Sharing life-saving information with a friend…

Posted on 04/13/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

…is not the same thing as proselytizing.

The 4Leaf Program is not extreme at all---when compared to this "routine" bypass procedure.

From time to time, one of my friends gets a wake-up call. He feels some chest pains, goes to his cardiologist and is scheduled for immediate open heart surgery. This series of events happened two months ago.

My friend had an emergency triple bypass on a Friday and I visited him in his hospital room two days later. Much to my delight, he was not only feeling and looking great, but I caught him reading our book when I arrived.

After visiting for a bit in his room, I left when some family members arrived. Later, I followed up by phone and found that everything was continuing to proceed very well. Finally, I paid him a visit in his home this week…and after discussing sailing and yacht club matters for an hour, I left him a few handouts (my heart disease reversal kit) on my way out. The next morning I sent him this note:

Life saving ring for a yacht club friend

Hi George, Thanks again for the nice visit yesterday at your fabulous waterfront home. So glad that you’re feeling well and looking forward to seeing you on the water soon.

As for the handouts that I left you, I am following up to see if you need any help. If you’ve already taken our 4Leaf Survey, I’d be surprised if your score is more than minus 20. That’s because over 90% of Americans would score minus 20 or lower—with less than 10% of your daily calories from whole plants.

Another handout was all about using your Survey Results to improve your diet. You have it within your power to almost guarantee that you’ll never have another invasive heart procedure. As Dr. Ornish and Esselstyn say, “heart disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never exist—and if if does exist, need never progress. And it can be easily reversed in 95% of the cases.” These guys are not quacks; they’re the two prominent MDs that influenced Bill Clinton to radically change his diet.

If you make enough changes in your diet to score plus 20 or better, you’ll be eating at the 3Leaf or 4Leaf level—and will be  among the top 3% of the healthiest eating Americans. Not only will you be reversing your heart disease, but your body will begin to seek vibrant health—and will reward you in many other ways too numerous to mention.

You should go ahead and finish our book, then take a look at all the healthy eating information at 4leafprogram.com. You should also definitely watch “The Last Heart Attack” that aired on CNN last August.

After doing all of the above, let’s have another fireside chat at my place before it gets too warm. Your friend, Jim

Part of my "heart disease reversal kit"

Proselytizing? I know from experience that most people will not make large enough changes in their diet to reverse heart disease—even after learning the truth from a reliable source. But, I never know when one of my friends might surprise me.

So I threw George a life ring; now he must decide whether or not to grab it. Is what I did “proselytizing?” I think not. All I did was share some powerful knowledge with a friend that just might enable him to avoid future heart surgery—and could possibly save his life.

The Bottom Line. I normally don’t offer dietary advice to anyone unless asked. But this is not a normal situation—this is a case where my knowledge can help to save a friend’s life. For whatever reason, he may not decide to take charge of his health at this time. But the seeds have been planted and who knows when they might lead to some positive action on my friend’s part?

I hope that I have some good news to report within the next few months. In the meantime, I will simply wait for him to contact me if he wishes to discuss this matter further.

*****************

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Want to receive some occasional special news from us? You may wish to Join our periodic mailing list. For daily updates you can choose to “FOLLOW” at the top of the right column.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com.

Please SHARE and rate this post below

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Heart Disease | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Getting hungry or losing energy between meals?

Posted on 04/12/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

An anonymous reader asks for some help.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth

Breaking news: Jason, Lisa and I will have a 4Leaf table at the VegFest in Worcester, MA, this Sunday from 11 to 5. Dr. Campbell and Kathy Freston will be speaking.

When I first moved to 100% plant-based eating back in 2003, I found out right away that eating just things like fruit, greens and other high-water content produce will leave you feeling ravenous after an hour or two. Although these are among the most nutritious foods, they also pass through your stomach quickly and leave you feeling hungry long before it’s time for your next meal.

What to do? In my case, it was a simple matter of listening to my body, adding more grains and starches, and planning my daily routine so that I always felt comfortable between meals. Occasionally, I hear from a reader who is experiencing some transitional challenges as he/she moves to this superior way of eating. I got one such note this week:

Hi Mr. Hicks. For breakfast I have Quaker old fashioned oats (boiled in water), sometimes a few raisins, Uncle Sam’s flaxseed, Kashi nuggets, Mom’s Best Toasted Wheat-fuls. I eat a good amount. I go to work and I am flat energy wise. I looked at your posting for your special oatmeal and have concluded that I must be missing something.

I have no energy spark after eating. I am hungry when I get to work. I feel like my breakfast has plenty of grains or starch but no spark and I am still hungry. I’ll eat a sandwich, carrots, apple, cheerios and raisins.  Still no spark. Do you have suggestions on what I am missing.  Thank you!

My response. Thanks for writing. I recommend that you continue to experiment until you find the routine that works for you. Speaking for me and my son, Jason; we both do a similar oatmeal routine each morning. Like you, Jason goes to work each day and must plan accordingly. A strapping young man of 38 years, he is well over 6 feet tall, is super trim, and his very active lifestyle requires between 3,000 and 4,000 calories per day.

Advanced planning makes oatmeal at work "easy."

He has a little fruit on his way to his office at 0600 each day. Then he brown-bags to work—all of the ingredients for his version of my daily oatmeal and prepares it in the company lunchroom. If you eat it cold like I do, you don’t even need a microwave to make his method work for you. He describes his oatmeal routine in detail in one of my blogs last year: Oatmeal the Staples way…”That was easy!”

As you may know, my morning routine begins with a large bowl of fruit at 0730 followed by my Sailors Daily Oatmeal whenever I get hungry—usually around 1030 or 1100. Again, my next meal takes place when I get hungry—usually my largest meal of the day at around 2:30 or 3 p.m.

You mentioned Dr. McDougall’s upcoming book, Starch. I think you’re on the right track with his teaching; we do need to eat a great deal of starch in order to provide the energy we need between meals. Since I began eating this way, my weekly consumption of whole grain rice and various legumes has increased about 100 fold. In the old days, although I ate a ton of fruits and vegetables, I also ate a lot of meat and dairy and not so much healthy grains and legumes. So I guess in my case, the healthy starches took the place of meat and dairy in my diet.

My son's office at work features a 4Leaf poster along with an exercise ball replacing the conventional office chair.

Speaking for me and my son—this diet style is working great for us. We have plenty of energy all day long and simply eat all that we want—whenever we want. I hope this information is helpful for you.

Maybe I could provide more input if I knew a little more about your daily eating habits. Have you taken our 4Leaf Survey? If so, please send me a summary of your answers and I perhaps I can suggest a few more things that you might try.

Perhaps my son will add his own “two cents” in the form of a comment on this blog. Again, keep experimenting; I am totally confident that you will find the routine that works best for you. Thanks again for sharing.

*************************

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Want to receive some occasional special news from us? You may wish to Join our periodic mailing list. For daily updates you can choose to “FOLLOW” at the top of the right column.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com.

Please SHARE and rate this post below

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, Board of Directors…

Posted in Healthy Eating 101 | 5 Comments

Twelve “not-so-healthy” ways to eat spinach

Posted on 04/10/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

Followed by one fairly healthy way from my own kitchen

Mark Bittman is clear about what he enjoys eating---but often confusing when it comes to helping his readers learn about healthy eating.

Breaking news: Jason, Lisa and I will have a 4Leaf table at the VegFest in Worcester, MA, this Sunday, April 15, from 11 to 5. Dr. Campbell and Kathy Freston will be speaking. Spread the word.

Mark Bittman has done it again. Although he has an incredible amount of knowledge about the harmful, inefficient and unsustainable nature of our typical Western diet, he rarely offers his readers any clarity as to what they should be eating to be healthy. He knows that we’re digging our graves with our knives and forks AND destroying our planet, yet he continues to shamelessly promote animal-based foods in most of his work.

The latest is an article in last week’s New York Times about spinach—and his suggestions for how best to prepare this super-healthy food. He likes spinach but not necessarily eaten raw in a salad. So he offers four ways to cook the spinach along with three suggestions for each method: wilted, steamed, braised and super-slow cooked. From the article:

Here, spinach undergoes four completely distinct treatments: superfast wilting in a pan; not-much- slower steaming in a pot; braised and almost a full meal; and superslow, a technique I really love, and one that results in astonishingly fine creamed spinach and the like. (These are generally so high-fat that they effectively neutralize spinach’s supposed health benefits, an interesting paradox.)

Here are Mark's three wilted options: with steak, bacon and chicken going left to right.

His list of 12 spinach dishes, all of which have oil, most of which have butter and half of which have meat, eggs or mussels. Notice that I labeled the three without butter as “healthier options.”

  1. Wilted with skirt steak
  2. Wilted with bacon
  3. Wilted with chicken
  4. Steamed with parmesan (and butter)
  5. Steamed with anchovies (and butter)
  6. Steamed with cashews (and sesame oil) Healthier option. 
  7. Braised with eggs
  8. Braised with mussels
  9. Braised with soy and ginger (and sesame oil) Healthier option.
  10. Slow-cooked with cream (and butter)
  11. Slow-cooked with Indian spices (and oil) Healthier option.
  12. Slow-cooked with rice & carrots (and butter)

Joseph's brand---about the healthiest packaged bread that I have found.

Want a really healthy spinach option? This is what I often prepare as a light dinner or as a healthy item to take along on the train or while sailing for the day. It started out as part of my Sailors Super Lunch; this is the “spinach-pita” portion of that lunch. Here’s the way I do mine. (If you’re nervous about microwaves, then you can use Mark Bittman’s method of wilting described above.) 

  1. Fill a large salad bowl with raw spinach. Squeeze some lime or lemon juice on top, spray with a bit of Braggs Liquid Aminos and sprinkle some Kirkland organic no-salt spice on top. Microwave for 30 seconds.
  2. Slice a whole wheat Joseph’s Pita in half and warm both halves along with the spinach for about 15 seconds. Spread a little hummus (preferably homemade) inside the two halves of pita.
  3. Start stuffing the pita with spinach; add a row of sliced avocado and olive, finish stuffing with more spinach.
  4. This meal can be a little high in fat if you’re liberal with the avocado and olive. I try to use just 1/4 of an avocado, which will take care of both half-pitas.

As for the Joseph’s bread. One full round of pita contains 230 calories, with less than 10% from fat. It’s not a whole plant, but it is made from 100% stone ground whole wheat flour. It has 8 grams of fiber and has slightly more sodium and a few more ingredients than I would prefer.

While this is not a super-healthy 4Leaf dish, this great little meal can be prepared in five minutes and is a much healthier spinach option than any of Mark’s oil-soaked, animal food medleys shown above. For more details on Mark’s cooking options, see the link below.

Spinach---the King of Greens

Spinach Salad? Finally, I disagree with Mark about the spinach salad. I think that there are many options for a highly delicious raw or slightly wilted version with the right mix of veggies, legumes, grains, seasonings and color. Just remember that if you’re going to call it a meal, you’re going to need more than just the spinach—anything from avocado to zucchini to make sure that you get the 400+ calories that you need. Enjoy!

So what’s the story with Mark Bittman? He probably knows more about the need for plant-based eating than any prominent journalist in America—yet his work is often confusing, misleading and lacking clarity. He is referenced many times in our book and mentioned often in this blog. Just a few weeks ago, I featured him in a blogpost: Mark Bittman. Does he ever take a stand on anything? As for the article about spinach….

 Spinach Is a Dish Best Served Cooked – NYTimes.com.

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Want to receive some occasional special news from us? You may wish to Join our periodic mailing list. For daily updates you can choose to “FOLLOW” at the top of the right column.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com.

Please SHARE and rate this post below

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, Board of Directors…

Posted in Healthy Eating 101 | Tagged , | 3 Comments