The Power of Plants | Danielle Arsenault | TEDxAbbotsford

It's a very exciting time to be alive. We have the technological innovations and knowledge to be the healthiest meat ever. We have made leaps and bounds in nutrition science. We know how the body works at the cellular level, but cancer, diabetes and heart disease affect so many Americans today, with all this information in front of us, it seems like we are not following this path. Why is there a lot of conflicting information about nutrition and we are confused? We follow the trends and hope to achieve some kind. of improvement and while many health supplements work to improve and help combat nutritional deficiencies, they should not be relied on long term as the answer to our nutritional needs, the truth is that no food or supplement promises perfect health , is the Nutrition obtained from a variety of raw nuts and seeds, fruits and vegetables that will add quality to our years.

This is the foundation for optimal health. And you see, what I'm about to share with you is nothing new. The path to optimal health is right in front of us and we can begin to realize this true health potential by following some very simple ancient practices. I am here to share with you the

power

of

plants

and three ancient whole foods to optimize our health and achieve a multitude of nutrients. to our diets by simply adding them to what we eat every day so let's think about this imagine a world where you can access all the health secrets of all the ancient sages this is our world we have this knowledge it is simply forgotten if we look at food culture All over the planet long before the Hundred Mile Diet existed, people ate with what was available to them, they ate fresh local produce in season, they preserved their food naturally, and many cultures ate little or no animal products, for example, the Choctaw First Nations of Oklahoma and the Miss P. -8 ate a plant-based diet and got most of their calories from fruits and vegetables, and already in ancient Egypt, scientific studies have shown that, by analyzing the carbon atoms in mummies, the ancient Egyptians were mainly vegetarians and then even in recent history, the Vulcan bomb of In Ecuador, these are known to be Jewish peoples for a long time and they eat primarily a plant-based diet that is raw and even today modern communities live with these values .

There are people in Ameren Israel and forest sadhana. India eats 100% plant-based, they grow most of it. their own food they also built an intuitive diet based on their environment they are eating real food now this is their foundation so let's think about this here I'll show you something so simple you're probably wondering what this is Okay, I'll tell you in a minute, but I want to share with you something as profound as when I was a child. I have always believed in the

power

of

plants

. I believe in listening to our gut. You know, how does it make food feel in our bodies?

We eat, does our diet energize us or exhaust us, does it make us feel light but satisfied or do we have horrible digestive upset? Listening is wisdom, practiced daily as a child. I gravitated towards all things natural, insects, trees, plants and definitely the garden. I remember digging deep for the carrots we planted as seeds and seeing the origins of the food and really appreciating the time and energy it took to grow a carrot. I loved school and the science experiments where we planted seeds in little cups and with the help of sunlight love water these seeds would grow into sprouts their roots would expand throughout the cups we planted them in I have always believed in the power of plants, you know, this was something I saw since I was a child and that curiosity never faded.

Many years later I went to Puerto Rico and studied the raw plant-based healing diet of a plant-based diet. It was here that I was reintroduced to sprouts, but not in the context of a scientific experiment. It was here that I learned how to take a seed and turn it into a nutritional powerhouse. Sprouts are a complete protein and are also very rich and have a wide range of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that help our body function at a cellular level. I mean, if you think about a sprout, what? Is it a little plant that has the power and the same nutrients as the adult version of itself?

When you eat sprouts, you eat a hundred at a time, which means you're eating the combined nutritional advantage of hundreds of little plants. that's powerful India Pakistan South America Asia the mung bean sprout, for example, is a vital source of protein, these cultures somehow intuitively know that there is greater value in sprouting the legume than in cooking it to eat the best of it. sprouts where they can be grown at home, so not only do you grow them at home, but you can also find them available in supermarkets and health markets, but you should make sure to choose white roots that do not turn yellow because this could mean that They have gone too far and could start to develop harmful bacteria.

How do you grow sprouts at home? It is very simple you take the seed or nut and put it in water you soak it how long you soak it depends on the size of the seed the bigger the seed the longer you soak it and then you will have it soaking in this unhealthy water because the inhibitors of enzymes that protect us are released into the water, so you want to make sure you throw that water away because that will make it harder for your body to digest it. It is discarded and you are going to rinse it.

The following days you will have the crop of broccoli radish alfalfa sprouts mung beans lentils clover sprouts the list goes on not only do you get a great variety but the sprouts yield up to 24 times more Original volume of seeds for you to obtain more at the same price. I believe no super salad is complete without sprouts and sprouts are the first whole food that I believe can optimize your health. The second is seaweed and seaweed when I was a little girl going to Kelowna. She was on vacation in the Okanagan to visit my uncle, and even though there was no sea in sight, my uncle ate seaweed.

I remember saying then that seaweed was one of the strangest things I could have ever imagined eating, they were the things that would tickle the back of our heads. Feet in the lake when we swam was not food, but of course I was curious and tried it and loved it and I didn't know then that seaweed was an ancient whole food consumed by coastal communities around the world. I finally found myself in the South. Korea, where I lived and taught for four years. I was so elated because I got to rock climb, camp all the time, and peruse these amazing local street markets.

I was very impressed with the variety of seaweeds that are regularly used in Korean cuisine and the seaweed and algae. It has been used for centuries and eaten everywhere and especially has strong roots in Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan and China and as a food, seaweed is one of the most nutrient-dense foods in the world. planet; In fact, the first Chinese writings date back to approximately 3600 BC. C. were the first to document the use of seaweed as food, so you will have heard of omega-3, the correct essential fatty acids, phase EF. Well, many people eat fish and fish oil to get these essential fatty acids.

Have you ever wondered where they get their fish from? analogy with seaweed see the topic of eating fish to get your own magazines, they are higher up the food chain the bigger the fish the more toxins it has accumulated throughout its life and heavy metals too, so when you eat those fish, you also eat These toxins, I say, skip the middleman, go straight to the source: seaweed, and these days, they are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Now you can eat so many types that the dark green salty substance that surrounds the sushi is called nori and then there is the seaweed with its gelatin. -As a texture, you can find it in the form of noodles or maybe you have heard of doles, it is becoming very popular lately because of its similarity to bacon, it is very smoky but has nothing to do with the animal industry and then there are freshwater algae such as chlorella. and AFA blue-green algae and saltwater algae are like spirulina and marine phytoplankton, which is actually my favorite.

All of them can be harvested in their natural ecosystems without harm and therefore their sustainable algae and Al J are absolutely incredible, not only because they are very very interesting because in the early 1950s chlorella was seen as a solution to the hunger crisis due to its easily digestible protein, but unfortunately it never fulfilled its destiny. Chlorella is an amazing plant. It is a single-celled organism that can control itself within 24 hours. the fastest growing food crop known to man, so if you have the ability to do this, think about what it can do for you, how to eat them, you can put them on everything you eat, so the subsidies go to your salad , seaweed noodles in soup.

You can use nori to wrap pates with sprouts, roll them up, they are so delicious. I love putting drops of marine phytoplankton in water with lemon essential oil, it's so delicious and gives me an energy boost, in fact, I had some right before I went on stage. So this is an amazing plant that you can incorporate into your diet to get such variety, so they are also high in iodine. Iodine deficiency is now quite common in the North American diet, and in the early 20th century, iodine deficiency was so common that, in fact, it led to the fortification of table salt, iodized table salt. , well, unfortunately, the iodine present in table salt is toxic and has toxic amounts of potassium iodide, aluminum derivatives and lye, but without a natural source of iodine we run the risk of thyroid problems and possible problems. iodine deficiency, so the most sensible way to get iodine would be to eat seaweed.

Korea introduced me to many things, seaweed allergies and kimchi. Kimchi is a fermented delicacy found on every Korean table. Here we see a group of women lovingly preparing a huge vat of kimchi, which is a very popular cultural tradition during the autumn months, this naturally brings me to the third ancient food that I believe can optimize health, sauerkraut and others, yes , sauerkraut and other unpasteurized raw fermented foods such as miso pickles and kimchi fermentation. a vast history dating back 12,000 years with reported use in India, Spain, South Africa and Asia. Now this is very interesting. Sauerkraut was aboard Captain Cook's ship as he explored the West with barrel after barrel.

His crew avoided scurvy due to sauerkraut's high vitamin C content. content, so one could logically infer that while other sailors perished at sea, the unexplored waters of the Pacific were mapped by sauerkraut. That's true and the best and most surprising health benefit of sauerkraut and other fermented foods is their probiotic content. Probiotics are gaining recognition due to their essential health bacteria that strengthen the immune system. Now you see that our intestines have pounds and pounds of bacteria, both good and bad, and when we get sick it is because the bad bacteria have taken over the helpful probiotics that keep our immune system in check and, in fact, about 90 percent Our immune system depends on the health of the gut, so by eating foods that are naturally fermented, we repopulate the gut with good things and stay healthy.

It is very easy to make sauerkraut. I'll show you how simple it is here. take some cabbage that's it and I've pre-salted it to speed up the process so you have cabbage in a bowl you add a little salt let's pretend it's okay now how much salt depends you'll have to take a look at it and What you need to do is just squeeze it, that's all we do with sauerkraut to make sauerkraut and once you squeeze it, the salt will go into the sauerkraut and draw out the natural juices and actually create a brine which is just from the salt, okay, so once you have that, you can add some different spices, chili, caraway seeds, you put it in a receptacle, you put it in a jar, so I brought this crock as an example, but you can do it with a glass jar.

Okay, you want to put it there and then. you want to press it down, so really press it down. This is a very important process because this takes out the air and brings the brine solution to the top, so that's very important. Well, as you can see, if I press really hard, you can write. to see the brine solution start to build up at the top, okay, and then all you have to do is weigh it, so I take a wide mouth glass jar, a smaller glass jar, I put it on top , I cover it and leave it on the counter after about two weeks, the pH will have dropped, the lactobacillus acidophilus takes over and you have thisamazing probiotic rich multivitamin at your fingertips to use the old saying, knowledge is power, well, knowledge requires action to be useful.

I believe and know that we all demand that it exists. a dire need for nutrition education taking care of ourselves should not be complicated and expensive, let's make it easy, let's make it fun sauerkraut seaweed and sprouts three simple but nutritious foods that will add a lot of nutrition to our diet and we can integrate them effortlessly into what we eat, let's listen how these foods make our bodies feel and when we do this, we are practicing what has been known for centuries, we are renewing our ancestors in the wisdom within ourselves, building an intuitive diet based on our environment.

The foundation for optimal health is built on organically grown whole foods of plant origin. Thank you.