If you don’t know what goes on in the olive oil industry, chances are you maybe eating olive oil that’s not really olive oil.

Massive fraud
The olive oil industry is riddled with fraudulent practices. Most olive oil is a low-grade mixture of olive oil and canola oil that has been deodorized and artificially colored — even if the label states “extra virgin, cold pressed.” Even if (and most likely) the label states that it was made in Italy.

Restaurant “olive oil” isn’t
Restaurants the world over are offering their patrons a brand of olive oil that is sold as “grocery store olive oil” — it’s cheap and adulterated. Worse, many restaurants cut their olive oil with canola oil.

Health benefits
Olive oil in its pure and unadulterated form is a great food. It’s one of the pillars of the much-heralded Mediterranean Diet that holds the greatest potential for the lowest disease rates (especially heart disease) and the greatest states of health. Of course, when the olive oil is tainted, there goes the neighborhood.

Polyphenols protect your health
Olive oil is a wonderful source of polyphenols. Research shows that these lower cholesterol* and yield other benefits. Polyphenols are antioxidants that protect the cells from the oxidative damage by oxygen “free radicals” that continually circulate throughout the body.

A Portuguese study of the major antioxidants in olive oil showed that one in particular, DHPEA-EDA, protects red blood cells from damage more than any other constituent in olive oil. This compound is the major health benefit associated with virgin olive oils, which contain increased levels of DHPEA-EDA compared to other oils. In virgin olive oils, DHPEA-EDA may make up as much as half the total antioxidant component of the oil.**

But if your olive oil isn’t really olive oil, then you’re not only lacking the important constituents of the food, but you’re actually injuring yourself by eating bad oil. Bad (and altered) oils harm the body, while good oils build the health. And contrary to popular belief, good fats actually protect the body from heart (and other) disease. They also support the nervous system, hormonal system, vascular system, eyes, brain and skin.

Olive oil is  a great source of good fats and vitamin E and is rich vitamins A, B-1, B-2, C, D, E and K and in iron. For thousands of years olive oil has been used by native Mediterranean cultures to as a curative food as well as a topically-applied salve.

Uninformed public can’t recognize good oil
Good olive oil gives off a slight burning sensation in the back of the throat. It’s a sign of high polyphenol count. Unfortunately, because we are so out of touch with the growing, harvesting, tasting and creation of real food these days, few people understand how good oil is supposed to taste.

How do you know which olive oil to buy?
First, I highly recommend that you read the book Extra Virginity by Tom Mueller to understand the length and breadth of this problem. Then you can go online and read about the industry fraud. The more educated you are the better chance you’ll find the real and be eating for health.

Olive growers who do things right
Go to the website of the California Olive Oil Counsel and you’ll find some reliable olive oil sources.
One such grower and producer is KATZ.

Albert Katz, whose family produces olive oil in the Suisun Valley (eastern neighbor to the Napa Valley), California, and has won twenty-four gold medals over the last ten years told me, “I was a chef for the first half of my working life and I fell in love with olive oil in the 80′s. After a trip to Italy in 1990, I became addicted to the green elixir and vowed that I would come back to California and figure out how to produce it. It has been over 20 years since that trip, but I think I finally have attained that dream.”

Regarding the integrity of olive oil on the market today, Katz explained, “Americans in general do not really understand that ‘extra virgin’ as used by most of the industrial brands found in supermarkets throughout the US means absolutely nothing and is not policed by any federal agency. As you might know most oils labeled with this designation are not actually EVO even measured against commonly accepted world standards. In fact, studies have shown that close to 80% of those industrial brands are not even made with olives! We have seen a dramatic increase in consumer awareness and education over the last 5-10 years and the proof is in the pudding…so to speak…as we sell out every drop of oil we can produce from our trees every year. So we know many ‘enlightened’ consumers actually get it!”

Eat olive oil as if your health depended on it, because it does.

* Ann Intern Med. 2006 Sep 5;145(5):333-41.
The effect of polyphenols in olive oil on heart disease risk factors: a randomized trial.
Covas MI, Nyyssönen K, Poulsen HE, Kaikkonen J, Zunft HJ, Kiesewetter H, Gaddi A, de la Torre R, Mursu J, Bäumler H,Nascetti S, Salonen JT, Fitó M, Virtanen J, Marrugat J; EUROLIVE Study Group.

** Wiley-Blackwell (2009, April 1). Source Of Major Health Benefits In Olive Oil Revealed.

Creative Commons License photo credit: John McNab

by Vic Shayne

One of the reasons people are slow to change into a more healthful eating pattern with non-toxic foods is that they identify with the foods they’ve been eating. Negative comments about such foods are often taken personally. This is a big part of the resistance to eat organically and get off the merry-go-round of junk foods and commercial processed foods, even if they know these are deleterious.

This is supported by recent findings by researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

People believe the marketing then swear by it

According to university researcher Tiffany Barnett White, “When companies get consumers motivated about their products, they are just as motivated to protect the brand as they are themselves. So it’s really more about the self than the brand. When people can self-affirm through other means and activities, they’re not defensive at all.”

White said, “Consumers are highly resistant to brand failure to the point that they’re willing to rewrite history. It not only explains why so many Toyota customers ignored the negative brand information in the aftermath of the highly publicized recalls, it also accounts for why they’re quick to defend the company and why they would want to re-write history in a more positive way.”

How do people let go and make the healthy switch?

So, we’re left asking the obvious: How do people abandon their identity with their Sugar Frosted Flakes or Big Mac and jump on the health wagon? To use the vernacular, it ain’t easy.

Marketing gurus and psychologists are stumped, but I have my own thoughts. I believe it’s a matter of consciousness. There are those who think for themselves and those who follow blindly. And there are those who have a certain degree of intellectual curiosity that drives them to discover a world beyond their own. Plus, there are those who are injured or wronged — sometimes their health declines or they lose a loved one — and they reflect upon their own diets.

Tragic loss can create a change

I have a very good friend whose wife just died of cancer. One of the things he said is that he is going to go organic, because he knows that a lifetime of eating toxic foods can cause cancer. Tragedy can bring on a change of heart and a change of eating habits.

My advice: Don’t wait for a tragedy.

The poisons that exist in commercial foods are capable of causing a wide array of symptoms and diseases. You can’t be swayed and hypnotized by corporate advertising that allows you to ignore the dangers of eating artificial ingredients, hormones, steroids, additives, emulsifiers, MSG, refined salt, sugar, aspartame, antibiotics and all the rest of the junk that’s found in commercial foods.

Creative Commons License photo credit: JekkoneI

It’s not that uncommon for people to feel like they are going to black out. You get up from a chair or off the couch and you see spots in front of you then it’s as if somebody’s turning out the lights.

What’s wrong?
There is no one simple answer to this question, but here are some things to think about.

There are several situations that may preclude the feeling of blacking out:

1. taking medications
2. drinking coffee
3. eating a big meal
4. eating refined foods and sugar
5. having a migraine coming on
6. stress
7. exhaustion
8. something more serious (ask your doctor)

What to do about it
I’ve always been an advocate of having a good daily diet because it’s the foundation for good health. If your diet is not good, you can create the right conditions to experience a feeling of blacking out.

One of the biggest offenders is sugar, not only in the form of white sugar, but also in the form of carbohydrate foods. When you eat them, your blood sugar will eventually drop and you can experience black-out. Similarly, if you drink coffee, you can experience blood sugar lows, mineral depletion and vitamin B depletion which will also lead to that blackout feeling.

Although we sell a lot of whole food supplements, the key here is not in supplements alone, but in the diet. People who eat a regular diet of fruits, vegetables, some meat and nuts and seeds, without artificial ingredients or stimulants (like coffee, for example) rarely experience these blackouts.

Supplemental support

But to bolster your vitamin B and mineral supplies, and to process sugar better, here are the top three supplements we have: BFood , Green Nutrients and GTF Complex.

So simple that a child can explain it — and she did!

Sichuan Style Shrimp Creative Commons License photo credit: FotoosVanRobin

by Vic Shayne, PhD

When I was a kid, I loved shrimp. Being from Miami, shrimp was huge and plentiful. Then after a time it became scarce and expensive. Now it’s cheap. No surprise.

I was driving to my office today when I heard an interview on NPR with author/researcher Barry Estabrook. He had some information that made me pull over and jot them down. One of the things he said was that ninety (90) percent of all shrimp comes from Asia and is raised in a toxic sewage pond environment. The water is so contaminated and diseased that the farmers use outrageous amounts of antibiotics.

So when you eat shrimp, not only are you eating sewage, but you’re also consuming drugs — many of which are illegal in the western world — dipped in cocktail sauce or fried on the barby. Shrimp today is a dangerous food. You have to know the source to avoid the disgusting consequences. Ocean caught off clean waters near the U.S., is a better choice.

Writer Craig Weatherby, who has reported on the toxic shrimp problem, said, “… according to a new independent report, the Chinese aquaculture industry crams fish and shellfish into facilities to maximize production, generating large amounts of waste, contaminating water and spreading disease (Food & Water Watch 2007).” Weatherby said, “China’s seafood farmers try to control the spread of infections, disease, and parasites by pumping the animals’ feed with antibiotics and filling the waters with pesticides and fungicides.”

The problem isn’t only China, it’s a lot of Asia, including Indonesia and Thailand in specific, where you can find purveyors of toxic shrimp and other seafood.

Shrimp industry destroys the environment

And another problem: a great deal of the shrimp is grown in mangrove swamps which are habitats that become destroyed from the toxic industry.

Greenpeace reports: “Over the last few decades shrimp farming has been a relentless destroyer of huge expanses of tropical coastlines, particularly mangrove forests. Mangrove forest roots are bulldozed into the mud to make way for the intruding shrimp farms. The coastal equivalent of terrestrial rain forests, mangroves are home to an incredibly diverse range of life. They are breeding grounds and nurseries for many fish, shellfish and other wildlife. Shrimp farming turns them into a barren and toxic prawn cocktail.”

Add drugs to the mix. Greenpeace writes, “To grow asmany shrimp as possible and maintain overcrowded populations, largeamounts of artificial feed and chemical additives, including chlorine,are added to this destructive cocktail. Malathion, parathion, paraquatand other virulent pesticides are also sprayed on the pools.”

“With millions of shrimp crammed together in ponds, diseases can run rampant, in some cases severely enough to kill off entire ponds and even a country‚ entire shrimp industry. On average, an intensive shrimp operation only lasts for seven years before the level of pollution and pathogens within the pond reaches a point where shrimp can no longer survive,” reports Food and Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group.

What’s this mean to your health?

Food and Water Watch reports, “The negative effects of eating industrially produced shrimp may include neurological damage from ingesting chemicals such as endosulfans, an allergic response to penicillin residues or infection by an antibiotic-resistant pathogen such as E. coli.”

It gets worse

Shrimp is a really bad food to eat. You don’t realize you’re biting into antibiotics, bacteria, poisons and other toxins when you sit down to eat. This is a very extensive problem that involves not only the quality of the food, but also poses a tremendous short and long-term health risk. You can read more by clicking here.

The consumer watchdog group, Public Citizen reports, “The story of farmed shrimp is also one that health conscious consumers should want to hear because if they knew more about what might be lurking in the flesh of farmed shrimp, they might think twice about eating too much of it, or about eating any at all.  ”

Creative Commons License photo credit: williamcho

by Vic Shayne, PhD

One rumor I’ve heard floating around for years is about a person “that somebody’s friend knew” who ate all organic but got cancer anyway. A couple of points:

1. Sounds like a rumor started by Big Agra;

2. Organic eating is only one part of an important “clean” lifestyle.

Food that helps our bodies function best

The bottom line is that our bodies function best on real, whole, untainted, natural, pure foods. Organic foods are just one (important) part of the equation of good nutrition.

But here’s a list of foods you can eat that won’t build your health yet may still be organic:

• Organic pizza
• Organic crackers
• Organic bread
• Organic pasta
• Organic cake
• Organic sugar
• Organic vitamins
• Organic ice cream

The list can go on for quite a while, but you get the point. You can even eat beef six times a day and still be organic, but you won’t be healthy.

The secret to feeding your body what it needs for optimum function is real food. Processed foods, even if organic, are not good foods. By the way, the same foods listed above may also meet the qualifications for vegetarian fare, but they say nothing about being healthful. Many, many vegetarians are unhealthy because they eat these items.

So what constitutes a good organic diet?
The answer is simple, and it’s old news. However, we need to be reminded, so here goes: A good organic diet contains mostly a variety of vegetables, followed by a variety of fruits, seeds, nuts and a little meat (fish, beef and chicken, for example).

What is organic food good for?

Rumors have been started by Big Agra (commercial farms and food manufacturers) that organic food isn’t as good as sprayed foods from pesticide-drenched crops. Do you believe this? Do you believe that your body is meant to ingest bug spray that makes Black Flagg and Raid pale in comparison? Of course not. The poisons sprayed on foods cause cancer and other diseases.

Eat for health

It’s important to eat organic, but only if you also eat for health! Bon appetit!

SPONSORED BY:

This article sponsored by Green Nutrients, the all-organic, all food supplement that gives you your greens every day!

The only whipped cream I’d ever eat is Janice’s Organic Whipped Cream. It’s not in a store. It’s in our kitchen. My daughter Tasha makes it for our family (it’s actually my wife’s recipe) and there’s only three simple organic ingredients.

Did you know you can make your own whipped cream the healthful way? The stuff in the aerosol can isn’t good for you. It’s full of sugar and, especially if not organic, has all kinds of unnecessary chemicals. Don’t let big corporate food companies fool you into thinking that you can’t have great whipped cream without a boatload of non-nutritious, health-defying junk.

Nothing’s cool about Cool Whip

Cool Whip was introduced some decades ago (1967) in the big processed food boom that saw thousands of products passed off as foods. It’s not food and not nutritious. It’s bad for you.

Here’s what’s in Cool Whip:Cool Whip Original is made of water, hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, skim milk, light cream, and less than 2% sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, and beta carotene (as a coloring).

See? Terrible stuff. Why all those bad ingredients when they are not necessary? Those chemicals and sugars don’t belong in your family’s bellies.

Other bad whipped cream ingredients

First bad ingredient: The can itself. You don’t need it and our planet doesn’t need it. There’s all sorts of junk in whipped cream, but here are some other common ingredients: sorbitan monostearate, artificial flavors, carrageenan, sucralose, mixed tocopherols and nitrous oxide.

The best whipped cream possible. Fresh and organic.

My daughter makes whipped cream very simply: Organic Valley carton of heavy whipping cream, add a little vanilla extract and a little honey to taste. Use an electric beater until it’s creamy. That’s it. No more. Three ridiculously simple ingredients and fresher than anything you can buy ready-made.

photo credit: milele

No suspense here. It’s Cuba.

A whopping 80 percent of Cuba’s agriculture is ORGANIC. If they can accomplish this, why can’t we? Okay, you’re right, politics doesn’t allow us to. With huge corporate agriculture influencing Congress and bullying the rest of the market, it’s a tough game to be in. Still, we can marvel over Cuba’s success in the organic arena.

80% is a phenomenal success

Trevor Reichman, writing for treehugger.com, reports: “50% of Cuba’s agriculture now comes from urban farms. In the smaller towns, they produce 80 to 100% of the vegetables they need, eliminating the need to transport food long distances. The move back to a human and animal powered harvest, instead of heavy machinery, quickly created 140,000 new jobs in a country with a population 30 times smaller than the USA. In order to produce food without the use of fossil fuels, It was a matter of reclaiming land from the large scale industrial agricultural corporations. According to the documentary, The Power of Community, 80% of Cuba’s agricultural production is now organic!”

In 2001, the BBC reported that Cuba’s annual production of fruit and vegetables was growing at 250% a year.

Back in 1993-1994, Cuba was teetering on the brink of nationwide starvation due to severe food shortages. The Cuban government made organic farming a priority and handed over eighty percent of state-owned land to private shareholder enterprises. The success is impressive to say the least, but especially so for a third world island nation.

Bravo!

photo credit: Romtomtom

CEO, NutriPlex Formulas, Inc.

I decided I need to start a movement away from things that kill the earth and that kill us, and that kill our children, that are sold to us as the opposite.

• GMO food
• Chemically grown food
• Poisoned food.
• Chemical vitamins
• Isolated vitamins
• Poisoned vitamins

It is essential for the health of the planet and the health of our bodies and the health of our children that we must do this.

FOOD HEALS: IT BUILDS, MAINTAINS AND REPAIRS HEALTH OF THE HUMAN BODY. IT IS A MIRACLE AND IT IS BEING DESTROYED.
I teach food, I love food, I live with food, I know my life and the lives of my children depend on food. I want it to be the best, the purest and the safest it can be.

If it is, I know I don’t need endless drugs, surgeries, or other inadequate offerings.

Therefore, it cannot be fake food, foul food, or forced food.

Because this is what I demand, I have to pay attention to everything that has an impact on the food I eat, offer to my friends, give to my children.

• I must pay attention to the soil, the air and the water.
• I must pay attention to corporations, chemists and politics.
• I must not be afraid to stand up for what I want and demand it for the common good.

It was obvious, it was always there, but I never noticed it until I gave birth and knew what selfless and unconditional love was. Love so strong I would do anything, cross any ocean, fight any battle and even think outside the box until I could find what I needed to protect and nurture the ones I loved against the modern urban killer that I saw all around us, affecting every family I knew: Sickness and Disease. From chronic ear infections and ADD to childhood leukemia and cancer, it surrounded us, and the statistics were staggering.

Everything used to “combat” sickness and disease, in reality, makes us more sick.

What I found was that everything used to “combat” sickness and disease, in reality, makes us more sick because it doesn’t, in truth, make us healthier, in fact it is a huge contributor to the problem. The chemicals of drugs alone and their production is not only killing our bodies, but killing our air, soil, our rivers, streams, lakes and even oceans.

I believe in supply and demand. I believe people will stop demanding chemicals and drugs when they know and can trust there is a proven and successful alternative. I searched and searched for my own family. I had to find a way to deliver the right kinds of food, the right combinations, so we could repair our health and then build our health and then maintain what we had repaired and built. Since I couldn’t find an answer that I trusted and felt was something I could incorporate into my life, I had to do what any passionate mother would do: I had to invent one.

At this point I have to proudly admit, I didn’t do this alone. I turned to the one person I knew cared about my family as much as I did, my husband. Our journey took us years of exploring and experimenting. We went back to school, we created a library in our house of books, journals, studies, references, research. In order to clean out our bodies, we cleaned out our pantry, our refrigerator, our take-out menu drawer. And we started talking to people. To doctors, health food store owners, restauranteurs, food science researchers.

I have always hung my head with a touch of shame when I admit publicly that I am a perfectionist. You know the type of personality that drives people who work for you nuts. But now I am so glad that is an intrinsic part of my personality, because I hate compromise. When I am forced to do so, I find myself pushing, always pushing the line, raising the bar, setting the standard. So finally in order to quench our thirst for answers, we decided to go back to school and become healthcare practitioners ourselves.

When it came time to carry a line of nutrition in our office to ensure people would get exactly the nutrients they needed delivered in clean, unaltered foods to bring back their health, we could not find a nutritional company that had the same worldview, the same high standards, the pure food approach to healing, or even products that were impressive enough in their formulations to warrant our giving them to our patients with confidence.
My husband and I were told what we were insisting upon wasn’t possible. We decided we should do it ourselves. We reasoned that if we didn’t want to settle for less, there must be other healthcare practitioners, and certainly patients who were being underserved. However, when we offered a business plan and looked for investors, we were told it had never been done, and no one would understand it, and therefore it would fail.

The point of no return

But, we couldn’t turn back. We could not see ourselves sitting in front of parents of a sick child, and giving them less than what we believed in (which happened often). No one believed what we believed so we did what all crazy, passionate nut jobs do: We maxed out our credit cards, sought out the best ingredients we could find, put all Vic’s education and research into crafting five exquisite formulas of foods from all over the planet that research showed would heal the human body and make it strong, and we started our own line of nutrition.

With those formulas, we started teaching our patients how to eat better, how to clean out their pantries and refrigerators and bodies. And people started to get better. People with conditions that are considered lifelong chronic illnesses that are to be managed at best, with drugs and surgery. It wasn’t us healing people. It was food and it was knowledge. Food in the right combinations, of the right quality and purity with the right nutrients. Knowledge of what those foods were, made it simple and made miracles happen.

NutriPlex Formulas is born!

That’s when NutriPlex Formulas was born. In our little clinic in Carefree, Arizona in 1997.

NutriPlex was the result the passion of a mother and father with limitless love and apparently not just for our own children, but for all the children whose parents will listen.

We’ve had our company for fourteen years now. We did find a handful of doctors who were passionate also. But we weren’t sure how to reach out more than by word of mouth. Remember, we maxed out everything we owned to get started. We knew we must be doing something right when we started getting threatening phone calls from our competitor’s sales reps in different parts of the country. But unsure as to how to proceed and putting profits back into research and development we haven’t been great about telling our story. I actually would worry if the big boys in the industry would start to come for us. After all we were just a David to their Goliath, we were David without a slingshot.

Plus we had never been in manufacturing before. We had a lot to learn. It was a good thing we were highly motivated on a daily basis by the sick and the desperate people that would somehow would end up on our doorstep after “all else had failed” because the federal regulations, the negotiations on raw ingredients, the fights with the industry as to “standard procedures” in manufacturing was overwhelming. But we kept going, and we also tried to balance our small “baby” with our two other babies who were growing up in the meantime.

A David without a slingshot

I guess today, I am used to being David. Even without a slingshot, the years of hearing doctors telling me the huge difference our formulas have made in the lives of their patients, and even having patients take the time to call us personally to thank us, has given me confidence and strength in mission. Now my mission is to spread the word of what we have and stop letting the Goliaths of the world intimidate me with their size and capital.

It’s a new world out there, and I am excited that I can reach out and let people know there is a better way, and if you already know that, but don’t quite know how to proceed, if you want to give your family the very best you can, I want to share everything I have learned. I want to live the saying: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I think I am ready to fight the good fight!