Remember – if you and a friend join together, you can both enter the Vitamix drawing!
Or – refer a friend who joins, and you can enter.
Questions? Check here or email Mary Beth.
This class has loads of vegan recipes and info about vegan living! Download and print recipes, and get more recipes in class. Get help converting your favorite recipes to delicious vegan versions. Become a healthy vegan (not a potato chip vegan).
You don’t have to be a vegan to take this class!
This is the place to ask your questions and get real answers from real people who have chosen veganism. Join Jan and Kyra and learn what it means to be a vegan, making the transition to veganism, living in a “mixed” (animal-free and animal-eating) family, and the challenges and rewards of being vegan.
Classes at Marilu.com are available free to all members. Just check your inbox on Monday for your daily email, log in to Marilu.com and get to class on the message boards. There’s even a handy class page with all the resources and links you’ll need for class.
Not a member?Sign up now and get a free class (sometimes two!) every month.
We’re getting ready for our Viva La Vegan class – which starts Monday!
Sign up now
and you’ll be ready to go on Monday morning!
Sign up with a friend (or get a friend to sign up)
and enter each other in the drawing for a FREE Vitamix! Details here.
The Viva La Vegan class is a great place to learn about veganism (animal-free eating and living), and it’s for everyone. You don’t need to be a vegan (or vegan-ish, or vegetarian, or any other label)… you just need to want to know more, and to want excellent recipes! Yes, eating less meat (or no meat) can be delicious.
Marilu recommends that we eat less animal protein as a way to lower our intake of saturated fats, avoid animal hormones and avoid environmental toxins. Red meat is especially difficult to digest, and is the easiest to cut out of your menus. Red meat is considered beef, pork, lamb, venison, etc. (Poultry and fish are not considered red meat, although you’ll want to look for organic poultry and ocean fish.)
Eating less animal protein can be a gradual process. You don’t have to change everything at once. Get used to new flavors and textures in your food at your own pace. (Class coaches Jan and Kyra will support you in this!)
Here is Marilu’s chart for going meatless (from Total Health Makeover®, chapter 1).
BEGINNER * Allow yourself one portion of red meat or pork a day. This includes anything from a cow, pig or lamb. (Don’t be fooled by those “other white meat” ads for pork. Pork is nearly as dense as beef.) Also, don’t become Mr. Venison, either. Add more fish or chicken to your diet.
INTERMEDIATE * Limit your red meat and pork consumption to three times a week. Try to eat only free-range poultry and meat whenever possible.
ADVANCED * Eliminate all red meat and pork from your diet. Make sure your poultry is free-range and your fish is from unpolluted waters whenever possible. Experiment with vegetarian meals.
MAKEOVER MANIAC * Eliminate meat completely from your life. Even counting sheep is forbidden.
If you need some simple ideas to get started on a lifestyle that reduces or eliminates animal protein, try the following… and get to class on Monday!
Switch from red meat to poultry and fish.
Use poultry or fish as a compliment to the main dish, not as the main dish itself.
Prepare meatless meals that you are familiar with, such as bean burritos, pasta salads, and veggie stir-fries.
Transition by eating meat less frequently. Start with breakfasts that are meatless, then incorporate meatless lunches as well.
Substitute fresh vegetables for meat in recipes. Vegetarian chili made with Portobello mushrooms is excellent.
Try meat substitutes in moderation. Many supermarkets carry a variety of soy and grain alternatives to hamburger, hot dogs and lunch meats.
Try new types of cuisine. Many ethnic cuisines offer meat-free dishes; you may not miss the meat when you have new flavors to entice you.
Why do you want a Vitamix?
It’s a powerful more-than-blender to help you make amazing smoothies, soups, spreads, and more. The Vitamix retails for $500, so this is not a cheap giveaway; it’s an awesome prize that Marilu wants to give YOU.
How can you win the Vitamix?
Between now and July 11, all you need to do is get a friend to become a member (1-year membership), and you’ll get TWO entries in the Vitamix drawing. That’s TWO entries for every person who becomes a member on your recommendation (get two people to become members and you get FOUR entries, etc.).
1. Get your friends to sign up here for a 1-year membership.
2. Then send an email with your name and your friend’s name to Mary Beth.
That’s all you have to do.
BONUS * Your friend is now automatically enrolled in July’s Viva La Vegan class! (So if you think backwards about this, anyone you know who may be interested in veganism, or what it means to eat a plant-based diet, or who is looking for a healthy way to lower their cholesterol numbers, or who wonders just exactly what it is that you eat… those are the people to invite to become a member.) If you’ve taken the Viva La Vegan class before, you know it’s a great class – but it’s improved even more this year! Coaches JanB and VeganKyra have lots of surprises in store this year.
DOUBLE BONUS * When you (and your new-member friend) take the Viva La Vegan class, you also get an entry in a second Vitamix drawing for participating in class every day. That’s the best second chance ever!
Get your friends to sign up here for a 1-year membership by July 11.
Send an email to Mary Beth with your name and your friend’s name.
Then enjoy the Viva La Vegan class with your friend!
It’s meat scraps turned into meat filler – and it ends up in burgers and tacos everywhere.
This product is actually called ammoniated boneless lean beef trimmings. Still not sure? This is the cheapest, least desirable beef on offer – fatty sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, which are notoriously rife with pathogens like E. coli 0157 and antibiotic-resistant salmonella. Once swept up, the scraps are sent through a series of machines, which grinds them into a paste, separates out the fat, and laces the substance with ammonia to kill pathogens.
The USDA allows this ammonia treated meat to enter the marketplace and with no labeling requirement on the packaging to inform the consumer that the meat they are about to buy contains ammonia. It is used to stretch the actual ground beef, and the USDA shockingly allows up to 15 percent of a ground beef product to be this filler and still be labeled ground beef….
According to a New York Times article, The “majority of hamburger” now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings “the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil,” “typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass” that contains “larger microbiological populations.”
(…)
McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone. And since the USDA considers it a “process”, Ammonia doesn’t have to be listed on the packaging as a separate ingredient!
Of course you can avoid Pink Slime by not eating red meat. If you choose to eat red meat, buy grass-fed beef, which contains no ammonia. Our best advice when choosing animal-derived foods is to buy directly from the source – get to know a farmer (you can find them at farmer’s markets) and visit the farm. Meet the butcher and see the processing facility. Be honest with yourself about where your food comes from.
Loads of vegan recipes and info about vegan living! Download and print recipes, and get more recipes in class. Get help converting your favorite recipes to delicious vegan versions.
You don’t have to be a vegan to take this class!
This is the place to ask your questions and get real answers from real people who have chosen veganism. Join Jan and Kyra and learn what it means to be a vegan, making the transition to veganism, living in a “mixed” (animal-free and animal-eating) family, and the challenges and rewards of being vegan.
Classes at Marilu.com are available free to all members. Just check your inbox on Monday for your daily email, log in to Marilu.com and get to class on the message boards. There’s even a handy class page with all the resources and links you’ll need for class. Not a member? Sign up now and get a free class (sometimes two!) every month.
Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of our agricultural system — I say this as an Oregon farmboy who once raised sheep, cattle and hogs — is the way antibiotics are recklessly stuffed into healthy animals to make them grow faster.
The Food and Drug Administration reported recently that 80 percent of antibiotics in the United States go to livestock, not humans. And 90 percent of the livestock antibiotics are administered in their food or water, typically to healthy animals to keep them from getting sick when they are confined in squalid and crowded conditions.
The single state of North Carolina uses more antibiotics for livestock than the entire United States uses for humans.
This cavalier use of low-level antibiotics creates a perfect breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant pathogens. The upshot is that ailments can become pretty much untreatable.
FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the so-called “diseases of affluence” that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods. The major storyline in the film traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering yet under-appreciated researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. (Hey, we know those guys! They’ve written some of our favorite books – The China Study by Dr. Campbell and Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Esselstyn.)
The filmmakers travel with Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn on their separate but similar paths, from their childhood farms where they both produced “nature’s perfect food”; to China and Cleveland, where they explored ideas that challenged the established thinking and shook their own core beliefs.
The idea of food as medicine is put to the test. Throughout the film, cameras follow “reality patients” who have chronic conditions from heart disease to diabetes. Doctors teach these patients how to adopt a whole foods plant-based diet as the primary approach to treat their ailments—while the challenges and triumphs of their journeys are revealed.
Check here for theaters showing Forks Over Knives in the USA. Check here for theaters showing Forks Over Knives in Canada.
We found this great list of words used on food labels and what they mean. Here’s the beginning of the article to explain it more – we encourage you to click the link and read the whole thing, plus the comments.
These days, grocery shopping involves a lot of reading. Food is rarely content to just be, and instead, must include dozens of labels designating it as CAGE-FREE, HIGH IN ANTIOXIDANTS, or the dreaded ORGANIC. And even if you know your PASTURED from your HUMANELY-RAISED chickens, odds are you still need a PhD to decode most of the other language.
So, to make navigating your supermarket a tad easier, here are 26 food labels, defined and explained in terms understandable to humans. I have to be honest – 36 hours ago, I couldn’t tell the difference between LOW-FAT, LITE and REDUCED-FAT. Now, I can. And I have this guide to consult when I forget.
by Dr. Campbell and 
by Dr. Esselstyn.)
