Simple, Flexible Salad Recipe

Photo by LollyKnit

The photo above is for a gorgeous fruit salad of watermelon + mint + raspberry with honey + lime juice as the dressing. I can't wait for summer to indulge!

Almost every weekday, I eat a vegetable-based salad for lunch. I don't like leaf lettuces unless they are ultra-fresh, so I mainly use vegetables and fruits.

Here is my basic salad recipe:

Dressing (olive/flax/sesame oil + lemon juice/cider vinegar + mustard)
Aromatic (like ginger, scallion, shallots, garlic, onions)
Green (like spinach, kale, kohlrabi tops, cucumber, zucchini)
Colorful Vegetable (bell pepper, tomato, carrot)
Protein (like nuts/seeds, tofu, boiled egg, cheese, beans)
Herbs
Fruit, fresh or dried
salt + pepper


I usually start with the dressing at the bottom of the bowl, then I add the aromatic so it has time to infuse the salad dressing.

Next I try to add the green so that it has enough time to soak up the oil and become tender, especially zucchini. If zucchini doesn't soak up enough oil, it can be bitter.

I try to make my salads colorful and have a variety of flavors, like sweet and bitter with apples + daikon radishes together or fennel + orange.

If I want extra texture, I add mushrooms or avocados to contrast all the crunchy raw vegetables.

Juicing versus Blending, or: Why I am not buying a Juicer

Photo by *Solar ikon*

With my new immersion hand blender, I have been drinking more smoothies as a way to get more fresh fruits and vegetables into my diet. I usually do banana + a sweet fruit, like strawberries, apples, or kiwis. If I feel like an extra boost, I also add a dash of cocoa and a handful of almonds.

After reading The Raw Food Detox Diet, which touted juicing as the foundation of eating raw (pp. 49-52), I started wondering what the differences were between juicing and blending as well as which one was better for me.

Here is what I found:

What is the difference between juicing and blending?

Juicing separates fiber from juice to make juices, while blending blends fiber and juice to make smoothies.

According to the Raw Food Detox Diet (pp.49-52), juicing releases organic water—or ‘hydration’ as Natalia Rose calls it, chlorophyll, and enzymes from the fibers. These we cannot absorb from the fibers without juicing. Without fiber in the way, all the fresh water, chlorophyll, and enzymes go straight to the cellular level.

Organic hydration is water from plant sources, not from a spring, well, or faucet. This organic water released by juicing contains all the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes from the plant. Furthermore, Rose asserts that no more water is needed on her diet because of organic hydration (!). And without the fiber to fill us up, we can drink even more organic water.

I don’t know if I believe everything Rose has to say about juicing. According to her, the minerals in mineral water and sea salt may even leach minerals from the body! Not that she provides documentation on this, however.

How are juicing and blending good for you?

Both blending and juicing saves you time on chewing, chopping, and digesting. By blending and juicing, you get to eat more and facilitate more and faster absorption in our ‘compromised’ intestines. Apparently, eating trashy food will compromise your intestines.

Freshly juiced and blended juices are better than bottled. Bottled juices are pasteurized, which kills live enzymes through heat. In fact, when Alissa Hamilton, author of the soon-to-be-published book Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice, explained pasteurization, she also revealed how ‘fresh’ Tropicana orange juice really is:

“In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn't oxidize. Then it's put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it's ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.”

Now who still wants to drink juice from a box?

So to juice or to blend?

Here is a summary of juicing and blending pros:

Juicing juices :

+ good for getting unpalatable greens into your diet by mixing with apples

+ high volume is possible

+ absorbed in 20 minutes, little energy to digest without fibers

Blending smoothies :

+ good also for mixing unpalatable greens with fruits

+ high volume also possible

+ whole food, no wasted fibers, but longer to digest

+ high-speed blender can also break cell walls for easier absorption

+ noisier than juicers

+ easier to clean because you eat all the fiber

Both blending and juicing are good for getting unpalatable greens at a high volume into your diet. But I already eat plenty of greens in my weekday salad lunch.

The main difference between the two is the fiber. Fiber is important roughage that is good for you, but a raw food diet already has a lot of fiber. Because I am only about 50% or less raw, it is important that I get fiber from whole vegetables and fruits.

Moreover, juicing refines vegetables and fruits so that they are no longer whole foods. Whenever possible, I try to choose the least-refined food.

I also don’t want to spend the money or the storage space on a high-speed blender or juicer.

In conclusion, I will continue to blend smoothies at home for my own food enjoyment and buy juices from the café downstairs if I need to digest some nutrients fast—like right before I head off to yoga.

Genetic Modification in Europe

Photo by azrainman

Like many Americans, I believed that Europe has no GMO food products. Unfortunately, that is not true. In a few processed products, like canned soups, I have seen ingredients labeled 'modifiziert'--modified. At least here, genetically modified foods are labeled.

I found an excellent resource about GM in Europe in English, GMWATCH.

Review: The Raw Food Detox Diet

In the tradition of my of my favorite personal finance blogs, every other Sunday, Eat with Integrity reviews a book about food.

I picked up Natalia Rose's book, The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss, because I wanted to learn more about eating raw. Instead of finding motivational research or scientific facts, I found a lot of misinformation and an unfortunate attitude towards food.

What is the raw food detox diet?

Rose is stridently against "waste" in this book. According to her, "waste=weight". If you get rid of waste, then you get rid of weight. Rose's diet focuses on removing as much "waste" as possible from the diet (basically, everything that is not fruit or vegetable) and eliminating the toxins that have built up in your cells from birth, toxins that come from eating anything other than fruits and vegetables.

To that end, her diet encourages you to eat "quick exit foods in quick exit combinations,"that is, eating food that leaves your body quickly. Practically speaking, this means eating only fresh fruits, starches, meat-proteins or nuts/seeds/dried fruits (fat-proteins) together. Rose offers no scientific explanation for why a longer digestion time might be harmful to the body.

Questionable suggestions in the book

The sad thing is that she advocates using the artificial sweetener Splenda for sweetness. While Rose does not advocate completely eliminating all processed foods from one's diet until one is ready to be 100% raw, Splenda is a sugar-free chemical whose safety many question. The fact that Rose recommends the chemical Splenda as a white sugar replacement suggests that she is not concerned with completely eliminating processed foods nor with safe foods.

Moreover, the diet is only one part of her detox plan. The other half entails "waste elimination specialists" to help you get rid of current and past toxins. Among activities like sweating and deep breathing, which I'm all for, colonics and enemas are what she most recommends. In Rose's interview with her colonics therapist, they both agree that certain people may not need help to "eliminate" at first, but eventually everyone reaches a point where they come up against "post-putrefaction", waste that has been lodged in the body for so long that it needs professional help to leave the body.

For starters, no one needs a monthly or weekly professional treatment to eat healthy. I sincerely think each individual can heal her- or himself. Second, colonics has been debunked! Even by the raw food community! One of the supplements Rose's colonics therapist advises is psyllium. I found out through rawveg.info that psyllium becomes a gel that conforms to the shape of whatever container it is in, so that once you ingest it, it creates a gel that is in the shape of your intestine! Add clay for color and herbs for gunkiness, then your poop looks really like shit, like post-putrefaction.

While I didn't research into any other of Rose's claims, the fact that she recommends Splenda and psyllium as part of her detox plans made me less inclined to believe her other claims.

Meal planning ideas

After Rose explains her diet philosophies, she gives a quiz to diagnose your detox transition level. If you have been eating unhealthy for a while, you are a level 5, whereas if you are ready to go 100% raw, you are a level 1.

I was on the low side of a level 3, so I read both level 3 and level 2 weekly menu plans. A level 3 was basically 80% raw for breakfast and lunch with dinner open to almost anything as long as it was "well-combined." She mostly advocates a "green lemonade" vegetable juice first thing in the morning, then fruits for breakfast and snacks before and after a raw vegetable salad lunch. A level 2 was someone who incorporated more creative raw dinners into her diet.

I am ready to try gourmet raw recipes for dinner, but one thing made me hesitate: Rose asks Level 2 to stick to mono-fruit meals, that is, eating one type of fruit for a meal. I cannot ever imagine enjoying a meal of 16 bananas or an entire watermelon. I crave variety and diversity in every one of my meals, and this type of mono-fruit meals will never be something that appeals to my instincts of eating with joy and abundance.

Good ideas from Rose

Helpfully, Rose advocates planning ahead to avoid temptations in real-life scenarios, like at the office or at other people's parties. I really appreciated the extra motivation she offered about changing habits at the office, which is one of my weak areas. I really need to replenish my healthy snacks at the office, such as nuts, dried fruits, and chocolate with over 70% cocoa content.

I appreciated a few of Rose's philosophies. Rose is not concerned with making anyone 100% raw. In fact, she is against anyone "transitioning" too fast to a 100% raw diet. She also wrote about not labeling herself as even an "aspiring raw foodist." If she felt like eating something mainstream, she does without worrying. She recognizes that as long as we mostly eat healthy, indulging in meat or raw cheese is ok. She just eats what she eats when she wants to. And that is something I agree with: find liberation and joy in your meals rather than be limited by an identity label like vegan or raw.

Is The Raw Food Detox Diet worth reading?

Because Rose presents her diet along a continuum, there are a few good ideas and recipes you may find useful in this book. In fact, I did see a few recipes I wanted to try and may share on the blog later.

Nonetheless, I found her book filled with misinformation and a weird distrust in the joy of food that I would not recommend it. Also, Rose recommends a lot of brands of food to buy. While these specific kinds of recommendations may take the thinking out of eating, what if the manufacturers change their recipes? Her book is not a resource for people who want to become more conscious about what they eat, but for people looking for a specific program about which they don't have to think too much about.