The Raw Vegan Network e-newsletter
March 2007
Editor: Vickie Fisher, owner Raw Vegan Network
Welcome to the Raw Vegan Network e-newsletter. This newsletter is for informational purposes only. It is not intended for diagnosing, prescribing or healing.
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IN THIS ISSUE
-Network Happenings
-Questions and Comments
-In the News
-Health Tip: Food and Behavior
-Recommended Reading and websites
-Featured Network Member: Linda Wooliever, Worcester, VT
-Favorite Recipes: Fudge, Mexican “Rice”, Spicy Refried Beans
-Products: Juicers, distillers, dehydrators, raw recipe e-book, supplements
Please email us with your feedback about the articles and recipes, and what you would like to see in up coming issues.
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NETWORK HAPPENINGS
***Raw Vegan Network member Angela Elliott in San Diego, CA has just completed her new raw recipe book “Alive in 5, Raw Gourmet Meals in Five Minutes”. You can purchase Angela’s book at www.celestialrawgoddess.com .
-The Raw Vegan Network provides online raw food certifications for those who wish to expand their portfolio of expertise enabling them to serve others in there locale that wish to experience the health benefits of living a raw food lifestyle. For information: www.therawvegannetwork.com
-We also provide free contact services for people desiring help in there local area for raw food services. For information: www.therawvegannetwork.com
**Check out the “member’s events” page at www.therawvegannetwork.com/events.htm. It has the latest on what members are doing, such as raw food classes, retreats, raw food delivery, etc
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QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
***The following is an excerpt from the School of RAWk March bulletin written by Raw Vegan Network member Erica Albanese, Eugene, OR (schoolofRAWk@yahoo.com ), and is reprinted by permission.
In
Detention: PETA Needs To Learn How To Treat Women
I am finally at peace. After years of never feeling 100% comfortable in supporting PETA due to their total and flagrant disrespect for women, I have finally decided to terminate all support (excluding for individual acts of animal rescue or legal victories) and to actively educate others in the area of animal rights by also letting them know they do NOT have to side with the ridiculous, irresponsible, misogynistic and---hypocritically enough---exploitative antics that PETA perpetuates in order to support animal rights and live a compassionate lifestyle. Nope, I no longer feel the need to compromise my OWN self-respect by continually overlooking this extremely important issue. I'm tired of being the "bigger" person, accepting PETA for all of it's embarrassing, monumental flaws and direct insults!
Come to think of it, I actually think that MORE would be interested in learning about vegetarian and vegan lifestyles if they did not associate PETA's offensive and ridiculous antics so closely to the issue of animal rights. Some don't like PETA just because they don't like any reminder that their food or car seats was once a sentient being, which I disagree with, but many meat-eaters and vegans alike don't like them because they are obnoxious and insulting and embarrassing to our culture. And they are.
I understand that 20 billion terrified and abused dogs, cats, cows, horses, pigs, chickens and more are being neglected, enslaved, skinned and boiled alive, tortured, and worse every year. It is the most troubling thought in the world---borderline incomprehensible! I understand the overwhelming feeling that this suffering NEEDS to end like YESTERDAY, trust me. I agree with PETA on that. Yes, there are many things that I do like about PETA, and that includes the amazing service and great interactions I have had with their employees. But their mission to keep insulting women by getting more and more to strip or do even worse in public----basically featuring them only as sexual toys---in a desperate attempt to win adult males (the least likely to convert, unfortunately) over to a vegetarian lifestyle is just WRONG and ludicrous and NEEDS to end. I thought PETA didn't believe in exploiting animals? Could have fooled me. . . .
I had the opportunity to meet Ingrid Newkirk, the head of PETA, just two weeks before finally being pushed over the edge by way of video footage I will not discuss in this newsletter in order to not draw any additional attention to it. That a woman is in charge of orchestrating such degradation towards other women is especially disheartening, although none too surprising anymore in this day and age of what author Ariel Levy has appropriately dubbed female chauvinist pigs----women all too happy to exploit, degrade and objective themselves and other women under the strategically conditioned belief that it is "feminist" or "liberated" of them to do so.
Unfortunately, patriarchy has many faces and, regrettably, more and more of them are brainwashed and female. Until PETA can learn to give compassionate, educated and intelligent women the same respect it gives spiders, birds and jellyfish, the School Of RAWk and it's affiliate, Angel's Health Food Institute (www.angelshealthfoodinstitute.com) will continue to boycott PETA by supporting other animal rights/vegan organizations and speaking out to others in both person and in our literature about boycotting PETA as well (which shouldn't be hard since most people, including a lot of vegans/animal rights activists, hate them already anyways).
PETA will never succeed in reaching the masses at large with any kind of real message because what they fail to acknowledge is that evolving to a plant-based diet involves raising one's consciousness, and the acts of practicing an elevated consciousness and finding appeal in some poor woman degrading herself are mutually-exclusive interests. Fortunately, there are dozens of other animal rights organizations, especially VEGAN OUTREACH (www.whyvegan.com) who are mature, sensible, determined and effective in their peaceable and successful outreach efforts, and are therefore deserving of our respect and support.
If you have a bitter taste in your mouth regarding animal rights due to the efforts and sensationalist exploitations of PETA, please open up your heart and mind to consider that supporting compassionate living and a lifestyle free of causing unnecessary pain on other beings is NOT the same thing as supporting PETA, and know that you do NOT have to align yourself with their organization to make changes in this direction.
***Editor’s
note: Both Erica Albanese ( School of RAWk) and it’s affiliate Peggy McDonnell
(www.angelshealthfoodinstitute.com)
are Raw Vegan Network members in Oregon.
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IN THE NEWS
Doctors Are The Number Three Cause of Death in the U.S. - This according to the authoritative Journal of the American Medical Association. Learn how you can avoid becoming one of their statistics.
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HEALTH TIP
Food and Behavior
Vickie Fisher, owner Raw Vegan Network
When my son Josh, now 23 years old, was little, I would tell people, please don’t feed him sugar or red dyes because they made him extremely hyper and “ping”. They didn’t believe me until they saw it first hand. I knew then the link between food and behavior just by watching him react.
Several years ago I read a very interesting book, and would like to share it with you. It is titled “Food & Behavior” by Barbara Reed Stitt. Barbara is a former Chief Probation Officer and creator of a nutritional program which helped thousands to lead healthy and productive lives. Even though I do not totally agree with the diet she promotes (lean meat is included), her findings are amazing.
According to Barbara, “The connection between food and behavior is so basic that it is being overlooked by parents, the school system, counselors and most of all the medical professionals. Ask any hyperactive child, depressed, angry teenager, violent adult or criminal what they eat and you’ll find they “live” on junk food-sweetened boxed cereals, candy, carbonated drinks, potato chips, fast foods. Junk food abuses the mind, undernourishes the body and distorts the behavior”.
As Barbara started to pay attention to the eating habits of the probationers who came through her office, she discovered that a huge portion of the people who were getting into trouble were junk food junkies consuming 50 to 150 teaspoons of sugar daily. The connection seemed obvious to her: “if men and women were living on process foods and snacks, how could they get any nourishment? If they were undernourished, how could their central nervous systems be functioning properly? Finally, if their brains and nerves were malfunctioning, how could one expect them to behave sanely in society”?
She did not have many restrictions placed upon her in her work; but, she was expected by the judges to keep her charges out of the courtroom using any legal way she could find. So she began using diet and encouraging people. Instead of sending her subjects off immediately to a psychiatrist, she placed them on a diet that consisted of a total ban on sugar, white flour products, chemical additives, caffeine and alcohol, and emphasized the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats and plenty of water. She also discovered many of her subjects had dangerously high levels of toxins such as lead and cadmium in their blood that could cause emotional and behavioral disorders.
Her probationers began to feel good, energetic, calm and alive. An incredible number of them managed to stay on the straight and narrow and out of the courtrooms. It wasn’t long before the judges began to sense the effectiveness of this approach of getting the body healthy before working on the delinquent behavior. One judge that she worked with got into the habit of saying, “I’m going to send you down to Barbara Reed and you’re going to stay on the diet she gives you. If you don’t, you’ll be back in trouble-and the next time you’re going to jail”!
I believe Barbara was absolutely correct about the connection between food and behavior. Not only did I notice it with my son when he was little, but I see it in the majority of people today.
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RECOMMENDED READING AND WEBSITES
Food & Behavior, Barbara Reed Stitt, National Press
VEGAN OUTREACH (www.whyvegan.com)
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FEATURED NETWORK MEMBER
Linda Wooliever
Worcester, VT
Almost 12 years ago, I watched my mom get diagnosed with and then rapidly deteriorate from non-small cancer of the lung and the series of "therapies" that the medical world chose for her. She wasn't a smoker nor did she work in a factory. At the time, she was an anomaly. She was given a 2-year prognosis after all treatments were exhausted. In 10 months time, I saw a person whom I hardly ever knew to be sick, age and grow weak right before my eyes. She began with chemotherapy which was literally like pouring poison down her throat. Then she had to take other medicines which would force her organs to continue to work despite the drugs that would otherwise make them shut down. She said she felt like a sewer. She lost a lot of weight, had a "moon face" from prednisone and suddenly had a huge stomach which was also a side effect from the drugs. After a short while, the doctors tried radiation on her because the lump in her lung shrunk from the size of a baseball to the size of a golf ball, but it pressed on a nerve so she could no longer use her right arm. She had swelling and pain and they weren't sure why so they put her on blood thinners and then elected to do radiation even though her cancer was already metastasized. She had cancer in her brain, her eye, possibly her bones, in her lymph nodes. We asked her to stop going to different doctors because each one found more cancer. The radiation worked, to the extent that it took away the pain to her arm but the rest of the cancer in her body was escalating. The option to go back to chemotherapy wasn't there. Apparently, you have to wait a few years wait and she didn't have that option. She chose to use a drug which was not yet FDA-approved which was derived from a ewe tree. Well, this was the decline for her. My mother had had 20+ years of food-related allergies - things that she chose not to eat because she didn't like the effects they had on her. For 20+ years, she didn't have much in the way of fresh fruits or veggies. Everything that I believe the body needs, she didn't have. People don't seem to think much about food allergies but to me they are the body's way of telling you that there is an immunological imbalance. To me, it's not about taking shots or eliminating the food forever (I believe that the body can grow out of allergies much in the same way that it grows into allergies.) I believe that our bodies carry much wisdom inside them and I believe that we've lost or forgotten the ability to listen to them.
After my mom died in 1995, two days after my 25th birthday, I made a promise to myself that I would take care to listen to my body. At that time I didn't know a thing about raw foods. It wasn't until my daughter was born in 2001 and I found that I was feeling pretty awful - I had Candida and hypoglycemic tendencies and acid reflux. I found a woman on the internet who was a raw fooder who offered to "beta test" her consulting job on me. She helped me to learn a lot about raw foods and got me started on this journey. I am truly grateful to her for being so willing to help me. A little while later I took this online course with the Raw Vegan Network which gave me more tools for my tool belt. I learned a lot about the why's of this diet. I practiced on my own and found that I needed to actually see to learn some of the recipes, such as the dehydrating and how to open/eat some of the more tropical fruits that I never knew of before. I took a class with Lynda Carter out of Virginia and I gained even more awareness and confidence in how to prepare the foods for myself and my family. Just this past July, I took Alissa Cohen's 3 Certification Courses and these just put me in a very good place for myself as well as gave me many tools to be able to bring this to other people.
I am very grateful for the people that entered my life, to show me how to do raw food for myself. I find that I don't need to do it any way other than what works for me and I appreciate the many books and videos that are out there. But mainly, I have to thank my mother and my daughter for giving me these powerful life lessons that made me awaken to a healthier way of living.
My diet has changed a lot since the beginning days when I was transitioning from cooked to raw. Even now, I find that I eat differently depending on the time of month and what might be happening in my body. For example, there was a weekend in the middle of January where I was totally wanting lemons. I made lemon puddings and lemon smoothies and lemon dressings for salads. I found that I was VERY tired that weekend and I allowed my body to sleep when it needed to sleep. By the time Monday rolled around, I no longer had that craving and moved onward to eating what my body was wanting each day.
Given that as the sort of "disclaimer" to how I currently eat, I will also say that I typically eat a lot of fruit. I begin the day with a smoothie and I tend to eat more fruit in the afternoon. By evening, I'll eat something a bit heavier in the form of dressings for salads or raw Reuben’s - I eat what I want when I want, which is raw & living food. It's the first time in my life where I don't have guilt or shame associated with eating.
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FAVORITE RECIPES
Linda Wooliever
Worcester, VT
Fudge
2c soaked cashews
1c pitted dates
1c raisins, unsulphured
2 heaping T carob powder
1/2c fresh pineapple juice
1/2c distilled water
1c flaxseed meal
1c chopped walnuts
Drain cashews and put in blender or processor with dates, raisins, carob, juice and water. Whiz to thick paste. Stir in flaxseed meal and water. Press onto ungreased cookie sheet and freeze for 2 hours. Cut into squares and store in the freezer. MMM!!
Mexican “Rice”
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp. chopped red onion
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons olive oil
1-2 medium parsnips (peeled and minced in food processor to equal 1 cup)
4 sun dried tomato halves, soaked for 2-4 hrs
3 Tbsp. of the sun dried tomato soak liquid
1/4 teaspoon cumin powder
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
Directions:
Rinse the onion and garlic by submerging in filtered water, swishing and draining them. Next place the onion and garlic on a teflex sheet and dehydrate for 4 hrs. to soften and sweeten the vegetables and help to evaporate much of the volatile mustard oils. Next, mix the dehydrated veggies with the parsnip “rice”, add sun dried tomatoes and soak water, chili powder, cumin and sea salt. Stir this mixture until well combined. Adjust seasonings to taste. Let this mixture marinate for approximately 4-6 hours in the fridge for the flavors to marry. Warm for 20-30 minutes in a dehydrator set at 115ºF until warm.
LINDA'S NOTE: I just threw everything in the food processor, blended it and ate it. Very tasty and much less complicated but go for the directions if you want. I ate this by itself and also with Alissa‘s Spicy Refried Bean Recipe below.
Spicy Refried Beans
Ingredients:
2 cups sprouted chickpeas
1 cup walnuts
2 avocados
2 limes, juiced
1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons olive oil
4 teaspoons cumin powder
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt (the coarse gray kind)
Pepper to taste
Directions:
Mix all ingredients together in a food processor and blend until smooth.
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PRODUCTS
**Need help getting started with incorporating healthy raw food choices into your diet and maintaining the raw vegan lifestyle? Put together an entire holiday feast or a light meal. Mostly Raw Recipes by Vickie Fisher (owner of The Raw Vegan Network) is available at www.therawvegannetwork.com/productindex.htm
**The Raw Vegan Network is offering juicers, distillers and dehydrators for sale. Products are available at www.therawvegannetwork.com/productindex.htm .
**In today's environment, even if you are eating all organic fresh raw fruits and vegetables you may not be receiving all the nutrients you need for optimum health. If you are not a raw vegan, then you definitely need to supplement your diet. That is why we decided to add a line of all natural health products that we believe are the best health supplements available on the market. These are available at www.myaimstore.com/pathway2health .
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FEEDBACK
-If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us at info@therawvegannetwork.com and we will include them in our questions and comments section. Please email us with your feedback about the articles and recipes, and what you would like to see in up coming issues.
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