A monthly ezine brought to you by Petro Janse van Vuuren, changing your life with healthier eating choices

In this edition:

1. Personal update: Birthday Month
2. Monthly Maxim: Soft Dairy
3. Feature article: The Natural Way
4. Recipes: Warm in Winter
5. Business Bite
6. Healthy Talks Calendar
7. Note to Maritzburgers about chickens
8. Note to Stellenboshers about recycling

1. Personal update: Birthday Month

Last year I had a big birthday tea with all my friends in Pietermaritzburg. In my speech I said that I feel my life was at a watershed - a calm before a storm. The storm turned out to be us relocating to Stellenbosch so that our lives could get in line with our dreams. Having made the change and the subsequent choices, it is time to take a deap breath now and let the tide we have created carry us a little way.

Contact us with your own update. We love to hear from our friends and supporters

2. Monthly Maxim: Soft Dairy

Dairy is the cause of allergies, lethargy and digestive difficulty. This is because dairy sugar, lactose, and dairy protein is difficult to digest. The undigested protein can build up and eventually cause ear infection, sinusitis and other respiratory tract infections.

The suggested soft white dairy products are easier for the body to use. They contain important pro-biotic enzymes the body needs for digestion and absorption of nutrients. However, make sure you buy organic dairy or at least products that clearly state that they are free of hormones and antibiotics. Better still is unpasteurised dairy, but you have to pick your source very carefully. Pasteurisation is a heating process that destroys good bacteria, and vitamins B6, B12 and C. It also denatures the protein making it more harmful and even less usable to the body.

• Eat ricotta and mozzarella cheese before cheddar and gouda,
• Plain yoghurt or buttermilk on cereal instead of milk,
• Nut milk, or rice milk for all those dishes you can’t use yoghurt and buttermilk for.

3. Feature article: The Natural Way: a plan for clean eating

The Natural Way eating plan's greatest asset, in my view, is its relative simplicity when getting started: just 5 steps to natural health i.e. without supplements and chemicals. The biggest difference between her and me is that I encourage the use of natural organic whole food supplements while she discourages the use of supplements all together. You might want to check out my reasons why you should supplement.

Why Supplement?

5 steps to natural health

1. Eat at least one fruit only meal per day.
2. Snack only on fresh or dried fruit or raw vegetables.
3. Do not eat more than one protein meal per day.
4. Start every cooked meal with raw vegetables.
5. Do not eat a concentrated starch and a concentrated protein in the same meal.

Start Supplementing

Recently I have rediscovered the perks and promises of this eating plan when I attended a talk by Bev Wium, a Natural Way consultant. I have reintroduced some of the principles to our diet to great effect. Bev had some wonderfully practical ideas that I would like to share with you. Her talk was called "Monsters and Angels" and centred on how to cut out all the bad stuff in the food our kids love to eat. She has been a Natural Way consultant for the last 14 years and practises what she preaches. Her own kids are now 24 (son) and 21 (daughter). Here are some of the gems from her talk. Practical tips to cut out the bad stuff: 1. Instead of caffeinated fizzy drinks like Coke and (god forbid) Red Bull, buy Grapetizer or Appletizer instead. Caffein upsets the nervous system, the brain and the heart and who wants that for their kids. Who am I kidding? Who wants that for themselves? Enjoy more peace in the home and quieter nights by using the fruit only substitutes. 2. Refined sugar controls the emotions especially for some people. Take this quick test to ascertain if our bodies react emotionally to sugar. Tick the ones that are true for you:

1. I really like sweet foods.
2. I eat a lot of sweets.
3. I am very fond of bread, pasta or cereal.
4. I now have or had a problem with drugs / alcohol.
5. One or both my parents are alcoholic.
6. One or both my parents are especially fond of sugar.
7. I am overweight, or battle to loose weight.
8. I continue to be depressed.
9. I over react to stress.
10. I have a history of anger and/or weepiness that surprises even me.

Now don't think you can solve this by using artificial sweeteners. They are mostly chemical compounds that are bad for you. Aspartame, which is widely used in many products including health shakes and sugar-free sweets, has been proven to increase appetite in the best case scenarios and in the worst can cause seizures. Honey is your best kind of sweetener and you can also use fructose in moderation. I, Petro, also make ample use of dates, raisins and apple juice.

3. Concerning additives, preservatives and colourants: buy Windhoek Beer instead of other brands since it does not contain sulfur dioxide. And if you want a 'clean' tomato sauce go for All Gold.

4. Margarine: Just stay away, would you. It contains not only colours and preservatives, but transfat i.e. vegetable oil that has been heated four times. It is cancer forming and bad for you and your kids. Rather use soft butter spreads (check the labels) or mix your own by blending 2 parts butter with one part olive oil.

Bev also talked about dairy and other animal proteins like meat and eggs. The bottom line? Cancer. She mentioned a book by T. Colin Campbell called 'The China Study' in which, the author, proved how animal protein especially dairy causes cancer in mice and how the mice heal themselves the moment their diets are changed to exclude the animal protein. It is hard to change this aspect of our diets, I know, but it can be done and it should. My family and I are now completely dairy-free and have meat just once a week. You can do it too.

In closing Bev shared a little info on how heavy metals like lead and mercury is implicated once again in ADD and ADHD. Get rid of the mercury in your amulgam dental fillings, moms. Bev told of how her memory loss improved and her fatigue melted away as she went to get the heavy metals removed from her system. Details on all these issues can be found in the book 'Healthy Kids the Natural Way' by Mary-Ann Shearer. It tells you of a great way to ensure your own health and that of your kids from pregnancy through babyhood, breast feeding, introducing new foods and feeding your tot. The book is well worth owning and is available in most bookshops country wide.

The Natural Way and the Raw Food Diet

However, cooking is not considered a complete no-no. Yet, if it was not for this inclusion of warm food, I would not have survived the freezing Cape winter. My family and I battled with the raw food diet this winter and I reached for Mary-Ann's recipe book number one. It helped me get warm ideas without compromising too much. Because Mary-Ann too supports the inclusion of as much raw food as possible, many of her recipes would give the raw option like "use canned or sprouted chick peas". In the recipe section below are 2 recipes that I have adjusted from this recipe book to incorporate more raw food than the original version.

Another big difference between 'The Natural Way' and raw food is that Mary-Ann uses butter and cream in ample amounts. Her reasoning is that neither of these contain animal protein, just the fat. However, my family has chosen to ditch these too since my husband, younger son and mom all suffer from hay fever, blocked noses or flemmy throats when they use dairy. The raw food diet replaces dairy with nuts, especially almonds, and coconut.

Finally, on a practical note: I find food combining rather complicated while the simple principle of eating raw food is easier to follow. Most raw meals will support the food combining principles because very little use is made of complex carbohydrates. However, fruit is not so much consumed on its own. Many smoothies contain fruit and vegetables as well as fruit from different groups together. Fruit is also often mixed with nuts.

Whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on the food-slide, keep playing with your food until you find what works for you. Keep in mind, though that ‘what works for you’ does not just refer to what is convenient and practical, it includes what works to keep you healthier and more energetic for longer. If your life situation changes, or you get tired of one kind of eating plan, try something else, but keep going. You can both master the food-slide and enjoy the ride.

4. Recipes: Warm in Winter

Seed-stuffed Butternut

• 2 whole butternuts.

• 3 carrots
• 3 sticks celery

• ½ cup chopped parsley
• 1 clove crushed garlic
• 2 Tbs tamari sauce(or organic soy)
• 4-6 Tbs sunflower seeds
• 2 Tbs Tahini
• 2 Tbs cold pressed olive oil
• Natural salt to taste (rock salt, sea salt/vegetable salt)

Carrot and sweet potato casserole

• 500 g cubed sweet potato

• 400g carrots
• 12 black olives

• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 45 ml lemon juice
• 45 ml cold pressed olive oil

Do you have your own favourite and healthy family recipe? The one recipe you cannot do without? I would like to hear about your recipe. Share your recipe with me and if I like it I will add it to my site. I wil try your recipe out of course and add my own comments on what I like.

Share your recipe with the form here

5. Business Bite

Free ebook - the 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing

It exposes all the myths and bad practices that cause the majority of mlmers to fail in their business. But we think it would be insightful reading for anybody in any businesss.

6. Healthy Talks Calender

Ingrid Roberts' website

"The Power of Positivity and Focus in creating Business Success"

"Modern Day Health Challenges and Solutions"

"The Substance of Beauty"

"Let's Talk Health and Sport"

"Quintessence Morning"

More information on these talks

7. Note to Maritzburgers about chickens

So far Stonehaven seem to be the most reliable and truely free range, dirt scratching chickens. But are not fed on Organic grains. Another positive is their abattoir is on their farm so the chickens are not transported on the highways.

Listed below, are reminders as to why an informed consumer should consider putting STONEHAVEN CHICKENS on their table .

1. Throught their growing process, they eat a feed formulation that is specifically formulated for STONEHAVEN Chickens. It contains NO harmful additives ie. antibiotics, coccidiostats, growth promoters, animal by-products and fish meal. The feed is as close to organic as is available to us at the moment and we are working on that.
2. STONEHAVEN Chickens are contented and free range ie. they forage by day and sleep at night. This is them during the day - yes, they really do run around on their own grassy patch.
3. STONEHAVEN Chickens are maintained disease-free with a scheduled vaccination program - NO antibiotics are used.
4. STONEHAVEN Chickens are allowed to grow at their natural rate. They take about 45 to 50 days to reach a good roasting size compared to 21 days for mass produced chickens. So they are much less fatty and we also think they taste a lot better. They even look a healthier colour.
5. STONEHAVEN abattoir is a manual process. Each chicken is washed in clean, running spring water and packed by hand. Hence no cholrine residues which you can find in water that has to be heavily treated.
6. STONEHAVEN Farm has an enviromentally compliant culture. We don't use toxins or poisons anywhere on the farm and grow our own organic veg for our pies and our family. All our cleaning products are biodegradeable and natural.

This Maritzburg notice is brought to by Shereen from Dovehouse Organics. Find her at the Saturday Farmer's Market or out on the Karkloof road.

Note to Stellenboshers about recycling

Hi everyone, I am sure most of you are aware of the serious impact that household waste is having on our environment. Always thought you want to re-cycle but not sure what to do with your household waste? Please consider Mr. Recycle (operating in the Helderberg and Stellenbosch area) as an 'easy' option to reduce the rate at which our landfills are filling up and get as much waste recycled as possible. I think they only recently started serving Stellenbosch area and need more people to make this project more financially feasible. Think about asking your body corporate at the next AGM if they could make arrangements with Mr. Recycle if you live in a block of flats or in a complex, or if you know anyone with a business, or have your own business that has a lot of waste that can be recycled. It is a great way of creating jobs and helping the environment at the same time. Please think about signing up for Mr. Recycle (if you haven't already) to collect your recyclable goodies. It is apparently really easy as you only need 2 seperate bins, and a box for paper. 1 regular bin for the municipality and 1 bin for polystyrene, glass, plastic and tin (for Mr. Recycle) and something to put your paper and folded cardboard in. The charge is R 260 per YEAR which comes to about R 22 per month, and he collects from your doorstep!

Mr. Recycle

Greetings,

Petro Janse van Vuuren

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