Entries Tagged 'Food' ↓

I was lucky enough to be one of the 600 people in the Audience at the Bloor Cinema last night in Toronto to watch the documentary - Food Matters.

I’ve actually already seen the documentary, in fact I own a digital copy …but I LOVE it so much and find it SO inspiring that I wanted to see it ‘on the big screen’ this time. And Dr Andrew Saul (who featured in the documentary) was actually there afterwards answering questions. It was awesome.

Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it:

Every time I watch Food Matters I’m on the edge of my seat, consuming every tiny fragment of information. It is the most motivating and inspiring film I have ever seen, without a doubt. And as you can see, I can’t rave enough about it.

Today I’m still on a ‘health food high’. I’ve spent the day buried deep in the Internet researching nutrition, alternative health and raw food. I feel like a disciple to some of the nutrition and raw food gods out there, namely David Wolfe, Truth Calkins, Daniel Vitalis and Andrew Saul.

The first time I watched this documentary it was one of those rare life changing experiences for me. I know that sounds a bit over-exaggerated but I swear it isn’t. It’s almost like watching the film made me ‘wake up’ from a dreamy haze of resting comfortably on the border of nutritionally healthy and nutritionally unhealthy.

It doesn’t matter if you have acne, or a skin problem, or any other possible health problem out there …you just cannot ignore the healing power of nutrition. You can’t expect your body to function without any problems if you fuel it with junk. We all know that using premium fuel in our car makes it run better, or using quality materials to build a house makes it more solid ..so why is it any different when we’re building and running our own bodies?

If you want to view Food Matters for yourself, you can view it here.

I picked up a small chocolate from a health store today. It sparked my interest because it’s sweetened with malted grains, mesquite powder and goji berries, a magical mix I’ve never seen before.

The chocolate is called Cacao Berry Clarity and it ticks a lot of boxes. I like this chocolate because it’s super healthy, affordable, and most importantly - tastes quite good. Even my chocolate-connoisseur-travel-buddy had a taste and gave it the thumbs up. Oh, and it’s vegan friendly too.

From the research I’ve done, malted grains don’t seem to be that common an ingredient to use as a sweetener. They’re more commonly used in beer brewing, so I have no idea why this Cacao Berry Clarity product has chosen to use them. My guess is because they give the chocolate a nice malt taste while subtly sweetening it at the same time.

But what’s SO good about this chocolate is how healthy it is. When I experiment with making my own chocolate products at home, I just put together ingredients that aren’t unhealthy for you and that I think will taste good. This Cacao product has done that, but gone one step further and added additional superfoods to turn it into a chocolate treat that is also medicinal.

Cacao Berry Clarity Superfoods

The Cacao Berry Clarity website has a downloadable text file which lists the superfoods contained in the chocolate and their amazing properties. It’s definitely worth a read, just so you can see how healthy these ingredients are, and why I think this chocolate can be classed as a ‘health’ food.

You can download the file by clicking here.

1. Goji berries

We all know that goji berries are a superfood and really great for our health. You can’t pass a health store or market now without finding at least one brand of these berries on sale. I’ve even seen them on the shelves at my local deli in Toronto.

2. Klamath blue green algae

This microalgae actually dates back to over 3 billion years! If you read the downloadable file, you’ll see the list of health properties this algae contains. The information has totally blown me away so I’m going to look into this food further. It’s best known for its amazing effect on the nervous system, but it has many more benefits than that.

3. Raw cacao nibs and cacao butter

I talk a lot about cacao so I don’t think I need to go into any more detail! You can read my article about cacao here if you haven’t yet.

4. Mesquite powder

I’ve recently become a member of The Best Day Ever and I seem to be hearing a lot about this mesquite powder within the site.

Mesquite is one of those ancient foods from the Middle East, India, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, and the American Southwest that has just been newly rediscovered. It’s best know for its antifungal, antimicrobial, and antispasmodic properties, AND it’s a natural sweetener with a very low glycemic index of 25.

Is this the most ultimate healthiest chocolate?

I do love this chocolate. I love the fact that it’s so healthy, tastes good and at US$2 a chocolate is quite affordable. Unfortunately the taste just isn’t as superb as nushing on a row of Green & Black. I’m beginning to think that perhaps I won’t be able to find something as tasty as Green & Black that is guilt free, but I’m going to continue my search anyway.

In the meantime, the Cacao Berry Clarity is a great option if you can find it. AND a portion of the profits of this chocolate go to Casa de Milagros (Home of Miracles), saving lives of children in Cusco, Peru through health, Education, Arts, Permaculture and love.

Fran

I found this awesome video on YouTube last night.

It’s a video of an actual doctor who’s talking about natural skin care, and how to prevent premature aging and acne through natural treatments.

I love this video because this doctor confirms everything that I talk about with natural skin care and healing acne. And I love it even more because he talks a lot about how important nutrition is.

I can’t stress enough how important food and diet is for your skin, your body, your mind, your soul ..everything, so it’s awesome to actually hear it confirmed from someone who has a medical degree.

If you want to get serious about having clear, glowing skin long term, then you will at some point need to look at the foods you’re consuming.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time researching alternative nutritional medicine, and have discovered some really quite amazing information that I’ll be writing or videoing about on my blog over the next few weeks.

It just makes me realize how holistic everything really is. The food we eat, the water we drink, the place we live, activities we choose to do, television shows we watch, even the attitude we have towards life ..it’s all connected and it all mixes together and manifests into our health and well being.

Fran

I picked up a block of ‘Flame Of Chicchan’ organic raw chocolate made by E3Live yesterday.

I don’t know what E3Live was thinking when they made this product, because it has to be the worst chocolate I’ve ever eaten in my life. And I’m quite confident in stating that it will probably be the worst I’ll ever eat.

I even uttered these words after my third bite, “This tastes like disgusting!”, and I have a witness to prove it.

It’s a pity, because I was so excited about bringing this block of chocolate home from a ‘healthy’ grocery store yesterday. I found it in the refrigeration section which was a real treat. It was almost like it was hiding so I felt like I’d hit the jackpot. Even better is how this chocolate is chocked (excuse the pun) full of super foods and it’s a raw food product. I’ve been learning a lot about raw foods lately so I felt like finding it was fate.

So why do I say this chocolate taste so bad? Well, it doesn’t taste like chocolate at all. It tastes like some kind of strange health bar that forgot to add a sweetener. Then it has this chili aftertaste which burns your throat a little. So essentially it’s a chunk of bland savory stuff with a hot ‘n’ spicy chili aftertaste.

I do have to give E3Live a little bit of credit for creating something that’s so damn healthy. It does contain a few superfoods (raw cacao, raw honey, spirulina, coconut oil), and there isn’t one ingredient on the list that isn’t highly beneficial to our bodies. If this block of choco actually tasted good, I’d be buying it by the carton, that’s how healthy it is.

I’m disappointed in this chocolate for a couple of reasons. First, I had high hopes that this would be THE brand of delicious tasting healthy chocolate that I was looking for, and second because it goes against everything that I’m all about when it comes to healthy eating. Because these ingredients modified and mixed around a little can make a healthy chocolate that actually tastes good, the way healthy food should. I feel like E3Live just got it a little bit wrong somehow. Yes it’s great to make a healthy chocolate, but it’s also important to make it actually taste good too.

And it’s not impossible. Healthy food, especially raw cacao, does not need to taste bad. In fact, raw superfoods and raw cacao can be some of the tastiest foods we’ll ever eat.

Now this product is handmade and the recipe obviously would have been sampled by the people that make it, so I’m wondering if I’m missing something here. I guess it is called ‘Flame Of Chicchan’, so perhaps the chili flavor should not have been such a surprise. But I’m also wondering if my taste buds are just not aligning well with the product. Perhaps my travel buddy (who also sampled it with a similar response) and I are just not acquired enough to fully appreciate this raw taste.

In any case, I won’t be buying this product again. And unless you like your chocolate to taste like cardboard and chilis, then I’d hold off from purchasing one too.

Sorry E3Live for the very bad review, but you still get top points for being super healthy!

Fran

On the topic of chocolate (sorry I know …again), I have recently discovered raw cacao beans and of course how ridiculously healthy they are for you. If you can handle the bitter taste, then these little beans are definitely something awesome to incorporate into your daily diet.

Not only are they absolutely amazingly fantastic for our body, but they contain an unbelievable amount of:

• Anti-oxidants - way more than any other food, and which are very powerful at healing the skin.
• Magnesium - more than any other food and which happens to be the number one mineral deficiency in the US.
• Chromium - again more than any other food and which also happens to be the number one trace mineral deficiency in the US
• Incredibly high levels of Vitamin C

So if you eat one of these little beans, you are getting a concentrated source of anti-oxidants, magnesium, chromium and vitamin C. More than any other food around and way better than popping a synthetic supplement or pill.

The word ‘cacao’ actually means ‘cocoa’. Apparantly the Brittish couldn’t pronounce the word cacao, so they called it cocoa instead. Seems strange to me, it’s not hard to say, you kind of pronounce it like: ka-cow. You can watch my video below for the proper pronunciation.

This food is so special, that a long time ago in Mexico City they even used it as currency. That’s how amazing and valuable the cacao bean was considered to be. Now you can just pick up a giant bag for around US$15. I guess we’re really lucky now how affordable and accessible this food is.

But what exactly are anti-oxidants?

So apart from anti-oxidants protecting us from free-radical damage of the skin, they are really just a measure of the color pigment in a food. So essentially, the darker the color of the food, the more anti-oxidants it contains. You’ll notice in the video when I crack open the cacao bean that it’s a black or deep purplish color. This just shows how many anti-oxidants are present in the bean.

Now blueberries are quite dark too, and they’re often thought of as being fantastic for our skin. But while blueberries contain 32 antioxidants, and wild blueberries contain 61 ..cacao beans contain an unbelievable 621 anti-oxidants!!! That is an insanely high amount. Now you know why I’m putting up with the bitter taste of these little things, because I know how GREAT they are for my skin.

Here is a video I recorded which shows the actual cacao bean, and some chocolate I bought from a farmers market that was made out of these beans.

Fran