In this edition:

1. Just read this!
2. Personal update:
3. Monthly Maxim: No Additives
4. Feature article: Additives are yucky!
5. Ingrid's Inspiration:
6. Recipes:
7. Business Bite: Business Warriors

1. Just read this!

Of course, if you want to come, by all means contact me by Feb 28 and book now. I got it for a discount if we can get just six of us to go.

But even if you don’t want to go, just reading it will have many benefits. The least of which is to make you aware of the incredible power of raw food, inspiring you to eat more of it. And in keeping with this month’s maxim: Additives are Yucky! Raw food has none of those – provided of course you wash off any pesticides.

Below, just before the testimonials, check out the incredible special I was able to organize for us!

The Power of Raw Living Foods

Do you want to know a secret?

Exceptional health isn't complicated.

People make it complicated.
Science makes it complicated.
Over educated people make it complicated.
The media make it complicated.
In fact it is really very simple.

Do you want to know what it is?

Do you want to know how to:

Reclaim your health
(if it's gone missing)
Lose weight and keep it off
Have abundant energy
Enhance your mental focus
Increase your vibration and awareness through the foods you choose
Learn to make the food that will give you radiating health, energy and beauty, not just for today and tomorrow but for always

UK-trained, Cape Town based Raw Food Chefs, Peter and Beryn show you how to prepare simple and gourmet raw food dishes that are delicious and healthy. Peter and Beryn show you HOW to UN-COOK your food so that it tastes better than if it was cooked and is filled with living goodness!

Come and join us for 2 fun-filled days of essential know-how for healthy living and Raw Food preparation.

Durban course dates: Saturday 15th March
Sunday 16th March Time:

10am – 6pm (Saturday including lunch and dinner)
10am – 4pm (Sunday including lunch)

Venue: Hillcrest, Durban

Investment into your health and longevity:

R 1100 which includes:

• 2-hour morning and afternoon lectures on both days
• 3x 1-hour raw food preparation demonstrations
• Power smoothies and fresh juices
• A juicing demonstration
• Delicious, nutritious RAW meals
• Lunch and Dinner on Day 1
• Lunch on Day 2
• Healthy desserts to LIVE for!
• A full and detailed 70 page manual
• A full range of raw food recipes
• Superfood tasters – a taste of the world's highest energy foods

PLUS

• Free 3 month follow up email support program designed to motivate and support you to keep going, so that you succeed in creating new, healthy habits that last and take zero willpower or discipline to maintain.

• How to prepare healthy raw foods that taste fantastic and are easy and quick to prepare that will even impress your friends at dinner parties.
• How to make nutritious smoothies that will keep you going all day …or night.
• How to cleanse and detoxify your body
• How to demystify health and nutrition so that it is easy to understand and apply
• How to juice to maximise success
• How to choose and use the highest vibrational, nutrient and mineral-rich superfoods as snacks and in your meals.
• How to avoid the pitfalls of a standard vegetarian or vegan diet
• How to practically and realistically apply the ratio of success to your diet and transition to a healthy lifestyle at a pace that is right for you.
• You will also learn what to exclude from your diet and why.

To enrol please contact:

Petro at 082 828 2259 by Feb 28

Booking with deposit is essential. R1100 a bit pricy you say? Not really if you look at everything on offer. But here is a deal you can not refuse: Come with me and you can get it for only R920 Provided there are at least 5 takers.

Contact me to book

I spoke to Barbara, the organizer, and she sounds positively delightful assuring me that we will be eating all weekend with no adverse affects on our health! She also said it would be very relaxed and informal and if you have a small baby, you can bring him/her along! I need to confirm my block booking by next week Wed the 20th so you have a week to think about how incredible this could be for you. It will give you new inspiration and a fresh ionjection of creativity for your cooking – not to mention all the health benefits. I am looking forward to using the oomph to shed the last 6 kg’s of pregnancy weight – who is with me? CONTACT ME by 28 Feb to book.

Contact me to book

Past course participants testimonials:

"Thanx so much! I really enjoyed the workshop! Invaluable!! I generally strive to be healthy so it gave me another tool to use to do that" Lauren, Gardens

"I got great ideas for making healthy food and a deeper understanding of health and lifestyle balance. I feel more motivated about changing bad habits." Kristin, Tokai

"Thank-you Beryn and Peter for your inspiring course. You are very generous with your time, food and information. I could physically feel a shift from being on the course. I also realised the simplicity of it all – it doesn't have to be about deprivation. I also realised there is a broad range of things that I love eating that fit into the very healthy category – YAY!!" Marissa, Cape Town

"Lost 5 kilos in 4 weeks – not dieting!!! Just healthy eating – Juicing is AMAZING" Dave Grobler

"Invaluable info. Clarity on so many myths relating to food and STUNNING breakfast smoothies! I am wheat intolerant and have gained very useful info and recipes to help me." Sue Ansell

"I didn't expect to see so many different and delicious recipes. Also really appreciated the way you teach and explain everything." Katherine Tudsbury

"This was fun, fabulously interesting and enormously enjoyable! THANK YOU BOTH. I loved it!!!" Nola Davidson

"Never thought I would actually love the new tastes. Very pleasantly surprised." Erica Bax

2. Personal update:

Our readership has doubled in the last month and we are encouraged by all the positive responses. Some of you have given us feedback about sending out the newsletter weekly instead of monthly indicating that this is a bit overwhelming to you, so we will cut it back again to once a month only, with just an in-between note about something important if we think you will be interested.

For those of you who enjoyed the weekly reminders, we ask that you contact us and let us know what you liked about them. We are working on an online coaching system to help everyone interested with weekly or even daily reminders, inspirational messages and tips to help you reach your health goals. Your feedback in this regard will help us to hone the product to meet your particular needs.

What do you think about this idea?

Having said that, our bumper issue is becoming even bumpier now with regular inspirational articles by my esteemed friend and colleague Ingrid Roberts to feed your soul so you do not have to compensate for a hungry soul by eating chocolates, doughnuts and chips.

We are here to help you have fun while changing the way you choose food. Make the pantry your playground and learn to run up the food slide. If you wonder what I mean by 'food slide' check out the new home page.

FeedandEat.com

I am so excited about the incredible growth of my site and readership in the last month. I feel encouraged that we are on our way to creating a community of healthier feeders and eaters so that we all feel encouraged and supported in our efforts.

Thank you for your support and positive feedback.

Send me more feedback

2. Monthly Maxim: No Additives

Read about all 12 Principles here

This month the maxim is: Choose the product with the least amount of additives

Additives are harmful to the body preventing it from absorbing nutrients. Often the body is unable to flush it out and stores it causing toxins to build up impairing bodily functions. It can cause serious disease including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

• Eat plainly salted crisps, rather than flavoured crisps,
• Plain yoghurt rather than sweetened fruit yoghurt,
• Home made soups rather than tinned but definitely tinned rather than instant soup powders,
• Compare labels of the same product made by different companies.

4. Feature article: Additives are Yucky!

Here is why I check labels and avoid additives

I first discovered the adverse affect of additives when I was 14 years old.

I had joined a youth group that organised a hike up to the Afrikaans Language Monument on Paarl berg in the Western Cape.

We were issued with sandwiches and bottles of juice and off we went. It was not a long hike, but a steepish one. I saved my juice for the top, but got too thirsty and drank it on the way up. Soon after my chest closed up a little and the skin on my chin and throat started itching. I did not pass out or experience a major asthma attack, but I sure struggled the last bit of the way up.

I asked a friend to read the label (I’m partially sighted remember) and she told me there was a preservative in it.

Labels were not very detailed in those days yet (late 80s), but from that moment on I looked for juices that did not have any preservative in it. This was my first lesson in additive avoidance.

Because my mom was a registered dietitian then, she kept up with all the latest research and when the stink about tartrazine and MSG was made, I followed her example and started cutting those out of my diet too, checking the labels of all savoury snacks.

Later, as I begun cooking for myself, I also checked sauces, soups and other packaged or tinned goods.

More recently with Dr Oz on Oprah and other figures denouncing transfats and enriched flour, these have also made it to my ‘top additives to avoid’ list. Sugar with its bad press relating to diabetes, ADD and pancreatic cancer not to mention daily sugarspikes, energy ups and downs and insomnia, is also on that list.

Now I also cut out all other artificial flavourants and colourants even if it says on the package they are ‘permitted’. Nobody knows what the cocktail of these chemicals will cause to the human body, even if they were individually tested and found to be safe. But I have an even more convincing reason why I check labels and choose products so carefully...

Since birth my eldest has been suffering from eczema.I got it under control by cutting out dairy from both our diets (I was breastfeeding). Still, in spite of this he always had a rough skin texture and some cradle cap. Changing to biodegradable non toxic and non caustic detergents helped a great deal, but did not clear up the situation completely. Then a visit to my in-laws showed me what was going on.

Within two days of our visit Benjamin’s skin became more rough and red and by the fourth day he was in great pain and discomfort itching and burning all over. We got some anti-histiamine cream from the chemist that helped us get it under control, but as soon as we skipped an application, it would flare up again. Even back home we could not get rid of the problem. I took him to the doctor and the kinesiologists.

The former gave us a mild cortizone cream while the latter gave us the answer: cut out colourants and flavourants completely from his diet.

I broke my head to think where he got them in the first place and made a list of possible culprits at my in-laws home: pink poloni, yellow cheese, instant soup (my mother in-law uses to thicken sauce), orange breakfast juice, flavoured potato crisps and shop bought biscuits.

These were the only items that was in their diet that was not in ours that contained additives. Not far out weird products at all, just enough that created a very bad experience for my boy. I love him for being my little thermometer.

Back home I have started to be even more prudent with label reading and changed a couple of our brands. Most notably the baked beans we were buying. Benjamin loves these and they are a very handy fast option but I discovered that the brand we were using had colourants in it. I had to swop it for a brand that has no colours or flavourants or preservatives, but does contain a little cane sugar. So I had to compromise a little.

Now my only remaining struggle is the junk he is exposed to at kids parties! About this struggle another time...

So where are you on the 'no additives' slide?

This is my story of how I turned and slowly made my way up the slide over the past 20 years. If you only start now, don’t worry, it does not have to take 20 years for you. You can learn from my experience and accelerate your progress.

See where you are and commit to making one choice in the right direction. Or if you are brave or desperate enough make a bigger jump.

Just make sure it is one you can maintain for at least a month. After 30 days the new habit will have formed and you can move on to something else without having to worry about sliding back too soon. You will only need holding strength to keep you from sliding, not moving strength to get you further up.

Make sense?

5. Ingrid's Inspiration

CELEBRATE WHAT'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD

A week ago I saw a movie called 'Celebrate what's right with the world' - It's a short movie put together by a National Geographic photographer DeWitt Jones - who blew refreshing air through the cigar smog of usual media, by reminding us of the endless wonder and awe out there in the world. If we will just CHOOSE to see it.

Isn't it amazing how this kind of talk so easily stokes the feelings within us of "hey, wow, he's right... there are things right with the world, many things!"

Maybe it's the teacher who pours her heart of for her kids, day in day out, for little financial reward. Or, the folks who enfold foster kids even with their own kids' hungry mouths to feed. The nurse who gets home to cold suppers, night after night because death doesn't respect overtime. Or, the vet who gives up his practice to help suffering animals in the townships for no pay. Maybe it's the woman who cradles a neo nate in Special Care so the real mom can get some desperately needed sleep...

It's all there, if we can just open our eyes for a minute to see it...

My junior school motto was "Lift thine eyes". Didn't mean much to me then, but as an adult I value it so much for the way it helps me to look up in faith and see more than simply what the eye beholds. For it is out there to see if we choose to see it. "None so blind as those who wont see.." as the saying goes.

I'm not for one moment negating the horrors in the world today, and by golly, SA has its fair share here. But I prefer to understand that life lived at any time in history is always a mixture of opportunity WITH adversity. And success, not to mention happiness, is invariably mastered by those who seek to focus, with all their might, on what is kind noble and of good report.

I acknowledge the evil side of the world out there. But I choose to dignify it with little if any of my time, my attention or my energy. You see, what we listen to and what we read has a subtle and manipulative ability to derail our higher vibrational energies and so I make the choice, sometimes many times in a day, to be aware of the bad news coming, but to sidestep it.

Short of it dealing me a fatal blow I will choose never to acknowledge its power. So when I hear "Isn't it terrible how" or "did you hear the shocking news" or "you just will not believe" I am on cue to run for mental cover.

Where do I run to? The haven that's closest: from a book, to my azure blue swimming pool, to a beautiful piece of music, to my dreambord, a coffee with an emotionally rewarding friend or perhaps to that spiritual walk through the plain trees of Botanic Gardens - en route to fetching my kids from school.

There are plenty of spiritual feeding troughs if we just know where to find them.

I invite you this week to concentrate on having an attitude of gratitude and feel the rewards of this! Sure our kids may be giving us hassles, the start of the year is weighing heavily on our nerves already, or maybe our finances are still in shock from Xmas. Well, guess what?

We all have pretty much the same sad tales to tell. But what makes a champion different is that she says "in spite of this all I lift my eyes to see my blessings, my able body, my kids who love me, my spouse, my home, my car, my job, my friends... All are mine, I acknowledge & give thanks. With a grateful heart!"

Thought for the week: Wherever we spend our thinking we will attract more of the same! And Blessings require, as a foundation, most importantly an attitude of gratitude.

Look forward to chatting again soon!

Ingrid

6. Recipes: Dice muffins

It really is a pleasure to make and has never flopped. Just one thing, potato flour works better if mixed with something courser like brown rice, millet, mealie meal or pea flour. My favourite combination is one cup fine mealie meal and one cup rye flour. Or one cup rice flour and one cup rye for a finer texture. But really, I have done it with every other kind of flour too. The most economical is to use 2 cups fine mealie meal.

Miriam will love this recipe Sift together:

• 2 cups flour (of any variation you choose)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1tsp cinemon (optional)

• ¼ to a ½ cup brown sugar/honey/fructose/ziletol
• ½ cup sunflower oil
• 4 eggs

• 2 cups grated carrots/butternyt/sweet potato/apple
• 2 mashed bananas or 1 cup other sweet fruit like mango, peach, strawberries (or any other berry of choice) OR cooked mashed squash or other pumkin/sweet potato/ apple OR dates soaked in hot water.

Optional: You may also add ½ cup raisins, nuts or seeds or other dried fruit of any description. Note: It is not a stiff batter, so add some water, milk or herbal tea if it appears too stiff.

Spoon into a greased muffin tin. Bake at 180 degrees C or 350 F for 25 mins. Makes a dozen muffins. For a savoury version try leaving out the sugar and using any of the raw grated vegetables (even baby marrows if you have) and add cooked spinach, sweet corn or mushrooms as soft mix instead of a sweet fruit or veg mash. Half and half it with some cottage cheese or yogurt or even feta. Just remember, it won’t be dairy free if you do.

Your own creativity is the limit. Play with your food!

I added a section to my website for recipes. I am starting a collection of favourite family recipes and you can add your own favourite too.

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

7. Business Bite: Business Warriors

I would like to introduce you to Peter Carruthers and his Business Warriors. Pete has been writing a newsletter for South African small businesses for a number of years. I've been reading these for at least two years.

Pete has a unique insight into the ups and downs of running your own business in South Africa. He has also created a community for these Business owners called Business Warriors.

I joined them last year in November and has found the information invaluable.

The best part is a Forum where you can pop in and ask any question about South African Business.

Don't know what generator would be best for your business? There is a number of discussions going on this topic with contributions from electrical engineers, qualified electricians and a garden variety of small business people.

It is a great way to know what is going on, what is important but most importantly, it is a number of ready to use business consultants at your finger tips. I recommend signing up for the newsletter and joining the Business Warriors. You won't regret it. And if you do Pete will give you your money back.

I am a Business Warrior. Are you?

8. Healthy Talks

For more info contact me 3. "So what's ADD really all about?" (Guest speakers to be announced) Sat 1st March at 14H00 for 14H30pm start Dun Robin Nursery Restaurant (Oak park) No charge, but please patronize the catering on offer.

Greetings,

Petro Janse van Vuuren

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Feed and Eat Digest is published by FeedandEat.com Copyright © 2008

Petro Janse van Vuuren
Feed and Eat
94 Birkett Road, Scottsville
3201, South Africa