I have thought for years that I would be stuck using Sensodyne toothpaste for my extremely sensitive teeth. Whenever I have tried to switch toothpastes to a natural toothpaste, my teeth would start hurting within 2 days. They would hurt so much that even breathing air through my mouth would cause extreme pain. I was also sensitive to hot and cold foods and even walking would cause my teeth to feel like they would fall out. Weird, I know. Lately even with the use of Sensodyne, my teeth were hurting when I was eating my lacto-fermented Sauerkraut. I was even considering blending my kraut in a blender and drinking it with a straw.

Learning about Weston A. Price and his work I understand that many traditional cultures did not use toothpaste or even brushed their teeth. They ate a nutrient rich diet high in seafoods, organ meats, mineral rich broths, healthy saturated fats and properly prepared grains (soaked, sprouted or sour leavened). These traditional cultures had near perfect teeth (free of dental decay and perfectly aligned teeth)  without the help of toothpaste or braces.

I was stumbled across a “toothsoap” video that explains how toothpaste can inhibit remineralization. I was taken aback by the discovery that the glycerin in toothpaste can inhibit remineralization of the teeth.

My children are not regular users of toothpaste either. My oldest has used natural toothpaste on and off in her young life. But my youngest hates toothpaste and just brushes with water. Both girls have no cavities or decay. So I set aside my Sensodyne toothpaste and created my own with Coconut Oil.

Coconut Oil Toothpaste

1 teaspoon of coconut oil

1/8th teaspoon baking soda

2 drops of stevia

3-5 drops of peppermint oil

Mix all ingredients together and store in a small jar.

I have been using this toothpaste for 2 weeks. The coconut oil makes your mouth feel moisturized and your teeth very polished.

I have no sensitive teeth and I can eat my sauerkraut without pain!

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade

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In an attempt to get my children to eat (and like) liver I have been experimenting different ways to make it. I think I have come close. Although this recipe was not a hit with the kids at dinner time last night, it has great potential. I enjoyed and loved it very much and would not mind eating liver like this weekly. My children do not enjoy the texture of fried onions so I gave it to them without them.The onions contribute a lot of  the flavour. Next time I will add the fried onions into the food processor while making the liver mix.

I tried to make liver meatballs but had to much liquid and they went flat, turning into patties. This is a Low Carb Recipe using almonds instead of white flour or bread crumbs.

Yummy Liver Patties

1 lb of organic liver (I used pork)

1 organic pastured egg

1 cup of almonds (preferably soaked overnight and oven dried)

1/2 cup of milk

2 cloves of garlic

3/4 tsp cumin

1 large onion

Salt and Pepper to taste

Butter for frying

Chop onion and fry in butter until golden brown. Place liver, egg, almonds, milk, garlic, cumin in a food processor and blend mixture until smooth. Spoon out liver mixture into the frying pan and cook for a few minutes until golden brown. Flip the patties and cook for a few minutes. Top the patties with onions, salt and pepper.

My question to you:

What else could you add to make these kid friendly? I was also thinking about adding a can of tomato paste.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop.

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Imagine your child is sick and you want to get some Vitamin C to boost their immune system. Now imagine Vitamin C being illegal. GASP! Your vitamins are going to become as illegal as Herion!

Have you ever heard of Codex? It will be implemented on December 31, 2009…

• Every dairy cow on the planet will have to be treated with a Monsonto bovine growth hormone.
• Every animal (if it has fins, feet and feathers) on the planet will have to be treated with antibiotics and growth hormone.
• Codex will mandate that all food be irradiated including our local food!
• Organic standards are very low and they will be able to give animals growth hormones and drugs and still classify the as organic.
• Codex sets extremely high limits (these limits are poisonous) on industrial chemicals allowed on our food.
• Codex brought back 7 out of the 12 extremely toxic pesticides that have been world banned pesticides.
• When just the vitamin and mineral guideline alone goes into implementation a minimum of 3 BILLION people are estimated to die. 1 Billion people will die of starvation alone.

Dr. Rima Laibow is suing the US Government because Codex is illegal. Watch her presentation it is well worth the time.

From the video… “He who controls food, controls the world”

Congress uses a multiplier and every e-mail, fax and phone call counts as 13,000 constituents!

Use your voice to prevent this from happening!

Sign the petition here and visit www.healthfreedomusa.org

Please help share this message and tell as many people as you can. Show your outrage and don’t let Codex control our food!

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Cheeseslave!

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Constipation is a big problem for a lot of people. Especially those that are transitioning to a low carb, low fiber diet. Did you know that this transition to low fiber is actually very beneficial to your colon health?

Of course constipation is not good, but using fiber to relieve this constipation can be very damaging. Fiber may actually be the cause of your constipation.

Konstantin Monastyrsky, the author of the Fiber Menace  describes how all our belief systems about the virtues of fiber have been all lies.

1. Fiber does not prevent colon cancer
2. Fiber does not prevent breast cancer
3. Fiber does not lower cholesterol
4. Fiber does not reduce the risk of heart disease
5. Fiber does not regulate blood sugar
6. Fiber does not reduce the risk of diabetes
7. Fiber does not decrease appetite
8. Fiber does not help with weight loss
9. Fiber does not keep the colon clean
10. Fiber does not help stop diarrhea
11. Fiber does not ease constipation

Watch these videos as Konstantin Monastyrsky explains the fiber misconceptions with scientific studies.

I have found 2 effective ways of regulating bowels without the use of fiber.

Lacto-fermented foods and coconut oil.

The lacto-fermented foods provide my gut with beneficial probiotics and enzymes required for food digestion as well as nutrient assimilation. The coconut oil stimulates bile production.

Dietary fat stimulates the release of bile from the gallbladder, which, in turn, stimulates the gastrocolic reflex. This in turn stimulates peristaltic mass movement, which, in turn, stimulates defecation. Source.

For healthy bowel function I try to eat lacto-fermented foods with every meal and take 2 tablespoons of coconut oil daily.

Share your thoughts!

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I am extremely excited to share with you a great link to a book I have just discovered (it is a scanned “ancient cookbook” published in 1869). Sometimes in life we may need some grandmotherly guidance and wisdom. It seems since the invention of televisions and just over scheduled lives, the art of housekeeping and cooking have been lost. We don`t spend time in the kitchens with our mothers or grandmothers anymore.

A lot of us just don’t have any  kind of motherly resource and just end up lacking. We may learn the hard way with trial and error or never learn these necessary skills at all. I don’t know about you, but I was thrust into marriage and parenthood without knowing how to cook and sew and once my girls arrived I needed some major help!

If you have a close grandparent, I encourage you to find some of their old cookbooks. You will be shocked at how different the recipes are compared to today’s cookbooks. A lot of traditional ways have been lost in the modern age of convenience.

So here are some ancient recipes that you won’t find in a modern cookbook from Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers.

How to Boil A Calf’s Head

How to Brown a Calf’s head with the Skin On

How to Bake a Beef’s Heart

How To Cook Rabbits and Squirrels

How To Make Brain Cakes
(We are of Polish Heritage and my mother said that eating Brain was a delicacy in her youth!)

How To Make Giblet Pies and Soups

There are 5 pages dedicated on how to eat oysters (just keep hitting the *next* button at the top of the page)

How To Make Milk Yeast

Blackberry Cordial
“This is valuable medicine for children in summer”

How to Make Vinigar

And how to pickle, preserve, make catsup (just keep hitting the *next* button at the top of the page)

How to make liver sausage and head cheese

How to Render Lard and Tallow

The rest of the book deals with how to keep house, herbal and medicinal food remedies (butter oil was used for soothing the stomach for violent vomiting and dysentery)

Take note at all the simple and plain recipes there are in this book. Yet they are so extremely nutritious and loaded with fat, milk, eggs, gelatinous stocks, brains, liver and feet. I also saw tongue amongst the recipes but did not link. I remember having had cows tongue as a kid and it being extremely chewy but tasting good nevertheless.

There are recipes in there that are good for the “delicate persons”. These recipes are high in fats from “rich milk” and eggs, butter and highly gelatinous from boiled pig’s feet. Calf’s foot gelatin with cream is “nice for the sick person”. And note that this milk and cream would be raw and unpasteurized.

Spend some time exploring this book and hopefully try out some recipes and remedies.

Note what ingredients are not included in this book:

1. Canola oils, corn oils, soy oil and other “new” industrial vegetable oils.
2. Skinless, boneless chicken.
3. 1% and 2% milks.

Animal fats, bones and organs where used for medicine and good health. This is how our great grandparents and grandparents ate before heart disease, cancer, and obesity became epidemic.

Share your thoughts!

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade.

To your health,

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Lately I have had this fascination about microbes, lacto-fermentation, and healthy gut flora. The other day I was contemplating how people ever survived before the invention of soap and antibacterial products. As I read through the Bible there is no mention of soap. All the washing is done with water (Note: The Bible is a spiritual book with mysteries in it. There are very spiritual meanings to water. Check out Eph. 5:26). Since the creation of man it was water that has kept us clean.

I have to admit that I am a bit of a germ phobic. I sanitize my counters after preparing my meats. I make sure to wash my hands very well and get uncomfortable at public venues.

But really I should not. Here are my thoughts why…

• Earlier this year, we had a deer that got struck by a car across the road from our house. We live in the country and have a neighbour’s dog that runs at large. He discovered this deer a few days after it was struck. This dog had large chunks of fur sticking out of his mouth and running happily home. He came to visit this deer for a few days until it got taken away. This deer was old meat and infested with all kinds of lovely bacteria and as far as I could tell my neighbour’s dog is still quite healthy with no ill side effects.
• My dog decided that he enjoyed living at my mother in law’s farm and she was happy to have him. One thing that he loved doing is eating cow poop. Yum. That is extremely gross but yet again; he had no known unhealthy side effects from it.
• I have known 2 dogs that eat their own poop (both are Labradors… I don’t know if this trait is common among those breeds). Totally gross but they don’t get the runs after doing so.
• This amazing intestinal quality is not just limited to dogs. In my college years I lived with a cat that had a litter of kittens and she would eat her kittens poop too.

In my studies in Environmental Sciences it has been taught to the students that our tolerance for poop bacteria (coliforms and e-coli) is not that high. In fact we get very sick from even the smallest amount. We have to kill these bacteria with chlorine in our water systems. Not only in the water itself but also in the pipes so that bacteria does not grow during distribution.

I know that people are a very different species from cats and dogs, but how can these animals have so much intestinal tolerance from eating solid poop and rotten meat and not die? If a person was to do the same we would get deathly sick, have organ failure and probably die.

How can animals eat decomposing flesh and we have to sterilize our kitchens after handling meat?

Could it be that the good bacteria that lives on us and in us get destroyed by antibacterial products (chlorine, medications and antibiotic use) allowing the pathogenic bacteria to take over and decreasing our own natural immunity.

A good related post to this is What Really Causes Disease by Kelly The Kitchen Kop. This post debates the “germs cause disease” or “immune failure cause disease”.

What about just washing with water? I don’t think I could do it, but it sure gives me lots to think about.

Edit Note: I actually did an electronic search of the word “soap” in the Bible after writing this post to confirm that soap was not used in the scriptures. I found 2 verses containing that word (Jer 2:22 and Mal 3:2). My mistake, Soap IS mentioned in the Bible.

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There is no need to stay away from all fruit on a low carb and anti-candida diet.

There is a great way to remove sugars and pre-digest the carbohydrates so they don’t negatively impact insulin levels. It is by way of fermentation.

There are many benefits that you can get from fermenting your fruit. When making sauerkraut the vitamin C content is much greater than in a plain old cabbage. The Vitamin C is increased by the fermentation process. So there is a good chance that there may also be a greater vitamin content in fermented fruit. The fermented fruit will not taste sweet. It will have the flavour of the fruit without its sweetness.

If you are suffering from Candida Yeast this is probably the only way to eat fruit. Although I still suffer from symptoms of Candida, they have not gotten noticeably worse from eating this fermented fruit.

I also get severe binging urges when I eat fruit due to insulin resistance (including strawberries and other low sugar fruit). Eating the fermented fruit actually eliminates any sugar craving I may be having and satiates my hunger.

Lacto-Fermented Fruit Recipe

1 pinapple
2 oranges
1 apple
1 inch piece of grated ginger
1/4 cup of rapadura sugar
1/4 cup of whey
1 teaspoon of salt

I cut up the fruit into small pieces. I put the pieces in my jar and gently squished them to get them juicy. I put in the salt, whey and sugar and mixed everything together. Close the jar up and let this sit (fully covered) at room temperature for 2 days. Transfer to the refrigerator after 2 days.

Note:
This is probably not a tasty recipe for most people. I have learned to love the taste of ginger. It spiciness makes the whole batch quite sour. However ginger is a great tonic for the liver and aids any tummy troubles. It is a great anti-inflammatory and and may inhibit cancer cells in the colon.

Since Candida yeast inhabit the colon, there may be some benefits of consuming ginger for candida.

This study shows how effective ginger is at inhibiting oral candida yeast and compares it to Nystatin drug.

The trick here is not to have the urge to add yeast to your fermenting fruit! This can turn your fermenting project into alcohol.

This article is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade.

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Here is a Low Carb Recipe that you have to try. These Coconut Herb buns are extremely light and yummy. They also contain flax and from what I have read the oils in the flax do not get destroyed when baked.

These buns go great with tomato and cheese.

Low Carb Coconut Herb Buns

1/2 cup of dessicated unsweetened coconut

2 tablespoons of golden flax

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon of dill

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon thyme

1/2 teaspoon basil

1/2 teaspoon tarragon

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of bakins soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup of melted butter or coconut oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together coconut and golden flax in a coffee grinder until the mixture is well mixed and finely ground. Put the coconut/flax mixture into a bowl. Add the herbs (garlic, dill, oregano, thyme, basil, tarragon). Add salt, baking powder and baking soda to the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add melted butter and eggs to the dry ingredients. Mix well again. Grease a muffin top pan or a muffin pan. I used a muffin top pan that I got at the grocery store. Place about a tablespoon and a half of mixture into each cup.

Place in the oven and bake for 17 min or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Let me know what you think! This post was submitted to the Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival hosted by Anne Marie aka CHEESESLAVE. To get more real food recipes check out her blog.

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In today’s culture of the low fat movement, the idea of slathering, eating and cooking with saturated fats is disgusting to most. To lose fat we need to eat light, light and even lighter. Popular weight loss shows demonize meats and saturated fats and forbid egg yolks and encourage anything lean.  So what else are we to think?

Low Fat Dogma!

If we eat light – we will be light, have a lighter carbon footprint, love our animals, and have clearer minds to see and know our inner spiritual selves and god.

What this is is an ideology. It is all perception.

When it is portrait on television as healthy, the government reinforcing it in food guides, doctors and nutritionist telling their patients, magazines touting it as the greatest way of losing weight and product manufactures jumping on the “lean” bandwagon it is no surprise that everyone would try to adopt this way of living.

It is easy to vilify the meat and fat as artery clogging.

Eating “light” saves the animals. Eating meat “murders” animals (I do own a t-shirt that reads “meat is murder”).

Heavy, greasy saturated fat is bad. Light vegetable polyunsaturated oils are good.

We know that studies have shown the opposite –  that saturated fats are good and vegetable fats (polyunsaturated fats) are bad. Meat does not cause heart disease.

We have evidence all around us. Obesity is epidemic. Never in history has obesity been so prevalent. Obesity has created new industries – new drugs and supplements, weight loss clinics, food products, food addiction centers etc. Do you think that spouting the truth, that eating saturated fat will decrease appetite and help folks lose weight is going to happen? No. There is too much money now in the weight loss industry and in the drug industries.

Just remember how persecuted Dr. Atkins was. Nobody wanted to hear his science. The perception of eating bacon and eggs as being healthy was laughed at.

How do you change this “low fat” and “eating light” perception? You can start by enjoying your saturated fats and not feeling guilty by doing so. If you have vegetarian ethics (and even if you don’t!), I recommend that you find a good organic farmer that loves their animals. You can find out how the animals are handled, what they are fed, if they get to hang out in the pasture fields and eat good healthy bugs.

Don’t forget that it is carbohydrates in all forms that increase insulin and get stored as fat (fruit, grains, breads, beans, lentils and sugars etc). To get the fat loss benefits of saturated fats, carbohydrates should be restricted.

When you eat meat and saturated fats you can

• be as spiritual as a vegetarian
• love your animals
• you can have a low carbon footprint by selecting food from local organic farms
• you can feel “light” by breaking your food addictions, feel satisfied after eating meals and stop carbohydrate cravings
• you can feel great and have lots of energy and a “clear mind” (brain fog is a symptom of candida  yeast which thrives on carbohydrates and sugars)

You can enjoy your bacon and eggs (yolks and all), lose weight and be healthier for it!

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