To start off this season’s “soul food” blog posts, I have SUCH a treat for you all! Robbie Raugh, a Registered Nurse, is an internationally known Integrative Health, Fitness, Nutrition Practitioner and Master Trainer. Robbie draws on her 30 plus years of experience teaching health, nutrition, and fitness classes, and running her private practice on a daily basis. She also appears regularly as the health and fitness expert on ABC affiliate WKBW-TV and hosts her own radio show on Faith, Family, Food and Fitness, called The Raw Truth on WDCX99.5 FM and ESPN Radio 1520 AM, streaming live worldwide. She is also the featured instructor of four Raw Energy Fitness Exercise Videos, and The Kinetic Workout Live exercise video. Robbie is an international speaker and a dedicated wife and mother.

Robbie is not only extremely knowledgeable in her field, but she is passionate and energetic and her zest for living life to it’s fullest is contagious. What I love most about Robbie’s ministry is that she champions both physical health and spiritual health. She fully recognizes that you can love Jesus, but if you don’t have energy to serve him, you aren’t going to be effective to carry out God’s plans and purposes for your life. On the flip side, you can have a healthy heart physically (and a rock hard bod), but if you have a heart of stone towards Jesus, you ain’t got anything at all. As I listened to Robbie speak on nutrition recently, what struck me was the big lettering on the screen behind her, a very straight forward message that read “God cares more about the condition of your heart than the condition of your body”. With everything Robbie teaches, she makes very clear, that physical health is not the be all and end all. The phrase “if you have your health, you have everything” is FALSE. If you have JESUS, you have everything – but you can certainly live this life in your temporary dwelling MUCH more abundantly if you have your health!

This is exactly what “From Milk to Meat” is all about  – I want to provide nourishment for both your body and soul. And yes, I provide you with a “cheats” section too…because, I love donuts…and brie…and molten lava cake. It is ok to enjoy the yummier things of life. BUT, I try my best to be 90% good 90% of the time, and then enjoy a “cheat” to the fullest when I allow myself. As Robbie says below- “if I want to try it, I will, but now it does not control me like it used to”.

My daily food habits are conscious choices to make great tasting meals that take care of my temple. My hopes are that this site provides you recipes that inspire you to eat REAL food, rather than jumping in the car to the Golden arches to order combo #4. I want to help you understand that there can be just as much ease, and way more benefit to tossing together a few healthy ingredients, rather than opening up a can of (insert whatever can applies to you ____). I am not advocating a life style of eating sweets and cheats, but a life style of eating REAL healthy foods, and then indulging on occasion if you’d like. Even more, I want to stress the importance of getting in our daily spiritual nourishment. “From Milk to Meat” refers not to the physical diet you should be on, but rather the journey and growth of your spiritual maturity that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. For today, let’s focus our attention on the food our physical body needs.

Food is powerful. It can tempt you and keep you hooked like a drug. It can also heal you. In recent years, I have learned more and more about food’s ability to either cause or prevent disease. The following exerpt, “Food and Cancer”, from Robbie’s easy to read Book The Raw Truth Recharge is just one of the very enlightening truths that I have read about the links to food and disease. I am so grateful for Robbie’s book, and encourage you to order a copy here. In the meantime, listen to what Robbie has to say about a very serious topic…

 

Food and Cancer

“We know we can prevent and reverse some cancers by eating a plant-based diet.

When my sister Arlene and I researched breast cancer, the link between sugar, and obesity kept popping up. That information was not in the mainstream media then, and it’s not in the mainstream media now! Not only that, doctors aren’t even talking to their cancer patients about eating healthy and the links to cancer. In fact, there are world-renowned cancer institutes and oncologists that have free candy available in the lobby of their hospitals and practices.

Back in 1924, Otto Warburg, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, proposed the hypothesis that cancer is a metabolic disease that affects the way cells use food to make energy. Warburg believed that cancer cells exhibit a preference for using sugar to fuel themselves, even when the oxygen for normal cellular processes were available. He wrote: “cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal cells by a fermentation of sugar.”

Unfortunately, the general direction of cancer research over the past 40 years has been biased towards genetic causes with drug-based treatments, and little progress has been made towards a cure, leaving patients with a dismal future and death.

Recently, though, Dr. Thomas Seyfried, has backed Warburg’s work in his book Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin Management and Prevention of Cancer. Dr. Seyfried argues that cancer is not a genetic disease but a metabolic disease. Metabolic diseases are conditions in which the metabolism, or the making of energy from the food we eat, is abnormal or dysfunctional in some way. Normal cells are able to efficiently use the food we eat and the oxygen we inhale to complete normal cellular respiration and make adenosine triphosphate (ATP), our cellular energy source.

The second type of energy fuel is ketone bodies, which come from fatty acids. They come from fats we eat or the metabolism of fats. This fat metabolism process is called ketogenesis, and the shift in metabolism that favors fats as the primary fuel for energy is called ketosis. Long story short, cancer cells can’t use ketones, and must have glucose to stay alive and grow. In very simple terms, a high-carbohydrate diet has been found to feed cancer cells. Remember it’s not just the sugar we’re talking about, it is the foods that turn into sugar as well. There is so much research out there about spontaneous regression of tumor cells based on a lifestyle and food changes, without any chemotherapy medication. Again, it’s not reported in the mainstream media, but the facts are there when you begin to research.

I am asked quite often by my clients what I would do if I had cancer. Am I against chemotherapy treatment for cancer? I won’t answer that, because I believe it’s an individual personal decision that people need to make for themselves. But I can tell you this: what we eat matters. It can either feed most cancers and diseases or prevent it, so why wouldn’t we use food as the main part of our treatment plans for patients? Why do doctors and our health care system avoid that component of the treatment plan? Why do we have to fight with our insurance companies to pay for a nutrition or heathy eating program, but they will pay for diagnostic tests, co-pays, surgeries, medications, lap band surgeries for weight loss and the like?

I look at sweets as carcinogens, and I am no longer tempted to eat them, nor am I addicted to them. If I want to taste something I do, but it’s not something I crave or have to have like it was when sweets once controlled my life. There was a time that I lived to eat desserts! But I broke the chain…not by my own strength, but through Christ alone (and the help of a detox)! I am free! Now you have to break the chain!”

 

Here is Robbie “kicking some butt”, like she does in her kickboxing classes. She also kicks some butt in the kitchen! Below is a sampling from the delicious and healthy recipes she provides in the back of her book.

 

Amazing Hummus

1 (25oz) can of organic chickpeas, rinsed

1/2 cup organic baby spinach leaves (processed until finely chopped)

2 organic roasted red peppers

1/2 can of artichokes

1/3 cup of tahini

1/4 cup water

Juice from 1 lemon

1-2 cloves of garlic

1/4 tsp hot pepper flakes

1/2-1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cumin

 

Combine all ingredients together in a food processor or Vitamin until smooth

 

Sprouted Grain Tortilla Chips

1 pkg of Sprouted Grain Ezekiel tortilla wraps

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place wraps on cookie sheet. Bake for seven minutes, longer if you want them crispy. Break up into pieces and dip in your favorite bean, hummus, salsa or avocado dip!

 

The Raw Truth Recharge Detox Soup

3-4 cartons of organic vegetable stock

Fill with chopped vegetables:

2 minced garlic cloves

2 small onions, diced

4 diced carrots

2 zucchini

4 celery stalks

1/2 cup of purple cabbage, chopped

1 cup of squash green beans

Add spices – 1 tsp of basil, oregano and parsley

Pepper to taste

1 cup spinach or kale (add at end)

 

Add together all ingredients at once except spinach or kale. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 30 minutes. At the 25-minute mark, add the spinach or kale. Note: after detox you can sauté the onions and carrots first in a little EVOO, and later add beans, legumes, chickpeas etc. You can also add in other organic vegetables of your choice.