Raw Vegan Potluck Groups in Ontario

 

Join a raw vegan potluck in your area!

These groups are not for profit and run on a recurring basis.

The goal is to bring together like-minded folks to create a supportive community.

• Toronto Raw Food Potluck Group
• York Region Raw Food Potluck Group
• Mississauga / Brampton / Oakville Raw Food Potluck Group
• Barrie Raw Food Potluck Group

Have fun!

Give me 6 mins/day and I’ll double the length & strength of your hair

I grew up thinking that hair growth is something you can’t change.

Some people would say “my hair just grows so quickly!” and others would complain, “I don’t know, for some reason, mine just grows so slowly.”

I also believed that the thickness of your hair is something that can’t be changed.

That all changed when I started drinking green juices every day.

I went through a phase when I couldn’t even look at a green smoothie any more – I just was sick of them. (I probably wasn’t switching up the ingredients enough, but that’s a different story).

I stressed out for weeks wondering how I’d get in 2 bunches of raw leafy greens per day, to make sure I was getting enough nutrition.

I finally caved and bought a juicer. Not even the “proper” juicer like a twin-gear extractor. I bought the cheapest juicer I could find. $100. Sure, you’ll do.

I did this purely to make sure my sugar cravings would stay at bay, knowing that if I missed a few days of greens, they’d come back.

Here’s how it would go:

• 8:15am: open fridge, take out 1 bunch kale, 1 english cucumber, 1 lemon, and 1 apple
• 8:16am: assemble juicer and wash produce
• 8:17am: juice everything
• 8:18am: pour juice into water bottle and throw out the pulp
• 8:19am: run hot water and rinse the entire juicer. If you rinse immediately, there’s no need for soap (for 1 week) and it can be done in 90 seconds flat.
• 8:20am: Chug.

When I started drinking 1L of green juice per day, my hair doubled in length and strength. You can clearly measure something like this yourself – keep track of where your hair sits (chin, shoulder, back) and check back again in a couple weeks.

I personally went from growing 1 inch every 2 months to 1 inch every month.

Here’s what also helps:

• MSM – natural form of sulfur, an element which helps hair be shiny and strong
• Cutting out any unnatural chemicals (turn up your nose to packaged food)
• Consistency. Do this every day for at least 4 week and see what happens.

Make sure you change up your juice frequently. Some recipes:

• Spinach – celery – carrot – apple
• Swiss chard – cucumber – grapefruit
• Bok choy – cucumber – apple – lemon – mint – sprouts
• Dinosaur kale – celery – watermelon – watermelon rind (tastes just like watermelon)
• Parsley – halapeno – ginger – lemon – apple – cucumber

If you really want to take your hair (and health) to the next level, and can afford to give yourself the royal treatment, the one thing I’d recommend is to join a juice fast.

You clean out your system like you wouldn’t believe, your energy shoots through the roof, you lose weight, cellulite just vanishes, and you become more mindful. It’s also a very powerful hedge against negative emotions.

We’re so glad to be hosting a juice fast at the House of Verona in May 2011, lead by the one and only Philip McCluskey.

Learn more about this rare opportunity to connect with Philip and take back your health here.

To book a spot, call 1-800-252-2826 or email bookings@houseofverona.com.

How I reversed my gray hair – without being 100% raw

I went 70% raw vegan overnight from being a SAD eater, eating maybe 5% raw. Maybe less.

Over the first year, I noticed tremendous benefits: self esteem shooting up, weight loss, a mysterious lump in my back disappeared which had been there since I was 10.

But I still had grays. I would pull them out when I found’em.

Then I started drinking 1 litre of green juice every day. Here’s what happened in 4 weeks:

• My hair grew at double the rate (I calculated the measurement given the time)
• My hair became visibly shinier
• A half-inch of my grays were my natural chestnut brown at the root.
• Between the gray tip and the brown root was an orange/copper inch. Perhaps a transitional period?
• Since then, every time I find a gray, it is followed by a dark root growing in

I’m not 100% raw all the time. In fact, all of this happened when I was still eating cooked vegan food.

Here’s an example of what I put into organic green juice:

• 1 whole bunch of dark leafy greens. Ex. Kale, spinach, chard, etc.
• 1 english cucumber (interchanged with celery)
• 1 apple or orange
• 1 lemon
• 1 thumb ginger

Here’s a shot of a hair in transition I found last week:

We can help you with your grays too – join Philip McCluskey‘s juice feast at the House of Verona in Blue Mountain, Ontario, in May 2011.

Book this retreat before December 25th and receive a complimentary $30 gift card to The Big Carrot or Whole Foods – a perfect stocking stuffer – call 1-800-252-2826.

How a raw vegan corrected her vision naturally

Jen Laur, owner of Raw Love, Life Food, a Toronto-based catering company she owns with her husband Mike, recently lead a raw food retreat with the House of Verona. On that retreat, she shared her story of how she corrected her eyesight after going raw.

Like so many, Jen suffered from poor eyesight. Once believing eyeglasses were a permanent sentence, her perspective shifted after attending a vision-correcting seminar. She was surprised to learn that a traumatic event is often a trigger to bad vision and immediately thought back to a stressful event, which seemed to affect her vision overnight.

She began looking into alternative therapy for eyesight, including the Bates method, which takes a proactive, holistic approach to correcting eyesight that includes exercise and nutrition.

Jen took full responsibility for her eye health and realized that in addition to exercises, her diet was a crucial component of her healing.

Jen’s raw vegan diet was full of nutrients her eyes needed to repair themselves. She noted that the most important nutrients for her eyesight included:

• Vitamin B12
• Vitamin A
• Vitamin C
• Omega 3 Fatty Acids (sprouted chia seeds are the highest food source)
• Zinc

Eating foods whole and raw ensures that the maximum amount of nutrients remain intact.

According to Dr. Mercola, lutein is also an essential nutrient for proper eye health. Lutein is found in dark leafy green vegetables and produce with a strong yellow colour, such as papayas, oranges, squash, and carrots.

Just like an athlete needs to support strength training with proper nutrition, Jen continues to fuel herself with eye-supporting foods (the eye is, after all, part muscle!) Now, Jen enjoys vision that is better than when she wore glasses.

Jen’s top foods and supplements for eyesight:

• Gogi berries (high in beta-carotene and antioxidants)
• Chia seeds (excellent source of Essential Fatty Acids)
• Marine Phytoplankton (incredible rich source of nutrients, supports cellular health)

To contact Jen Laur, or put in an order for organic raw food to be catered to you in Toronto, email rawlovelivefood@gmail.com or call +1-416-551-8820.

To book a spot on a raw food retreat at the House of Verona, call 1-800-252-2826 or email bookings@houseofverona.com.

Guest Author Kristen Mehendale is a Holistic Nutritionist in Toronto, Ontario. View her website athttp://www.kristenmehendale.com and follow her on Twitter @HappyCellsKM.

How a 72-year-old stays looking 40

Guest Author Kristen Mehendale is a Holistic Nutritionist in Toronto, Ontario. View her website at http://www.kristenmehendale.com and follow her on Twitter @HappyCellsKM.

Raw vegan NHL player stays muscular with these foods

I recently had the chance to sit down with former NHL Right Wing for the Montreal Canadians, Georges Laraque, at the Raw Aura restaurant hosted by Chef Douglas McNish.

Georges shared that he’s a strict 100% vegan and 80% raw, and he was this way even when he was on the ice.

I asked him how he is able to maintain enough muscle mass while competing in the NHL on a raw vegan diet.

His advice: “Tons of kale. Lots of goji berries, as they’re a complete protein, full of amino acids. It was very important for me to eat a lot of cooked quinoa when I was on the ice. Vega protein powder helped me as well.”

Georges went vegan for animal rights purposes, but now reports that he’s never felt better, and he wishes he had made the decision years ago. A quote from his official website states, “my energy level is stronger and my strength has increased too. My health has never been better in all areas.”

He goes on to say, “If you want to try to be a vegetarian, but are under the impression that you will not get enough protein or that you will look skinny, rest assured that there is tons of protein in vegetarian products that are much better for your health because vegetarian products aren’t filled with the cholesterol that animal protein is filled with.”

“Some of the greatest athletes in the world are vegetarians like retired four-time NBA champion John Salley, Carl Lewis (who was named Olympian of the Century by Sports Illustrated), NFL’s Tony Gonzalez and the MLB’s Prince Fielder among others.”

We love Georges tremendously for his compassion towards animals, his passion for activism, and the fact that although he was the most feared player on the ice, he was one of the kindest ones off the rink.

Have a look at his campaign for Haiti, view the film Earthlings which converted him towards veganism, or book a spot on a raw vegan retreat to learn how to go vegan yourself.

Follow Georges on Twitter here.

It’s never, ever too late

We’ve met plenty of women at the House of Verona who are in their 50s and just did their first Triathlon this summer. They have a day job, kids, a cottage, and some of them never joined a single sport growing up.

Fresh or Frozen?

Fresh. Definitely Fresh.

Ask any food scientist – all food manufacturers must blanch produce before freezing them.

We recently sat down with Food Scientist Jinny Lok, B.Sc., MBA. She explains, “vegetables contain enzymes. If enzymes are not deactivated through blanching prior to freezing, they can cause vegetables to rot, lose colour and flavour even after the vegetables are frozen.”

“Blanching vegetables means submitting them briefly to boiling water or steam. The heat treatment destroys the enzymes, changes the texture and sets the color.  For extended storage, this improves the keeping quality of the vegetables.”

In addition to the loss of nutrients due to blanching, the freezing process also degrades certain vitamins. An Italian university published a finding in the Journal of Food Science that freezing broccoli caused a decrease of 39% of vitamin C and a 29% decrease of sulforaphane (an anti-cancer compound).

The argument against eating fresh produce stems from a concern that produce loses nutrients when it travels for a week across a continent, as well as the fact that unripe fruits are more acidic than ripe ones.

If you’re able to buy locally grown produce, and eat it fresh, you are able to save a large amount of nutrition versus eating frozen vegetables.

Here are some links to farmer’s markets in Canada and the U.S. to find a market near your home:

• Farmers Markets in Canada
• Farmers Markets in Ontario
• Farmers Markets in the USA

Follow Jinny’s blog or Tweets here.

Depressed? Easy on the steak

In March 2010, French researchers found that cooking beef lead to a significant degradation of tyrosine and tryptophan in meat.

Why should you care? Because these are two critical amino acids which help fight off depression.

Why care about tyrosine?

• Tyrosine is an amino acid which is a precursor to the neurotransmitter dopamine.
• Dopamine deficiencies have been linked with depression (and sugar cravings).
• Here’s the thing: depressed people are often told to eat more tyrosine-rich foods. However, most go-to tyrosine foods are animal proteins – steak, fish, etc.
• Of course, everyone who eats meat cooks it first – which we now know strips the food of the tyrosine that they were trying to get in the first place.

Why care about tryptophan?

• Tryptophan is an essential amino acid which functions as a biochemical precursor for the neurotransmitter serotonin.
• Serotonin deficiencies have been linked to depression.
• Serotonin is often recommended as a supplement to depressed individuals, typically in the form of animal proteins. As this research shows, it’s better to get tryptophan from raw, plant-based foods.

Eat these instead to get your tyrosine:

• Raw almonds
• Raw avocadoes
• Raw pumpkin seeds
• Raw sesame seeds
• E3 Live Blue-Green Algae

Eat these instead to get your tryptophan:

• Raw cacao
• Sprouted Oats
• Raw Sesame seeds
• Sprouted chickpeas
• Raw Sunflower seeds
• Raw Pumpkin seeds
• Spirulina
• Bananas
• Sprouted lentils

We’re currently developing an advanced retreat program at the House of Verona to help depressed individuals. If you’d like to hear more about this, click here. Thanks!