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About the Appendixes

Appendix 1: Your Daily Check ListCall this “Your Daily Check List”. It’s a list of health habits to both develop and to avoid and provides a convenient check list of how many steps in the health continuum process you accomplish in a day. It can be used to tell you how well you’ve done, or where work needs to be done, both as a motivator. It’s set up to be printed once a week so as to pro-vide weekly knowledge and encouragement.

On the counter productive practices some are listed as “Minimal or No” while others are strictly “No”. These are listed this way as it’s almost impossible to stick to a 100% vegan diet. (For example, I use flour tortilla shells to fill with salads as a meal and sour cream on baked potatoes). As long as these foods fall with the 5%-10% portion of your diet, you’ll be doing great—and my listing reflects this option. Obviously the “Minimal or No” choices are clearly preferably to the fully “No” options.

Appendix 2: 100 Million Americans Have Diabetes or Prediabete{1}

This article was part of one of news feeds. It’s worth mentioning since I don’t talk about diabetes that much in my book. It’s an alarming statistic that’s totally preventable. The primary reason why diabetes continue to escalate is because of the excessive consump-tion of processed sugar and high fructose corn syrup, both of which put an enormous strain on the liver and significantly contribute to obesity. Eating animal products, which are high in saturated fat, certainly doesn’t help either. This article is statistical evidence of just how critical it is to follow a 90%-95% vegan diet, to not be poisoning your body with these toxic foods, and to fast once a week. I’ve reproduced this article in its entirety.

One statistic from this report is especially alarming to me: “A total of 30.3 million people in the United States have diabetes, accounting for 9.4% of the population.” Clearly, there’s a serious problem with the diet paradigm in this country.

Appendix 3: Freezing AvocadosBoth Emmale and me are endeavoring to eat as close to organic as possible. It’s not al-ways practical and sometimes not even possible. Still, it’s a worthwhile goal to do so as much as you can and, it is true, it’s getting easier to find organic as more and more cus-tomers demand organic. At one time limited only to health food stores, many farmer’s markets have growers that sell functionally organic food. My regular grocery stores carry some organic, too. My own garden is functionally organic. Being certified as an organic grower is and expensive and bureaucratic process that many otherwise well-intentioned farmers can’t afford. The main issue is to get foods that are as pesticide free in how they were raised as possible.

Emmale ordered some organic produce online. One of the products received was a case of organic avocados. They are delicious but there were 72 of them. They ripened very quick-ly. The thing is that you can only eat so many avocados in day so the question became: How do we keep from losing the majority of our investment. The answer is to freeze the

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avocados. Still, you can’t just stick avocados in the freezer and hope for the best. Rather like freezing bananas with the peeling still on them, all you’ll end up with is a very mushy piece of fruit. Too, avocados turn brown when frozen if not properly processed. In this ap-pendix, I’ve included the process I used for properly freezing avocados.

Appendix 4: How the Obesity Epidemic Got Started, and How We Can End ItIn chapter 19 of my book I talked about obesity. The incidents on “My 600 Pound Life” are, hopefully, the rare exceptions. Still, obesity is becoming more and more of an issue in general. One of my main reliable Internet feeds that I get is from Dr. Joseph Mercola. He’s very aware of relevant health issues. As much as he writes I wonder if he has time for a private practice but I suppose he manages. The title of the article in this appendix is “How the Obesity Epidemic Got Started, and How We Can End It”. My own experience has shown that obesity is, more than anything else, an issue of toxicity and of eating grossly more than is necessary, often of the wrong foods, because of the influence of many fac-tors including toxic chemicals that make you eat and eat and … enough said. That most processed food and drinks are loaded with processed sugar doesn’t help either. Dr. Mercola makes a number of truly relevant observations in his discussion. I’ve included his discus-sion, pretty much verbatim, in this appendix.

Appendix 5: Declare a War on Waste!Once again Dr. Mercola presents a most worthwhile read. It’s all about waste in America. It’s mostly about food waste but the article goes beyond that.

I was recently at my local grocery store. I was the back room, in the Produce Department. On the floor were several banana boxes full of fruit and vegetables that were going to be tossed—as in put in the dumpster. It wasn’t salable but there are few options available to the store, because of potential liability issues, for constructively finding a use for all this food. Granted, some of it was beyond eating but most of it was simply below commercial standards. There was essentially nothing wrong with the majority of this food. The pro-duce manage graciously let me take home, gratis, ‘expired’ peaches and nectarines, in one box, as well as tomatoes, in another box. Granted, this produce did have a few issues that had to be trimmed away but the vast majority of it was fine.

In the end, I ended up with 7 quarts of frozen peaches and nectarines and 11 quarts of canned tomatoes. I estimate that there was probably about $100 of perfectly viable pro-duce. The only thing really wrong with it was that is was not commercially up to par. Still, the produce manager was going out on a limb to let me have this produce. Anymore with so many people being sue happy well, who knows: Someone else might consider suing the store because of a moldy spot on a peach or because of a bruised tomato.

Sadly, there is so much food, perfectly good food, that goes to waste in this country and that’s the subject that Dr. Mercola addresses in this article. While the story pertains to Great Britain, it’s equally applicable to the United States.

Appendix 6: Reflections on “The Sunfood Diet Success System”I first read David Wolfe’s book, “The Sunfood Diet Success System”, many years ago in its paperback version. At the time I found him to be quite revolutionary in his thinking, but there was much I didn’t understand. Sure, I understood that our diets should be primarily vegan and that as much as possible of that diet should be in the natural raw form that the food came in. Some author’s call this a ‘raw food’ diet, and it is, but as David Wolfe points out, ‘raw food’ can be misleading. (Steak tartare is raw food but I wouldn’t be caught dead eating it.) David Wolfe prefers the term ‘sunfood’ as a reflection of the fact that the food was produced by nature—and only by nature. It’s a concept that is so simply that it’s easy to get tripped up on.

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Recently Emmale got a new copy of his book. The original version was published in 1999. This current version is the seventh edition published in March of 2008. There have been changes. More than anything else there are clarifications of earlier points.

Much of David Wolfe’s book is still profound to me. With each reading more understanding is gained. His insights are profoundly deep. Rather like Dr. Bragg’s books, when the stu-dent is ready the teacher will appear except that in the case of “The Sunfood Diet Success System” it’s also a matter of the student being prepared for a much higher level of truth. Too, in many cases David Wolfe goes beyond what Dr. Bragg and his daughter presents. If Dr. Bragg’s teachings were a vehicle, it would be a Ford Mustang muscle car. David Wolfe’s book would be a Ferrari 488 GTE.

I drove a Ford Mustang once. It was an amazing experience. I’d be terrified to drive a Fer-rari 488 GTE. Following David Wolfe’s program creates that same sense of awe. Dr. Bragg introduced the ideal dietary and nutritional program. David Wolfe introduces perfection itself.

At its core, as with the Ferrari, “The Sunfood Diet Success System” is pure power. It’s also simplicity itself. In this appendix I’ve included quotations from David Wolfe’s book and my reflections and observations on what he presented.

{1} {2}

Nutrition according to Dr. Paul Bragg Nutrition according to David Wolf