When we started our non-dairy yogurt company we wanted to have close to zero water waste in our production, all organic non-GMO ingredients, totally compostable packaging and high enough wages for our partners and staff that they could afford to eat organic foods themselves.  Sound a little idyllic?  Yes well I’ve always been more interested in saving the world than in actually making yogurt it’s no secret…

The water filtration and recycling were easy enough considering that at first the officials were totally against it.  We use a double jacketed stainless steel tank to heat and cool the yogurt enabling us to maintain the perfect incubation temperature.  The water in the jacket of that machine is now recycled so that we don’t have to just leave the tap on and dump the water down the drain which unfortunately is standard operating procedure in food production.  This was apparent in the fact that the inspectors had never seen a water recycling system like this.  While we were frustrated it was easy enough to prove to them that the system was safe and we were able to have a small victory there.  Victory #1.  Yay!

Organic and non-GMO ingredients have always been a priority for me as long as I can remember.  I have been interested in organics since I was a child and have watched them become more and more popular.  I feel like we are almost at some kind of critical mass where we can really make change by choosing to purchase organic produce.. but I digress.  It was easy to find organic, gluten free, peanut free, soy-free and GMO-free suppliers for all of our ingredients.  The world is changing and there are options.  Victory #2.

As for the wages for the staff (ahem ourselves) we are still working on that.  We are on the verge of a breakthrough.  Hopefully when we are ready to hire someone we will be able to hold to this standard because it is so important to us that people who are working to create beautiful healthy products end up with an appropriate living wage so that they can actually afford the quality of life promoted by the company that they work for.

We began a search for compostable packaging.  I became excited by all of the innovations in packaging design.  There were bottles made out of recycled cardboard and take-out containers made out of pressed bamboo.  Many containers were compostable and this excited me.  Options for compostable packaging used to be quite limited without much excitement or great design but suddenly there were beautiful shapes and colours and more and more options all the time.  I became excited.  Most of the new options were not useable for a refrigerated wet food like yogurt but there were compostable clear plastic containers which looked quite nice.  We sourced special machinery that would not overheat the packaging because the compostable material is more heat sensitive than regular plastics.  We planned out how we would produce and package the yogurt with those packages for optimal health and efficiency.

One day I sat down to think about compostable packaging and what it was made out of.  Corn.  What do we know about corn?  We know that unless it is certified organic or certified non-GMO then it almost definitely IS GMO (backyards and other random exceptions noted).  I knew that it was imperative to the packaging industry to produce their products as cheaply as possible.  This was when I realized that I was holding a product of GMO corn.  Oh no!!!  A few phone calls followed by a paranoid google search revealed that I was right.  In Europe it is possible to purchase non-GMO compostable packaging but compostable packaging in North America is most likely made from GMO corn.  In my opinion it is totally all made of GMO corn who are we kidding here?  I am not sure about other continents or countries so if non-GMO compostable packaging for liquids like a yogurt exists in your country I want to know about it.

So who cares?  We’re not eating it anyway.  It’s just the packaging.  I did consider this perspective but it didn’t seem right to me.  I don’t usually think in black/white right/wrong BUT if I were to choose one issue that I feel strongly enough about to make blanket generalizations about it would be GMO foods and other GMO crops.  I do not think we should be producing genetically engineered crops to feed to other animals, to ourselves or to package our foods in.  Why?  Because of food security for the next generation and for people in developing nations where the subsistence crops are being replaced by genetically engineered mono-crops and poverty and malnourishment ensue.  For me the human rights issues and the rights to food are more important than my personal health.  What are your reasons?

So I held up two containers, one in either hand, one supporting Big Oil and one supporting GMO corn.  Not a good choice.  I sat holding those containers for a year (figuratively… I did a few other things that year).  I eventually decided I would rather support Big Oil than Big Bad Food.  What would you have decided?

Because this topic is so very close to my heart I would love to hear your comments in the comments box below.  Thank you!  For more information about GMO foods in particular check out the Bought movie here

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Happy Belated Valentines to you!  I think it’s official:  The world has caught on that February the 14th is not a day to sit around and wait for your honey to buy you flowers but is a day to engage in some serious self love and epic self care.  I received a total of 7 hand drawn valentines cards (isn’t that amazing?) and over a dozen emails on the topic of self love (thankfully as it is an area I am working on).  At the end of the day I was left with a list of adjectives describing how wonderful each of us are, several messages about how we are each loved by the Divine Mother, three recipes for raw cacao goodies (yum) and explicit instructions on how to give myself a bath.

I looked myself in the mirror and said a few mantras.  I woke up the next morning asking myself how I would be able to carry this love-fest through the rest of my life and celebrate love every day.  I believe I need more baths, more treats and more love from the Divine Mother every day… but as time passed on the 15th I started to feel a little… empty.  Happy but not quite fulfilled.  I want something deeper.

I realized that I could repeat unending positive messages to myself but I would not get anywhere without showing up for myself where it really counts.  When the self-love gets tough I’m going to step up every time.

Here are three ways to show self love powerfully every day:

Self love means honouring yourself even if it means inconveniencing other people.  Have you ever found yourself gathered around someone’s table trying to be nice by avoiding having to tell them you don’t eat dairy or you don’t eat non-GMO corn or something like that?  Sometimes I take a glass of wine and pretend to drink it or find creative ways to throw out foods that I don’t eat (much easier if your friends have a dog).  Worst of all are the times when I eat something I would not normally eat in an attempt to spare someone’s feelings.  This might be worth it if I were weighing an evening of feeling bad against someone else’s feelings but for me it is much more than an evening.  And one choice that hurts my body to spare someone else’s feelings soon becomes two or three and then a pattern.  This way of living betrays self-loathing, codependency, pathological loneliness and definitely not self love.

I remember the gluten free vegan cupcakes that had me barfing on the couch for two days and I remember the piece of candy given to me by a friend’s mother.  I remember the piece of cake that resulted in two weeks of swollen gums.  I am super sensitive so a trace of gluten or food colouring will really set me off.  I know this before eating these things but sometimes I just don’t want the other person to feel bad.  News flash!!  This is crazy pants!!  Part of the problem here is that I want other people to like me and think I’m “normal”.  I want to be accepted.  Well I’m not normal.  But that doesn’t mean I am not acceptable.  I’m a catalyst for change, a spokesperson for health.  I rebel against junk food and animal products and foods that hurt us.  Are you “normal”?  No, I doubt it.  How does it feel to compromise your ideals just to feel “normal”.  You are exceptional.  Treat yourself that way.

It is important to be tactful and gentle in order to be loving to others but it is also important to make sure that you are loving yourself.  If tomatoes make you break out in a rash don’t eat them even if your friend brought them to the picnic.  Yes people will think you are weird sometimes.  You may not be the same as everyone else but I think you’re cool.  From now on I’m going to make an effort to take up just a little more space, a worthy amount of space to honour myself at the table too.  By not telling people what my needs are I am expecting them to intuit them and setting our relationships up for difficulty.

Self love means taking time to prepare real food from scratch.  Yes that’s right.  It can be difficult to find time to prepare food from scratch especially when eating a mostly from-scratch real-food diet.  Time is our most precious resource.  What is more important than our health?  Without it we can’t have a fulfilling life.  Spend time on you.

In your ideal fridge would you find homemade probiotic foods, a variety of dressings and dips, frozen treats, grain-free crackers, cut up veggies of all shapes and sizes and smoothie packs ready to go?  What else is in your ideal fridge?  Can you make that happen?  Let me know in the comments so I can steal your ideas (kidding).

In a world where the majority of people spend a few minutes to pour cereal, pack sandwiches and heat up processed dinners we are pushing the boundaries hard by making our own dehydrated crackers or fermenting salsas.  This kind of real food prep pushes the boundaries of time and physics too… at least the physics of scheduling.  This requires actually setting aside long chunks of time once or twice a week to prepare delicious foods from scratch.  I like to use a couple of hours on Sunday and then a couple more hours midweek to make sure everything is cut up and washed and if necessary fermented/dehydrated ahead of time so that there are snacks and staples ready for myself and my family.

Sometimes other activities with friends and family or work interfere with this prep time.  Sometimes there is a movie I want to watch or a show to attend.  That is a choice that is sometimes well worth it.  It takes true self-love to make this food prep time nonnegotiable.  It takes time to remind ourselves that we deserve a fulfilling life, not just a release in the moment.  Other things may fall by the wayside but holding fast to this food prep time helps me to keep myself running optimally.  This shows me that I care enough about myself to spend the time required to feed myself the way I deserve to be fed.

Self love means limiting the time given to just about everything. Hey, time is limited.  Choosing to do one thing necessarily means less time to do another.  And it shows where our priorities are.  Are we running our own lives or letting them run us… into the ground?

I am either a victim of time or I am in charge of it.  I realized painfully that I had been a victim of time for as long as I can remember.  As long as time is running away from me and I am rushing to get everything done around the house, finish more work projects, write new recipes, stay up late to write e-courses or meet someone in a hurry I will be a slave to time.  If I am a slave to time I will not be in charge of my own life.  What better act of self love could there be than to crown myself the High Priestess of my own life starting with deciding which things are worth my time and which are not?  Warning:  This means leaving work undone and going to bed early sometimes and it also means making a batch of raw cookies when I could be rushing out to meet someone somewhere.  This also means leaving time for physical activity and of course to consciously eat and enjoy all those healthy foods I have prepared.  The busy work is not serving me.  Is it serving you?  I didn’t think so 🙂

Self love is not always easy and it means more than just staring into the mirror and saying “I’m ok”.  Self love sometimes means saying no to the things we each want in the moment so that we can say yes to the lives that we really want in the end.  Self love means changing habits so that they support us in achieving our optimal health.  I’m doing it.  Are you?

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If you find yourself having ups and downs, struggling with a little bit of belly fat and fatigue this article is for you.  When I sat down to prepare this week’s content I was really answering a question about “blood sugar issues” but the more I thought about it the more that I realized that we are all on a continuum with stability at one end and instability on the other and each of us falls somewhere between those end points, never being perfectly “balanced” or “imbalanced”.  Imagine how boring the literature would be if we could achieve perfect balance!  Blood sugar management is one of the most important jobs carried out by our endocrine systems.  Our bodies are working on this all day and all night, continuously and each of us could use a little help from time to time.

Some ways to know if this might be a current issue are if you feel hungry after a meal, crave carbs, need to eat right away when you do feel hungry, have symptoms of low blood sugar like dizziness, nausea and frustration, crave sweets after a meal, feel foggy-headed, have a bit more belly fat than you’d like or suffer from any type of exhaustion or fatigue.

Here are 12 food categories to get off the roller coaster:

• Foods high in nutrients.  Foods high in minerals like magnesium, boron and zinc and high in vitamins like all the B vitamins especially 1,3 and 5 and vitamin C can really help to get off of the roller coaster.  For example magnesium.  Magnesium gets burnt up by high insulin levels in the blood AND low magnesium levels can actually lead to insulin resistance.  Low magnesium can be a real downward spiral and can really contribute to if not cause blood sugar dysregulation.  You can break out of the magnesium spiral by (drumroll please) eating foods high in magnesium!  This is easy if you love green juice or greens in general and is also possible through nuts and seeds.  Each of the minerals and vitamins mentioned above is particularly important for keeping the blood sugar roller coaster steady or even hopping off of it if desired.
• Foods that don’t spike YOUR blood sugar or insulin levels.  This one is different for each person because we are all somewhere different along the continuum.  The only way to really know is to test blood sugar after eating using a blood sugar monitor.  I have had salads that have shot my blood sugar way up but also had fruits that did not.  This will be highly individual.  Another way to get a good idea is if there are foods that make you feel tired after eating them or if they cause you to experience any of the symptoms mentioned in the second paragraph above they are suspects.  Remember that it doesn’t mean that you have to say goodbye to those foods forever if they are healthy foods.  Really finding balance and then figuring out where those foods fit in can work too (unless it’s a jelly donut I really don’t advise jelly donuts…)
• Foods high in enzymes.  Enzymes come from two sources:  those made within our bodies and those made outside of our bodies.  Most of the protein we eat and much of the nutrients go into making enzymes in our own bodies.  Enzymes are like the commands that our bodies use to make things happen.  They are not the commanders but the commands themselves.  Enzymes make things in our bodies change, rearrange, digest, get promoted to other jobs…  They are really working behind the scenes very hard.  Enzymes from outside our bodies can come from food directly.  These enzymes can work to digest foods and clean our bodies including our cells and insulin receptors.  All raw fresh fruits/veggies have enzymes UNLESS they have been irradiated.  Yup.  As more and more of our fresh produce is irradiated coming into the country we are getting less and less enzymes from our fresh fruits and veggies.  Somebody stop them.
• Foods high in fiber.  It keeps the bad stuff moving out and creates an environment for the good stuff to be absorbed.  Fresh fruits and veggies, especially greens are going to be amazing here.  Fiber can also be a good way to eat fruits if they are usually too high in sugar to be eaten alone.  Some fruits might just be too sweet but if strawberries or raspberries on their own are a problem try raspberry kale kale raspberry kale kale.  It works for me.  Does it work for you?
• Foods high in water.  Water is each of our friends and some people are just not getting enough of it.  One way to get more water is to eat foods that are high in water content like cucumbers and fresh veggies.  Drinking water is definitely a good idea to keep everything moving and detoxing but the water that we can get from foods is important too.  If your body tolerates tomatoes, cucumbers and watermelon they may be good sources of water as well as nutrients.  They are also good dipped in guac… except the watermelon.
• Foods that optimize/heal digestion.  We already talked about water and fiber which are very important for optimizing digestion.  It is also important to heal the digestive tract.  This is not a quick fix but some foods that can help here are slippery elm, DGL licorice root, marshmallow and aloe.  L-glutamine is important too.  Healing the digestion can reduce inflammation in the body and less inflammation means more stable blood sugars.  It’s all connected.
• Stress-free foods.  What are stress-free foods?  They are foods that do not cause any digestive stress or stress on our immune systems.  This will be personal for everyone.  If you happen to be allergic to tomatoes please don’t eat them…. even though this article said to eat them.  They may be high in water but if they cause your immune system to go on red alert then you know they are contributing to inflammation and therefore adding to the blood sugar rollercoaster.  Other stress-free foods include non-processed foods with few ingredients that are easy to digest.  Usually if you are reading a label and you can’t pronounce an ingredient your body can’t pronounce it either.  Yes except quinoa.  Generally the more toxins in a food the more stressful it will be for the body.
• Organic foods.  Speaking of toxins organic and non-GMO foods are the cleanest we can get at this time with the exception of home-grown.  Eating clean takes a burden off of the body so that it can heal and perform metabolic functions more optimally.
• Foods that cause no auto-immunity.  Sometimes it can be very hard to identify triggers.  These may be foods that cause no overt symptoms but signal the body to attack itself in some way.  One example of this is gluten and how some of the peptides in it, when not digested properly, can signal the body to attack the thyroid or the thyroid hormones.  Dairy products can be a very important trigger for pancreatic autoimmunity which is particularly connected here.
• Foods that lower blood sugar.  In this section we will focus on foods that can lower blood sugar without raising insulin levels because that may be counter-productive for insulin resistance.  Two of these foods are carob and cabbage.  Both of these foods contain compounds that have been shown to lower both blood sugar and insulin levels after eating (yay).  The bonus of carob is that it tastes sweet.  I have used it as a sweetener when I stopped eating sugar and found this beneficial even before I knew about its blood sugar lowering qualities.  Cabbage can be juiced or borsch-ed if your body can tolerate digesting it.
• Foods high in the right bacteria.  This will of course be highly individual because we each are dealing with a different microbiome.  The two types of microflora most prevalent in the human guts are Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes.  Some strains of the former have been connected to obesity and diabetes.  It seems like we want those to be outnumbered by the Bacteroidetes although we need both types in abundance.  Unfortunately none of these bacteria are the ones we are getting from probiotics.  Yup.  To rebalance these organisms if your body will tolerate wild ferments and you have a safe place to make them that is a really good option.
• Herbs that lower blood sugar.  Fenugreek, cinnamon, ginger and basil are either available in your cupboard or in a store very near you.  These foods are excellent because they are everyday foods that are common flavours that will not seem medicinal or weird tasting at all.  Pesto.  Yes!  You can check out last week’s recipe for arugula pesto here  and check out this week’s recipe for Carob Spice Elixir here  with the addition of Maitake if you have it available for some extra blood sugar balancing effects.

Take it one day at a time and meal-by-meal.  You have already accomplished great things and have incredible body awareness or you would not be here.  Let’s hop off this roller coaster step by step together.

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Just in case you thought otherwise, NOTHING on this site or app can be construed as health advice.  I don’t know you.  I can’t give you advice and besides, I abhor telling people what to do.  You are the only person who can tell yourself what to do after doing your due diligence which includes consulting your medical practitioner.  If your medical practitioner doesn’t believe food is connected to health get a new one!

This article is more about family and friends who just have to tell you what they think whenever you have something going on.

Everybody eats food and everybody has a body.  It’s pretty easy to see how everyone has their own opinions about food, health and how the body works.  Some opinions are far more informed than others.  Most people have no idea how uninformed they actually are.

We all have experience with food and therefore everyone’s an expert.  As soon as friends and family hear that you are interested in health or perhaps changing the way you eat to better support your body it starts:  The opinions start flying in like paper airplanes in a grade three classroom.  In time it can get pretty overwhelming and although each of the ideas presented are unique they all start to blend together into a wash of unsolicited dietary advice.

I’m sure you have developed your own coping mechanisms for this type of advice.  I like to really listen to the person and find something we can agree on before moving on.  But before even that how do you know when you are actually getting good advice from a friend or family member and how do you pick it out from the seemingly endless stream of nonsense coming from media, institutions, professionals, friends and loved ones.  Here are five questions to ask yourself to guide your intuition as to whether your advisor may be onto something.

• Their advice is something that can be read in more than one reputable place.  Maybe there has been more than one reliable study on what this person is recommending or maybe their opinion has been featured in a wide range of well documented literature or across many cultures or traditional practices.  Don’t trust something just because it is in a medical journal.  Read it for yourself and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the studies done.  Cosmo, while fun to read on the plane, may not be the best place to get information on certain topics although if Cosmo says the same thing that is also featured in a published study in the Gastroenterology and if it’s also something that your grandmother told you once and there are other traditional cultures that have used this practice it may be worth a look.  This is not to say that if something has not been traditionally practiced or scientifically documented it is not true.  There are more things that we don’t know yet, haven’t tried, haven’t done and that haven’t been studied than we could possibly imagine.  It is always trial and error and risk/benefit analysis.  Fortunately most plants in and of themselves are not that risky.  Removing whole classes of foods from a diet can be if not done with knowledge.
• Their advice is not overly simplistic or black and white.  Yes, some things are black and white (elephant steps on toe, toe hurts) but food and health are nuanced and because experiences and exposures can vary so much it is great to receive recommendations that are not quite so dogmatic.  Thou shalt eat cabbage may or may not be the best diet ever for every person.  If the friend or family member giving suggestions seems to have an understanding of the nuances of food and how it works in the body they are likely to be dishing out better words of wisdom.
• Their advice does not limit or increase any essential nutrients to the point at which it could be damaging.  Yes the vegan or a grain free diet may seem a bit extreme to some but these types of diets do not necessarily limit or eliminate key nutrients from our foods.  Some diets that are really really low in vegetables or really really high in protein or fats may represent excesses and extremes that cannot be compensated for and may not be good advice for everyone to follow.  Certainly not long term.  No doubt the friend or family member giving advice about the diet has anecdotes to share on success with an extreme food plan but this does not mean that it will work for everyone.  When using the word extreme think.. is the idea of the diet extreme or are the nutritional elements of the diet extreme?
• Their advice focuses on something reasonable rather than obscure.  While your exhaustion may be a result of some exotic or terrifying sounding disease it could also be dehydration, lack of sleep or a B vitamin deficiency.  If their advice has you thinking about the apocalypse it may be time to consider advice from someone else.  For any sign or symptom look to the things you are exposed to every day and the most common causes in everyday life.  When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras.  Unless of course you have zebras nearby.  Then think zebras.  The problem with googling symptoms is all that will come up are diagnosable diseases, not dehydration, sleep deprivation, stress, sensitivities, mold exposure or blood sugar swings.  Rule out the obvious and close-to-home first.
• Their advice is not designed to make them feel better about their own choices.  If you are eating kale salads all day long and you are taking advice from someone who is eating pizza and ice cream AND the advice is to eat more pizza and ice cream…  this may be a little suspect.  It’s not always going to be this obvious but friends and family can be driven subconsciously to keep us the way we “were” or make us more like them so that they can feel just a little better, just a little safer.  This can be particularly pronounced where one person is going through great healing and change and others start to feel left behind or invalidated.  While they may have some great advice they may also be driven by their fears and trying to change you.

There is good advice out there and there are wonderful people who love you with your best intentions in mind.  You cannot follow every piece of advice you receive from friends, family, strangers and professionals that are helping you.  Before you get overwhelmed consider whether their advice is something that can be read in more than one place, is not too black and white, not limiting essential nutrients, not focusing on anything totally obscure and not designed just to make the advisor feel better.  Keeping this in mind you will be able to take on what serves you, follow the advice that will lead you down the right path and move toward your goals with the help of well meaning friends and family as a team.

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