Someone tell me if the blender is not good for greens.

[Goldsplinter]

Look what I found.


Please do not use electric blenders for juicing as the rapid blade movement causes oxidation of the chlorophyll and renders it useless.

Talking about wheatgrass.

http://www.saisanjeevini.org/wheat.htm

Want to know if this would apply to greens, and probably almost everything that is raw!

oh and P.S. chewing on wheatgrass is pretty cool :)

[luckitri]

Everybody's got an opinion. Some people think that keeping the fiber is best for your health so that means the blender. Others say that if you are trying to heal a major illness you need to get just the juice and need a superior juicer.

[Kerilyn]

Have you ever read the Green for Life book? Victoria does a great job explaining the reasons why we need the blended effect. Greens have the strongest cellular walls of ALL food groups. In order to get the nutrients from those greens, you need to rupture those cell walls. If you want to do that by chewing - best of luck to you! :p But I think it would take you a good 1-2 hours to finish one small salad! (You must chew each and every bit to a creamy consistency!) Try it for yourself. Take a bite of salad and right before you are going to swallow it, spit it out onto a napkin. Now, do you think that your body is able to utilize ANY of that? It will only use the SMALLEST TINIEST particles. The bigger particles enter into the blood stream and actually are found to do damage to your healthy cells!

Hope this helps!

[luckitri]

Kerilyn - I can't keep up with every book recommended. Please elaborate on greens doing damage to healthy cells. I never heard of this.

[rawnora]

Keri,
Actually, Victoria does a great job of explaining her theory about why we need to blend foods, but she does not explain how to get around the oxidation problem. I can say this with certainty even though I haven't read her book because quick oxidation is unavoidable when the surface area of a food is expanded and exposed in such a way as it is when juiced or blended. New raw fooders can benefit from juicing and blending because they assist the transitional process. However, the question posed in this thread is valid. Because of the oxidation problem and others associated with juicing and blending, these practices are entirely unnecessary and even unhealthful if they are done long-term.

In their efforts to identify a gimmick or niche for themselves, some raw leaders unfortunately combine their personal experiences with other sources of information (like research on Chimps, in Victoria's case) to arrive at theories that seem valid but are not. We are well served to think critically about information that leads us away from nature, such as the idea that foods need to be processed to be made optimal.

Appreciatively,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

[Goldsplinter]

Keri,
Actually, Victoria does a great job of explaining her theory about why we need to blend foods, but she does not explain how to get around the oxidation problem. I can say this with certainty even though I haven't read her book because quick oxidation is unavoidable when the surface area of a food is expanded and exposed in such a way as it is when juiced or blended. New raw fooders can benefit from juicing and blending because they assist the transitional process. However, the question posed in this thread is valid. Because of the oxidation problem and others associated with juicing and blending, these practices are entirely unnecessary and even unhealthful if they are done long-term.

In their efforts to identify a gimmick or niche for themselves, some raw leaders unfortunately combine their personal experiences with other sources of information (like research on Chimps, in Victoria's case) to arrive at theories that seem valid but are not. We are well served to think critically about information that leads us away from nature, such as the idea that foods need to be processed to be made optimal.

Appreciatively,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com
Tell us your opinion/belief Nora, on the blending/oxidation thing.

[sport]

We can not deny Victoria the fact that there was an improvement in the health of the participants in her study and that the only change that they made to their diet was the inclusion of the green smoothie.
She also states strongly that it has brought about an improvement in the health of her own family.

[Goldsplinter]

We can not deny Victoria the fact that there was an improvement in the health of the participants in her study and that the only change that they made to their diet was the inclusion of the green smoothie.
She also states strongly that it has brought about an improvement in the health of her own family.
...?

We're talking about the oxidation issue, not if a green smoothie is good or not.

[rawnora]

Goldsplinter,
Thanks for your question. The ideas I expressed about oxidation are not opinion or belief. A belief is an unconfirmed idea. An opinion is subjective from one person to another. Oxidation doesn't fit into either category, since it is an observable, verifiable, reproduceable scientific phenomenon. Slice an apple open and let it sit on your counter for a few minutes. The browning of the exposed parts is oxidation. The more exposed parts there are, the more browning there is. It's easy to observe in apples because they're white but it happens to all organic matter, at varying speeds, and is a natural part of the decomposition process.

Sport,
Goldsplinter's correct that your questions are off topic, but I'm happy to answer them nonetheless. Actually I have some questions for you. How do we know that the improvements that were noted were the result of the participants eating blended foods? How do we know that there wouldn't have been more improvements if the added foods had been eaten whole rather than blended? How do we know that the participants weren't overeating (an almost universal mistake among raw fooders) and that the improvements might not be owing to the fact that the inclusion of these low calorie foods simply decreased their overall consumption? These are only a few of the questions that should be asked before one leaps to the conclusion that the 'study' was valid or that blended foods are optimally healthful, as is being contended.

It is often the case that long term raw fooders think they can continue eating at the levels they did when their bodies were not assimilating efficiently. When they inevitably begin experiencing the symptoms of their excesses, they sometimes experiment with eating different foods, eating less, eating more, at different times, taking supplements, etc. If they find something that causes their symptoms to go away, they often make erroneous assumptions rather than objectively examining the evidence and arriving at conclusions that fit with everything else we know to be true. It is not correct to assume that a food or practice are optimally healthy just because it causes a symptom to go away. There are other criteria that must be met.

Best wishes,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

[LightLover]

Hi Nora, I am wondering:

- * Can some of your objections be send away, by the idea of adding lemon/lime juice when blending? Just like this juice is avoiding the browning
of a sliced apple for quite a long time, does it make sense that it is an antioxidant for a smoothie, especially if you drink it immediately?

I happen to like, by intuition, avocado smoothies with lime (recipe: carrot- and apple- and pear- and limejuice; put this all in the blender with an avocado and blend)

and also fresh coconutsmoothie with lime (limejuice in a blender with coconut
water and -meat and with banana and passionfruit)

* besides this: what is your opinion of making a marinade for your green salads? (like arugula and watercress)
I started with making a marinade (olive oil & lime juice and if you want some
salt) and let the salad in it for 1-2 hours, so the chewing work should become easier. Do you promote this?

hope you find time and love to react to this, as you always seem to be able to :) :p ;) , because I am really struggling with this!


ll

[rawnora]

Hi Nora, I am wondering:

- * Can some of your objections be send away, by the idea of adding lemon/lime juice when blending? Just like this juice is avoiding the browning
of a sliced apple for quite a long time, does it make sense that it is an antioxidant for a smoothie, especially if you drink it immediately?

I happen to like, by intuition, avocado smoothies with lime (recipe: carrot- and apple- and pear- and limejuice; put this all in the blender with an avocado and blend)

and also fresh coconutsmoothie with lime (limejuice in a blender with coconut
water and -meat and with banana and passionfruit)

* besides this: what is your opinion of making a marinade for your green salads? (like arugula and watercress)
I started with making a marinade (olive oil & lime juice and if you want some
salt) and let the salad in it for 1-2 hours, so the chewing work should become easier. Do you promote this?

Interesting questions, thanks for asking. Just intuitively, I'd say that it's not a good practice to routinely add acidic fruit juice to foods for the purpose of slowing down decomposition. Considering that the theoretical reason for blending foods is to make them more digestible, it doesn't make sense to me to add something to them that complicates digestion. In addition, we don't want to stop the process of oxidation, we only want it to happen inside our bodies. And anything that slows it down outside our bodies will complicate it on the inside too.

It is amazing and miraculous to me that our stomachs can recognize and respond in an almost completely unique way to thousands of different foods, in order to break them down. Brilliant as our guts are, however, their abilities are limited and we can't expect them to figure out how to break down 5, 10 or 20 foods at the same time. It's just a simple, inescapable fact of biochemistry that acid and alkaline neutralize each other. When this happens, digestion is greatly hindered. More of the food becomes waste. In SAD eaters, the body is constantly in a state of internal pollution because of this (among other things). Going raw is a gigantic improvement because at least the miscombined foods are digestible to begin with, although they will still only be partially digested because of the biochemical neutralization problem. New raw fooders can get away with combining errors for a certain period of time, until their bodies clean out and become more efficient. Usually at that point people start to experience symptoms when they eat certain bad combinations, and they have to start paying more attention to combining properly or they will continue to suffer. Adding lemon juice to recipes to impart a zingy flavor is acceptable even if it isn't the best combo because it assists the transition process, allowing a person to not miss cooked food so much. In this way the benefits exceed the 'cost'. But to add it for any other reason doesn't make sense. We want to increase digestibility by eating food as close to its natural state as possible, and complicating digestion by adding acidic fruit juice defeats that purpose.

Of course it depends on the foods in question too. Acidic and sweet fruits (like the ones you mention) don't work well together but lemon juice added to fats, sub-acid fruits or leafy veggies is acceptable. The classic salad dressing of nuts, lemon, tomatoes and celery is not a bad combo. Proteins also digest in an acid environment so if a person is eating cooked or dehydrated fish or meat, marinating in lemon juice would be acceptable.

Regarding oil-based marinades, unless you're washing all of the oil off of the food before you eat it, much of what you're eating will not be digested because foods coated in oil are difficult for the body to break down. Oil clings to foods so much that it's going to be difficult to get it off without using very warm water which wouldn't be the greatest thing for the food. I wouldn't imagine that it would do all that much to improve digestibility, for all this. Fundamentally, if a food has to be soaked in order to be made palatable or digestible, it probably isn't human food to begin with. Truly optimal foods don't require processing of any kind and anything that is done to them only diminishes them. Of course, in transition all bets are off because we have to do what we have to do in order to stay raw. ;) Transitional processing methods should be used to the extent that they help a person stay raw, not with the idea that the food is being improved.

Nora
www.RawSchool.com

[LightLover]

I followed toaday a combined lecture of Gabriel Cousins and Brian Clement
in Amsterdam, and asked about the blending.

And they see blending as a transition process to raw, and say that even Victoria Boutenko shares this opinion. (What a great lecture it was).

Chewing was also important to rise the serotoninelevels.

LL

[misslinda]

LL, lucky you!!!

Thank you for sharing the insightful tips and info. Raw always gets more and more interesting.

:)

[LightLover]

Linda, thet are a great team, I don't know if they act many times together?

What I learned:

- they are both not on the sugar side (included high sugar fruits)
The whole world seems to love sugar: did you know cancercells crave for sugar and use much more than normal cells? Also many other substances you don't want grow on this.

- Gabriel said chewing raises levels of serotonine, Brian didn't know it, and also nobody of the audience I assume :D

- Infrared sauna is good for detox
- A pure approach: not so much oils, but the whole foods, no lovers of sprouted beans.

- At the end they hugged eachother :p


"Come forward into the light of things"

ll

[Pierre]

Suppose you have a 2 L blender and you make half a liter of smoothie in it. So you have 1.5 liters of air in it. Air is 1/5 oxygen so you have 300 mL of oxygen. Oxygen is 1.4 g/L so you have 420 mg of oxygen. A mole of O is 16 g so that's 26 mmol.

Chlorophyll is 900 g/mol (I computed the a and b forms and picked a round number between them). I don't see anything on the chlorophyll content of leaves so I'll assume 1%. So you have 5 g of chlorophyll. That's 5.5 mmol.

When you cut an apple, you expose the cut surface of the apple to all the air in the room. When you blend leaves, you are exposing all the molecules in the leaves to all the air in the blender. But you're not exposing them all at once. Theoretically, there's enough air to oxidize all the chlorophyll, but each molecule is exposed for a millisecond, then goes back down in the blend. So I don't know how much blending it would take. I think we should ask the blender makers.

[LightLover]

Oh, and I forgot:

- Brian is now busy , not looking into the blood, but directly inside the cells themselves to see how they are being "feed" with nutrients, or not..

- Beepolls are great, only buy them when sold in refrigirator



LL

[Goldsplinter]

so reading on nora's last post in the thread. It seems that putting olive oil on a salad is NOT a good thing for your stomach/digestion. Tell me if i'm correct.

[Goldsplinter]

Yesterday I blended:

-Some greens, don't know the names
-Flax Seeds
-Cacao Nibs
-Some Jalapeno Pepper
-Celery

Tell me if it's good for the body/digestion or bad.

[sport]

Yesterday I blended:

-Some greens, don't know the names
-Flax Seeds
-Cacao Nibs
-Some Jalapeno Pepper
-Celery

Tell me if it's good for the body/digestion or bad.
Not sure about the combining but I seriously question the taste.

[Goldsplinter]

Not sure about the combining but I seriously question the taste.
lol. Funny as hell, very valid point.

[Tirza]

Interesting questions, thanks for asking. Just intuitively, I'd say that it's not a good practice to routinely add acidic fruit juice to foods for the purpose of slowing down decomposition. Considering that the theoretical reason for blending foods is to make them more digestible, it doesn't make sense to me to add something to them that complicates digestion. In addition, we don't want to stop the process of oxidation, we only want it to happen inside our bodies. And anything that slows it down outside our bodies will complicate it on the inside too.

...Nora
www.RawSchool.com

I always use pineapple juice as the liquid base in my smoothies. The pineapple tends to slow the oxidation, plus the digestive enzyme in pineapple should aid digestion.

[dogmd]

I always use pineapple juice as the liquid base in my smoothies. The pineapple tends to slow the oxidation, plus the digestive enzyme in pineapple should aid digestion.


Me tooo.. I blend my greens with the fruit and drink it all within 5 minutes.

[rawnora]

Goldsplinter,
Oils are very energy-demanding because they are difficult for the body to process. They are not utilized by the body, they are only eliminated as waste because they are out of their normal context that allows the body to recognize and assimilate them. If you like fats on your salads, it's best to use whole foods like avocados or nuts in your dressings. There are some very tasty recipes that can easily replace oil-based dressings.

Regarding your jalapeno-chocolate smoothie, I can only second what Sport said :), in addition to mentioning that it's not so much the combination that's unhealthy as it is the individual ingredients. Hot peppers are irritative to the internal skin and cacao contains harmful stimulants. Flax seeds are questionable too, but probably not harmful.

All the best,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

[LightLover]

Hi Nora, just one point we didn't discuss:

* And adding whole olives in a salad? or being cut/chopped in a dressing,
like the avocado and nuts you mentioned?

I guess these are whole foods.
, so it is fat in the normal context, but maybe there are other objections?
It must be possible to find "correctly processed" olives? Or not..?

* Anyway, I think whole olives are anyway better than oliveoil? Looked at from the point of choosing "whole foods"?

Your before/after pictures really underline the power of your pure foodchoices, but I have difficulties to give up so many things, and it seems to be more and more..

LL

LL

[rawnora]

"And adding whole olives in a salad? or being cut/chopped in a dressing,like the avocado and nuts you mentioned?
I guess these are whole foods, so it is fat in the normal context, but maybe there are other objections? It must be possible to find "correctly processed" olives? Or not..?
* Anyway, I think whole olives are anyway better than oliveoil? Looked at from the point of choosing "whole foods"?
...I have difficulties to give up so many things, and it seems to be more and more.."


LL,
Yes, olives are whole foods but the problem with them is the processing. Olives are a questionable food to begin with because they are not really palatable in their raw natural state. I've heard people say they like them that way but I've tried them and they are bitter and not tasty at all. Even if a person likes the way raw unprocessed olives taste, it's pretty hard to find them. I think NFL sells them but they are very expensive. Unless you buy the raw unprocessed ones, you're getting a powerful dose of salt when you eat olives, and salt is poisonous. As far as choosing between regular store-bought olives and olive oil, it would be difficult because they're both pretty bad.

Having said all that, I ate olives occasionally for a couple years after going raw, in addition to other sub-optimal foods that I've since moved away from. I didn't know about how bad salt was then and if I had I probably would not have eaten them at all, but for the most part when I ate those borderline foods it wasn't a mistake. It was something I needed to do. I couldn't have stayed raw eating the way I do now from the start. People who try to eat optimally too soon end up going backwards and that is very difficult to pull out of, psychologically. Plus it's hard on the body because while you are eating well your membranes are becoming more sensitive and permeable such that when you do go back and eat the harmful stuff, more of it actually enters your bloodstream.

There are some 'foods' that are more harmful than others and what a person should do in transition is identify those and try to steer clear of them or at least gradually wean off them. It doesn't have to happen overnight and it's actually better in the long term if it doesn't. This is where journaling is helpful because sometimes it seems like you're not making progress at all unless you can see what you were doing a year or two ago.

I can understand how the raw diet can seem terribly limiting at first, especially as a person learns that recipes and combinations are not optimal and wishes to progress toward more simple eating. It is very common to have feelings of loss and mourning at the idea of giving up our cherished favorite foods, even raw ones. I can recall feeling early in my transition what I can only describe as grief and desolation as I contemplated my raw future. It's all part of the mental adjustment we have to make, which actually happens very naturally without the least bit of effort. I don't see my food choices as limited at all now. One of the problems I have at this particular time of year, in fact, is that there are so many choices and so much abundance that it's hard to not eat constantly.

Just trust the process. Replace your harmful/complicated favorites with ones that are only slightly less harmful and complicated, and just continue making those small improvements periodically. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you think too much about how different your diet will be in the distant future.

Best wishes,
Nora
www.RawSchool.com

[Kerilyn]

Wow, I don't know how you guys stay on top of these posts like you do! haha. I can't find the time in the day -which keeps me up till about 1-2am! haha. Anyway, I have to say thanks to Nora. Wow I had no idea blending could be such a bad thing. I am still going to continue on my green smoothies since to take the time to make any special dressings and do all the work of making the salads.. ok I know I'm sounding pretty lazy right now- but Green Smoothies are SOO good and easy! oh well, I'll learn to come off of them eventually but as of right now..being my day 15, I think I'll stick with them for some time! Good luck to you all, and again, thanks Nora for all of your help- I love reading your posts and website - great information but don't know about the whole "only fruit" thing quite yet. it's a great way for me to get my greens in.

[LightLover]

Wow, I don't know how you guys stay on top of these posts like you do! haha. I can't find the time in the day -which keeps me up till about 1-2am! haha. Anyway, I have to say thanks to Nora. Wow I had no idea blending could be such a bad thing. I am still going to continue on my green smoothies since to take the time to make any special dressings and do all the work of making the salads.. ok I know I'm sounding pretty lazy right now- but Green Smoothies are SOO good and easy! oh well, I'll learn to come off of them eventually but as of right now..being my day 15, I think I'll stick with them for some time! Good luck to you all, and again, thanks Nora for all of your help- I love reading your posts and website - great information but don't know about the whole "only fruit" thing quite yet. it's a great way for me to get my greens in.
---------------
---------------
* it's simple Kerilyn, why I always will find time: in the "SAD" world I feel the one which is constantly being lied to; in the raw world there are less lies and they are lighter and being made with less purpose to do so. :D

But that "lying" is being replaced by much confusion. Rather preferring confusion than lies, but I still feel the raw world has to take this away as much as possible, in order to rebalance the world more into the "raw direction".

I mean: most knowledge in the "foodworld" has a biological basis, and I think
it has no use if we all solo are going our way to reinvent the wheel, (I don't believe in the statistics of the numer 1, while there are people out there (Cousins, Clement) studing the whole day, having patients, contacts with universities, microscopes and lifeexperience.

And when I heard their lecture, and heard many things that are not in their
books, (ok, not finished reading, but almost certain) things that an individual can't discover alone and are of much value, it makes me sad: where is the
"standard rawfood book" , which describes the "how", "why" and "when-issues", especially for people in little villages with difficulties
to "shopping-raw" and visit lectures, and having contacts with other, which is easier in big cities. A book that also will be the standard for discussion.

But there is shining light! Here is a unifying conference< I will ask them
if they can also right an "unifying scientifically bases book"

LL :)

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Page 1
This historic summit was held at the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach Florida on January 14, 2006. The summit convened to unify the leadership in the Living Food Movement, establishing scientifically based common standards for optimum health.Leaders from eight countries (with a combined total of 411 years following this lifestyle) agreed on the following standards:(Compiled and Organized by Jameth Sheridan, N.D.)The Optimum Diet for Health/Longevity:• Vegan (no animal products of any kind, cooked or raw)• Organic• Whole Foods• High in nutrition such as vitamins, antioxidants and phytonutrients• Highly mineralized• Contains a significant quantity of chlorophyll-rich green foods• Contains adequate complete protein from plant sources• Contains a large proportion of high-water content foods• Provides excellent hydration• Includes raw vegetable juices• Contains all essential fatty acids, including Omega 3 fatty acids from naturally occurring plant sources• Is at least 80% raw (the remaining to be Vegan, whole food,and organic)• Has moderate, yet adequate caloric intake• Contains only low to moderate sugar and exclusively from whole food sources (fruitarianism is strongly discouraged)• Is nutritionally optimal for both detoxification and rebuildingWe also agree that:• Supplementation with Vitamin B-12 is advised.• The addition of enzyme active superfoods and whole food supplements is also advised.• This way of eating can be further optimized by tailoring it based on individual needs(within the principles stated).• Benefits derived by following these principles are proportional to how well they are followed.INTERNATIONAL LIVING FOOD SUMMITVibrantHealtHtHrougHPlant-basednutritionPage 1 of 2
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Page 2
• We will remain open-minded, and this information will be updated and expanded upon, if necessary, as new research becomes available.• Diet is a critical piece of a healthy lifestyle, yet not the entire picture. A full spectrum, health supportive lifestyle is encouraged. This includes physical exercise, exposure to sunshine, as well as psychological health. Avoiding environmental toxins and toxic products is essential. Paramount is pure water (for consumption and bathing), the use of natural fiber clothing, and non-toxic personal care products. Also consider healthy options in home furnishings/building materials and related items.All leaders agree that the main objective of eating in the above mentioned fashion is to promote health, and equally to prevent and minimize disease.The following leaders support these principles:(listed in alphabetical order)Solveig Almqvist – Secretary of the Enzyme Swedish Living Foods association - SwedenTommy Axelsson – Secretary of the Enzyme Swedish Living Foods association - Sweden Fred Bischi, PhD – USATamera Campbell – Vision - USARajaa Chbani – Pharmacie L’Unite - MoroccoGabriel Cousens, MD, MD(H) – Diplomat American Board of Holistic Medicine - USABrenda Cobb – Living Foods Institute - USAAnna Maria Clement, CN, NMD, PhD – Hippocrates Health Institute - USABrian Clement, CN, NMD, PhD – Hippocrates Health Institute - USACarole Dougoud – Institute Haute Vitalite - SwitzerlandKare Engstrom – Dietician - SwedenViktoras Kulvinskas – “Grandfather” of the Living Foods Movement - USAMarie Christine Lhermitte – Chemin du mas Magnuel - FranceGeorge Malkmus – Hallelujah Acres - USARhonda Malkmus – Hallelujah Acres - USAPaul Nison – The Raw Life - USAClaudine Richard – Naturopath - FranceMichael Saiber – Vision - USAJameth Sheridan, ND – HealthForce Nutritionals - USADiana Store – Raw Superfoods – UK/The NetherlandsJill Swyers – Living Foods For Health – UK/PortugalWalter J. Urban, PhD – USA - Costa RicaPage 2 of 2

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*

[Goldsplinter]

Goldsplinter,
Oils are very energy-demanding because they are difficult for the body to process. They are not utilized by the body, they are only eliminated as waste because they are out of their normal context that allows the body to recognize and assimilate them. If you like fats on your salads, it's best to use whole foods like avocados or nuts in your dressings. There are some very tasty recipes that can easily replace oil-based dressings.

I read somewhere that we need oils. So, i'm thinking, that you're saying, that, even cold-pressed raw olive oil is not good.

And I don't know how eating things that is not oxidized is GOOD, and how is chlorophyl important to our bodies.

[sport]

[QUOTE=Goldsplinter]I read somewhere that we need oils. So, i'm thinking, that you're saying, that, even cold-pressed raw olive oil is not good.

QUOTE]
Are you confusing fats with oils. We need fats but not oils.

[Goldsplinter]

I said it right.