WHEATGRASS MENTIONED ON THE TONIGHT SHOW

I am just getting started with wheatgrass and had my first real taste of it the other night. Wow, I thought I was going to start mooing but with all the benefits, I am going to start doing wheatgrass shots on a regular basis. I think I may put it in my smoothies to hide the flavor.

I was watching "The Tonight Show" last night, 09/25/08, and they had a segment of Presidential Jeopardy on with three very good impersonators for Bush, Palin and Obama.

One of the "answers" was "whole foods" and the Obama impersonator said it was a place to pick up some non-dairy tofu curry and some WHEATGRASS.

I thought it worth mentioning on my blog because more and more, mom and I are running into people that know about wheatgrass, have heard about it or are already consuming wheatgrass. Don't forget to check out mom's wheatgrass blog at GROW YOUR OWN WHEATGRASS. The tray shown in the picture is an actual tray of my mom's wheatgrass.

A WELL-BALANCED RAW FOOD DIET CONTAINS ALL THE PROTEIN NEEDED TO MAINTAIN A HEALTHY BODY

The importance of protein in your diet is best explained in The Center For Young Women's Health. If a raw foodist follows a well-balanced diet, they will get all the protein they need naturally from those raw foods. Protein contains the amino acids your body needs to help build and repair muscle, maintaining healthy tissue. Without protein, your body can start to break down leading to a variety of health issues. When on the raw food diet, you want to be sure you get all the nutrients your body needs including protein. There are many ways you can add protein to a raw food diet. Nuts are a great example of this; you can make purees or pate and also make your own milk from nuts. Seeds can also be ground and added to your recipes. Hemp seed milk is not only being sold in health food stores, it is now on the shelf at some of your local supermarkets. You can make your own butter from many of the nuts and seed varieties.

Many vegetables are rich in protein including your leafy vegetables such as romaine lettuce, kale, spinach, cabbage, chard and arugula. These types of protein can easily be added to a smoothie or, if you feel like munching on something, they can be used in a salad.

Until studying the raw food diet myself, I did not realize that many fruits contain protein as well; watermelon, tomatoes, pomegranates, dates, kiwi and avacodos are great sources of protein. The Fruit Pages contains a comprehensive table listing all nutritional information for many fruits and vegetables.

In addition to obtaining protein from seeds, nuts, vegetables and fruit, according to The Fat Free Kitchen, one ounce of wheatgrass per day contains the nutritional value of 2.5 pounds of vegetables and Living-Foods lists 35 very interesting uses for wheatgrass. Wheatgrass is sometimes hard to digest so juicing it is considered the best way to go and, if you have problems growing accustomed to the taste, you can add wheatgrass juice to grape juice or, again, throw it in with your other smoothie ingredients, let the other items conceal the taste.

DIABETES AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LOWER BLOOD PRESSURE

If you have diabetes, you really need to watch your blood pressure. With diabetes comes a higher risk of heart disease so the target BP level is lower.

A natural approach is much safer as well as less expensive. For hypertension, I am currently on four different costly medications with their attendant side effects and hope to one day come off of all of those.

There are many ways to lower your blood pressure naturally and I am going to share a link with you. DLife – For Your Diabetes Life has a list of 16 non-drug ways to lower your blood pressure.

Please click on the above link and start working towards a much lower blood pressure today, the natural way.

THE PROBLEM WITH PROCESSED FOODS

My dad and stepmom purchased what they thought was a can of turnip greens. Instead, when they opened the can, they found the can contained what appeared to be pork and beans. The name of the company is Glory. This particular brand is available nationwide and started showing up on shelves several years ago. It was created at the Ohio State University Food Industries Center and boasts a southern-style flavor in over 50 varieties of heat-and-serve products.

With a company that large, you would expect them to have some pretty stringent food safety measures in place but to mis-label, well, someone dropped the ball and you are left wondering what else they could be missing.

The more I turn to organic foods, raw foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, the more I worry about what really is in that processed food, or in this case, that can of "turnip greens". Are the cans on your pantry shelf what they really say they are? If you want a good scare, read the label.