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You are probably thinking, “there goes Vreni the food nazi off the deep end about something else …!” Yeah, well maybe. And certainly for us foodies that follow the shenanigans of the food industry, it is old news that the Almond Board of California, which supplies all the almonds to the US and Canada, will begin pasteurizing almonds in September. There are two issues here.

1. Pasteurization not only kills the micro-organisms in the nut, but also the nut itself.  A nut is a seed, and if you plant it, it will grow – it has life-force.  Cooking the nut kills the life-force, so if you plant it it will not grow.  The enzymes that make the seed viable also help our bodies digest it.  Furthermore, heating the nut destroys those delicate polyunsaturated fatty acids in them, making them rancid, and therefore what was once a nutritious food now becomes at best questionable, at worst, harmful.
2. The FDA will allow the Almond Board of California to label these cooked almonds as "raw", so as consumers, our choice is taken away from us.  The label will be completely wrong, with the goal of confusing the consumer, which in my mind is criminal.  All almonds in North America will be pasteurized according to this law, so when you go to any store in North America to buy raw almonds, you will not be getting the real thing.  So, plant an almond tree or order your almonds from a source that gets them from Europe (you can order real raw almonds here – www.realrawfood.com).

Hopefully if enough people fight this, we can convince the Almond Board and the USDA not to do this.  Please send a letter and protest! Sample letter

Why are they doing this?  In the name of food safety, they claim.  There were two cases of salmonella from almonds grown conventionally before 2004, and no cases ever from organic almond farms that I can find.  The biggest reason foods are pasteurized is to lengthen shelf life, which increases sales. The more "dead" the food is, the longer it will take to spoil, the more chance there is to sell it.  But sterilizing everything deprives our immune systems from being able to build up defenses to common pathogens, which results in us becoming more susceptible to illness. And there is no doubt that there is more sickness today than even twenty years ago. Many kids seem to get a cold once a month! The short-sighted view of good health is that the germ is dangerous, and therefore must be killed before it comes in contact with our bodies. The long-sighted view is that building health isn’t about the lack of exposure to the germ, but rather about the ability of the immune system of the host to be able to defend itself against the germ, which can only happen through some exposure. (This is, after all, how vaccines work!)

I also found out this week, much to my dismay, that pretty much all other nuts and seeds, with the exception of walnuts, are already heat processed and sold as raw.  Cashews are boiled for six hours, pistachios are heat treated to shell them, brasil nuts are heated, and there really is no such thing as a raw sesame seed … And all this time I’ve been buying them "raw", carefully soaking them to increase their digestibility, drying them at low temperatures to prevent any oxidation, and now I find out they have been dead all along!  I just don’t think it is fair that as consumers we are being purposefully deceived by the labels.  If the label says "raw" I expect it to be raw!  We already have to go way out of our way to seek out healthy food, and to be able to choose appropriately we must be able to rely on accurate labels. Slowly, bit by bit, our choice of healthy, viable food is diminishing, either through its governed absence (selling raw dairy in Canada is illegal), or by deceptive labeling as in this nut example.  The only consequence that is possible with forced poor-quality food, is poor health.

I cannot promise a tip next week – I’ll try, but I don’t see much time available for writing.  In fact June will be tough as I will also be out of town over two weekends on a course. By July things should settle back down to normal though.

Related Posts
Food – our raw material
The hygiene hypothesis
It’s not what you eat but what you digest that counts

Online at Almond Board of California
Online at Mandatory Almond Pasteurization Weston A. Price Foundation
Online at Food Scam: Almond Board of California to falsely label pasteurized almonds as "raw" Newstarget.com
Online at the Cornicopia Institute Almond Fact Sheet
Koenig A. et al. Immunological factors in human milk: the effects of gestational age and pasteurization J. Hum Lact 2005 Nov. 21(4): 439-43
Gaya P. et al. Proteolysis during the ripening of Manchego cheese made from raw or pasteurized ewe's milk; seasonal variation J. Dairy Res. 2005 Aug. 72(3): 287-95
Silva FV, Gibbs P. Target selection in designing pasteurization processes for shelf-stable high-acid fruit products Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2004:44(5): 353-60
Dos Anjos F. et al. Gamma-glutamytransferase as a marker for the pasteurization of raw milk J Food Prot 1998 Aug. 61(8): 1057-59.

Copyright 2007 Vreni Gurd

Did you know that the reason your gut may be roiling may be due in large part to stress? Whether it is Irritable Bowel Syndrome, ulcerative colitis, or simply a stomach ache before you are about to give that really important speech, stress may be playing a significant role.

If you’ve been following along on this mini stress-series over the last couple of weeks, you probably can figure out exactly how stress can upset your gut, right?

If you are hiking in the woods, you round a corner and come face-to-face with a grizzly bear, your body is not going to prioritize digestion at this moment. Instead, it’s going to go "Oh sh*#t" – quite literally!  If you were given enough of a fright, you probably will soil yourself to immediately get rid of anything in your digestive tract.

It’s harder to run on a full stomach, so your body thinks it’s doing you a favour! Suddenly all the blood leaves your gut and floods your muscles so you can better use them. Perfect response for a dire situation.

(Running is about the last thing one should do if you chance upon a grizzly bear, as you can’t out run them, and if you run, they are very likely to chase. I think you are supposed to slowly back away, and be very sure you are not getting between a mom and her cub!  Please research this topic on your own, if you are going into bear country.)

Back to stress. If your body is chronically stressed for whatever reason, (the stress bucket runneth over), be it emotional, work or relationship stress, financial stress, chronic pain or disease, chronically poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, inadequate or too much exercise, a fungus or parasite problem, chemical or heavy metal toxicity, or any combination of the above, your parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and repair system that is in charge of digestion is turned down, and your sympathetic system (fight or flight) system is turned up. 

This means that blood is diverted away from the gut, and if this happens chronically, the body has a very hard time digesting food.  This leads to poor absorption of nutrition, and a very unhappy stomach, intestine and colon.

Stress, as shown in the example above, also can affect intestinal motility, in some showing up as the runs, often in anticipation of a big event, and in others as constipation if there is poor coordination between the small and large intestine.

Ulcers have been linked to stress for a long time, and when it was proposed that ulcers were actually caused by the bacteria H. Pylori, the theory was received with skepticism, until it was proven in subsequent studies.

However there is no question that it is the interaction between stress and the bacteria that causes the ulcers, rather than the bacteria or the stress alone. A little bit of stress and a lot of bacteria can result in stomach ulcers, as can a really major stressor and a very little bit of bacteria.

The interaction that creates the ulcer is poorly understood, one theory being that stress causes a reduction hydrochloric acid secretion, and in turn a reduction in the bicarbonate mucus that coats the stomach wall protecting the stomach walls from the acid. H. Pylori also reduces the stomach mucus. 

At the end of the stressful event, the parasympathetic system ramps up again, digestion is prioritized, more hydrochloric acid is secreted, the inadequate mucus coating is overwhelmed, and the acid eats through the stomach wall giving you an ulcer. Ironically, a reduction in HCl production may create acid reflux type symptoms, so antacids which further reduce HCl don’t resolve the cause of the problem.

To test this, squeeze a lemon or pour a cap full of raw apple cidre vinegar into a small amount of water and drink before a meal, and see if this reduces heart burn symptoms. If so, your heartburn may be as a result of too little HCl as opposed to too much, and HCl tablets with meals may be helpful. If the symptoms become worse, then you may actually have too much HCl, although this is rarely the case.

So, poke some holes in the stress bucket, and bring the chronic stress levels down. My sense is that most stress these days is caused by unresolved emotional issues, so dealing with that aspect is critical.

Learn to reframe problems as opportunities, get professional help from psychologists, psychiatrists or councilors, learn EFT (emotional freedom technique) or NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) – whatever method can work for you to help you deal with emotional stuff. 

Baby yourself with great quality food, play a lot, listen to soothing music, breathe, meditate, do some art work, go for a walk along the beach, enjoy your friends and family, and then go to bed and sleep, sleep, sleep.  For any digestive issue, repopulating the gut with good bacteria through quality probiotics is essential.

Related tips:
Acute vs. Chronic Stress
The autonomic nervous system and fat loss
Dealing with health issues
Learn to let go

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.
Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An updated guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping WH Freeman and Company, New York, 1998

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd

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We’ve all heard how stress increases the risk of cardiovascular disease – how does this happen?

When under stress, our body thinks it needs to save your life, so it does what it can to make it easy for us to run or fight. Therefore we need oxygenated blood to get to our muscles quickly.

Our sympathetic nervous system fires up increasing our breathing rate and heart rate, and releases hormones that constrict the blood vessels so that there is more pressure in the system which helps deliver the blood quickly to the muscles that need it.

If the stress is chronic, because of the extra work and forces being put through the system, the heart and vessels wear out faster than they would if the stress were not chronic, just as high-pressure hoses and pumps wear out faster than ones that are not subjected to high pressures.

The areas in our blood vessels that are the most vulnerable to injury from a mechanical perspective are the junctures where the blood vessels bifurcate into smaller vessels due to the blood slamming into those junctions causing turbulence, and eventually causing tearing and pitting in the smooth lining of the vessels.

Another part of the stress response is the secretion of glucocorticoids like glucagon and cortisol, which release sugar into the blood stream to provide instant fuel to the muscles in order to save you.

However, if the stress is chronic, and high blood-sugar levels become the norm, there is more potential for glycation where the glucose molecules bind with protein molecules, the first stage in developing Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs), which also damage the lining of the blood vessels, adding to the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

(Chronic high intake of sugar and flour products also leads to AGEs, and therefore blood vessel damage, which is why these foods are linked to cardiovascular disease).

Now the body needs to try and repair the damage to the vessels, as well as shore up the vulnerable areas for the future. So cholesterol is dispatched to the area to repair the tisse, and it works its way underneath the smooth lining, thickening it.

In addition to this, because now the surface of the vessel walls are roughened due to tears or pits in the lining, platelets, our blood clotting cells, are more likely to clump there.

Over time, between the thickened lining and the clumps stuck in the area, the vessel walls harden and the opening becomes narrower, and we are diagnosed with atherosclerosis.

The impact of the thickened vessels depends on where they are located. If they are in our legs, we may get claudication, or a blockage in the arteries in our legs. If the thickening is in the arteries of the heart, we get heart disease, and if the thickening is in the vessels leading to the brain, we may become a candidate for a stroke.

Ways to reduce stress include meditation, breathing exercises, parasympathetic exercise like yoga, Feldenkrais, Alexander technique, tai chi or qi gong.

Other ideas include spending time in nature, connecting and laughing with good friends, living in the present moment, writing a list of at least 20 things we are grateful for and repeating this exercise each day.

Putting our problems in perspective, realizing that there is no point stressing over stuff we have no control over, finding the courage to change stressful situations that we do have control over, simplifying one’s life, and enjoying time doing absolutely nothing can be worthwhile skills to develop.

If you would like help addressing stress issues, feel free to contact me.

Related tips:
Acute vs. Chronic Stress
High cholesterol does not cause heart disease
The autonomic nervous system and fat loss
Mind and body; psyche and soma
Learn to let go

Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Third Edition WH Freeman and Company, New York, 1998

Katie, Byron Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life Three Rivers Press, New York NY, 2002.

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.

Pert, Candace PhD, Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine Scribner, New York, NY, 1997.

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd