For all of you Smoothie Gurus who are making Smoothies regularly - Cheers!

1) Stick to the protocol you learnt with us on keeping it simple, unless you are at the *Smoothie Commando or *Smoothie Queen level.

If you wish to add in new items into your Smoothie, do so one at a time.

(*Which means you can mix more than 6 types of fruits and greens together and still make it taste heavenly)

First of all, thank you for loving our In-House Smoothies, we read that you wished you can make smoothies which taste exactly like ours. Please be gentle on yourselves and remember that we have been on the path for more than 4 years, we make smoothies everyday(still doing that now) & we made so many mistakes!

You are already doing an amazing job with just less than a year of practice.

Whenever you try new experiments, and find that your smoothie taste yucky, go back one or two steps to the basics and start simple again. Use only a max of 2 fruits, under the Conceptual Format that you learnt with us. You won’t go wrong that way.

Whatever you do, never give up! Keep trying till you get it ☺; and you will.

Read the rest or post a comment…

Tags: raw food diet, low fat recipes, raw food recipes, raw food health

1) How can I Avocados Smoothies tasty, they usually taste bland; can I blend the pit?

These questions are increasing because more people are becoming aware of the goodness in Avocados. I was jokingly telling my friend that the price of Avocados may increase pretty soon, at the rate which we are training Singaporeans to incorporate living foods into their diet

The thing when using Avocados is to know that these are not sweet, therefore we cannot rely on them to give a sweet taste to our end-smoothie. If we wish to use them to make good smoothies, we can put in more sweet fruits like red Melons, Grapes & Chinese Shui Jing Pears.

If you have a powerful blender like ours, you can also blend the pit in for extra nutritional boost. Just be aware that the smoothie will taste slightly bitter. We don’t encourage you to blend the pit with a commercial blender, unless you are planning to break the blades. Which may be a blessing because then you’ll have an excuse to finally invest in a good blender!

2) Will blending smoothies destroy the enzymes in fruits & greens?

Any form of processing takes away nutrition from fresh living foods; the best way is of course to consume organic crops freshly harvested from the soil. However, in our busy conventional lives today, we don’t have time to sit down and chew greens whole day, so we use the blender to ‘pre-digest’ the foods.

And yes of course the heat from blades will remove some nutrients but the resulting smoothie will still be much more nutrient dense than a standard cooked store bought meal.

During the Intro Workshop, you will learn how to blend a smoothie to best preserve the quality, taste and nutrients.

3) What is your take on smoking while eating raw foods?

Our reply, based on real experiences, is that the body will definitely be more affected by the nicotine and tar as compared to somebody who eats cooked foods. When the body is taking in clean simple nutrition, all the nerves and neuro-transmittors are clearer, messages and signals travel fast and intense. The nicotine kick is definitely stronger, and the toxins from cigarettes will be absorbed into the blood stream faster.

You can say that the person will feel extremely high from the smoking, and extremely low from the nicotine withdrawals. We do not recommend this way of living.

Tags: low fat recipes, raw food health, raw food recipes, raw food testimonials

Specially Created to cater to our growing Intro to Living Graduates!! This post will be renewed regularly, so make sure you check in frequent to stay up to date

We are the first Living Foods Lifestyle training Group in Singapore, we have done it ourselves and are here to hold your hand for the journey ahead!

1) Is it normal to feel heaty after eating Raw Cacao? I noticed most of my Asian/Chinese friends are prone to heatiness.

Answer:

“It is pretty common because raw cacao is heaty, somewhat like durian. That’s why having enough Green Smoothies, and adding Pure Synergy allows us to balance yin/yang.

There are many people (including myself) who could not take durian or chocolate without falling sick with sore throat etc. Only after I started to eat more raw foods years ago, then the body balances and now the tolerance is totally different.

Similar experiences reported by the other raw foodists – the body seems to balance off after eating more raw foods. Now, I can go for durians and mangoes 2 to 3 times a week. And of course, people’s constitution vary from body to body; For people whose body seems to be on the more heaty side, it helps to drink more Green Smoothies.

Did you drink enough water? I suggest you drink ample purified water, alongside with Green Smoothies, add more fresh fruits (skip the mangoes or longans) and fresh greens into the cooked meals too…

Also, it would be useful to take note what you are eating during the other meals. It is usually the processed foods that are wrecking havoc in the body.”

2) Can we eat pumpkin, radish, sweet-potatoes? They seemed to be consumed rarely or not at all in raw food diets.

Answer:

“Pumpkin, radish and sweet potatoes have been used in raw recipes where they are sliced thinly and marinated well to break down their fibers. The key thing to note is that they have tougher fibers than other produces, and have better textures steamed. Even though I eat mainly raw vegan foods, I think its perfectly ok to have steamed potatoes/pumpkins roots as compared with hawker centre fried oily meals.”

3) I had tried 2 types of smoothies on my own using your formula. It was delicious but the texture is not as good as what we drank during the workshop - is this due to the blender quality.

“Yes you are right on that – the Blender makes a whole world of difference. If you are serious about transitioning onto blended smoothies and foods for the long term, it is definitely more economical and efficient to invest in a quality one.”

4) What can I do with the vegetable stalks, which we do not use in blending?

Answer:

“The best way to use them is to use them in dehydrated recipes like cakes, breads, pies or crackers. We can process these stalks in the food processor in recipes, and they form the base/texture to make raw gourmet snacks ‘chewy’. If you don’t have time or don’t own a dehydrator yet, you can use the stalks to make juice for facial masks, ferment them with fruit peels to make enzymes, compost for your garden, or simply feed them to pet turtles or rabbits! “

To experience our Intro to Living Foods Workshops, write into

Tags: low fat recipies, vegan weight loss, raw food diet, raw food testimonials

I’d been asked many questions about the food pyramid throughout all these years, the good news is that it is getting dramatically less frequent recently! People all around are waking up to the fact that what we see out there, may be pretty far away from what really works for us.

And of course, most of the readers or students who come to me are already quite savvy on their own course of pursuing healthy eating.

In fact, I dismissed the standard food pyramid way before I even discovered about raw foods. Back in 2005 when I was training madly for the Standard Chartered Marathon, I already learnt that the standard food pyramid cannot serve me in helping me achieve stellar fitness stamina.

That was also the time I started my interest into health diets, lifestyle practices as well as anti-ageing methods, which till today I am still crazy about!

This figure currently best summarizes what I eat:

Read the rest or post a comment…

Tags: raw food recipes, low fat recipes, low fat recipies, raw food health

Interestingly, the types and quantities of living foods I eat everyday has somewhat evolved over the past few years. There is one almost confirmed observation made from people on Green Smoothies, including myself - and that is our overall consumption of food reduces on days on which we are not physically active.

Because I lead a mostly active lifestyle, I actually experienced a substantial increase in food intake. Living foods as we all know, are dense in nutrients, but low on calories and huge in bulk! So in order to meet daily caloric requirements, I take in more food volume now.

Read the rest or post a comment…

Tags: raw food recipes, raw food health, low fat recipies, raw food diet