Clean, fresh, RAW Challenge for JULY!!!

AWh thanks Ummbinat!! That sounds so yummy right now but I just used the last of my carob I should put in the notes on that one that refrigerating the banana for a couple hours makes it much more fun. Yeah everything has been on hold on the new site.

RMC - I like the wheatgrass idea - never thought of that although my blender probably would have just killed itself faster as the grass would have just knotted up around it (it was a piece of junk). Water... well personally the majority of the water I drink is from a brita filter. I don't buy bottled water just because of the waste & cash for it. I think the best option would be water straight from the ground - we have a couple fresh water springs around here but I go through so much I rather not drive all over the world. They are actually more common than you think. However unless its in a fairly untouched area you can't be certain that some type of nasty run off could be contaminating it. Personally I'm saving up for a distiller. Distilled water is the easiest to assimilate & absolutely free of everything....so I guess this would be considered "dead"?

Best path would be to flush the feeling and/or take something alkalizing....so maybe some lemon water. Getting a bit of sun on the face always make me feel better as well - no matter what the ailment.

I'm joining you!! Well kind of By tomorrow afternoon I will be on bananas. I still have a star fruit, 2 passion fruit, and a papaya that I will have for breakfast tomorrow. After that I have about 80 bananas staring at me soooo at least five days maybe more if some more bananas are ripened up by then. YAY!!! I've been wanting to go bananas but everytime I open the fridge there seems to be some type of fruit coming out from the shadows plus my garden has been going crazy but my husband should be home in a couple days so everything can wait for him!! I am really excited for this....I've never done banana island for real...most was like one and a half days.

Here are some SuPer SweEt banana tips to get us in the mood!!

All Bananas, All the Time!

Banana milk: combine peeled bananas with filtered water, in a blender; use enough water to achieve a milk-like liquid; blend until completely smooth.

Banana cream: follow the directions for banana milk, except, use less water, to create a cream consistency, thicker than a milk consistency.

Banana pudding: place peeled bananas in a blender, blend until smooth.

Banana "oatmeal" : mash bananas with a fork until an oatmeal like texture is created; may be served with banana milk.

Warm banana: place peeled banana in a sunny window until it feels warm to the touch; peel and eat. (You may want to use warm banana recipe for banana "oatmeal")

Cold banana: place banana in refrigerator for several hours; peel and eat.

Banana on a stick: carefully insert a wooden Popsicle stick, or skewer, through the center of a banana: half of the stick should be in the banana, half should be exposed, as a handle.

Frozen banana on a stick: follow directions for banana on a stick; freeze for several hours.

Banana kabobs: slice banana, insert wooden skewer through center of each slice until stick is filled, leaving enough wood exposed on each end to hold and eat. Be sure to make several for each person.

Banana hor' dourves: slice bananas, or cut into interesting shapes, place a toothpick through the center of each slice, arrange on an attractive plate or platter.

Banana ice cream: freeze several bananas. Using a high powered blender or a Champion juicer, blend into a creamy frozen treat.

Banana milkshake: combine banana ice cream and banana milk in a blender; pulse quickly; drink through a straw for an authentic experience.

Ants on a log: cut the pointed ends off of a banana, creating a log shape; dice the end pieces into small pieces; sprinkle "ants" on the log; enjoy. Kids really like this one.

Banana novelties: cut and arrange banana pieces on colorful plates to form flowers, trains, clowns, birds, or whatever your favorite shape might be.

Banana split: cut a banana in half in a long, slender dish; top with banana ice cream; may add chopped banana bits and/or banana cream, for added excitement.

Banana cereal: slice one banana into a cereal bowl; blend one banana with water to make banana milk or banana cream; pour over slices in bowl.

Banana necklaces: (warning, this could be messy) slice one or more bananas into fairly thick slices. Using a clean knitting needle, and clean hemp thread, carefully thread banana slices onto thread. When you are sure it is long enough to slip over your head, tie ends of thread. Wear, and nibble when hungry.

Happy Bananas: Eat lots of bananas, and smile!

Great job with your sis Ummbinat! What a wonderful gift to give! If we all just turn on one person to eating more raw foods then soon enough this world will be full of glowing happy people! My husband said the other day "can't we just be quiet vegans?" NO!!! There are so many people I care for and love deeply that are just slowly killing themselves and in the process are living horrible unrewarding lives. If we can just reach out and help one person then its all worth having others ignore us or try to bring us down because they are fearful or ignorant. Not sure if I shared this yet...A really good friend of mine (SAD meat eater) came to me a couple weeks ago and was asking about colon cleanse & detoxing. He saw stuff at GNC and he was trying to decide which one to get. I explained to him how those products are just short term & really a waste of money...they don't strengthen your system but actually weaken. I told him about banana island & he ended up doing it for 4 days. he lost 4lbs (didn't have much to lose) and now goes more regularly then ever (this was his main issue - he was only going at most once a day & usually much less). He reports feeling great, more energy, & adding more raw foods to his diet!! If I wasn't such a loud mouth he might not have asked for my recommendations and he would have his money stolen for a quick fix instead of a life long permanent change. Yay for NATURE!!!

We are on the final stretch now!! Less than two weeks to go! How is everyone doing? I'm on day 2.5 at Banana Island and I very well see this going on for at least another week as we have another tree that is ready to go!! I had a bit of mucus today thinking maybe I have some unraw nuts or something in the house.

Very excited for you Naoka!! This is definitely your time! I will have to check out his site. I've been thinking about trying to give stuff like that to my husband and see if I can win him over

Because our bodies do better with raw foods our guidelines change. This is why most other country's RDAs are so much lower than the US because their diets are better. If you compare this info with the UK's this is still even higher in most cases! These are my notes taken from Adam (nutrition genius on 30BAD) and other various sources - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If your diet does not consist of very high raw or you consume meat/dairy/eggs then these statements probably do not apply to you.

General Guidlines for a rounded nutrient rich day:
Papaya, mango, and/or kiwi (vitamin e & overall great nutrients)
Bananas - calories & easily digestible
Dates, figs, raisin (various dense nutrients)
6-10% of calories from LEAFY GREENS (romaine, spinach etc)
citric acid (citrus fruit) or malic acid (apples, pear) with LEAFY GREENS (vit C & iron together = better absorption)
Brazil nut (selenium)


SETTING UP YOUR VITAMINS/NUTRIENTS with a program like Cronometer (not sure why MFP doesn't do all this)

Vitamins:
Make B-12 = 0 Either your body will make b12 or take the shots. Our soils are so depleted that getting B12 naturally is very hard. Some people with uncompromised digetive systems will produce their own. To be safe just get your levels checked after a couple months of raw
Make Vit D = 0 Vit D get from the sun
Vitamin E 10mg - which is still double the barest minimum you need (LF doesn’t need as much)

Minerals:
Calcium 500mg
Phosphorus 500mg (NEVER more than calcium - a daily check should be made that it doesn't excede calcium)
Iron 8-16mg as your minimum (because you are taking in all non-heme it will be absorbed better)
Selenium - really only need 20mcg but I just leave it at the RDA and have a brazil nut each day to cover it
Sodium - you will always be lacking here - we really don’t need that much sodium - I changed mine to 250 just so that there is something to shoot for - good sodium source: celery
Zinc - you will usually be shy of the RDA however on this diet again you will be assimilating it much easier

Lipids:
Omega 6 from 2-3 (you want the ratio of omegas 3:6 ideally at 1:1, 1:4 is ok and never more than 1:5)

--ADAM'S NOTES--
VARIOUS
selenium : should be about 20.4mcg as the barest minimum.
vitamin E: as long as you're getting 5mg or more, you will likely be fine. obviously higher is better, but since youre on a low fat diet, vitamin E is not needed in massive concentrations. There's no definitive number for vitamin E.
Iron & Vit C : (The easiest to absorb type of iron is non-heme (plant based). Spinach has more iron per gram than beef. Iron "deficiency" is not a supply problem but an absorption problem.)
If you have a developing cancer into your body, iron will make it grow fast. The body puts down iron levels often to fight cancer-cells, so the cancer-cells do not get enough of it and are better to fight for your immune system.
If you eat Vitamin C with non-heme iron(type in fruits/veggies) it is better absorbed than heme iron(found in meat)
Phosphorous: needs to be monitored in relation to calcium (in many ways more important to know than calcium intake, since our calcium requirements are actually only around 450mg on a diet containing no animal protein and low sodium...whats important is that our phosphorus is in a 1:1 ratio to calcium, or that calcium is higher - if phosphorous is more your body zapps calcium from other sources to balance it out). Zinc is also very important. Again our requirements are much lower on this diet, but are still important.
Amino Acids: Similarly, as well as total protein intake, our amino acid levels are important. Usually people are low in methionine. This is a good thing in some regards, since we dont need that much methionine and high methionine is not good. However we do still have requirements which are often not met. Methionine is important for red blood cell/haemoglobin production, and hence tissue oxygenation, and for hence for iron usage. Its also important for liver detoxification. Essential infact. We need around 10mg/kg body weight of methionine, or 13-15mg/kg bodyweight of total methionine and cysteine. In this way, if our cysteine intake is sufficient, our methionine levels can be reduced slightly, because the body uses methionine to make cysteine.

PROTIEN (this response was to some who was worried about gaining muscle):
Your friends are right in saying that you definitely do need protein to repair your muscles and promote muscle growth. But they are wrong in believing that you need more than 10% of your calories to come from protein in order to 'get enough' protein. We actually need only around 3% of calories from protein to get enough, and for a safety assurance, its wise to get 5-7% of calories from protein. That is way more than enough protein anyway, so with a 10% allowance, we can dramatically exceed our actual requirements.

I think the thing that needs to be clarified is that 80/10/10 means that you get a minimum of 80% of your calories from carbs, and a maximum of 10 from fat and 10 from protein.

There are 4 calories per gram of carbs and protein and 9 calories per gram of fat. So if you take a typical requirement of say 3000 calories, that means that you can get anywhere upto 75g of protein per day, which is way more than most people need. When you consider two things:

protein:energy ratio- This means that our protein requirements are directly proportionate to our total calorie intake. The less calories we eat, the more protein we need, because our body will start to use muscle protein for fuel to compensate for the calorie deficit. The more calories we eat, the less protein we need, because we will not be needing to use muscle protein for fuel as much, and will not be needing to use any dietary protein for fuel either. This is why it is so important to eat enough calories on a lower protein diet.

Protein adaptation - we have an amazing capacity to adapt to different levels of protein intake. The thing is, the amount of protein we consistently get tends to set the threshold for our protein requirements. The more protein we consume, the more protein we end up needing on a day-to-day basis, because our body becomes less conservative in its recycling of proteins and its use of proteins. The less protein we consume, the less we need. It takes time to adapt to different levels of protein intake, to achieve what's called nitrogen balance. This can be anywhere from 4-41 days. So for example, if we take our baseline protein requirement of 0.3g per day, this means that at your weight of 48kg, you would only need 14.4g protein per day as long as your calorie requirements are met, to sustain your weight. In order to gain weight, say you wanted to be 60kg, you would need a baseline of 18g per day, providing you are getting enough calories. The reality is that if you actually consume this baseline requirement and no more, even if you get enough calories, you will go into negative nitrogen balance (you will lose muscle mass etc) temporarily whilst your body adjusts to the lower protein intake. So it is actually advisable to aim for at least 0.6g/kg, (doubling up for safety). For a 48kg female, this would mean consuming 28.8g protein per day, or for gaining weight to 60kg, around 36g protein per day. Then if you really want to be safe and go for the super-safe generalized recommendation of 0.8g/kg, you would require 38.4g protein for maintaining the 48kg weight, or 48g to achieve the 60kg weight. So as you can see, with an allowance of 75g protein for a 3000 calorie diet (and obviously more protein per gram with increasing intake of calories), its virtually impossible to not get enough protein, or exceed your protein requirements, whilst eating 811rv proportions.

The thing you need more of when aiming to gain weight, especially if you are skinny, is definitely more protein, but also more calories. So obviously, the more calories you eat, the more protein you consume by necessity. And of course as far as your friends assertion that you need more concentrated proteins to gain weight, if you wanted to try eating concentrated protein, there is always nuts and seeds, which can easily fit into 811 proportions

OMEGAs
Fruits provide the easiest to digest source of omega 3. Fruits provide the easiest to digest source of all nutrients, without exception, when they are ripe and edible to humans.
Of those fruits, the highest sources (and coincidentally, most easy to digest fruits) are the melons. The watermelon is the exception which has very little omega 3. Honeydew, piel de sapo, cantaloupe and galia are all great sources of omega 3.
There are many other fruits with appreciable omega 3 intakes, but which are not high in and of themselves (they add to our overall food intake to create a cumulatively high omega 3 intake). Use CRON-o-meter to find out this for yourself. Or look on WHfoods or nutritiondata.com. or go to ecologos.org and download jerrys story.
The next easiest to digest foods high in omega 3 are the tender dark green leafy vegetables. (Such as spinach and romaine lettuce). Again, you can use one of the above tools to work out exactly how much.
The hardest to digest plant foods, which are high in omega 3, are the nuts and seeds. Walnuts for example, are a good source of omega 3. Of the seeds, flax, chia and hemp are the highest sources. The main concern with eating too many nuts and certain other seeds not mentioned, are that they are invariably high in omega 6. The more omega 6 we consume, the more omega 3 we need. The lower our omega 6 intake, the lower our omega 6 requirements.
The other factor is about the omega 3:6 ratio. Ideally we would have a 1:1 ratio, however we can thrive on anything upto a 4:1 ratio in favour of omega 6. We can tolerate a 5:1 ratio. Any higher and we get a little excessive. High omega 6 intakes can imbalance our omega 3 levels, increasing our omega 3 requirements. High omega 6 intakes have been associated with problems such as increased inflammation and cancer, although realistically, its probably not going to be causing problems at the levels you are talking about.

Oh and I saw this in another thread here on MFP. If you live in the states this could help out a bit with cash flow. https://www.angelfoodministries.com/ They have fruit/produce boxes once a month for pretty cheap (they do contain croutons & dressing but you could probably trade with someone else for more fruit!). Far from organic but better than nothing!!