12 Steps to Whole Foods

Bye-Bye, Stimulants — Hello, Green Smoothies
Bring one to work the next day for your coworker, and spread the word as your good deed for the day! Pretty
soon your whole office will be converted. People love a live demo, if you’re willing to bring your turbo blender
and greens to work—but I’ve given very detailed instructions in my “template recipe,” and you can also guide
others to my three-minute YouTube green smoothie demo (www.tiny.cc/0dSxR).
What about E Coli? I’m often asked about whether I’m scared of spinach after the E Coli scare in 2006. I’m
not afraid of it at all. A 10-year study done by the Centers for Disease Control proved that eating raw plant
foods is the safest strategy, because less than 1/10 of 1% of food-borne diseases are caused by raw plant foods.
All the others are caused by animal and/or cooked foods.
In fact, I’m pretty sure my kids and I ate some E Coli-tainted spinach, a couple of days in a row, during the
outbreak in 2006. I barely noticed it. People with healthy gastrointestinal tracts who are eating excellent
nutrition every day are not the ones who succumb to parasites and intestinal bacteria. If you eat plenty of raw,
nutrition-dense plant fiber and stay away from foods that compromise your immune function, after a possible
initial cleansing period, you will likely find that you go through the winter without falling prey to the viruses
that are felling everyone around you.
Should I blanche my greens before freezing them? In a word, no! Blanching (or quick-boiling) kills all the
enzymes and many other nutrients as well. It’s an “old wives’ tale” that there is some benefit in this practice,
which ruins perfectly good raw plant food. Just wash your greens, put them in quart or gallon Ziploc freezer
bags, suck the air out with a straw to minimize the space they take in the freezer, zip tight, and freeze. You can
then put frozen greens in your blender later.
What about oxalates? A popular and growing theory and opinion among those interested in nutrition is that
greens (especially spinach) are high in oxalates and should be avoided because they cause kidney stones or
gallbladder problems, since oxalates may interfere with absorption of calcium from the body. Another popular
opinion is that cooking spinach renders the oxalates harmless.
In fact, a review of the peer-reviewed research reveals that the ability of oxalates to lower calcium absorption is
small and does not outweigh the ability of those foods to contribute significant calcium to the diet, since
spinach is rich in calcium. A few rare health conditions require oxalate restriction: absorptive hypercalciuria
type II, enteric hyperoxaluria, and primary hyperoxaluria. These are not the more common condition wherein
kidney stones are formed. The research is not clear that restricting foods such as spinach helps prevent stones
in those who have previously had them. Many researchers believe that dietary restriction cannot reduce risk of
stone formation. In fact, some foods that were assumed to increase stone formation because of oxalate content
(like black tea) have appeared in more recent research to have a preventative effect.
Further, cooking has a small impact (about 10%) on the oxalate content of foods, with no statistically
significant lowering of oxalates following blanching or boiling of greens. It appears that the nutritional
advantages of eating raw greens continue to far outweigh any benefit of cooking them.
Dr. Norman W. Walker says the following about oxalates in the “Vegetable Juices - Uses and Benefits” chapter
of his book Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices: What’s Missing in Your Body?
Spinach should never be eaten when cooked unless we are particularly anxious to accumulate oxalic
acid crystals in our kidneys with the consequent pain and kidney trouble. When spinach is cooked or
canned, the oxalic acid atoms become inorganic as a result of excessive heat and may form oxalic acid
crystals in the kidneys.
38 12 Steps to Whole Foods
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw