What about, say Apple Cider Vinegar? I don't eat it but would it work for cleaning?

I love the idea of watering my greens with sea water or water that has Celtic/Himalayan sea salt dissolved in it. Especially since we have such poor soil here!

Jen, I use two brushes - the one with wire bristles and the little plastic ball things on the ends, to get the knots out, then a bristley one to get it nice and shiny. The wire bristle one I just pick the bits off of every 4 or 5 days, it is very time consuming but I do it on the bus or something. I wash the other once or twice a week in the shower and I wash it with an all natural body wash. I'd prefer not to but I do wash it thoroughly with water afterwards and because the bristles are synthetic I doubt that they actually absorb the chemicals. I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions for alternatives!

Hi Sam, I'm in Perth but I just had to say that YES, I know exactly how you feel! I've been 100% raw since July 2006 but I still feel like I kind of exist in some parallel universe to everyone else, just happier, lighter, more carefree. It's wonderfuL!

Freedom   

This may or may not be true, I'm not sure, but the point is that what we're doing now isn't working either. A child dies approximately every three seconds due to starvation - surely something different would be worth a try? Could it possibly be worse?


In my first semester, first year of uni, I did a compulsory foundation unit called 'Life and the Universe.' I really hated the unit but one very interesting thing I learnt is that basically, our world can't comfortably support more than 2-3 billion people. We have 6 billion and ever-rising. It just can't work! 

Well I'm sure they will to an extent, which is the way things work. But I am going to dig a hole in the compost, pop them in there and cover it over, so they stand a bit more of a chance.

Thursday's Child, welcome to the forum!

I have to say thankyou to everyone has written in this topic. I got thinking after I read it last night, about the worm farm I have at home. And suddenly it occured to me that I was keeping those worms confined into a tiny area, far far less than they would have if they were free. Sure I fed them food similar to what they got in the wild and made their home comfortable but still, I had them locked up. Me, the girl who protests about zoos locking up wild animals, and I was  doing it in my own backyard! Amazing how sometimes you don't see the blindingly obvious!

So tonight, when it has cooled down, all my wormies go free!

Thanks again guys,
Freedom 

I've been doing oil pulling for several months now, using organic raw coconut oil. I have recently cut back to doing it only every other day and haven't experienced problems yet. I am having teeth issues at the moment because my wisdom teeth have been coming through and moving all the others around so I felt it was a good time to put a bit more effort into caring for my teeth. Overall I have found it very beneficial!

Miss Bliss, I love the idea of 'trading' eggs for other produce! Makes me think of a simpler time, when people exchanged things for other things and we weren't governed by the almighty dollar! Beautiful!

Oh and sheep are magnificent animals, I had a beautiful girl who was orphaned, I hand-raised her on a bottle from 2 days old. She walked on a lead, came when called and was a great mower too. 

Hi there Root, welcome to WA! Where are you from? I would suggest maybe the Canningvale Markets:

http://www.canningvalemarkets.com.au/

Have fun juicing!

Freedom 

Ooooh, sounds good Rabbit! Would it work with butternut pumpkin as well do you think? We have lots of them growing in our garden at the moment!  Oh and how finely chopped up does the pumpkin need to be? I guess it would be better if it was really fine, rather than chunky.

It's pretty amazing isn't it? I think today I've eaten 5 mangoes, 7 bananas (which are more like 110 cals each) and some plums but I'm yet to have my dinner so that will increase it a fair bit.

Wow I'm glad I live in WA! Ours are grown here, up in Carnarvon. PLus I get lots of scrummy home-grown ones, awesome!

I agree Rdy, lets start picketing, protesting and smuggling!

Hey Jungle,
I don't use any salt. Using kelp to season is a good idea, I personally don't find the need to season with anything though. I read this article awhile ago in Living Nutrition magazine and since then I haven't wanted to eat salt:

Salt Warning
by David Klein, Ph.D.
from Living Nutrition Magazine vol. 18

Avoid all salt – it’s a toxic, irritating, corrosive, stimulating, enervating and potentially deadly poison. Yes, even Celtic and Himalayan salts are destructive to your body and health – don’t be fooled by marketing hype! These inorganic substances may be trendy but they are not healthful. In addition to sodium chloride, they contain numerous toxic elements including heavy metals, such as aluminum, cadmium, lead and mercury. These wreak havoc in the body, and are very difficult to eliminate.

If you live in a northern region or near the ocean you have probably seen how rock salt and salt spray eats steel members and chrome coatings on automobiles. If you’ve ever had an open flesh wound and exposed it to salt, your senses will have told you how destructive it is. Salt paralyzes the intestinal villi and kills cells – would you knowingly bathe your delicate villi, your arteries, veins and capillaries with such a corrosive solution? Salt brine kills insects and “pickles” vegetables. Do you want to run a solution of that through your brain 24 hours a day? An ounce of salt, taken all at once, spells suicide.

You cannot become healthy if your sense of taste is befuddled by unnatural flavorings. Salt does not bring out the flavor of food; it overpowers your taste buds, deadening them to all sensation other than additional salt, causing unnatural cravings, overeating and beverage guzzling. 

Salt bonds with water, and its toxicity necessitates extra fluid intake. The body’s dilution response causes the cells to become dehydrated, severely impairing health. Salt also throws off the blood’s electrolyte balance (e.g., the sodium to potassium ratio) and acidifies the body, eroding health and impeding healing. Most illness cannot be overcome when salt is part of the diet. The few salt eaters I’ve counseled did not heal their disease conditions until they followed my recommendation of giving up salt--even though their diets were otherwise nearly perfect.

Hypertension (high blood pressure), edema, cardiovascular disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, asthma, arthritis, rheumatism, Alzheimer’s disease, lupus, premenstrual syndrome, gout, cancer and a host of other disease conditions are linked to salt. Can the body handle a little bit of salt? Maybe, but not on a regular basis. Why risk ruining your precious health?

We do need mineral salts–no doubt about it. From where should we get our mineral salts? Plant foods is the natural answer. The liquids from fruits and vegetables contain all of the mineral salts we need, in safe, organic, usable form. For rich, satisfying flavors, obtain produce grown in soil generously mineralized with a rock powder amendment. If possible, grow your own produce, adding such mineral sources as rock powder, azamite, or kelp powder to your compost and soil.

Abstain from salt, clean out, eat whole, fresh, ripe, raw, organic tender vegetables plus savory and sweet fruits. Your salt cravings will vanish and unseasoned foods will taste outrageously delicious.

Well, my Mum is officially a raw fooder ... in fact, she has been for 3 weeks now! As you might know, I was in Adelaide from the 10th to the 23rd of December; when I was in the car on the way home from the airport with my parents, Mum started to try and tell me something. She was kind of beating around the bush so eventually Dad said "she's gone raw!" I couldn't believe my ears! I'm going to share Mum's story with you now (and yes, I've checked with her and she doesn't mind!)

Mum has had digestive problems for over 20 years. She has had in excess of 7 abdominal surgeries, the main ones being: appendix removed, one ovary removed (due to cysts), gall bladder removed, 4 feet of excess bowel removed. When the bowel was removed, the remaining bowel was stitched together and stapled to the wall of her abdomen. That staple is still there.

For many years she (and the Drs) thought Mum had IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Over the years she gradually ate less and less variety, searching for things she could digest without pain and discomfort. She never tested positive for lactose intolerance but started giving up dairy anyway when I was about 9 or so (10 years ago now). She removed overt dairy (eg glass of milk, slice of cheese) from her diet but still ate bread, biscuits etc with dairy in them. Plus she loves chocolate and would occassionally indulge.

Many foods gave her terrible wind, some of the worst ones being brassica vegetables like broccoli and cabbage. She also couldn't have any high water content foods (eg lettuce) because they made her feel bloated. She couldn't pass the wind and had to lay down and massage her stomach to get it out; she described this like a ball of lead in her abdomen.

Mum has always drunk lots of water and the only hot drinks she enjoyed were herbal teas and the occasional hot chocolate, so no caffeine addictions there.

I clearly remember that by the time I was in about year 8 at school (2001) almost every night of the week Mum would say "what I am going to have for dinner?" Dad and I would chant "chicken, rice and peas," and we'd all laugh, but clearly Mum longed for some variety and flavour. The plate of plain grilled chicken, boiled rice and peas never looked very appealing!

I"m not sure whether it was before or after this that Mum discovered 'adhesions' - only through the glory of the internet did she find out about this condition, where the scar tissue that results from any major surgery does weird things in your body. Apparently certain people have 'adhesion skin,' making them much more susceptible to this condition. In Mum's case, the scar tissue has effectively formed little bands around her intestines so things can't move through them normally.

All the internet literature on adhesions says that the best way to deal with them is to eat a really low fibre diet, as the bulky fibre jams up the intestines where the adhesions exist. So from then on it was white bread, white pasta, white rice... you get the picture. Mum was concerned about the fact that she probably wasn't getting many nutrients from her diet but at least she could digest it.

Mum decided to become vegetarian after reading a lot of my animal rights literature (I was already vegan by this point)... it was September 2006 I think, or maybe it was 2005. Anyway, this didn't have any noticeable effects on her health (when you're only eating plain grilled free range chicken, I can see why) but it did serve to limit her food intake options even more.

Since I went raw last July, I've believed it could 'cure' Mum. I am a passionate believer in raw food... I would put 100% of my trust in it, always. I have read stories of people who have dissolved cysts, tumours and warts... why, then, could Mum not dissolve her adhesions? The hardest thing for me has been that Mum agreed that the raw diet was the best way for humans to live. She sees the truth behind it all. But she always said "my body has been unnaturally altered by doctors so I don't believe this natural diet can help me now."

As this year has progressed, I have seen Mum's condition deteriorate... this was because she had an office job and sitting down all day was affecting her stomach muscles. She quit that job and got another one that involved home assistance to people with disabilities/illnesses ... she was using an upright vaccuum cleaner and a floor washing thing that both hurt her stomach muscles.

A few times I outright suggested raw foods, juice fasts etc... I also dropped subtle hints. Eventually I realised I was going to make Mum angry, push a wedge between us. We only just got over the one that my eating disorder put there! If Mum wanted to raw, it had to be because she wanted to.

Then I went away for two weeks and whaddya know, I get home and she's raw! Lol.

There was a reason for this though. A couple of months ago she decided to try going gluten free (she has done this before) and so for a few days she ate heaps of gluten free crackers, bread pasta etc... most of which are corn based. She was an absolute mess after that, in agony. So she decided she was allergic to corn and tried to eliminate corn from her diet... you have NO idea how hard that is! It's in EVERYTHING! So she settled to just minimise the amount of corn she was eating.

On the first day I was away, Mum was preparing dinner for Cherimoya (one of my gorgeous ratties) which included scraping fresh corn off the cob. Some corn juice squirted into Mum's eye and she had a terrible allergic reaction to it - the eye swelled up, itched, watered etc etc for over half an hour. From then on she decided that all the corn had to go. And the only way she could find to do this, was to go raw!! (And the rest of the time I was away, Dad was chopping corn for Cherimoya, lol!)

It is still a HUGE learning curve. We have also figured out that Mum has a salicylate allergy and dehydrated foods do NOT agree with her at all. But she is generally enjoying her food and said that she hasn't felt so good in 20 years. I can definitely see that 'raw glow' all around her.

Viva la RAW!!! 

So anyway, what I'm saying here is - give people time and space. Let them make their own decisions. Be gentle. Just offer what they ask for and maybe a bit more. Don't push too hard. I KNOW it's hard to see people you love suffering.