Introduction – Nutrition & Recipes

 

 

Kaz will share some of her favorite recipes with you. They are easy to prepare, tasty and nutritious. For example the chia seed breakfast pudding recipe you find in the recipe section is surprisingly easy to make. It does not even require cooking. All you need to do is to mix the ingredient (mixing only takes a few minutes) and wait for 10 minutes for chia seeds to make the firm pudding like texture (or you can prepare this before you go to bed and leave it in your refrigerator overnight). It tastes like tapioca pudding. I shared this pudding with my neighbor. My neighbor told me that her high school daughter ate most of it and she only got to have a taste of it. My sister also got hooked on this after she tried it at my home and now she makes it at her home frequently. Chia seeds are loaded with omega 3 fat, the essential fatty acid which reduces inflammation and protect our cells and our body needs a lot of, but deficient in standard American diet. You will also love the kale-banana smoothie. It takes less than 5 minutes to prepare. You can have it in less time that you get a pizza delivered at your door. You can use any of your favorite fruit such as strawberries, mango, pineapple or substitute kale with spinach if you like. If you use frozen fruit and add cashew nuts or almond you will get creamier frozen drink texture. You can serve this as your dessert if you wish as it is so good. Who said that the good for you food must taste bad? Kaz loves to eat and I bet you, too, love to eat good food.

Since Kaz avoided red meat and consumed the USDA-recommended servings of vegetables and dairy products, she thought she had an excellent diet, in spite of having had elevated cholesterol and blood sugar level in the past. Doctors told her that her genetics must be the reason for her borderline-high cholesterol. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, she was devastated and searched for an alternative diet. This is when she had an opportunity to re-read Dr. Fuhrman’s book, and arranged a meeting to work with Dr. Jay Benson, who works closely with Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Since meeting Dr. Benson, she began following the mostly plant-based high-nutrient nutritarian diet, focusing on fueling her body to obtain higher immune power to prevent the recurrence of cancer. Today Kaz calls herself a nutritarian. A nutritarian is someone who prefers the most nutritious foods for the body. She feels even better than she did before the cancer diagnosis. She no longer has cravings for refined toxic foods and she stopped counting calories. In the process, she lowered her cholesterol and lost the last 10 pounds which were resistant to dieting.This diet is a must for athletes for the peak performance and for you and your family members who wish to prevent or reverse chronic diseases. Please read Dr. Fuhrman’s book, Eat to Live and The End of Dieting for more details.

 

According to Eat to Live, the quality of a diet can be judged based on three simple criteria.

 

• Levels of micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals) per calorie.
• Amounts of macronutrients (fat, carbohydrate, protein) to meet individual needs, without excessive calories that may lead to weight gain or compromised health
• Avoidance of potentially toxic substances (such as trans fats) and limited amounts of other potentially harmful substances (such as sodium).

Here is a checklist for your daily cancer fighting super food intake for your optimum health.

• a large green salad, include some raw onion and shredded cruciferous vegetables
• at least a ½ cup of beans or lentils in a soup, stew, on top of a salad or in another dish
• at least 3 fresh fruits especially berries, pomegranate, cherries, plums, oranges
• at least 1 ounce of raw nuts and seeds; focus on high omega-3 nuts and seeds (walnuts, hemp, flax, and chia)
• 1 double-size serving of steamed greens
• Include mushrooms and onions in your dishes

General cooking tips

How you prepare foods can have a huge impact on preservation of critical nutrients and in their medicinal qualities. In general, I recommend cooking in water without using oil, since heating oil can damage the oil. Furthermore, oil is very high in calories, with few nutrients.

Cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, broccoli, kale, watercress, Brussels sprouts, etc) contain gucosinolates, and in a different area of the cell, an enzyme called myrosinase. When we blend, chop or chew these vegetables, we break up the plant cells, allowing myrosinase to come into contact with glucosinolates, initiating a chemical reaction that produces isothiocyanates (ITCs); powerful anti-cancer compounds. ITCs have been shown to detoxify and remove carcinogens, kill cancer cells, and prevent tumors from growing⁽¹⁾. In order to maximize this conversion, we recommend that when you chop vegetables, you let them sit at room temperature for a few minutes before cooking with heat to avoid inactivating the enzyme protein.

Cruciferous vegetables and breast cancer
Cruciferous vegetables are especially helpful for preventing hormonal cancers, such as breast cancer, because some ITCs (abundant in broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage) can even help the body excrete estrogen and other hormones⁽²⁾. In fact, new research has shown additional anti-estrogenic effects of these ITCs blunt the growth-promoting effects of estrogen on breast and cervical cancer cells⁽³⁾.

Anti-cancer effects of onions and garlic
Allium vegetables are rich in cancer-fighting organosulfur compounds⁽⁴⁾, which are produced when the cell walls of the vegetables are broken down by chopping, crushing, or chewing. These compounds are thought to be mostly responsible for the cancer-protective effects of Allium vegetables. In scientific studies, organosulfur compounds prevent the development of cancers by detoxifying carcinogens and halting cancer cell growth. These garlic and onion phytochemicals are also anti-angiogenic, which means that they can prevent tumors from obtaining the blood supply to fuel their growth. In studies of breast cancer cells, garlic and onion phytochemicals have caused cell death or halted cell division, preventing the cancer cells from multiplying⁽⁵⁾.

How to cut an onion to maximize anti-cancer compounds and minimize eye irritation:

• Make sure that the onion is cold before you cut it. Even putting the onion in the freezer for 5 minutes is sufficient.
• Cut the end of the root off with the root facing away from you, preserving as much of the onion adjacent to the root as
  possible. The root is the part of the onion with the highest concentration of these anti-cancer compounds.
• Make sure to then cut or chop the onion finely, slice it thinly, or put it in a food processor before adding it to your soup,
  salad, or vegetable dish to maximize the production of sulfur compounds. See Dr. Fuhrman’s Super Immunity