I am making for lunch!

I am including two rice recipes.

Traditional white sushi rice:

This is much easier than it looks. You basically just do a 1:2 ratio of sushi rice and water. I use one and a half to two cups of rice and that makes about six rolls. You are supposed to rinse the rice until all the water runs clear. I often forget this step. Oops. The sushi rice is important because other types of rice will stay dry and won’t stick together very well. Aged rice is even better.

Cook until the rice is tender, sticky and the water is all gone. While the rice is cooking you want to combine 5tbsp of rice vinegar, 3 tbsp of sugar and 2 tbsp of salt. You heat that until the sugar is all dissolved and then let cool.

Once the rice is cooked you transfer it to a large wooden bowl or a large ceramic bowl will do and use a spatula constantly dipped in the rice vinegar mix to separate the grains of rice. Let cool until at room temperature. I have often let sit in the fridge a bit when I am in a hurry. The recipe is derived from the book SUSHI made easy and my own experiences making sushi.

Then follow the instructions for rolling your sushi in the link above!

Brown rice:

The instructions are pretty much the same as the recipe for white rice but the recipe urges you not to refrigerate. I imagine this would make the rice quite dry.

This recipe is derived from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and I haven’t tried it yet.

You can also add other forms of seaweed (such as arame) into miso soups and rice dishes.

Here’s to slimmer waist lines, good food and great health!