A period of cleansing on fresh live foods and raw juices offers hope of a happier, healthier life. Detoxing the body and mind can heal neural pathways, helping us free ourselves of harmful habits, allowing us to set up new positive behaviors. This 'reset' of our inner compass lets us see the world and ourselves in new ways

It's the natural order of life that we cleanse and detox our bodies at this time of year. With the warmer weather, we crave to feel lighter and healthier.

A simple daily salad, delicious and refreshing, is a great place to start. Sweet baby lettuce leaves are my favorite, tossed with a blended raw salad dressing. The key secret to making a beautiful, yummy salad is to start with the best greens you can find. Greens should look firm and perky. Avoid leaves that are yellow or brown. Tear greens gently with your hands. This prevent the leaves from bruising.

Often where people go wrong is adding too much dressing. You want your salad dressing to marry with the greens. Enhance, not drown them.

 If you are growing a variety of lettuce in flats and boxes, use only the small tender leaves in your salad. Save the larger outer leaves to add to carrot, apple and lemon for your morning fresh juice. This way no part of the plant will be wasted. The leaves of lettuce are a store house of anti-cancer, anti-oxidants and phytonutrients. Raw lettuce provides daily Vitamins A and C, beta-carotene, iron, magnesium and potassium.

For more information, and to learn skills to promote healing from a period of Cleansing with Raw Foods, sign up for our next 'Perfect Raw Cleanse' workshop.

The news of the death of 'Beastie Boy' Adam Yauch struck social media like a lightning bolt. "How old was he?", we ask, feeling a bit more vulnerable ourselves. On the heels of Steve Jobs, we may be thinking "if the rich and famous can't keep themselves alive, what hope does it hold for the rest of us?"

I am not making light of cancer, a disease we don't totally understand. Researchers are constantly pushing the boundaries of treatment, particularly with anti tumor agents that can home in on abnormally growing cells with increasing precision.

Thankfully, researchers are also studying natural elements as well. Numerous studies suggest that cleansing the body with potent cancer-fighting raw live foods may hold the key to combating cancer and other modern diseases. Test tube studies of extracted berries (blueberries, blackberries, red raspberries, cranberries and strawberries) were able to stimulate apoptosis (cell death) in colon cancer cells. Acai berries appear to be effective against leukemia cells, while polysaccharids found in goji berries kill prostrate cancer cells. To determine whether these lab results apply to real life, human trials are underway.

We don't need to wait for science. The American Cancer Society recommends 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day for optimum cancer prevention. Early summer is the perfect time to introduce fresh and frozen organic berries into your diet. We make a fresh live jam out of them and eat them on our raw dehydrated breakfast bagel. One jar of live jam will last you the week in a sealed jar in the fridge. It's soooooo easy to make!

OUR LIVE JAM                                                   

1 cup fresh or frozen organic raspberries

4 dates soaked over nite and drained

1 teaspoon agave

Simply take the above ingredients, put them through the Omega Juicer with the blank on. Collect it all in a glass bowl and mix until smooth. Spread a lavish amount on a raw pancake or bagel with coconut butter. It makes life worth living!

What is the prediction for the future? Everything that can be routinized and codified will eventually be done by machines, ie computers.

The good news is social and emotional intelligence are what we humans are uniquely good at. And no machine can take that away from us. No machine can duplicate the generosity and satisfaction of feeding others, caring for their well being and connecting with their inner needs.

Machines cannot protect the environment or feel that immense longing when we have been cut off from Nature for too long. Machines will never appreciate a nutritionally superior, splendid salad grown from seed and picked by hand, or the deep sense of contentment we feel from making foods that cleanse, restore and rebuild the body. That and much, much more is what humans are uniquely good at. It can never, ever be replicated by machine.

That is why it is the perfect time to be a 'Raw Foods Educator'. As life expectancy grows, so has the need for diet change to improve our quality of life. As interest grows, major bookstores have dedicated whole sections of their health and wellness section to the benefits of Raw Foods. Dr Oz and Dr Neil Barnard, two heroes of mine, are building successful careers giving advice on creative ways to eat plant based foods to prevent and fight degenerative disease. Google reports 250,000 hits on the keywords 'Raw Foods', and 300,000 hits on the keywords 'Raw Food Diet' as the population searches the Web for information on this timely lifestyle.

The Time Is Now! The future looks great for Raw Food Educators and Raw Food Chefs. Our next 'Certified Raw Food Chef Program' at 'Diet For Living Center' is on July 27, 28, and 29th. This fast track, hands on learning program is packed with everything you need to know to create a successful career in this exciting and growing field. For more info go to 'Become a Certified Raw Food Chef!' Classes are small and intimate. Space is limited so SIGN UP NOW!

We look forward to seeing you!

Breasts have allowed us to advance as a species. With their super rich stores of Raw milk, they allow babies to be born less mature, with smaller bodies and smaller brains, that finish their development after birth. Producing smaller babies meant that women's hips could be narrower, assisting in our ascent into bipedal creatures.

It turns out human females are the only mammals to have full time breasts. The rest of the mammalians grow breasts only during lactation. After weaning their young the breasts deflate until needed.

Due to the changes in lifestyle as we have rushed to claim ourselves in the modern world, women's breasts have become increasingly at risk for cancer. Breasts, made up of large amounts of fat tissue, are perfect as resources to feed hungry babies, but they can also be repositories for toxins and pollutants that can store there for years. These repositories can become cancerous, and contribute to the seventy eight thousand mastectomies done every year.

Certain chemicals we encounter or ingest mimic estrogen, replacing the natural hormone at the cellular level. For example, bisphenol A is a plastic additive found in the linings of food and beverage containers which does just this. It is estimated that the average American consumes fourteen pounds of these chemicals a year. As our bodies are not designed to separate these chemical products from natural products, a burden is put on our system to get the sustenance it needs and get these toxins out of the body. This can be an exhausting process.

 Raw Living Foods are the best way to get exactly the nutrients that we need into our system. They are the perfect healthy food, sustaining and cleansing us at the same time. This is the natural way to Return to Balance, to Get Well and Stay Well!

Naturally occurring flavonoids found in chocolate have cell protecting, 'free radical fighting' antioxidant properties. These flavonoids have been shown to lower blood pressure, improve blood flow, reduce risk of stroke and lower bad LDL cholesterol while raising good HDL cholesterol. Current studies are even showing promise of chocolate's effect at improving memory, regulating immune response and fighting cancer. Who could ask for more from America's favorite food?

Sounds great, right? Well, many of these fantastic characteristics are only found in unprocessed chocolate, RAW CACAO. When chocolate is made into standard candy bars, they strip it bare of it's many amazing attributes in the cooking process.

So... No Fear! Nature is on our side! The dried seeds of a South American evergreen tree, RAW CACAO is the perfect answer to feed our natural sweet tooth. In its raw, unprocessed state it is filled with beneficial nutrients. All RAW CACAO is packed with iron, zinc, calcium, and potassium, as well as dietary fiber. Oh, and the cacao bean is one of the most concentrated natural sources of antioxidants that exists.

We get our RAW CACAO from Live Superfoods. It's the Health Food SuperStore found on the WorkShop page of our Diet For Living Center website. Grown in Ecuador, they take great pains to make sure it is a 'pure Live Food', made with no heat added. I use it to make our 'RAW CACAO TEMPLE BALLS'. Bordering on exotic, you can not believe how delicious they are! I am including this super, super easy recipe that we serve at our 'Perfect Raw Cleanse Workshop', coming up Saturday April 21st at 10:00 AM, at our Center here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We would love for you to join us!

RAW CACAO TEMPLE BALLS

2 Tablespoons coconut butter

1 Tablespoon raw agave

2 tablespoons coconut flour

1 tablespoons raw cacao powder

2 tablespoons walnuts chopped

2 tablespoons raisins

Pinch of salt

1/8 teaspoons pure vanilla

Mix all ingredients together in a glass bowl till smooth. Form into balls and set in the fridge for 30 minutes. Makes 9-10 balls.