LexiYoga

Vegan Diet

Written by Lori Nichols Davies.

As the CEO of the Holistic Cooking Academy of Canada, we serve seven food regimens enjoyed world wide. I must confess that I worry most about vegans. Too often blood tests show they lack B12, zinc, iron, vitamin A and D, end up in rehab for anemia and depression and cancer.

vegan diet

If you don't eat a whole lot of greens and superfoods, this most restricted food regimen can be very hard to get right. Thankfully many restaurants are forming to support this choice of lifestyle to make it easier for others to follow. In the past 40 years there has been a marked trend to vegetarianism, which is contrary to the House of Israel and the Muslim faiths. You can quickly get seriously in trouble with your body on this lifestyle, and many people cannot stay on the vegan lifestyle for long. Your spirit cannot work right when the brain lacks nutrients.

A vegan diet is 70% fat. This trend to higher cleaner fat diets is rising thankfully, because the world is so toxic, and pesticides are stored in fats and oils found in seeds and animal foods. Buying strictly organic food sources is one of our eleven principles to create a healing kitchen. A great way to recover from the toxins in the environment, is to counter the low-fat propaganda dietitians have been recommending adamantly for the past 40 years. A vegan diet is healthy for many for a short period of time. But for just as many others it doesn't work.

Suicides are up amongst our teenagers. Viagra sales are up also because of the cholesterol myths that abound and the people swallow lies in food politics. Due to lack of cholesterol, one of our best immune builders God ever made for us, the sex hormones are waning and sterility is up. Cholesterol comes from a healthy liver that needs coconut oil and olive oil and lemon to keep itself clean, and also what helps the liver is healthy, organic, pasteurized saturated animal fats received with respect and gratitude, not horror.

Seeds and supplements are eaten by most vegans. Whole food supplements are essential. In our modern stressful times with soils deplete in trace minerals, food supplements are considered essential since 1992 by the American Medical Association and since 2003 by Canadian Dietitians, all 5000 of them.

In Canada, most of us don't get enough sun. We need D3 to prevent diabetes. This so-called vitamin is really a hormone. It is created from the sun in the cholesterol under our skin when we are exposed without sun screen. We holistic chefs do not fear the sun. We fear the man-made chemicals in sun screens. In winter, when we don't get nearly enough sun, and in summer when we don't get nearly enough sun, fish oils provide the best food source. At noon days in July and August is when it is directly overhead and the only time of day that the body can make D3 hormones. Traditionally our forefathers and ourselves get vitamin D3 best from fish and animal fats all year long. That's it, that's all. Fish oils. Animal fats. When it comes to D, we don't have much choice. It's a matter of sacrificing your body, or sacrificing your philosophy. What is best for you? Only you can choose. And your life depends on it.

This Academy recommends fish and animal fats a tablespoon per day minimum for the little woman and teenagers. Known as the flexitarian lifestyle for what we stand in a plant-based diet, we are strengthened in knowing it pleases God that we do not eat meat, save in winter and famine. He doesn't want us to commit suicide, you see. Our Father in heaven created Food Laws long ago at the time of Adam and Eve left the garden of innocence to procreate. He spoke again in the 1800's to a modern prophet. His Food Laws are called the Word of Wisdom. It is preserved in the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who have an average lifespan of 94 years, just like the Cordon Bleu chefs who eat butter.

It is wise to eat fish oils and animal fats sparingly, not too much, not too little, but just the right amount. Every nutrition consultant worth their salt prescribes cod liver oil as 'medicine.' Given to meat eaters and vegetarians alike fish oils have the miracle omega 3 fat so desperately needed to stop infections and autoimmune disorders. Flax oil works only when the liver and pancreas are healthy. (no diabetes or hypoglycemia or hepatitis or cirrhosis of the liver). Fish only works to overcome compromised immunity.

Even vegans need to ask themselves, am I eating to live? Or am I eating to die? Many nutrition consultants are vegans, but even they are not 100% vegan. Consider you body as you process your kindness to animals. It is wise to let your body lead the way, not your head, which can be full of wrong attitudes that kill you or others physically, emotionally and mentally. Our great free agency allows us to change our minds once in a while. This is the sign of health actually. And growth. Cerebral types are more sensitive than most folk to our dear animals and most cerebral types find veganism very appealing and they do feel better for a while. Sometimes for a long while. Bless them all. But amongst growing teenagers, it is my observation that they have a death wish, known as anorexia, and veganism is a great way to facilitate this end result quite quickly. The amount of suicides amongst our teenagers is up. This I blame largely on malnutrition in the land of plenty. So many lack knowledge of nutrition. This lack goes on for years, and then death comes. It comes far too early.

Did you know that we are designed to live to 120 years? Four score and ten years is 90 years which is 75% of the way. On earth, there are six centenarian societies that live 150 years - for centuries. None of them are vegetarian. The average lifespan in Canada is now age 78. It is number 34 in all the world of 160 countries for longevity status. We have a long way to go don't we to improve our lot. Understand bodily needs, I say. My firm stand is that everyone needs to be grounded much better in applied nutrition. Thats' why I formed my corporation in 2007. Two of us are now training others to be holistic teaching chefs, Ken Johnston in Ottawa, and myself in Richmond Hill. Many people say we give them far more than expected anywhere. Half of the population is appreciative, the other half doesn't want to be responsible for themselves. Half just want to play and taste and not know the truth about themselves.

I have seen the live blood of vegans who live in San Diego. Vegans can have great blood if they eat a lot of chlorophyll foods and avocados. Most vegans live in the south where they get that sunshine. But in Canada, this land is not meant for vegans. It is geographically unwise to be a vegan in Canada. Even Wayne Diott, President of Macrobiotics Canada eats salmon from his river in Blakney, ON twice a month. And Sam Graci on his Salt Springs Island, a psychologist from Hamilton who promotes Fit for Life since the 60's, when he got to his 50's, he saw his live blood under a microscope and decided to eat fish twice a month.

A proper vegan diet really emphasizes a flexible attitude like this, watching the bodily signs for guidance. Eat local organic food, and you can't in winter, can you, unless you dehydrate your garden or bushels of fruit and vegetables and herbs. Chlorophyll in sprouted seeds, also grains and legumes are the staple of healthy vegans. This is why Hippocrates Institute of Miami and Robert O. Young of San Diego do so well.

As for David Wolfe, as charming as he is, he is leading depressed people down the road to suicide when he says 'Melons are a great source of the B complex.' I looked up cantaloupe in the Nutrition Almanac to find out that it has 0.04 mg of B1 in one cup. Now holistic chefs happen to know that the minimum daily requirement of thiamine or B1 is 1.5 mg. David is telling me and his readers that to get the minimum daily requirement of B1, we need to eat 37 cups of cantaloupe. This is just ridiculous, isn't it?

Therapeutic levels are needed to treat depression. It is up there at 100 mg three items a day. Only a food supplement can do it. Even B12 shots or sublingual tablets with B6 and folic acid combined to make the team work most effectively to stop or prevent a heart attack. B vitamins are essential to brain and body function.

It's ridiculous how many people assume things as OK when they don't know precisely about nutritional science.

In my case, I was 24 when some great 'friend' in macrobiotics told me I could get B12 in miso. I accepted it stupidly. Twenty years later start asking questions and stopped being such a fool. I asked, 'Well how much miso do I need to eat to get the minimum 6 mcg. a day?' I looked in my trusty Nutrition Almanac. There I figured out my body needed 10.5 cups of miso per day. I laughed. How stupid would that be? I would die from sodium toxicity!.

So many people don't know what they are talking about. You need to buy the Nutrition Almanac and get your head screwed on right like I did when I finally woke up at age 51. I hope you wake up much sooner than I did.

I have discovered through evaluation sheets from 12 years of teaching in Ottawa, that an estimated 10% of Canadians have actually studied nutrition. The Ministry of Supply and services said in 1996 that 25% of Canadians have studied nutrition. but that is an overstatement. The International Organization of Nutrition Consultants has estimated that 5000 people in Canada have studied nutrition. We are blessed to have nine independent institutions established to train an unwary public in this essential science. So few people got any wisdom on food in elementary school or high school Family studies.

Teaching kitchens are so few and far between. In Ottawa, we have only twelve teaching kitchens at the high school level. How many of the 600 high schools in Toronto have teaching kitchens. If anyone would answer that question for me I'd be most grateful. Now I met 30 Family Studies teachers last May 28 in Richmond Hill. In my two hour talk I asked them 'What are the gluten-free grains?' The whole room combined got three out of 19. I asked them, 'You have studied nutrition. What do B vitamins do for us?' It took a moment and one said, 'They increase our energy!' How do they increase energy? I asked. The room was silent. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and said, 'B vitamins are friendly bacteria that metabolize protein, fat and cabs so we can have energy.' Dr.Shari Liebermann, Ph.D. said that in her book, The Real Vitamin Book.

Now of all nutrients, B vitamins are needed most for metabolism. Refined grains steal it out of our food. If I don't eat whole grains sprouted and nutritional yeast daily, the world's best food sources, and I don't, then I take a daily supplement of B complex to calm my nerves to think straight under stress. In one minute, when my nerves feel jagged, I feel calm.

This superfood, highest in B vitamins on the planet, is fortified nutritional yeast. It tastes like unsalted Parmesan cheese. It tastes absolutely addictive on popped corn and butter. It makes the greatest vegan gravy and I put it on everything from biscuits to vegetables. It replaces cheese in any recipe. I invite you dear reader to visit my website now. Get my cooking class schedule, and decide when you can visit with me to find out more about applied nutrition in your kitchen. All our holistic teaching chefs want you to create a healing kitchen in your home. If this feels good to you, then talk to me soon..

I invite you to come to my cooking classes to get your head screwed on right and to stay on track. Why don't you come to Richmond Hill or Ottawa River Valley to my home this summer? Come with a friend to make it more fun!

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