We have a saying here, a challenge to would-bes, that says, “put your money where your mouth is.” In other words, let us see some action rather than just talk.

The funny thing is that I have seen that happen. I have watched people express their desire to achieve better health, more energy, greater mental clarity, etc. They purchased the products that would help them achieve their goals. And there those purchases sat in the original box, not even opened.

These people were willing to believe. They were even willing to buy what was necessary. But something happened on the way. Somehow their belief was not enough. Their actions were not enough.

Many invoke “belief” as the basis for participation in some activity. But David, the psalmist, cites “experience” as the basis for his song of praise (Psalm 34). He does not invite others to “belief.” He said, “O taste and see that the Lord is good…” (verse 8).

So no, I don’t have to “believe all this stuff,” It is not an exercise of credulity. I have experienced the reality by turning our old saying on its head. I have put my mouth were my money is.

Ellis Hein

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s the same thing,” he said. (The World of Pooh by A. A. Milne, pp. 147-148)

This is the way I feel every morning when I look forward to my pint of lacto fermented cereal. Afterwards I realize that I have to wait another 24 hours for the repeat performance.

This is more than just a matter of taste. True, I enjoy the taste, but more than taste, I feel the life of that food flowing into me. And this, more than taste, is what I want from breakfast. This makes breakfast an exciting beginning to another day.

It is the power of such breakfasts that make me realize others have to know about such foods. It is such breakfasts that make me into a “foodatic” i.e. a fanatic about food. I have come to realize that it is the food we eat that drives our lives.

Ellis Hein

Sally Fallon, in Nourishing Traditions, advises to cut the beets into 1/4 inch cubes and to bake before fermenting. Her rationale is that this helps prevent alcohol production

Using my recipe, you should be able to produce lacto fermented beets using grated, raw beets and still control yeast growth, thus preventing production of alcohol.

Lacto Fermented Beets. Enjoy!

• Wash, peel and grate enough beets to make 6 to 7 cups packed, grated beets.
• Add one tablespoon Celtic Sea Salt.
• Add one capsule of Spectrabiotic.
• Mix together well and let stand for about an hour or until the juices are drawn out of the beets.
• Spoon a one inch layer into the bottom of a wide mouth pint canning jar.
• Use the vegetable pounder to pack the beets into the jar.
• Spoon in another layer and pack again until the jar is filled to within an inch of the top. (I use two sizes of pounders; one 2 1/2 inches diameter and another about 1/1/4 inches diameter. As the juices begin to rise above the vegetables in the jar, I switch to the smaller diameter pounder. I can thus pack the vegetables without making the liquid run over.)
• Clean off the jar rim and cap tightly with a good lid.
• Fill a second pint jar. (You can use 1/2 pint jars to make the measure come out right if necessary.)
• Allow the jars to sit at room temperature for three days. Then refrigerate.
• The beets can be eaten immediately or allowed to age a little in the refrigerator before being eaten.

A Word About Spectrabiotic

I have not used inoculants other than the Spectrabiotic called for in this recipe. This blend of eight beneficial bacteria are microblended with AFA algae to provide the bacteria with the nutrients for vigorous growth and establishment. This product is excellent as a probiotics supplement and makes very good tasting lacto fermented vegetables. Using Spectrabiotic as an inoculant for lacto fermented vegetables and lacto fermented grains has been my innovation.

Musings

Growing up I couldn’t stand the taste of beets. I don’t know what it is about the beets I grow here in Wyoming, but they don’t taste like the vegetable I was made to eat as a child in Oklahoma. Maybe climate has something to do with it. I am sure PlanetFood has something to do with the much improved flavor. I know it makes my cucumbers and squash far better than the ordinary.

So I have had to laugh at myself. When I first discovered I liked my beets, the reflex of disliking them was so strong I nearly couldn’t force myself to swallow. But the good flavor of these beets (whether raw, cooked into soup, or lacto fermented) has won me over.

Ellis Hein

Steve Gagné in Energetics of Food says, The truth is, anything that is wholesome and healthy to eat is already blessed by God through nature…

There are many religious people who pray before eating or eat blessed food who also suffer from serious health problems and rationalize their problems as being of the body, and therefore not important in the greater spiritual view. How sad. What a dualistic view of life! The body is not separate from the spirit—it is an expression and celebration of spirit!

The human organism is capable of maintaining health, of rebuilding organs and tissues, and repairing damaged tissue without making a mistake IF certain conditions are met. Failure to meet those conditions or deliberately ignoring those conditions, at best, puts obstacles in the path of your body’s efforts to keep healthy. At worst, we bring on our demise. We like to imagine that because of our advances in medical science and the availability of medical care we are granted license to abuse those conditions with impunity. However, our greatest medical advancement of all time will be when all people, medical doctors included, come to understand that our greatest asset to healthy living is to joyfully live within the conditions of our creaturehood.

These conditions are:

1. Our food must come from nature.
2. We need to consume nutrient dense foods containing a wealth of minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids, fatty acids, and more. All this must be in a naturally balanced, interrelated, and easily digested form. One example of such a food is Simplexity Health’s Alpha Sun Algae®.
3. We need to avoid environmental toxins. We may argue that it is impossible to avoid toxic exposures. Then it is time to change the demands we place on our environment.
4. Drink plenty of fresh, pure water.
5. Get plenty of exercise in fresh, pure air.
6. Get sufficient rest.

There are probably many more items that one could add to the list, but we will start with these six.

Even the “bless it and eat it” people would not propose taking a car trip by driving a straight line to their destination. They exercise care to follow the road to be sure of arriving and to be sure their car is undamaged. These six conditions (plus others that may need to be added) are the road on which to travel to stay healthy to the end of your days.

Ellis Hein

…We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions, we are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.

To discover our illusions will not solve the problems of our world. But if we do not discover them we will never discover our real problems. To dispel the ghosts which populate the world of our making will not give us the power to conquer the real enemies of the real world or to remake the real world. But it may help us discover that we cannot make the world in our image. It will liberate us and sharpen our vision. It will clear away the fog so we can face the world we share with all mankind. (Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image or what Happened to the American Dream, 1962, p. 6)

Those words were published 50 years ago. Our sense of reality has not improved in the intervening decades. We live in a state of physical, mental, and spiritual illusion fed by the hype and fantasy of the media on the one hand and by our nutritional illusion on the other hand. It would be one thing if this situation were forced upon us. But the truth is we have chosen to be ruled by our created “reality,” our lie.

Jeremiah described the situation in ancient Israel as, “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land; the prophets prophecy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (Jeremiah 5: 30-31)

All dreams, all illusions, come suddenly to an end. For better or worse our eyes are opened to the reality we have so desperately sought to obscure. We have fed our bodies on the results of convenience and economic gain. We have nourished our souls on the prattle of self serving politicians, preachers, and public figures. Our conception of world relationships is bound up in college sports.

When the god of your making falls from its pedestal, you can either quickly set it back up, hoping no one noticed, or you can realize your error and change.

It may come as a surprise to many people, but the foods you eat can have a profound influence upon the state of your mind and spirit. Also, the things you feed your mind and soul can affect your choices of food. Our liberation from falsehood and the imagined reality of the dream-makers will involve our whole being feeding upon true food (physical food, mental food, and spiritual food, if we can make those divisions).

You can’t escape the world of the illusion by eating the modern artificial and synthetic foods. To return to reality, you need to eat foods that are completely rooted and grounded in nature. You may want to try Earth’s First Food, which offers your body a complete package of nutrients instead of a nutritional illusion.

You may also be interested in the message of the first Quakers. See the New Foundation Fellowship website for more information.

Ellis Hein

Spirulina, Chlorella, and Aphanizomenon flos-aquae ( AFA Algae ) are three species of edible micro algae on the market today. Chart 1 looks at some of the differences among the three, comparing such things as:

• how it is produced
• does it come with organic certification
• what are the effects on the nervous system
• does the lipid profile contain Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids
• does it offer protection from immune cell free radicals
• does it stimulate mobilization of immune cells
• does it stimulate macrophage activity
• what is the phycocyanin content
• does it help with stem cell growth and protection

Why Be Particular About Which Brand of AFA Algae?

There are many brands of AFA Algae algae on the market. Since they were all harvested from the same lake, does it matter which brand you choose? The information on Chart 2 compares the chlorophyll content of several brands. Chlorophyll is a nutrient that is easily destroyed by over heating, and as such it is a good indicator of the loss of other heat sensitive nutrients.

Ellis Hein

If you are interested in woodturning, see my other blog, Wood Turned Art.

Living closely with Nature gave us opportunity to observe, experience and recognize many Qualities of ourselves – Qualities that correspond with the growth processes and actions of plants and animals.

We Knew that Nature was simply humanity turned inside out – and humanity was Nature turned outside in…

Steve Gagné, Energetics of Food, p. 8. The two paragraphs are quoted in reverse order.

Have you ever wondered why it is the more we live in an artificial world, the more susceptible we are to those organisms whose job it is to recycle biological material? Why is it that we seem more vulnerable to illnesses when we try to live in an antiseptic environment?

Take a look at the human body. There are at least two aspects that correspond with the quote from Steve Gagné above.

First, we have two sides that are open to the world: our exterior and our gastro-intestinal tract. Early on in our development, we turn outside in to form a hollow tube surrounded by our body. Our G.I. tract is nothing more that captured and controlled exterior. This is a trick used by many single-celled organisms to engulf their food. Whereas they repeatedly perform phagocytosis, we do it once and use the resulting hollow tube to digest our food and eliminate our waste.

The second characteristic of humans corroborating Steve’s statement is our dependence upon bacteria for the foundation of everything our body does. The G.I. tract depends upon about eight pounds of beneficial bacteria to control that environment and to ensure proper digestion of our food, proper absorption of what our cells need from that food, and proper elimination of waste. Without those eight pounds of beneficial guests, our gut would soon be over run with disease causing organisms which would soon breach the intestinal wall and enter the body.

Further, each of your cells could not function if it did not carry its own bacteria-like symbiont. The mitochondria of each cell is not part of you nor controlled by your heredity. It has its own DNA. Without mitochondria, your cells would have no energy. You would cease to exist. You would never have begun to exist.

So inside out or outside in, it is time to recognize our connection to the rest of nature. We are a participant in nature, not the god of nature. That which nourishes and sustains us must come from nature, just as our Bacterial foundation of healthy living comes from nature.

Ellis Hein

The food you eat can affect your immune function. Refined sugars, for example, can decrease the ability of your white blood cells to destroy invading bacteria or viruses. On the other hand, betacarotene and other carotenoid compounds stimulate the thymus gland to produce thymosin. Thymosin along with zinc and arginine encourages production of more active and more energetic T-cells. These T-cells, as well as doing other things, produce interferon, a substance that stimulates protein production in cell walls, making your cells less vulnerable to the intrusion of viruses.

Neutrophils are white blood cells that engulf bacteria by enveloping them and then digests them. Their ability to perform depends upon the fluidity of their cell membrane. Fluidity is a function of the fatty acid balance you eat. You particularly need the correct balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, as found in premium AFA algae (a.k.a. Alpha Sun).

All white blood cells are dependent upon various enzyme systems. Enzymes must have the right vitamins and minerals present in the right proportion before they can carry out their functions. Unlike laboratory formulations, the vitamins and minerals found in raw foods, such as premium AFA algae (Alpha Sun), are chelated in live enzymes and enzyme systems. Thus your body can easily assimilate and easily make use of those nutrients. This explains why refined sugars diminish your immune function. They rob you of vitamins and minerals just to be dealt with in the digestive tract and to be dealt with once they reach your cells. This uses supplies that would otherwise have been available for your immune system.

Premium AFA algae (Alpha Sun) has a wealth of nutrients that are bound up in living systems, easily accessible to the human organism. Your body can use those nutrients for many different functions including your immune system.

For more information, see Karl Abrams Algae to the Rescue, chapter 7.

Ellis Hein

The Recipe for Bean Sandwiches with Lacto Fermented Pinto Beans

The first step is to create the lacto-fermented beans. There are many sources for recipes, but I share mine if you care to use it. (It makes 6 plus pints.)

• Soak three cups of pinto beans in pure water for eight hours.
• Cook the beans until tender. (The amount of time will vary according to your altitude.)
• Mash them with a pastry blender, potato masher, or fork. Use enough liquid to make them into a paste like thick cream.
• Allow to cool to room temperature.
• Add three tablespoons of salt and one capsule of Spectrabiotic (for inoculant). Stir well.
• Put the beans into pint jars and 1/2 pint jars. Cap them with good lids.
• Let the jars sit at room temperature for three days.
• Refrigerate. They keep well.

Now for the sandwiches. Prepare some naturally leavened bread according to your preference. Spread some lacto-fermented bean paste onto the bread and enjoy.

Musings

Every summer, until I was old enough to be working in the fields, I would participate in Daily Vacation Bible School. That was ok if the teacher presented anything of substance. But there were two things that could trump even lack of interesting material. First, would my cousin Wayne Rector be present? If he were there, we always had interesting things to talk about and think of. The second trump was bean sandwiches. I could endure any amount of triviality –just shut it out and think of something more compelling – if I got to have bean sandwiches for sack lunch.

The filling was cooked brown beans mashed up with cucumber pickles, pickle juice, and some mustard. And please, spread it thickly.

But those were imitation bean sandwiches and I didn’t know it. I now have had the real thing, both in understanding the Bible and in my culinary delight. Bean sandwiches made from lacto-fermented beans (with lacto-fermented vegetables as a garnish if you choose) are the substance of that shadow of my childhood.

So prepare yourself a bean sandwich or two, and, if you care to, have a go at the gospel of John at the same time. For me, when I grasped the significance of living food to the body, I then had a foundation for understanding the significance of The Bread of Life. Tell me the results of your own experiments.

Ellis Hein

Our children are 18 and 16 years old. I find it hard to remember when they, or any of us, last had the flu with all its attendant, miserable experiences.

No we are not special, nor have we retreated from contact with other people. Our family used to be part of that segment of the population that were good hunters. We always caught what was going around. But we have now caught a vision of something better.

Immunity from the flu begins with those beneficial bacterial guests you entertain. These small organisms inhabiting your gut play a crucial role in determining if any given bout of flu passes you by. Vigorous colonies of bacteria not only regulate what organisms proliferate themselves in your gut, the colonies also produce natural antibiotics that can circulate throughout the body.

There are other components of immunity that should not be neglected. All those specialized cells that your body uses to destroy and engulf invaders are actuated or enhanced by certain foods. They are depressed by consumption of refined sugar.

Part of my family’s journey to health has included cleansing our diet of refined sugar and other substances that pull down immunity. Another part includes consuming AFA algae products and supplemental probiotics. Karl Abrams devotes a whole chapter in his Algae to the Rescue to how the nutrients in AFA algae boost immunity. More on that in a later post. We also consume lacto-fermented grains, beans, and vegetables. These are not only a good source of friendly bacteria, we get the nutrients those bacteria manufactured as well as those they have liberated from the foodstuff.

So the choice really is yours. You can continue to enjoy vomiting and other miseries of flu season or you can begin the climb to a state of health enjoyed only by those whose cells, organs, and systems function in accordance with the design of the Original Equipment Manufacturer.

You might be surprised by what is possible.

If you wish to know particular products I have found helpful in maintaining immunity, contact me, and I will be happy to discuss what you may want to do for yourself.

Ellis Hein