I just read this amazingly eye-opening book called The China Study.

It talks about why there were so many Filipino kids were having liver cancers. Apparently, Filipinos from poor families and their kids were encouraged to eat peanuts and peanut butter (PB) because it was a cheap protein. The problem was that peanuts often were contaminated with a fungus-produced toxin called aflatoxin. In a factory, they found that the workers will scoop up the whole nuts that were good and use to sell as premium nuts. The bad nuts that had aflatoxin were put aside to make PB. So when small children lots of PB, many of them contracted cancer.

That’s not all.

Apparently, kids that ate more meat AND aflatoxin had a higher chance of getting liver cancer than those who ate less meat. So what happened then was that the rich kids had a higher chance of getting cancer than the poor ones.

Scary stats huh?

Moral of the story? I don’t know, make your own peanut butter?

It’s actually very simple to make and here’s the recipe for it.

Homemade Peanut Butter

Ingredients:

2 cups shelled peanuts
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil that has no heavy scent
1 Tbsp. honey or sugar to taste

Method:

Roast the peanuts in a frying pan with low heat until it smells fragrant. Cool it.

Place the peanuts and honey in a food processor, and process for 1 minute.  Use a spatula to loosen mixture from the sides of the bowl if it’s sticking.  Then continue to process while slowly drizzling oil into the mixture for another 2-3 minutes, or until the mixture is smooth, thick and shiny.  (Nuts will go from a rough chop, to finely ground, to a thick paste, and then finally a shiny, smooth peanut butter.)  Remove and store in an airtight container, and refrigerate.  If mixture is too thick and cool when you’re ready to use it, simply place the container in a warm water bath, or pop your needed amount in the microwave microwave to warm and soften it up.

For those who are looking for a healthier alternative or is allergic to peanuts like my son, try  making homemade raw almond butter. The recipe’s below.
Homemade raw almond butter

Ingredients:

2 cups of raw almonds soaked in water overnight
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tbsp honey

Method:

Strain the water from the almonds and place into the food processor. Blend on high until it reaches the consistency that you lie. From time to time, stop the food processor and push the almonds down from the sides of the bowl to make sure all of it gets ground up.

Add the cinnamon, vanilla and honey at any time. Remove and store in an airtight container, and refrigerate. It won’t last as long as the roasted PB. Some say it can keep for 4 months, but why keep food for that long? I’d rather consume everything up within 4 weeks or less. Otherwise, you can just freeze up extra almond butter if you can’t finish it within a certain period.

============

More on health

• Iodine Tincture Heals Cancer Lesions?
• The story of the Swine flu and the Nipah virus
• Should we drink chlorinated tap water?
• Chemicals we put on our body
• Tomato Basil Salad that help you live longer
• How to Get Cancer: Move to the United States
• Super pepper, better than popping multivitamins?
• Funny thing that happened

You won’t believe how old this lady is.  She’s 71 years old. Unbelievable.

Initially, Mimi Kirk saw a contest by PETA on Facebook for the sexist vegetarian above 50, and decided she would compete in this contest. Her popularity snowballed after that. She said, diet helps. Being a vegetarian and a raw foodie that is.

Below are two videos. One is from the Fox News interview. The one below that is about her talking about her diet.

Mimi On Fox News

Mimi talking about raw food

============

More stuff on healthy living

• Now guess how old is Rosemary?
• Guava As Medicine
• Live longer by consuming peaches
• Do you know if you are using the right cinnamon?
• “This plant healed my sister!” said hubby
• Gotu Kola heals the world!

What has the Japanese come up with this time? Portable garden vending machines people. It’s an interesting solution for urbanites who have problem growing vegetables in the city.

These machines can actually grow produce without any sunlight, up to 60 heads of lettuce at one go. This is mainly due to 12 40W fluorescent lights housed in a machine. The intended audience for the machine are restaurants, not apartment dwellers, but still, it is an amazing idea.

One of the great things about growing your own vegetables? No pesticides. That means you can eat these babies raw, just cut them from the stem. In fact, you might not even need to wash them at all. How cool is that idea?

====================

Thoughts on raw food and ways to grow vegetables

• Getting kids to appreciate more complex flavors
• Now guess how old is Rosemary?
• Miang Kam – An Almost Raw Appetizer
• Guava As Medicine
• Walnuts are good for you
• No garden? Plant vegetables in flower boxes
• Live longer by consuming peaches

About a year ago, I have started reading positive reviews about the New Zealand Anchor Butter. These reviews are way different from the bashings American butter gets in the press.

Apparently, it’s because Anchor Butter that comes from grass-fed, free-range cows is said to have a richer taste versus barn raised non grass fed animals. Besides that, the New Zealand government prohibits the use of animal growth hormones in dairy, sheep and beef farming. American cows on the other hand are fed with corn, and regularly are injected with growth hormones and other hormones to promote larger secretions of milk. And even when the cows eat organic food, apparently, the cows are eating organic corn, rather than going out into the pastures and chewing on fresh grass.

And the taste? The Anchor Butter has a richer yellow color, and critics have raved about the superior flavor as well.

Here’s another review of the butter below. I have copied paste the entire review and added the link to the blog. The reason I’m doing this because I have, in the past, lost a few links as some articles on the web went missing for some reason or the other.  The Delicious Truth blog has other very informative stuff about health.

=============

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Grass-Fed Cows = Real Butter = Anchor Butter

A specific example of a grass-fed product that I use during in-home cooking lessons in New York and in my own kitchen is Anchor Butter.

Anchor is made in New Zealand, where cows are grass-fed and law prohibits the use of hormones in dairy, sheep and beef farming.

When I hold Anchor Butter next to a stick of commercial butter for my students, they are amazed at the difference in color. Anchor is yellow (because of the grass the cows are eating), compared to the white butter derived from the milk of corn-fed cows. Even organic butters shade toward white since the cows are still eating corn (albeit without pesticides).

The myth (yes, MYTH) which states that butter is bad for you is based on unsound assumptions and studies, the same ones that classify all fatty foods as dangerous. (Gary Taubes, in his book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” does a masterful job of showing how many supposed nutritional and dietary truths are merely unproven statements that have morphed into accepted gospel.)

A story-starved media and clever marketers have so inculcated us with these myths that we have blindly accepted the false preaching and are left eating incomplete, flavorless and nutritionally-unsound foods like egg white omelets, lite mayonnaise and skinless chicken breasts. Whoever your god is, don’t you think it would have made eggs without the yolks if we were supposed to eat egg white omelets? The egg–with the yolk–is as close to the perfect, most complete food that exists.

Back to Anchor Butter. Yes, butter is terrible for you . . . if you are eating butter made from milk from cows eating a corn-based diet and shot up with hormones and antibiotics. If you are eating butter from grass-fed cows, you are providing yourself with a wealth of vitamins (especially A), minerals (selenium, an antioxidant), healthy fatty acids (CLA and omega-3’s) and cholesterol (essential for the composition of our cell membranes).

Did I mention how much better Anchor tastes than conventional butters? The flavor is much deeper and the texture is much creamier.

Anchor butter is available at the Fairway stores in New York. Other butters made in Europe–where cows grazing on grass is the norm–include President, Kerrygold, and Lescure. These can be found in progressive food stores and local supermarkets.

====================

More about health

• Chemicals we put on our body
  
• Yeasty homemade ginger ale (devoid of preservatives and additives)
• Using food to make natural and safe eyeliner!
• Daily dose of baking soda could stop kidney patients needing dialysis
• Is food making people around you crazy?

I just heard that actor Chow Yun-fat has pledged to donate 99 per cent of his wealth for charity when he dies. “I’m not taking anything with me (when I die),” he said.

Although the international star has made a fortune, Chow is said to live a normal life and he is noted to take public transport. The 55-year-old is estimated to be worth some USD120 million.

“This is not my money, I just earned them but this doesn’t mean it will be forever mine.” It is learnt Chow has come to an agreement with his Singaporean wife Jasmine Tan to donate his wealth.

Chow, a Hong Kong actor who started his acting career at TVB, became a household name for his role as Hui Man-keung in the drama The Bund in 1980. His career shot to a higher level when he acted in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow series, The Killer, Prison on Fire series and Hard-Boiled. He moved to Hollywood in the 1990s, and acted in The Replacement Killers, The Corruptor and Anna and The King but failed to move to superstardom in the West.

Chow then returned to the east and accepted the role of Li Mu-Bai in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film swept numerous awards in the international arena including the Oscars and he finally became a global star. The star has received 13 best actor and two best supporting actor nominations, and successfully walked away with two Best Actor awards for City on Fire and All About Ah-Long.

Source: Agencies Published Sept 14 2010

I added just a bit of dehydrated raw wheat grass powder in my plain water today. My almost 5 (so he says) year old rugrat took a sip and said, “Hmmm, this is good tea Mummy”. This is excellent because it means his taste buds are starting to appreciate more complex flavors.

ften times, we don’t know what they like. So it’s always good to keep introducing new food to them every once in a while.

============

More on healing raw food

• Malaysian raw food product
• How virgin coconut oil is made
• Guava As Medicine