Rawsome!

One of my goals I want to achieve this year is to get back to eating a high raw food diet. Last year for about 3 months I went completely raw which was incredible but of course didn't last. I went raw in winter which was the worst time because naturally all I was craving were starchy fats. So I fell off the raw wagon in a big way and just started eating any old thing, pizza, pasta, white bread, sugar. But throughout this period I knew that somehow I wanted to get back to a high raw diet but had no idea how. Since about December I managed to eliminate dairy and meat and in January I ditched fish so I was vegan which was something - not great but something but even this wasn't built on a particularly solid foundation and I was starting to get the cravings again for cheese recently. Fortunately I was saved from an imminent slide backwards thanks to my in-raw Kelly sending me an email telling m Victoria Boutenko coming to town to do a lecture on her specialist field: the green smoothie.
I had messed around a bit with green smoothies before because I'd seen and read a bit of information about this on other raw websites but of course I was doing it in a way that meant short term gain but not sustainable over the duration. So last night I went to see Victoria talk for close to two hours just on the green smoothie. Now I get why they are so good for you - stomach acid. Basically the higher intake of greens means the stomach produces more hydrochloric acids which assist with breaking down food better leading to better nutrition which means more energy and greater health. And as an aside although completely related according to Boutenko a lack of hydrochloric acid has a tendency to show up as noticeably greying hair in those over forty (yikes!) but if you drink your greens daily this can actually be reversed. So if having great skin, high energy levels and mental clarity weren’t enough, chuck in hair and I am sold!
But what really got me listening was the relationship between drinking greens and the liver. I am fairly preoccupied with this as I have a liver that doesn’t function as optimally as it could due to hepatitis c. For years my liver function tests have come back normal but I know that there aren’t that many options for actually clearing hep c apart from (what my friend Stephen Piper calls it) getting the fear on - interferon - hideous form of chemotherapy that sometimes doesn’t even work. So when it was mentioned that green smoothies boost production of bile which in turn assists with liver function I was all ears. I am due to get a blood test again soon to check my alts so I will be interested to see if this actually makes any difference.

Boutenko’s book Green for Life pretty much covers everything and her website is a huge resource for all things green and raw.

This mornings green smoothie consisted of:

1 cup of apple juice
1 cup of water
Kale
Cucumber
2 golden kiwifruit
Banana
Mint
Ice

I drank 2 large glasses and it was tasty, kind of like spirulina but not as gag inducing. Will post different versions as I experiment.