Janice Stanger, PhD's Blog

Cancer Is a Whole Body Disease

2013-05-05T06:09:36Z

The UCSD Center for Integrative Medicine Treats and Prevents Cancer By Helping Your Body to Heal Itself

You may think of cancer as a discrete mass of cells with a life of its own. Every kind of cancer is labeled with the part of the body it first targeted. Yet your whole body is key to preventing and healing cancer, regardless of the type. To a great extent, all cancers begin in your mind, when you tell yourself to eat risky foods and spend the evening stressing out while sitting on the sofa. With the right knowledge and motivation, you can just as easily make healing lifestyle choices.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) Center for Integrative Medicine weaves together open-minded conventional medicine with evidence-based approaches that go beyond drugs and surgery. I was privileged to attend the Center's April 2013 Conference on Integrative Oncology, which brought together a range of perspectives on taming cancer using a whole body approach to strengthen self-healing.

The China Study's brilliant author, T Colin Campbell, PhD, was a keynote speaker. Dr. Campbell reviewed the highlights of research over decades that develops compelling evidence for the relationship between diet and cancer. Nutrition controls genetic expression to a huge extent. This is especially true for the action of animal protein. Dr. Campbell found that casein, the main protein in dairy foods, had the effect of turning tumor growth on and off as the amount of casein in the diet was manipulated up and down. Plant proteins, even in similarly high concentrations, did not -in contrast - incite cancer progression.

The more Dr. Campbell researched the process by which casein made tumors grow, the more ways he found. He discovered a "tsunami of mechanisms" by which animal protein underlies cancer progression, and stated "casein is the most relevant carcinogen ever identified."

Dr. Campbell concluded with a description of the powerful effects of a whole foods, plant-based diet. This ideal nutrition prevents and cures most chronic disease, and does it quickly, in days to weeks. All this with no harmful side effects. So nutrition therapy trumps drug therapy. Whole foods optimize the functioning of your whole body.

Two of the other Conference speakers pointed out the role of stress and other mental factors in making the body vulnerable to genetic damage, while effective mind/body healing mechanisms are protective.

Click here to read about more Conference teachings and an integrative approach to healing from cancer

Which Air Pollutants Are Worst For Your Health?

2013-03-18T04:42:52Z

Give a Wide Berth to These Four Enemies of Air Quality

Your lungs are an entryway to your body, a site where you literally take in your environment. Millions of tiny air sacs in your lungs have walls only one cell thick. The oxygen necessary to life diffuses into your blood across this cell layer, and carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism, diffuses out to be eliminated from your body. This exquisite design is fundamental to life, and blocking it for only a few minutes will result in death.

Modern indoor and outdoor air pollutants are intruders hijacking this process, leading to premature death, disability, and damage that crosses generations. Microscopic pollutant particles and gases can cross the one cell layer of your air exchange sacs and enter your blood, from there carried throughout your body to cause widespread damage.

Other particles remain lodged deep in your lungs, provoking serious respiratory inflammation and harming your ability to get the oxygen needed for survival. Your lungs are structured to function in clean air, so don't have mechanisms to filter out all these harmful bits of pollution.

You can, to a meaningful extent, control the amount of health-destroying pollutants that assault your lungs. But first you have to know what they are. Here are four of the most dangerous causes of air pollution.

ONE. Fragrance. You might have thought of scented personal care and cleaning products as fun. You might have held the bottle to your nose for a big whiff, or sprinkled on perfume, or set "air freshener" loose in your house.

The Environmental Working Group's comprehensive report Not So Sexy: The Health Risks of Secret Chemicals in Fragrance will set you on a safer path. By law, the ingredients in "fragrance" do not have to be listed on the label, to protect the manufacturer's proprietary blend of any number 3,100 chemical ingredients.

Many of the chemicals used in artificial scents are associated with hormone disruption and allergic reactions. There is no scientific knowledge of the effects of most of these chemicals on human health, wildlife, or the planet's ecosystems. No one knows the impact of a mixture of the risky substances, since they interact in your body and the larger environment. Manufacturers don't even have to test for safety.

How can you protect yourself and the planet?

Click hear to read more about the worst air pollutants, their links to diet, and how you can protect yourself

Seven Dangers of Eating Eggs

2013-02-04T06:43:43Z

It's Not Just the Cholesterol That Scrambles Your Health

One of my most stomach-churning childhood experiences was cracking an egg for cooking and finding a partially formed chick fetus inside. I screamed in horror and threw it in the trash. No one else was in the kitchen with me. I learned at that point that it's pointless to ask "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

In fact, chickens and eggs are interchangeable. An egg is a disassembled chick, since everything needed to form the baby bird is inside the egg. The shell forms a casing that allows the contents of the egg, under proper conditions, to rearrange themselves into a baby bird who will hatch and grow into a reproducing member of his or her species.

The hideous conditions of chickens on factory farms has been widely reported, so many aim to eat supposedly "kinder" eggs that are labeled "free range" or "cage free" or a similar soothing label. These terms are not regulated and have no meaning. Most often, chickens suffer terribly to lay these eggs for commercial production. The laying hens must be replaced, and the male chicks who hatch to replace them are killed at birth since they have no profitable use. Often the tiny babies are ground up alive.

Still, some insist they get their eggs from rescued chickens who are treated like much-loved pets. What could be wrong with that? For starters, these eggs have the potential to harm your health and weight, just as all eggs do. Here are seven reasons to choose a non-egg breakfast.

ONE. The USDA National Nutrient Database records that a whole, cooked, hard-boiled egg has 155 calories, no fiber, and 10.6 grams of fat. Of this, about a third is saturated fat. Since the egg has no fiber, it will activate your stomach's stretch receptors for fullness only to the extent of the volume of the egg itself, which is pretty small considering your stomach is a bit bigger than a liter. You could get so many more nutrients and satisfaction from fiber by eating 155 calories of whole plant foods, such as apples, black beans, or brown rice.

Click here to read six more dangers to your health of eating eggs

How To Stop Emotional Eating For Good

2013-01-12T06:35:49Z

Julie Simon Shows You How to End Compulsive Eating and the Diet Mentality

Do you struggle with compulsive emotional eating, including binge eating when you're not really hungry or frequently reaching for junk food instead of nourishing choices? If so, you may have developed a love/hate relationship with eating.

On the one hand, food is always there for you, and can entertain and soothe you. But at the same time, you feel out-of-control and so unhappy after stuffing down more than you need. You have probably tried many diets and maybe even emptied your wallet on an unsuccessful quest for an easy, trendy fix. Yet you find yourself with weight ups-and-downs (more up than down) and a painful struggle between "I want" and "I should," with guilt never far away.

I know, I lived these conflicts myself through my early adult years. My friend Julie Simon, a psychotherapist and life coach, also struggled with these same issues. Lucky for us, Julie developed an approach to put a permanent end to unhealthy eating driven by addictions, body imbalances, and painful emotions.

Julie's book, The Emotional Eater's Repair Manual: A Practical Mind-Body-Spirit Guide for Putting an End to Overeating and Dieting, shares her discoveries. She articulates how to end your emotional eating for good by developing the tools you need to grow beyond it. Julie's wise and compassionate coaching guides you to build self-care skills and spiritual practices that nourish you on every level.

Julie told me why she wrote her guide. "Most diet books and weight loss programs focus exclusively on reduced-calorie eating plans and exercise regimens. They attempt to apply external solutions to internal problems and fail to address emotional and spiritual hunger and body imbalances. I created the 12 Week Emotional Eating Recovery Program and wrote this book because I wanted to offer an alternative to dieting that would address these mind, body and spirit imbalances."

I asked Julie about the diet mentality that rules the lives of so many.

Click here to learn more about the diet mentality and how you can get beyond it

How To Avoid Your Own Personal Health Cliff

2012-12-17T06:30:55Z

The Health Cliff Is Way More Treacherous Than Any Fiscal Politics

The drama of the "fiscal cliff" is riveting the country. Even when a political deal stops the threat of abrupt tax hikes and deep spending cuts, more battles over finances are sure to rock Congress for years to come, so the core issues will remain hot long after January 1, 2013.

While the fiscal issues are major news, the media spends little time focusing on the health cliff, which is a looming catastrophe for most Americans. You have the choice to make this most personal drama play out the way you want it to for yourself and your family. Here's what you need to know to avoid this gloomy slide into sickness and stay on track for a lifetime of health.

What Is the Health Cliff

Whether you've thought about it or not, you are facing a slide down a health cliff - an expensive slide for you in every way, costing you not just money, but also time, pain, and your freedom to live as you want with energy and superb health.

The descent starts when you are first diagnosed with a chronic disease, for example hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, arthritis, depression, heart disease, chronic sinusitis, headaches, asthma, back pain, a digestive system disorder, kidney disease, osteoporosis, cancer, or an autoimmune disease. Modern medicine offers drugs and surgeries to perhaps control the worst symptoms and sometimes prolong life, but offers few cures. And the drugs and surgeries themselves can be hazardous, with their own lists of dangers.

One huge problem is that chronic diseases love to keep each other company. The technical term for this is "multimorbidity," which means you have more than one chronic disease at a time, and the number you suffer with at once will likely go up as you get older. As you accumulate these unwanted diagnoses, you health, energy, and ability to function keep slipping down the face of the cliff.

Several recent studies indicate that the health cliff is starting earlier and becoming steeper for most Americans.

Click here to read more about the slippery health cliff and how to stay healthy

Why Meat Can Magnify the Dangers of Alcohol

2012-12-02T08:01:38Z

Wine and Cheese May Be a Particularly Toxic Combination

Drinking too much over a period of years is even more deadly than smoking. Alcohol can damage your brain, liver, digestive system, and other body systems. A recent study found that death rates were twice as high for alcohol-dependent men and almost five times as high for alcohol-dependent women, compared to the general population. Some studies have found small amounts of alcoholic drinks to be protective of heart health, although this may be due to beneficial phytochemicals in the plants the drinks were made from.

You should consult your physician to determine the amount of alcohol (if any) it's best to set your limits at. The information in this article is educational and not intended to tell you whether you should drink or (if you do) how much; only a licensed health care professional who is familiar with your health history can do that.

Whatever your choice on consuming alcohol, you should know that that animal foods, such as meat and cheese, may boost the normal dangers of drinking by accelerating liver damage and inflammation. Even if you never consume alcohol, these animal foods may harm your liver, with a result similar to the effects of drinking.

Your liver is super at multi-tasking. This large organ filters and stores blood and forms key blood cells, is critical to metabolizing food and hormones, detoxifies drugs and chemicals, manufactures bile for digestion, and stockpiles vitamins and iron. You need a high-functioning liver for optimal health.

You may already be aware that alcohol can injure your liver, sometimes to the point where the damage is fatal over time. Here are six ways that mixing animal foods with alcohol may make that liver injury worse. Or you can look at it that alcohol is making the effects of animal foods more toxic. However you want to think of it, the point is that meat, cheese, and alcohol don't mix.

1. Endotoxins, which can cause destructive inflammation in your body, are poisonous substances in bacteria that are released when the bacteria die. Alcohol enables endotoxins in your gut to get into the bloodstream that flows to your liver, causing your liver to become inflamed. Animal foods are often dense with endotoxins, which are not destroyed by cooking. Thus, alcohol may increase the amount of meat and dairy endotoxins in your digestive system that reach and inflame your liver.

Click here to read more reasons that meat and alcohol don't mix

The Physician Who Sends You to the Food Store, Not the Drugstore

2012-11-03T06:30:13Z

Dr. Don Wagner Heeded "Physician Heal Thyself," and Now Guides Patients with a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Diet Plan

Childhood was a health disaster for Don Wagner. Born with cardiac issues, including a hole in his heart and arrhythmias, he started life on medications and hospitalizations.

At age 4, he tumbled off a three story balcony in New York City, his childhood home. Paralyzed on his left side, he spent 6 months in a hospital with doctors helpless to get him to recover. Finally, still unable to move the left side of his body, the young boy was allowed to go home. When the doctors told Don's parents he would probably never walk again, his Mom became his hero. Refusing to give up, she learned some physical therapy modalities and worked with Don intensively until he made a full recovery. Don was not done with the hospital stints yet, though, and his pediatrician became a role model because Don saw him so often.

Luckily, Don grew into better health in his teenage years. "I never wanted to be sick again," he told me as I shared a fragrant Indian curry dinner with him and wife Sandy. The couple, thriving on a whole foods, plant-based diet, now juggles their busy Bullhead Urgent Care Center in Arizona with a plant-based private practice and Dr. Don's vegan radio show.

"I grew up on the standard American diet, but had a hippy macrobiotic uncle. He and his friends told me, "Don't eat meat, man, it's not healthy." Instinctively I knew they were right, and became vegetarian when I went to college, then vegan just before medical school. I didn't know how to do it right, though. I didn't feel well, and my weight plummeted from 180 to 122. I ended up going back to being vegetarian, which was easier for me," Dr. Don relates.

Click here to read the rest of Dr. Don's stories and learn how you can listen to a treasure trove of vegan radio shows for free

Vegan For the Holidays is Your Must-Have Cookboook for Festive Winter Celebrations

2012-10-05T04:51:33Z

Zel Allen Offers Whole Foods, Plant-Based Recipes To Delight Your Guests

Expectations are high for holiday meals. From Thanksgiving through Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Years - and all the parties and house guests in between - vegans may wonder how to satisfy friends, family, and co-workers while staying animal-free at the table. Health conscious eaters may be resigned to fatty, salty foods that lead to weight gain, heartburn, and a rush of guilt on New Year's Day.

Enter Zel Allen with her original, satisfying, healthy recipes in Vegan For the Holidays. Zel, a cofounder of the popular site Vegetarians in Paradise, includes whole food, plant-based holiday recipes that will satisfy everyone who tastes them.

After a short discussion of each seasonal holiday, Zel offers a variety of ideas for a complete meal, from appetizers and soup through main dishes, side dishes, and dessert. Her use of spices is masterful. She includes suggestions for pretty garnishes to make the dishes visually appealing. Pages of beautiful color photos of many of the recipes show better than any words how stunning this food is.

Take a Culinary Holiday Journey

Some recipes are quick and simple, while others require the concentration and time you'd expect for the most special dinner of the year. In every case, Zel uses ingredients that are easy to shop for. Her instructions are clear and complete.

You can use Vegan For the Holidays as your guide for a culinary journey through November and December. Not familiar with Kwanzaa traditions? Plunge into the Kwanzaa recipes, such as Curried Pumpkin-Peanut Soup or Okra Creole. Want to celebrate a couple of the eight nights of Hanukkah? Try Mushroom-Barley Cholent, Carrot and Sweet Potato Tzimmes, or Beet Latkes. With such tempting recipes, you might end up cooking every night and beyond.

In fact, many of the Vegan For the Holidays recipe ingredients are available all winter. So don't put the book aside right after your New Year's celebration with New Year Logs in Spicy Pecan Gremolata. Keep on enjoying through the spring.

Married to the Same Man More Than a Half Century

I spoke with Zel, who has lived in California since the age of ten, about her background and how she came to write Vegan For the Holidays.

Here is the rest of Zel's story and links to three of her delicious holiday recipes

The Paleo Diet Dangers and Distortions

2012-09-16T06:34:03Z

Still Another "High-Protein" Diet Threatens Your Health

The Paleo Diet can hook you with its story. This "cave man" diet promises to reunite you with your ancestors from 2.5 million years ago through the simple act of eating meat. In this complex era of busy lives and disconnected community, this is an appealing picture. Agriculture, which began 10,000 years ago, is the story's villain, supposedly leading people away from the hunt to an unnatural diet.

Loren Cordain, PhD and professor at Colorado State, launched the Paleo Diet with his book of the same name. This restrictive eating plan forbids all grains, potatoes and legumes (peas, lentils, beans) as well as dairy and processed foods (including processed meats). You eat all you want of meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit. Bone marrow, animal organs, and meat from wild animals are all on the menu.

The book represents that you can cure just about any chronic illness, from heart disease to cancer, by eating this way because it would match the way your distant ancestors ate for over two million years. You are also supposed to lose weight, and fast - up to 75 pounds in six months.

SCIENCE OR SCIENCE FICTION?

Let's determine whether the Paleo Diet is science or science fiction by looking at some simple facts. Here are a few key Paleo myths vs. reality.

Myth: Human genetics has been basically the same for the last 2.5 million years, with the ideal diet unchanged during that time.

Reality: You and all humans alive today belong to a species called Homo sapiens. Our species did not come into being until about 200,000 years ago. So through over 90% of the Paleolithic, the human ancestors that existed (and there were many) were by definition genetically different from us because they were entirely different species!

According to the Smithsonian Institute, most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans. We don't know how many of them related to each other or us. Leading researchers don't agree on critical questions in human evolution. It's misleading for Professor Cordain to represent he has all these answers.

Myth: Humans ate a lot of meat and bone marrow they scavenged from kills made by large predators, starting 2.5 million years ago.

Read the rest of this post, with more Paleo Diet dangers, myths, and realities and learn why Paleo still touts some success stories

The Truth About Whole Grains

2012-08-24T06:48:24Z

A Seed by Any Other Name is Still a Seed

Real world studies of what people eat show, over and over again, that if you consume whole grains you will be healthier and thinner. Yet outlandish statements in the popular media, and even “nutrition” books, may keep you from enjoying and benefitting from these most basic of all foods. When you know the facts, you won’t deprive yourself.

Whole grains are seeds. You might hear silly statements such as “Whole grains are not healthy, but quinoa is because it’s a seed.” If you hear anything like this, you know whoever is telling you knows zero about plants or nutrition, and you can boost your health by tuning out.

Another mundane myth is that people did not start to eat whole grains until these plants were domesticated about 10,000 years ago. Why would people have gone to all the trouble of deliberately cultivating a plant that they never ate before? Were our ancestors that misguided? The truth is that people ate wild grain seeds long before they started to plant them. In some parts of the world, wild grains still mingle with the domesticated in the fields.

In contrast to refined grains that dominate profitable refined products, whole grain foods contain all parts of the seed. These include the outer protective skin (bran), tiny baby plant ready to sprout (the germ), and food to nourish the baby plant until it can produce its own (endosperm). Refined grain foods are generally made only from the endosperm. Choosing a refined grain product over its whole grain equivalent is like turning away a $100 bill in favor of a $1. Why would you do this?

The health benefits of whole grains are undeniable, which does not stop competing interests, which would rather see you eat meat and dairy, from denying them.

Click here to learn about the health benefits of whole grains, see wheat and rice growing, and link to recipes with whole grains

How to Make Fruit Salad Everyone Will Love

2012-07-08T07:01:18Z

Easy Elegance for Picnics and Get-Togethers

If you are figuring out a fast, easy dish for any gathering, from a summer picnic to an elegant dinner party, fruit salad is your solution. Colorful fruit salad is gorgeous and tempting, bringing an orchard to your kitchen.

You don’t even need a recipe for fruit salad. You can make it on a moment’s notice, assuming you keep lots of fruit in your house. Hopefully you do this anyway, since fruit is a pillar of a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet.

Fruit salad is the ultimate in uncooking. You can even let young children help assemble it. In fact, letting kids have fun in making meals with healthy foods is one of the best ways to get them launched on lifelong wise eating choices.

Here are some hints to making your fruit salad memorable and irresistible.

Enjoy your fruit salad outdoors on a picnic blanket in a green space, at the beach, or in a sunny nook in your house. Appreciate all that nature put into the fruit – the soil, sun, pollinators. Smile at nature’s greatest bounty.

Include a range of colors for visual appeal. The fruit salad will also be more interesting if you use a range of shapes. For example, you can slice strawberries, leave blueberries whole as small round shapes, have cantaloupe scooped out in large round balls, and cut watermelon into cubes.

Click here to read more about irresistible fruit salad and see some colorful photos

Lavender: A Colorful Flavor

2012-06-17T07:02:47Z

Enrich Your Cooking With the Distinct Taste and Fragrance of Lavender

I’d never seen so many hard-working bees. As I relaxed into the rural vista, surrounded by fields of lavender in stunning purples, the hum of the bees soothed me into bliss. The fragrance of the flowers was the final calming element. Stress melted and vaporized.

I was at Keys Creek Lavender Farm in eastern San Diego County during the last weekend in May. The peak blooming season this far south is May and June, so my daughter Angela and I timed our visit perfectly. If you live further north, the peak blooming season for this hardy plant, which thrives in many parts of the country, will be later in the summer.

One of the Keyes Creek owners gave us a tour of their organic fields and the distillery where they make essential oils. I had always loved the beauty and fragrance of lavender, but never thought of it as a cooking ingredient until I sampled the farm’s fruity lavender tea. Still another level of enjoyment and relaxation infused me with that distinctive taste and aroma.

We drove home with fresh and dried lavender, various lavender oils and scrubs, sachets, orange and lemon lavender teas, and the farm’s organic Herbes de Provence. I had never cooked with this herb mixture – or in fact with lavender at all – before. While there are many different blends of Herbes de Provence, the Keys Creek blend has basil, marjoram, thyme, and lavender as the main flavors. I’ve enjoyed this new addition to my flavor menu, often adding a spoonful of the herb blend to the broth I stir fry veggies in for both the unique taste and fragrance.

Click here to read more about the health benefits of lavender and for some gorgeous photos

Six Hidden Dangers of Sunscreen You Must Know for Summer

2012-05-28T19:49:53Z

Can a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Diet Do What Sunscreen Can’t?

Life on earth evolved with the sun. Plants, the base of the food chain, harness solar power through photosynthesis in leaves. Animals live off the energy and nutrients in plants. Over billions of years, plants and animals have perfected their relationship with the sun. Living things have evolved safeguards to benefit from the sun without succumbing to its power.

Yet today, sunscreen manufacturers would have you believe that the sun is your enemy, a cancer promoter. Instead, you are supposed to trust the chemicals in sunscreen to safeguard your health. The fact that sunlight is free and sunscreen drained $687 million from our pockets in 2010 may cause you to ponder who to trust – nature or industry.

Here are six dangers of sunscreen you need to know for your summer sun strategy.

ONE. Used as directed, sunscreen shuts down your natural production of vitamin D. A thin sunscreen layer spares your ability to produce this vital substance, but also does not protect as well against sunburn. A 2012 article in the British Journal of Dermatology concludes “When the amount of sunscreen and SPF advised by the World Health Organization (WHO) is used, vitamin D production may be abolished. Re-evaluation of sun protection strategies could be warranted.”

TWO. Several UV filters used as sunscreen ingredients have an estrogenic effect on your body (that is, they have a biological effect similar to the hormone estrogen).

Click here to read more about the dangers of sunscreen and alternate sun strategies

"The Ocean Needs Sharks More Than I Need Soup"

2012-05-15T07:29:48Z

Judy Ki Has Retired to a Career of Advocating For Sharks, Chickens, Pigs, and Politically Courageous Candidates

The family meals of Judy Ki’s Hong Kong childhood paved the way for her current whole foods, plant-based diet. She grew up in the Chinese tradition of eating fresh veggie dishes with only small amounts of meat and fish. Judy’s mom taught her to respect animals, including the lizards whose role was to keep down the insect population in the family garden.

Judy, a humane advocate, political activist, and retired middle school science teacher, is a San Diego neighbor. I admired Judy’s work, meeting her at community events and through Facebook, where Judy describes herself as “proud bunny-hugging, bleeding-heart, do-gooder.” She took the time to share her path to activism with me recently over a bountiful salad and baked potato lunch.

At age 20, Judy moved to the US for educational opportunities. She chose California because she disliked cold weather.

An environmental caucus of the Democratic Party in San Diego in 2007 was a turning point for Judy. “A beautiful young blonde lady gave me a Vegan Outreach pamphlet. The year before I had read the book Fast Food Nation and was shocked at the treatment of animals raised for food. After reading the pamphlet on the realities of factory farming, I knew I had to take action,” Judy recalls. She had just retired from a 27 year career with the San Diego Unified School District, and finally had time to devote to activism.

She started by going to Washington DC for the Taking Action for Animals conference sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Meanwhile Judy was slowly transitioning her diet. She had stopped eating factory farmed animals right after getting the Vegan Outreach pamphlet. She still consumed some sea animals, but tapered off these choices. Soon she was happily sticking to a 100% plant-based diet.

Read the rest of Judy's journey into activism and quest to save sharks. Please be inspired - you can make this much of a difference yourself!

How To Get Animals Out of Our Vegetables

2012-04-09T00:14:12Z

Davie Maxwell Pioneers Compassionate Farming for Delicious Leafy Greens

Whole food, plant-based diets and veganic farming are natural partners. Veganic gardeners grow crops without manure, bone or blood meal, or other animal products. While plant-based nutrition is a blossoming trend, raising cruelty-free crops is evolving more slowly.

Using veganic methods, Davie Maxwell grows the world’s healthiest, tastiest leafy greens on his 5-acre Hidden Oasis farm near Vancouver, Washington, a short drive from Portland. I was deeply impressed with his quiet dedication, compassion for the critters that nibble his crops, and eagerness to share his learnings when I visited him on a recent trip.

Seventeen years ago, Davie smoked, ate greasy meat and processed foods, and drank soda. Then he had a relatively minor medical problem that kept him in the hospital, just for one night. That was enough for him. He decided to learn to take better care of himself so he would never have to walk into a hospital again. “Once was enough to last me a lifetime,” he winces.

But change to a healthier vegetarian diet was one step at a time. “If someone back then said I was going to be vegan and specialize in growing greens, I would have thought they were nuts,” Davie told me.

Davie grew flowers when he first started to improve his diet, but after a year or two switched to focusing on leafy green nutrition powerhouses.

Click here to read the rest of Davie's story and learn more about growing crops without slaughterhouse and factory farm products