An average adult needs:

A general rule if a processed food is low in sugar, it will be high in fat, if it is low in fat and sugar, it will be high in sodium etc – so just watch out.  A good generic product to start analysing intently is the muesli bar, still sitting in the cereal aisle but probably should be moved to the confectionery aisle.  If you are having a muesli bar as some sort of a bridge between meals, you would do much better to have a small handful of almonds/walnuts/raisins/real cranberries (not ones with preservatives on them) or 2 fresh medjool dates and an apple.

Read this article comparing muesli bars to mars bars … but don’t get any ideas! read more

I would like to invite you now to recognise the Tick on other products in the supermarket and stop and ask the following questions:

• Regardless of the product bearing the Tick – is it healthy?
• Is there a wholefood equivalent of this?
• How many ingredients does this product contain?
• Are any of these ingredients odd to you – for example soy, corn syrup, maize?
• How many numbers does this product contain?

For example a Tick bearing product I noticed today in my local supermarket – it is called Uncle Tobys Fruit Fix and I’m looking at the Strawberry flavour.  The front of the pack shows the Tick, plus a claim that it equals 1 serve of fruit, 99% fruit ingredients.

The back of the pack advises: “When choosing a snack, we believe fresh fruit is the best choice.  We recommend you aim for two serves of fruit per day and that at least one of these is fresh fruit.  Uncle Tobys Fruit Fix provides 1 serve of fruit per snack so they can add variety and enjoyment to your day.” The box of 6 sells today for $5.98 whereas a punnet of actual strawberries was selling over in the produce section for $1.50.  I’m not saying any of the claims are untrue, I’m wanting to highlight that if you want a strawberry snack, buy a punnet of strawberries over processed food every time!

Running the Traffic Light Counter over the product, it shows Low for Fat, Low for Saturated Fat, HIGH for Sugar, and Low for Sodium.  So in essence, this isn’t a healthy snack, it’s a highly processed, sugary snack.

Pop over to the freezer section of the supermarket (a section I never go to and enjoyed the research today, just for you – I did come away with some organic frozen blueberries, though!)  Anyway, I noticed McCains frozen pizza has the Tick.  I’m looking at the Pizza singles – Ham and Pineapple.  It has 47 ingredients: base (wheat flour, water, vegetable fats and oils (antioxidant (320)), yeast, wheat flour, soy flour, emulsifiers (481, 472e), ascorbic acid, raising agent (920), enzyme (amylase)), cheese (19%) (milk solids, salt, enzyme, starter cultures), sauce (water, tomato paste, flavour (sugar, xantham gum, potassium chloride, yeast extract (wheat), vegetable oil (soy), spice extracts)), pineapple (12%) (pineapple, water, sugar), processed ham (9%) (pork, water, wheat starch, soy protein, wheat gluten, acidity regulators (450, 451), potassium chloride, flavour (soy), salt, sugar, thickener (407a), hydrolysed vegetable protein (soy), antioxidant (316), sodium nitrite, fermented rice, pork protein).  I checked all the numbers in The Chemical Maze book and they are all ok, except the jury is out on 407a (processed Euchema Seaweed).

Running the Traffic Light Counter over the product, it gets Medium for Total Fat, Medium for Saturated Fat, Medium for Sugar and Medium for Sodium.  So, it carries the Heart Foundation Tick, but is it healthy?  I say no, but I don’t say “don’t have pizza”, I say make your own.

Put 2 cups of wholemeal flour in a bowl, add 1 teaspoon of dry yeast, add 1 big tablespoon of polenta and enough cold water to make into a dough.  Turn out onto a floured surface, knead and roll out to fit a pizza tray.  Spread with organic tomato paste, top with tomato, basil, mushrooms, onions, garlic, chili, drizzle in good olive oil and pop in your bbq with the lid down for 20 minutes – in the last 5 minutes add some fresh rocket and sea salt, maybe some more olive oil and keep it in just to ‘wilt’ the greens.  Far better than the bought one!

Smarten up and ask yourself – is it healthy, is there a wholefood equivalent, could I make this myself with whole ingredients?

My grandmother died of cervical cancer and my mother, whilst she died of old age, survived a couple of heart attacks, a few more strokes and open heart surgery.  Her twilight years saw her on numerous medications and a silent fear of not getting too confident in case something happened.  This extended to overseas trips.  I was working for an airline when Mum was in her 70′s, but the medical issues ended up curtailing her staff travel due to not being able to get medical insurance and also a fear of being too far away from her specialists and doctors.

When I get to my twilight years, I don’t want my days to be punctuated by medical waiting rooms, I don’t want to know the first names of the girls at the pharmacy, I want to be in a Winnebago with my darling traveling around Australia, MIA and incommunicado!  Why am I convinced my DNA is not my destiny?  Because I don’t eat a diet anywhere near what my mother, or indeed the rest of my family eats.  My regular diet is predominated by whole foods, loads of leafy greens, loads of fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, only good quality organic oils and loads of my food is consumed in as close to its natural state as possible.

If you think about your grandmother, mother, aunts, sisters (or grandfather, father, uncles, brothers) what’s everyone got?  Is high cholesterol your family marker?  Is it high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, bowel disease or obesity?  What do they eat?  How much regular (i.e. daily) exercise do they get?

Whatever your family disease of reknown is, you don’t have to sign up for it.  Keep yourself as healthy as you can, keep your weight in the ‘healthy range’, keep your waist measurement in the healthy range and eat a diet predominated by whole foods – leafy greens, fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, good quality oils.  Try to eat leafy greens twice a day – salad with lunch, a green smoothie at 3pm instead of a biscuit and go for a walk at lunchtime.

You don’t have to sign up for family diseases.  Look seriously at what you eat and how much physical activity you participate in.  Become an active participant in your own health journey.

• High blood cholesterol
• Risky alcohol consumption
• Inadequate vegetable consumption
• Smoking
• High blood pressure
• Inadequate fruit consumption
• Excess Weight
• Physical inactivity

Can you see one or two risk factors that you might have?

Can you work out what the top 3 risk factors to our health are? Click here to find out …Risks to Health

Take a moment to look at the attached to see how society has filtered our body sizes over recent years…Health Status Its Up To You

However, we believe you are what you eat and holding a special event for fundraising for cancer would do well to serve only healthy, fresh and nutrient packed foods.  Eating the foods that do not support your body in an effort to help reduce cancer, is a bit like screaming and yelling for peace and quiet.

go to http://www.itsuptoyou.com.au/get-started/raw-food-recipes/ to get some ideas for healthy cakes that will still give you that feeling of a ‘treat’ but without the risk to your health.

Once again, we hope Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea is a successful one.

What does it mean?  Well, it describes a culture of MORE, which causes OBESITY.  We now have a culture of bigger popcorn, bigger burgers, bigger steaks, bigger bread.  More opportunities to eat, eat when driving, eat when travelling on a plane, even if you have already had breakfast at home before coming to the airport, eating at the departure lounge, eating at sporting events, eating when watching tv, more more more ….

Watch out for symptoms of morebesity in your life.  Watch out for behaviours that have the potential to become habits, i.e. eating when not a meal time and eating when not hungry and especially watch yourself when you say these words “a large one, please”.  Try not to order a large anything, go back to “regular” or if it exists order a “small”.

However, don’t be too prissy about Raw – if you feel like some steamed vegetables and fish – why not have it – it is more about what you ‘predominantly’ live on, what you do most of the time.  So if you are new to Raw, a simple trick is to look at your meal and double check that ‘something’ on the plate is raw – it might be some sliced capsicum, some organic cos lettuce, some fruit.  If every meal has something raw included you are doing really well. 

We easily live on predominantly Raw during winter, but our meals are heated to 41 degrees, we live on curries with parsnip rice, spicy soups, Thai flax crackers with spicy dips, etc.  We even heat our Apple, Almond and Cinnamon porridge during winter months, putting it in the slow cooker before a long walk and coming back to it nicely warmed through.

Why not come to one of our Raw Food Cuisine Classes during May or June and see first hand how to do it.

• Type 2 Diabetes
• Heart Disease
• Obesity
• Childhood Obesity
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Colitis
• Depression

a dramatic change of lifestyle behaviour, in particular a move away from processed and fake food, to a raw food diet, one predominated by leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and some oils will have a huge impact on individual health status.  Rather than trying to ‘manage’ the symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes what about just simply curing it?  Rather than trying to ‘manage’ high risk individuals for heart attacks, what about trying to bring those individuals back to normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol, normal weight and excellent health?

If we could stem the tide of potential patients into the Hospital and Healthcare centres by, well … creating a healthy population, then we would free up the hospital systems and doctors waiting rooms.

For many individuals a raw food diet will dramatically change their health status and simply remove them from the healthcare system.