1. Start with you. While scientists once believed we were separate from everything else on earth, we now know that couldn’t be further from the truth. We human beings are made up of the same stuff that makes up the stars we gaze at, the grass we walk on and the very food we eat. Spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra says it best: “At some point in our lives, the realization dawns upon us that freedom does not come from external situations or circumstance. All of creation, everything that exists in the physical world, is the result of the unmanifest transforming itself into the manifest. Everything that we behold comes from the unknown. Our physical body, the physical universe — anything and everything that we can perceive through our senses — is the transformation of the unmanifest, unknown and invisible into the manifest, known and visible. The physical universe is nothing other than the self curving back within itself as spirit, mind and physical matter.”
With this in mind, how we think about ourselves, treat ourselves and feed ourselves becomes a whole new ball game: every negative thought we hold and reaffirm to ourselves is also reaffirmed to the universe, every bad diet choice directly affects the health of universe, every unkind action or thought towards another has a direct affect on the universe and so on. Making conscious, educated choices every day is the first and most important step in healing the earth. A great place to start the education is with inspirational author and teacher, Louise L Hay and her bestselling book You Can Heal Your Life
2. Change your diet. While the meat and dairy industries do everything in their power to ensure consumers believe meat and dairy help us grow healthy and strong, there is much evidence to the contrary. Besides the undeniable health risks of eating meat and dairy that can no longer be ignored due to the rise-and-rise of cancer cases, there’s another reason it’s important to reassess the amount of animal products in your diet—and that’s the detrimental impact meat production has on the planet. A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. When asked by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) what personal change people could make to help the environment, ex-Beatles star Paul McCartney answered, “I think the biggest change anyone could make in their own lifestyle would be to become vegetarian.” Find out how here.
As with anything, it’s about being kind to yourself during the process if you decide to give up meat and dairy. Do your research to ensure you do things at a pace that works best for your body and lifestyle. An important thing to remember: vegetarianism and veganism are not diets in the common sense of the word, or religions for that matter. Rather they’re a lifestyle choice—an action resulting from understanding how everything on the earth is deeply connected, and how what we put in our mouth has a profound effect on everything we are and do. That means taking it all one meal and day at a time, so leave any feelings of guilt or failure at the door. Every step you take towards making a difference adds up. Be proud of yourself and tell yourself often.
3. Stop buying plastic water bottles, shopping bags or containers. We’ve all certainly heard it before: buying water in plastic bottles and getting plastic bags at the supermarket isn’t a good choice for the environment. Treehugger.com has an article that gets straight to the point detailing what is known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” or “trash vortex”: (it’s) essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area twice the size of the continental U.S. Believed to hold almost 100m tons of flotsam, this vast “plastic soup” stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. Gotta see it to believe it? Watch this.
As said before, being kind to you, also means you’re being kind to the world around you. Plastic water bottles contain the cancer-causing chemical known as Bisphenol A, which leaches from the bottles to the water you consume. Step one: buy a reusable water bottle. Step two: fit a reverse osmosis filter to your kitchen tap (same goes for the shower: many municipal water supplies are not only highly chlorinated, but also contain high levels of pharmaceutical drugs—such as antibiotics, oral contraceptives etc—which get ingested through the skin, which is the body’s largest organ. Read more here.
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There are so many good reasons to read the label on any cosmetic product you intend to buy. I used to think, albeit naively, that if a product was for sale then it must have been put through rigorous testing and deemed safe for human use. But alas, that wishful thought was just that—wishful.
Amongst the thousands of cosmetics brands on the market today, a good number contain chemicals toxic to our health. Just like food in the supermarket, if you can’t pronounce a word on a label, chances are it was brewed in a lab not in nature. Many of these ingredients are used as fillers; cheap additions that give the illusion of more product, without hurting the manufacturer’s bottom line.
Just because a lipstick, face cream or the like is expensive also doesn’t mean it’s any safer than the alternative $2 bottle in your local drug store or chemist. In fact, that cheap bottle may be a hundred times safer than the cream that comes in the fancy packaging.
With cosmetic safety regulations lacking in many countries, it’s up to ourselves to be our own judge and jury when it comes to what we’re willing to buy and then put on our skin—our body’s largest organ. Anything you slap on the outside ends up on the inside. If you’ve read this blog before today you’ll be familiar with the phrase: “if you can’t eat it, don’t wear it”.
If you’re starting to wonder exactly what chemicals are lurking in your bathroom cabinet, be sure to check out The Cosmetics Database.
In the book Natural Organic Hair and Skin Care, cosmetic chemist and herbalist Aubrey Hampton is quoted as saying: “Buyers in department, drug, discount and supermarkets don’t know anything about the chemicals that go into cosmetics, and assume their customers don’t know much either.”
These chemicals have only been proven safe with animal testing. If you put them in your product you rely on or accept those tests. Also, many of these chemicals pollute our environment because they aren’t biodegradable. This affects all species. You won’t know this if you don’t read the label.
Besides the cocktail of chemicals that make up many beauty products on the market today, there’s also the very real issue of animal testing. Just because a manufacturer didn’t test on an innocent being, doesn’t mean the manufacturer they bought their chemical ingredients from wasn’t tested on an unsuspecting monkey or rat. What it boils down to? Labels also lie.
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A few years ago, I was completely addicted to coffee. A soy latte here, a mocha chino there. But from the moment I became vegan I also gave up my love affair with caffeine and switched to health-boosting herbal teas. Now, I drink just about every herbal tea around, from dandelion leaf to sage. There are now loose leaf teas in my kitchen I’d never dreamed existed.
One of my favourite places on the planet to drink tea was Dr Tea’s on Melrose Ave in Los Angeles, until it temporarily closed its doors last year. The man behind the much-loved tea sanctuary Mark Ukra dared opened the tea garden in a city known for its countless Starbucks and loyal coffee addicts who frequent them.
So while the English swear by it and the Japanese cherish it, in the United States, Mark (or Dr Tea as he is affectionately known) says tea is one of the least favoured drinks, despite its documented health benefits.
Considering he comes from a family of Middle Eastern tea merchants dating back more than 400 years, it’s little surprise Dr Tea has become the unofficial spokesperson for tea in the United States. His book, The Ultimate Tea Diet, also showed that tea was good for more than just getting your daily dose of antioxidants.
I recently caught up with Dr Tea and asked him to share some interesting tid bits about the ancient beverage that comes in many varieties, yet is derived from just one powerhouse plant: the Camellia Sinensis.
SD: How can tea help coffee drinkers kick their habit?
DR TEA: I had this exact issue. I found that tea is essentially consumed exactly like coffee, hot and or cold. It can be placed in the same cup so you have the same feeling. They both have caffeine, albeit, tea has less as well as L-Theanine which counteracts caffeine’s harmful effect in the brain. Now taste of course is not easily matched although I sell a coffee tea, which is a tea I have roasted in a coffee roaster so it looks and smells like coffee.
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Even though I eat a mostly plant-based and raw diet, I still enjoy cooking up a warm meal every now and again. Sautéing a little tempeh, onion, garlic and miso is always a delicious addition to a kale salad.
But what happens if the pan you’re using to make your healthy masterpiece is doing you more harm than good? Case in point: Non-stick fry pans and the solid research that shows they’re detrimental to human health.
I cleaned out my kitchen cupboards long ago from chemical-coated cookware, after I did some research and found those fancy non-stick fry pans produce highly toxic fumes that leach into food causing cancer and other illnesses.
According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), after just two to five minutes of heating, coated cookware can exceed the point where the coating breaks apart and emits toxic particles and gases. At varying temps the coatings can give off at least six toxic gases, including, you guessed it, two carcinogens.
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About a year ago, a relative was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He was told bluntly by his doctor he wouldn’t make next Christmas. With those words, and not being prepared to hear them, everything turned to blur.
After one course of poisonous chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the relative changed direction and undertook a more natural approach, cleansing his body and replacing usual unhealthy meals with foods from nature. While he’s not in the clear, he has a new lease on life and has, in effect, become his own doctor, managing his own body. He has taken it upon himself to do his own research. It’s now likely he will indeed see next Christmas. Probably the Christmas after that, too.
So, the question remains: what gives another person the right, doctor or otherwise, to tell another human being when their approximate date of death will be? When did we make it part of the health “care” system to strip away a person’s hope? When did Western doctors become psychics?
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A bottle of Pom Wonderful landed on my desk the other day. A cute little rotund ball of juice, promising to bolster the body with antioxidants, relieve digestion issues, lower cholesterol and the like.
The first thing I always do, of course, is flip any product over and read the ingredient list. While many drinks are marketed as healthy, a considerable amount on supermarket shelves are loaded with all sorts of undesirable (and oft-unpronounceable) ingredients.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn Pom Wonderful is actually pomegranate juice, albeit made from a concentrate. It also tastes pretty great.
While I think it’s an option for those who lead a busy life and don’t have time to make fresh juice, I’m personally not a fan of the pasturisation process, which is typically used to extend shelf life. However, the Pom Wonderful peeps use a flash method. My question is, is flash any better than the traditional process?
According Sally Fallon, nutrition researcher, chef, journalist and author of Nourishing Traditions – The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats the jury is still out: “flash pasteurization heats (the product) very rapidly and only holds it for a few seconds. So it’s unclear which is worse (pasturisation or flash pasturisation), whether there’s any advantage, nutritional advantage to one or the other. Both of the methods get rid of the enzymes and that is the test for successful pasteurisation.”
I had some questions for the Pom Wonderful company, which they were more than happy to answer…
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While I’m on the subject of healthy skin, I thought I’d include a post about my aversion to sunscreens. I don’t wear them and never will.
I stopped using sunblock the moment I stopped being a beauty editor a few years ago. A combination of gut feeling and research told me what I was being told to “protect” my skin with was little more than a poison (and poisonous it is).
You see, the sun is a life-giver. Without it, we’d be on our way out. The amount of sun we can tolerate depends on various factors from skin type to foods we include in our diet. But somewhere along the way, we’ve been told to fear the sun. Cover up and slather up the marketing hype tells us, and we’ll be doing a great job of protecting ourselves from that nasty cancer-causing ball or fire in the sky.
So why, was my question, had the skin cancer rates skyrocketed? Why were we being told to suddenly be scared of the very thing that gives life to the planet and everything on it? Dollars of course. Scare the masses and they’ll buy the product.
Here’s an excerpt from Natural News:
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…they sell it on supermarket shelves.
Check out this video below from StoptheRobbery.com if you’ve ever thought cancer (and many other dis-eases such as alzheimers) were a mysteries to be cured by a man in a white coat.
It’s just another example of how important it is to be your own doctor—and that starts with what we put in our shopping carts. Much of what’s offered on supermarket shelves these days are poisons disguised as foods and personal care products (think toothpaste, deodorant, sunscreens etc). It’s little wonder one in three people are diagnosed with some form of cancer in the US alone. In 1908, that number was one in 8,000.
Once these poisons have taken hold, the people in white coats proceed to offer greater doses of poisons in the form of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
It’s time to stop looking for a “cure” and funding societies that masquerade as our would-be saviours, yet do nothing but line their own pockets. While governments may never conform to the side of what’s right and moral, in the best interests of the populations they “serve”, it ultimately doesn’t matter. We all have the choice of what we willingly put into our bodies. We have the power to prevent diseases from manifesting. It’s just a matter of waking up to what’s going on. Oh, and getting really good at reading product labels.
That said, have a healthful weekend!
I want to share this profound excerpt from the preface of Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm by C. David Coates, kindly highlighted in a recent comment from JC (thanks JC!).
As humans, I believe our potential is limitless, as long as we focus our attention on actions that work with nature, not against. Clearly, as C. David Coates explains so well, we seem to have lost our way when we made it our mission to act as a god, rather than work with God.
Aren’t humans amazing animals? They kill wildlife – birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed.
Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.
So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions of more animals to look for cures for these diseases.
Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.
Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for “Peace on Earth.”
~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm by C. David Coates~
As Christmas day nears, I’ve been thinking about jolly ol’ Santa and his love for milk and cookies … how his turning vegan could be the biggest gift to vegan activists everywhere.
Imagine the influence he’d have. Children worldwide would be begging their parents for freshly-made almond milk with a side of raw vegan truffle balls, forget the cows, thank you very much.
So, without further adieu, here is my letter to Santa this year—10 reasons he should go vegan. I just hope he gets it on time…
1. Your cholesterol levels, Santa, would be back to normal. No more need for those pesky GP visits and poisonous pharmaceuticals;
2. Your energy levels would skyrocket, especially if you adopt a mostly raw diet. Raw, live foods are packed with enzymes, which are the givers of life. Kids everywhere want to see you around for a long time to come. Eating raw and vegan is healthy for you, animals and the planet.
3. Santa, I know you love animals. What bigger gift could you give to them than not eating or wearing them?
4. I don’t mean to be rude, Santa, but being overweight is a serious risk to your health. Did you know tummy fat raises your risk for high blood cholesterol by about 50 percent? A healthy vegan diet will have you at your optimal weight in no time.
5. Most cookies are laden with butter and processed sugar. Many of the mass-produced kind are even worse, with ingredients made up of numbers and boasting names impossible to pronounce. Santa, do you know where your cookies came from?
6. Drinking cows milk has been linked to all sorts of dis-eases, including asthma, osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes and more. Making milk from nuts is a cinch and doesn’t require harming animals or using massive amounts of the earth’s energy.
7. I hate to be the one to break it to you Santa, but that big fur collar that keeps you warm as you deliver your presents once belonged to real, live animals — defenseless creatures who were tortured and skinned without a second thought. I’ve also been told that fur has formaldehyde in it, which has been known to cause cancers. I don’t want you getting sick, Santa.
8. I know eating on the run must be tempting to a busy man like you, Santa. But I think you should know that fast food meats have thousands of additives that are addictive and fattening. Much of the meat on menus today are also full of pesticides and hormones.
9. Bacon and pork may be tempting, but did you know that pigs are more intelligent than dogs? Word has it they are intelligent as a three year old. I know you’d never eat a three year old, would you, Santa?
10. Those fancy leather seats in your sleigh may be comfy Santa, but did you know how many cows died to make them? If you compare your ride to the average Mercedes Benz, my guess is around seven.
So Santa, if you’re reading this, I urge you to take the pledge. Go vegan in 2010. Imagine the energy you’d have delivering presents next year. Those rosy cheeks would have a truly healthy glow, Mrs Claus could learn new culinary skills, whipping up raw vegan recipes to share with the elves. I’m certain Rudolph would be grateful too, knowing for certain he won’t be re-named venison when it’s time for retirement.
And to PETA, I think I’m onto something. I’ll let you take it from here.
It’s great that more and more companies are coming out with vegan product lines. But just because no animals were harmed in the making of these lipsticks, moisturisers and the like, does it mean they’re good for you? Not always.
Unless the ingredients are natural and organic, chances are you could be slapping man made chemicals on your bod. These chemicals are absorbed through the skin, into the bloodstream and contribute to toxicity that can lead to various dis-eases. Yikes. Whoever coined the phrase “beauty is pain” was right on more than one level.
The Environmental Working Group has a comprehensive list, called The Cosmetics Database, that’s well worth keeping handy. It features many of the products we’ve all come to know and love, complete with their toxicity/carcinogen level. You’ll never look at your mascara the same again.
Vegan Peace also has a comprehensive listing of ingredients and products that can help determine if your beauty products are indeed vegan friendly. Then it’s just a matter of determining which of those are human friendly.
A great natural beauty line worth Googling is Living Nature, which is made “of” New Zealand and is low on the scale of harm according to The Cosmetics Database.
Better yet, find beauty fixes right from your own kitchen. Here’s a handy how-to intro from The Green Dove.
Bursting the Beauty Bubble
A lot of big business has benefited from the rise of diseases such as cancer and diabetes (think pharmaceutical companies, multi-billion dollar charities etc). I love (note sarcasm) how some brands of margarine are marketed as having the ability to lower cholesterol. Who regulates this stuff? It’s just another reason why it’s so important to never believe marketing hype on any product. Ever.
Okay, whinge over.
The purpose of my post is to highlight a documentary I highly recommend to anyone who’s suffering from any type of diabetes, or any dis-ease for that matter. Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is a movie featuring some of my favourite people in-the-know: Woody Harrelson, Tony Robbins, David Wolfe and Dr. Gabriel Cousens.
It’s an independent doco (see trailer below) that chronicles six Americans with diabetes who switch to a diet of vegan, organic, uncooked food to reverse disease without pharmaceutical medication. The six are challenged to give up meat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, soda, junk food, fast food, processed food, packaged food, and cooked food for 30 days. The results are inspiring and undoubtedly would give hope to people who want to be disease-free.
Imagine seeing an end to the likes of “World Diabetes Day” (which was yesterday) and products emblazoned with pink ribbons. Enough of big businesses making money from illnesses and multi-gazillion dollar research that only offers a band-aid “solution”. If we all become our own doctors and refuse to put anything into our bodies that’s not as nature intended, the problem, I sincerely believe, will be a problem no more.
Here are some great quotes from the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates.
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”
“Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.”
“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”
“It’s far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has”
“Walking is man’s best medicine”
“Everything in excess is opposed to nature.”
“As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least, to do no harm.”
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
