I’ve known this about labeling for sometime, but the gentleman in this video explains how we are deceived quite well. It’s troublesome indeed!

I did my usual today - work on the computer broken up with a roller blade expedition with the dog. It was a good day, but I didn’t accomplish as much work as I’d hoped. I ate too many date nut balls…

Today I had:
green smoothie
arugula salad with tomatoes and citrus dressing
tomato sauce on zucchini pasta
pistachio-date balls with cacao nibs
OJ (and vodka)

I found yet another food-related DVD out on the market, this one called Processed People. Here’s one of the trailers:

I just got the DVD Food Matters in the mail a couple of days ago. (That’s the one my friend and I watched over pizza - how ironic!) It was good. It was more a set of interviews with people about the pharmaceutical industry more than anything, but very enlightening indeed. A main point to be ingested is that the big drug companies have nothing to gain by keeping us healthy, and food manufacturers (didn’t food at one time not require manufacturing?) have nothing to gain from us eating directly from nature. They are coming out with a Japanese version by the end of the year that I hope to get a hold of. A good thing, as the content is less visual than wordy.

I went roller blading today and outran the dog. My roommate usually takes Leo out at around 5pm for a walk and a poop, but she had a job interview in the evening, so I joined them while the sun was still out. Woah, was it hot! I had a good workout though. Also did some yoga this morning and also cycled to Costco. That all sounds great, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t overcompensate with calorie intake…. ugh.

Today I ate:

orange pecan date smoothie
green smoothie
tomato sauce and flax “crackers”
almond butter on same crackers
giant green salad with avocado
green tea
pumpkin seeds and goji berries (not really fond of the latter, I must admit)
OJ
red wine

Today turned into a bit of a food fest; I really ate well. This is surprising, as in the past whenever I have not brought enough lunch to work (only fruit until 3pm today), I have ended up buying crap at the nearest convenience store out of hungry desperation. Umm, perhaps the soba held me over today, and that’s why I made it home in time to prepare some healthy treats.

Today I had:

green smoothie
papaya
watermelon
kiwis
(cooked) soba and wakame (left the broth)
green salad with leftover apple curry dressing
humus a broccoli
Fuzzy Navel drink (I think I may be becoming addicted to these…)
white wine

A good laugh here. The “chief” looks a lot like David Wolfe….

Today is my 100th day of living a raw food lifestyle, so it is a good time for me to reflect a bit on what’s been going on in my mind and body. I have often looked upon my blog as a chore in recent weeks, which has still managed to keep me focused on my diet. However, I don’t think I have allowed myself to exploit the therapeutic benefits of keeping a journal as much as I should have.

For instance, there have been a few interesting changes in my body and mind that I have forgotten to document, as I was so busy thinking of what I ate or what I did on a certain day. One thing I have noticed a few times just over the past few weeks is that my body seems really good at healing itself. I cut my finger rather deeply with a knife a few weeks ago, and it seems to have healed overnight, and so smoothly with no infection, as if I had had a skin draft on it. This has also been the case with PMS pimples: They have magically left as fast as they came, along with my hormone imbalance. My monthly cramps seem shorter in duration, if not less intense in pain. I mentioned earlier at the beginning of my transition to raw that the after-sleep numbness in my arms disappeared, but I don’t think I mentioned that my lower back pains have lessened too. The only issue I am dealing with now is a chronic injury in my right shoulder. I am going to physio for it regularly. I think a miniscus might be pulled…

Another thing I really can’t stress enough is that whenever I have been eating particularly high raw - full of greens and fruit, I have felt… well, rapture! I have often found myself walking to the station in the morning on my way to work, being passed by stressed out salarymen who obviously were dying (perhaps literally) to get on the right train, and I would be suddenly overcome with pure joy- just enjoying being in the moment, smelling the flowers, or feeling the rain. There is no reason I could pinpoint in retrospect for this happiness. Nothing special or new had happened in my life. I just felt good. I named by blog “raw rapture” because I thought it was cute and catchy, but in truth I vastly underestimated the degree to which it would be appropriate.

My renewed goal: I have had 100% raw days over the last 100 days, but I estimate that most have been about 80%. I don’t mind not being 100% raw, and although this is a noble goal, it is actually not the priority for me at this stage; what is more important for me is to eat MORE fresh fruits and vegetables, and cut back on foods, raw and cooked, that are calorie dense. There are two reasons for this. 1) I want and still need to lose a great deal of weight. I have lost weight, and it is still coming off, but not at an optimal pace for me. I’d like to be back to a certain former self by the end of the year. 2) As I said, I feel so darned good when I eat mostly fruit and greens! I obviously still crave richer food items that literally and metaphorically weigh me down.

My other goal is to start exercising on a regular basis. Since June I have pretty much done nothing. True, I often walk 90 minutes a day for work (It’s almost 20 minutes just to my stations), but I know I need to get my heart rate up on a regular basis. I was doing really well at the beginning of the year, but that is of course when I was not working. I’m sure getting a simple program in place is going to have a big effect on my health!

Today I ate:

green smoothie (not sweet enough today)
Asian slaw
kiwis
raisins
green salad with raw curry dressing (apples, curry powder, olive oil, garlic and ginger)
Fuzzy Navel (blended oranges, dates, pecans, water, vanilla)

In this video from a few years ago has Tonya Kay (with with Courtney Taylor) revealing how to transition to a healthy raw food diet with ease. Tonya’s approach is/was very similar to mine, and she has a few LOL moments in her talk:

I slept after staying up late messing around on the Internet last night and spent the rest of the morning hours today doing the same. Then I finally settled down into my editing project. I have to finish it in a few days. It turns out that I will not be going to Osaka at the end of the month as hoped (to teach some Canada-bound HS students for a few days), as the powers that be decided it would be in their financial interests to find a local hire. In this economy, that is understood. It’s a downer for a person like me in need of extra income, though.

My aunt just sent me this video via email, so I just had to upload it and share here. Hopefully it’ll also give you 30 seconds of smiles, and a deep appreciation of marketing techniques:

Today I had:

green smoothie (no, this is not getting old!)
broccoli, cauliflower with leftover humus
peanuts
banana cacao ice cream
frozen raisins
lemon and water
Korean nori sheets (they have a lot of oil and salt…)

Today I was in Yotsuya, Tokyo, for the day testing locals for the oral component of the STEP test, the national English proficiency exam. I was paired with a lovely professor from Waseda University, and together we went through 30 test-takers, 10min. each, lasting the whole day. We struggled through the last few examinees due to fatigue, but the rest of the day went smoothly, and it was fascinating to meet the variety of people. We had one lady who had lived in Sri Lanka for many years, so her accent in English was interestingly more Indian than Japanese, and she was exceptionally well-versed in political and environmental issues. Another young man spent the latter part of his youth in Melbourne, and had a accent stronger than many native Aussies I have met in Japan. Quite a few graduate students in Japanese Universities were taking the test, and a majority of them had done undergraduate work in North America. In some cases it was hard to detect that they were not native speakers! Unfortunately the test also evaluates clarity and organization of thought, so this is where people lacking formal education were disadvantaged. As it was the first level, standards were very high and a great deal of tast-takers did fail, but most had a far better grasp of English than the learners I interact with on a day to day basis.

Today I ate:

green smoothie (fellow examiners were awed.)
zucchini pasta with tomato sauce
fresh papaya
papaya salad (minus the fishy stuff- went out for Thai after the test)
cooked veggies from remaining bento box
huge green salad with oil and vinegar
raisins
lemon juice and water

I was browsing the net last night I came across another great food-related documentary called “The World According to Monsanto.” YouTube has it broken down into 10 parts, which would take up too much real estate on my blog here, so here’s just part one for your enjoyment. This scares the crap out of me…

Today I had:

green smoothie (papaya, spinach, banana, agave, water)
green salad with mushrooms, avocados, green onions, balsamic vinegar
banana
raisens
papaya
Asian coleslaw
WINE!!!!
gin and tonics
peanuts

Saw a great film recently called HOME last night. You can actually see the hole film online via YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

A brilliant move to have the whole flick accessible for free, as this is a film that we all need to see. It’s a post Al Gore wake up call, and officially opened just June 5th, in fact, but I just checked today and it already had over 190,000 viewers who have already seen it online. It made me feel proud to be vegan and raw on the one hand, but also guilty in the knowledge that there is so much more I should and shouldn’t be doing. It made me feel angry at the greed that is part of our human nature, but also optimistic in the end about our resourcefulness and unity when push comes to shove. And push has come to shove. French directors had the simply idea of narration, areal video, and beautiful world music to effectively get the message across: if we want to survive as a whole planet, we have to start looking to the sun and stop brutally savaging the earth.

Here’s the trailer, but if you’ve got 90 min., go watch the whole thing.

Today I purposefully and methodologically planned to sin. Since noon I was dreaming about a Starbucks soy latte, and decided, “screw it!- let’s make an experiment of this!” I wanted to see a) if it was as delicious as I remembered and b) if it would make me feel like crap. The results, dear readers, are mixed.

1) I cannot lie: it tasted good. Great in fact. So much for a change in taste buds.

2) Within minutes after drinking the last drop, I felt as if I had major PMS cramps in my stomach. Once the stuff hit my gut, I felt more cramping and much bloating. I got a little diarrhea later. This reminded me of my experience eating salt too soon after breaking a fast. The body does know what is not good for it, once you allow it to highten its own awareness! Strangely, I did not suffer from caffeine shakes or too much energy or anything like that.

What I am bummed about is not the fact that the effects on my insides were so bad, but the fact that it tasted good. I was rather hoping it would be as bad as smoking a cigarette a year after quitting. (Delighted to report that it tastes like crap, and for the life of me I cannot understand why I subjected myself to all those carcinogens year after year. But I’ve forgiven myself for that- remorse and regret serve no purpose.) Perhaps I only psychologically thought it tasted good?

Well, just because the coffee tasted good, doesn’t mean that the body actually does not, in fact, ultimately crave what is good for it. After all, I’ve finished 2 months mostly raw, and I can very honestly say now that I look forward to my fruit and salads whenever I get hungry. Before it would be cooked curry or cookies, so this change has got to stand for something. I guess I need more time.

Today I ate:

green smoothie (spinach, berries, banana, agave)
raisens
cherries
pumpkin seeds, goji berries, pine nuts, and currants (trail mix)
double serving of zucchini pasta with ruccola-cashew pesto and leftover humus
giant mushrooms
white wine

Yes, I have definitely fallen for the raw food trap: reducing raw fruits, eating more veggies, but then loading up on fats due to calorie deficiency. I think I need to do a few days of fruit only to get into the high-fruit grove!

Bravo for Shelly Abegg, who defeated advanced cancer on her raw food diet:

June arrives tomorrow. Amazing how time flies! It rained all day today, and the raw food potluck I was supposed to be attending in Yoyogi Park was canceled. Bummer, but I enjoyed surfing for raw food sites online all afternoon instead. Yeah, I know, I should be doing some work instead…

I did do a bit of “cooking” though - my usual fair, though I did try a new version of Italian tomato sauce: I added green onions, basil, soaked, sun-dried tomatoes, and dates. What an improvement to just the red peppers, tomatoes, garlic and olive oil! In fact, I reckon you could skip the oil. I do like a little sea salt, mind.

My mini Cuisinart processor overheated after making a bigger-than-normal batch of ice cream. I thought that was it for the little guy, and it would have made the second appliance that frozen bananas have killed this month alone, but thankfully after a little rest, the little chopper powered up!

Today I ate:

green smoothie
cauliflower salad
cabbage salad
zucchini pasta and tomato sauce
banana cocoa walnut ice cream

The Meatrix has been online for while now, but even for those who have seen it, it still provides and laugh and reinforces what a lot of us already know. Enjoy:

OK, I should already know this by now, but it is imperative for a raw foodist to always carry emergency stock in her/his bag when out for a whole day. Problem is, you never know when you will be out for a whole day!  I packed leftover cauliflower salad and some fresh fruit for later on after lunch at work, but I was invited by my old students to hit the town (if you want to call Nagayama station a “town”) for an evening of excess straight after work, and of course I accepted. I had intended to shop (which I did actually do with great success beforehand - please read on) but I was famished by evening and ended up ordering a grand total of 6 raw salads, but I allowed the toppings of fried burdock root and fried lotus root to pass through my lips and…. I loved it! As I did the wine. Resistance becomes futile when surrounded by the borg; beginning raw foodists should avoid surrounding themselves with temptation by not letting themselves go hungry and then dining out with…. gasp, beer-slopping, fried food-eating carnivores (not that the meat part tempts me).

However, the great wonder of the evening was my little shopping expedition beforehand- I discovered that Nagayama’s Seiyu store has really made some phenomenal changes. I found a fruit, nut, and sembei store that sells raw peanuts, and an organic store that sell raw shouyu and raw miso. Soy sauce and miso are omnipresent in Japan, but do you know how long I’ve searched for the real macoy, raw stuff? Very happy! Cost a fricken’ fortune, mind!

After returning back to my station on the late train, tonight was the first night I was actually tempted to buy a helping of McDonald’s fries since getting on this raw food gig. With clenched fists I passed the tacky franchise and made it home. No sooner had I entered my apartment than my bag of raw peanuts ripped open, almost on their own accord. I don’t remember tasting anything as delicious and completely satisfying as a simple bag of peanuts. It must be PMS. No other explanation. But can I just say: God in her divinity has really and truly blessed us by dreaming up THE PEANUT. Though I do wish there weren’t that horrendous amount of calories and fat involved, especially considering the quantity I have just now finished ingesting….

Today I had:

green smoothies
cauliflower salad
kiwi and lichies
daikon salad
fried burdock and lotus root sald
sesame cucumber salad
kimuchi
peanuts (what, seemingly 2 cups worth!)
white wine (organic and preservative-free, of course!)

Here’s a goodie I found earlier on today: Storm of www.thegardendiet.com has this video comparing the cooked and the raw:

I spent WAY too much time surfing the NET today instead of getting work done. Amazing how we procrastinate until the very last minute. I am being followed by and am following one Ms. Leah Salmon on Twitter now, who has a great little website, on which I discovered the following great wake-up advice:

Today I had:

papaya
leftover Asian slaw
leftover humus with broccoli, button mushrooms, and bean sprouts
leftover cauliflower salad
cacao and banana ice cream
wine

This post too, is a day late, but I do recall what I munched on, because I was in chocolate heaven! I received 2 Gnosis chocolate bars from High Vibe, and with the help of my roomate, they lasted all of 5 minutes. Pretty darned good! I also opened up a jar of Artisana raw chocolate coconut butter, and that was a mistake. I’d planned to use it for “cooking” but that stuff will be gone by the end of the week due to a relentless spoon being periodically stuck into it… Also indulged in livingnutz’s mayan spice pistachios (awesome!), chocolate-covered mulberries and macademia nuts from Go Nutz, and a couple of pesto-flavoured walnuts.  Wow, rather worth all the money, I must say, but I have to exercise control. There’s a heck of a lot of fat in these goodies, however raw and healthy!

I did eat my share of bananas, salads and smoothies today though. (Can’t recall the details, so no list today either)

After work I headed to Seiseki Sakuragaoka to check out the baking section, which, to my delight, sells raw nuts and seeds, though the selection is limited. I was very happy, though.  The prices weren’t low, but way better than ordering online from abroad. I also found some chocolate heart molds, so once my raw cacao butter arrives, I can experiment at making my own chocolates. There’s a raw food picnic coming up soon in Tokyo, so it’d be nice to be able to make something by then.

Seiseki Sakuragaoka has changed a tad- there’s a new mini “mall” on the main street, but I didn’t get a chance to check it out. The organic health food store in the station building is looking good. I would never buy my produce there (insane prices) but it’s worth it for other stuff. I found raw honey, seeds, and Brenner’s soap. I also picked up some raw miso, though it did list salt on the ingredients. I learned that most miso produced in recent times is treated with heat. I am not surprised, unfortunately. Slightly related, there’s a dish in Taiwan called “smelly tofu” (understatement- it literally smells like SHIT- but tastes awasome) that is (was) an extremely healthy fermented tofu product, but over the past few years, producers have added chemicals to speed up the fermentation process….It’s really sad what is happening to food production around the world…

A raw banana-bender (maybe?) tells it like it is eating 80/10/10 in Greenland. LOL:

Well, the PMS of yesterday was justified. I am in a bit of monthly pain at the moment. My raw life does not seem to have amended that issue for me. I also went off the wagon today, without remorse or dire consequence - indulging in cooked rice, although it was home-fermented, pre-germinated brown rice - not exactly unhealthy. I made one of my favorite salads and made “ice cream” too,  all of which satisfied my emotional needs. Wasn’t a bad day all in all.

I ate:

a green smoothie (greens- dunno what they were, kiwis, mango, honey, wheat grass powder)
berry mix smoothie with mango
Asian Slaw (cabbage, carrots, peppers, soy sauce, honey, pepper, lemon, ginger, apple cider vinegar, sesame seeds (roasted-can’t be helped))
banana frozen “ice cream” with crushed pecans and cocoa powder
red wine (organic with no preservative , as usual. Am really loving this!)

As this BBC Horizon documentary shows, it’s more than how we eat that determines our longevity. Also of concern are our environment, our genes, our stress levels, our sense of purpose, human relations, attitude, sense of humour, and even religion.

How to live a long, healthy life (1)

How to live a long, healthy life (2)

How to live a long, healthy life (3)

How to live a long, healthy life (4)

How to live a long, healthy life (5)

Enjoyed another Golden Week day hanging around at home- still raining outside so haven’t really been motivated to get out. Spent the day watching movies and reading. I really should have gotten some work done in preparation for next week, but I was not so motivated.

Today I had:

melon
apple spinach smoothie
salad (avocado, tomato and greens)
sliced daikon, snow peas, raw tomato sause
banana Monavie cocoa powder smoothie
pecans and dates
red organic wine

Been researching a lot on chocolate recently. If raw chocolate really is a superfood, this is something I’d like to get into. As do many, I ador the stuff, and if I can enjoy it minus the guilt and plus help benefits, I’ll be converted. I ordered some basics, but international orders take time, I guess. Here are a few YouYube videos regarding the topic:

Shazzie talks on chocolate:

David Wolfe of “Naked Chocolate” talks on chocolate (26min., so make sure you have time!):

KaliLilla and little Samantha making chocolate: