juicing

After a few conversations about it with my boyfriend and a viewing of Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (on Netflix instant watch, check it out), we decided to try out a juice diet/fast. Our original plan was 3 days, but we went 46 hours before deciding we wanted dinner. On the one hand, it was challenging, but on the other hand, I felt pretty good and most of my hunger wasn't real hunger. More on that later. I'd definitely do it again.

In the documentary, he goes on a 60 day juice diet and encourages several people to try it out with a 10 day juice cleanse. We decided on 3 days because we weren't as unhealthy as most of the people in the film who were trying it out, and I wanted to make sure that I picked a really feasible amount of time so that my willpower would last. Not to throw him under the bus, but while I was definitely hungry and ready for food, my boyfriend was the one who was really ready to eat. I felt hunger, but once I had a glass of juice, I was pretty full and could last a few hours before the next dose. I think some of the impact on our slightly different responses can be a result of

• gender (he needs more calories and we were drinking about the same amount)
• activity level (we both workout, but since I don't have a job, I'm not as out and about as much)
• muscle mass (going back to calorie needs)
• mental need for food

Don't get me wrong, I love food. I think about it, I almost exclusively watch the Food Network, the highlight of my day is usually cooking or going out to eat for dinner, and I spend a good amount of time with recipes thinking about what to make next. Like many people, a lot of my best moments have involved food and friends together. That said, it wasn't so hard for me not to eat it because I knew that 3 days would end relatively quickly and then it would be back in my life. It wasn't a radical lifestyle change, just an experiment. I would like to stress that I am a pretty healthy person in general, so it could inspire a significant life change and shift in eating habits for a lot of people who really need it. 

3 days of fruit and vegetable leftovers from my juicer

In the movie, everyone who tried it talked about how much better they felt, they quickly lost some junk pounds, their skin really improved (part of what inspired me to try it), and their systems got nicely cleaned out within a couple days (yes, I'm talking about poop - and not just any poop, but getting rid of things that have been clinging to your insides for a while). They say that the first few days are pretty brutal physically and emotionally. I can't really speak to that because I mostly felt fine, and other than obviously being aware that I was only ingesting juice and water, nothing really felt or seemed or behaved differently in my body. 

Was it worth it? Definitely. I liked getting to try something new and challenge myself a bit. I definitely felt healthy knowing that I was only putting good things in my body. I did feel awake and energized throughout the day, and I think hoping that it would make me and my skin better had a good positive thinking impact on how it went. 

Some important things to remember if you try it out:

• This isn't fasting - you can drink as much water as you want, and, as far as I understood it, as much juice as you want
• Store bought juice is NOT equal to the juice you should make for this. We bought a gallon of juice from a local juice bar (sort of a brutal flavor) that was made fresh for me and then used a juicer to make the rest of it. If you do this, drinking glass after glass of OJ and apple juice is not the correct thing.
• When we think of juice, we think fruits. This should be heavily vegetable based. Fruits are important for balancing the flavors and masking some of the vegetable taste (apples, citrus, and ginger are great for this), but they aren't the bulk of it. 
• Read up on it. We based ours mostly off the movie, some recipes for the Mean Green juice used in the film, and some basic internet searches. 

My fridge with our first batch of groceries for the juice fast:

oranges, green apples, lemons, strawberries, cucumber,

blueberries, blackberries, carrots, spinach, kale, ginger

 the juice we bought: the love cleanse

cucumber, celery, parsley, coconut water, spinach, kale

*it tasted very intensely like these veggies; we always mixed it with 

apple, citrus, and other items to help with the flavor so we could drink it

An example of one of our homemade juice meals (for two):

• 1/2 bunch kale
• 1/2 bunch spinach
• 2 oranges
• 2 green apples
• 1 lemon
• 1 banana
• 1-2 carrots
• handful blueberries/other berries

sugar

I have had these two tabs open on my browser for a couple weeks now, so I decided to just get the entries done for both at the same time. Also, I didn't really cook tonight (other than mistakenly making too much pasta and just deciding to gorge myself anyway), so I'll substitute my cooking for the week with interesting information and articles. Hopefully someone appreciates that in addition to pictures and my commentary on food, which I am particular to because I like good visuals and hearing myself talk/write. I digress!

My friend Jess had this article linked on her facebook, which is the site I get most of my news and information from, sadly. So thanks, friends, for posting things so I learn about the world. I read books, though. Anyway, so I read the article on New York Times and found it pretty interesting. I mean, the general overall theme is that we eat wayyyy too much sugar and it is potentially a lot worse for us that our brains are rationalizing. A lot worse, keywords being: diabetes, obesity, heart problems, cancer...

The thing I liked most about the article was getting some interesting facts; I really like facts. And good visual aids. Both are in this entry, so scroll around and find what you like. Or read it all, I tried to make careful selections! Or go read the whole article and understand it more fully.

Things I would like to specifically highlight, in case you, dearest readers, are too lazy to read the whole article yourselves:
[Is Sugar Toxic? by Gary Taubes]

• If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.
• Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” to mean both sucrose — beet and cane sugar, whether white or brown — and high-fructose corn syrup. 
•  In the early 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in sodas and other products in part because refined sugar then had the reputation as a generally noxious nutrient. High-fructose corn syrup was portrayed by the food industry as a healthful alternative. It was also cheaper than sugar, which didn’t hurt its commercial prospects. Now the tide is rolling the other way, and refined sugar is making a commercial comeback as the supposedly healthful alternative to this noxious corn-syrup stuff.
• The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form — soda or fruit juices — the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.
• In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it’s clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat. This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers.
• To be precise, the F.D.A. reviewers said that other than its contribution to calories, “no conclusive evidence on sugars demonstrates a hazard to the general public when sugars are consumed at the levels that are now current.” This is another way of saying that the evidence by no means refuted the kinds of claims that Lustig is making now and other researchers were making then, just that it wasn’t definitive or unambiguous.
• In 1980, roughly one in seven Americans was obese, and almost six million were diabetic, and the obesity rates, at least, hadn’t changed significantly in the 20 years previously. By the early 2000s, when sugar consumption peaked, one in every three Americans was obese, and 14 million were diabetic.
• During the Korean War, pathologists doing autopsies on American soldiers killed in battle noticed that many had significant plaques in their arteries, even those who were still teenagers, while the Koreans killed in battle did not. The atherosclerotic plaques in the Americans were attributed to the fact that they ate high-fat diets and the Koreans ate low-fat. But the Americans were also eating high-sugar diets, while the Koreans, like the Japanese, were not.
• The context of the science changed: physicians and medical authorities came to accept the idea that a condition known as metabolic syndrome is a major, if not the major, risk factor for heart disease and diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that some 75 million Americans have metabolic syndrome. For those who have heart attacks, metabolic syndrome will very likely be the reason.
• Having metabolic syndrome is another way of saying that the cells in your body are actively ignoring the action of the hormone insulin — a condition known technically as being insulin-resistant. You secrete insulin in response to the foods you eat — particularly the carbohydrates — to keep blood sugar in control after a meal. When your cells are resistant to insulin, your body (your pancreas, to be precise) responds to rising blood sugar by pumping out more and more insulin. Eventually the pancreas can no longer keep up with the demand or it gives in to what diabetologists call “pancreatic exhaustion.” Now your blood sugar will rise out of control, and you’ve got diabetes.
• The question is whether they’re “chronic toxins,” which means “not toxic after one meal, but after 1,000 meals.” This means that what Tappy calls “intervention studies” have to go on for significantly longer than 1,000 meals to be meaningful.
• One of the diseases that increases in incidence with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. This is why I said earlier that insulin resistance may be a fundamental underlying defect in many cancers, as it is in type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What it means is that you are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.
• Now most researchers will agree that the link between Western diet or lifestyle and cancer manifests itself through this association with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome — i.e., insulin resistance. 
• The cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it. The more insulin, the better they do. Some cancers develop mutations that serve the purpose of increasing the influence of insulin on the cell; others take advantage of the elevated insulin levels that are common to metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Some do both.
• If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. 

cinnamon and honey

The other day I got a forwarded email from my mom touting all the amazing medicinal benefits of cinnamon and honey. Now, the claims are pretty bold so it is a little hard to believe that these two simple, everyday spices/foods can have such an incredible and beneficial effect on our health and no one knows it, but on the other hand, Americans today seem to much prefer and believe in pills and medications over using lifestyle changes and food to improve their health, so I can believe that some or all of this could be true but that Americans wouldn't give credence to such simple homeopathic solutions.

On a non-cooking related note, I have had horrible eczema my entire life. It was miserable, ugly, and humiliating for me, and I visited so many doctors and tried so many medications throughout my childhood and teenage years that didn't work, so I assumed it would never really get better. When I moved to Morocco, I bought a book on my kindle one day because it sounded interesting. It was called You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty. I was definitely skeptical when I started reading the book, but the author explained things well and it all made sense, so when I came to parts that professed that allergies were caused by being dehydrated, and I knew my allergies caused my eczema to act up, I decided to give his methods a try. I started drinking the recommended amount of water and stopped using my allergy pills. I was really and truly shocked at how much better my skin got. For the past 9 month, then, I have barely used any medication for my skin, which is a huge contrast to the steroids, allergy pills, and other variety of medication I used regularly for the first 23 years of my life. In addition to being happy that my system has probably flushed out at this point most of the medications I was putting into it on a regular basis, my skin doesn't look like I have a disease, except for all the scars. So after that experience, I am a little more likely to believe that simple attention to incorporating something into your diet and routine can have a really wonderful impact on your health.

So, before I pasted in the text about cinnamon and honey that my mom sent me, I wanted to do a little research and see what I could find about cinnamon and honey and their medicinal value. I will go ahead and paste the email text in now, and at the bottom you can find some sources I found that are related to or support the claims made. I also want to say that I don't know who wrote this email, and I haven't tried any of the treatments myself, it is just something I found interesting and curious and thought I would share.

Cinnamon and Honey 

Honey is the only food on the planet that will  not spoil or rot. It will do what some call turning to sugar. In reality, honey is always honey. However, when left in a cool dark place for a long time it will do what I rather call "crystallizing". When this happens, loosen the lid, boil some water, and sit the honey container in the hot water, turn off the heat and let it liquefy. It is then as good as it ever was. Never boil honey or put it in a microwave. To do so will kill the enzymes in the honey. 

Facts on Honey and Cinnamon:  

It is found that a mixture of honey and cinnamon cures most diseases. Honey is produced in most of the countries of the world. Scientists of today also accept honey as a 'Ram Ban' (very effective) medicine for all kinds of diseases. Honey can be used without any side effects for any kind of diseases. 

Today's science says that even though honey is sweet, if taken in the right dosage as a medicine, it does not harm diabetic patients. Weekly World News, a magazine in Canada , in its issue dated 17 January, 1995 has given the following list of diseases that can be cured by honey and cinnamon as researched by western scientists: 

HEART DISEASES: 

Make a paste of honey and cinnamon powder, apply on bread, instead of jelly and jam, and eat it regularly for breakfast. It reduces the cholesterol in the arteries and saves the patient from heart attack. Also, those who have already had an attack, if they do this process daily, they are kept miles away from the next attack. Regular use of the above process relieves loss of breath and strengthens the heart beat. In America and Canada , various nursing homes have treated patients successfully and have found that as you age, the arteries and veins lose their flexibility and get clogged; honey and cinnamon revitalize the arteries and veins. 

ARTHRITIS: 

Arthritis patients may take daily, morning and night, one cup of hot water with two spoons of honey and one small teaspoon of cinnamon powder. If taken regularly even chronic arthritis can be cured. In a recent research conducted at the 

Copenhagen University, it was found that when the doctors treated their patients with a mixture of one tablespoon honey and half teaspoon cinnamon powder before breakfast, they found that within a week, out of the 200 people so treated, practically 73 patients were totally relieved of pain, and within a month, mostly all the patients who could not walk or move around because of arthritis started walking without pain. 

BLADDER INFECTIONS: 

Take two tablespoons of cinnamon powder and one teaspoon of honey in a glass of lukewarm water and drink it. It destroys the germs in the bladder. 

CHOLESTEROL: 

Two tablespoons of honey and three teaspoons of Cinnamon Powder mixed in 16 ounces of tea water, given to a cholesterol patient, was found to reduce the level of cholesterol in the blood by 10 percent within two hours. As mentioned for arthritic 

patients, if taken three times a day, any chronic cholesterol is cured. According to information received in the said Journal, pure honey taken with food daily relieves complaints of cholesterol.

COLDS: 

Those suffering from common or severe colds should take one tablespoon lukewarm honey with 1/4 spoon cinnamon powder daily for three days. This process will cure most chronic cough, cold, and clear the sinuses. 

UPSET STOMACH: 

Honey taken with cinnamon powder cures stomach ache and also clears stomach ulcers from the root. 

GAS: 

According to the studies done in India and Japan , it is revealed that if honey is taken with cinnamon powder the stomach is relieved of gas. 

IMMUNE SYSTEM: 

Daily use of honey and cinnamon powder strengthens the immune system and protects the body from bacteria and viral attacks. Scientists have found that honey has various vitamins and iron in large amounts. Constant use of honey strengthens the white blood corpuscles to fight bacterial and viral diseases. 

INDIGESTION: 

Cinnamon powder sprinkled on two tablespoons of honey taken before food relieves acidity and digests the heaviest of meals. 

INFLUENZA: 

A scientist in Spain has proved that honey contains a natural ' Ingredient' which kills the influenza germs and saves the patient from flu. 

LONGEVITY: 

Tea made with honey and cinnamon powder, when taken regularly, arrests the ravages of old age. Take four spoons of honey, one spoon of cinnamon powder, and three cups of water and boil to make like tea. Drink 1/4 cup, three to four times a day. It keeps the skin fresh and soft and arrests old age. Life spans also increase and even a 100 year old, starts performing the chores of a 20-year-old. 

PIMPLES: 

Three tablespoons of honey and one teaspoon of cinnamon powder paste. Apply this paste on the pimples before sleeping and wash it next morning with warm water. If done daily for two weeks, it removes pimples from the root.. 

SKIN INFECTIONS: 

Applying honey and cinnamon powder in equal parts on the affected parts cures eczema, ringworm, and all types of skin infections. 

WEIGHT LOSS: 

Daily in the morning one half hour before breakfast on an empty stomach, and at night before sleeping, drink honey and cinnamon powder boiled in one  cup of water. If taken regularly, it reduces the weight of even the most obese person. Also, drinking this mixture regularly does not allow  the fat to accumulate in the body even though the person may eat a high calorie diet. 

CANCER: 

Recent research in Japan and Australia has revealed that advanced cancer of the stomach and bones have been cured successfully. Patients suffering from these kinds of cancer should daily take one tablespoon of honey with one teaspoon of cinnamon powder for one month three times a day. 

FATIGUE: 

Recent studies have shown that the sugar content of honey is more helpful rather than being detrimental to the strength of the body. Senior citizens, who take honey and cinnamon powder in equal parts, are more alert and flexible. Dr.  Milton, who has done research, says that a half tablespoon of honey taken in a glass of water and sprinkled with cinnamon powder, taken daily after brushing and in the afternoon at about 3:00 P.M.. when the vitality of the body starts to decrease, increases the vitality of the body within a week. 

BAD BREATH: 

People of South America , first thing in the morning, gargle with one teaspoon of honey and cinnamon powder mixed in hot water, so their breath stays fresh throughout the day. 

HEARING LOSS: 

Daily morning and night honey and cinnamon powder, taken in equal parts restores hearing. 

Now for my research findings, though let me say that I didn't really read through all of them terribly closely or check them out too stringently. I just wanted to see what was out there. 

• Cinnamon medicinal value, wikipedia
• Honey in medicine, wikipedia
• Cinnamon against mosquitos
• Cinnamon and diabetes
• Book about medical benefits of spices and seasonings
• Honey as topical antibacterial agent for wounds
• Honey as treatment for infections
• Honey as treatment for cough
• Honey as aid for burn treatment