Sometimes when the weather cools it is easy to get into the habit of eating more dense, cooked foods. For some people this is just what they need. But for others, a balance between raw and cooked (or even predominantly raw) is best. We each are unique, and so should be our diets. This colorful and nutrient-dense salad provides some key ingredients to support healthy detoxification. The dressing is delicious and can be used as a dip for raw veggies or used to top your favorite salads! I've even used it to top steamed vegetables! 

What is detoxification? In functional medicine, detoxification is often considered "biotransformation" because our bodies will transform harmful substances into less harmful substance and then excrete them from the body. This process can vary in effectiveness in different people depending on the nutrients we ingest, our genetics, and what types of toxins we are exposed to. For example, if we are exposed to persistent organic pollutants, which are so complex that they recirculate over and over in our body's detoxification process, they can slow everything down, not allowing a person to properly detox the everyday exposures like mercury from dental fillings or alcohol. Persistent organic pollutants include things like dioxins, DDT, and PCBs. DDT is an insecticide that was banned from the US in 1972. My mom has told me many stories of how she and her friends and siblings used to run behind the trucks that were spraying DDT when she was growing up in the 60's because they all liked the smell of it! Unfortunately they just had no idea back then how toxic it was. DDT has a half life of 50 years, which means that she passed down this stuff to me in utero and through breastfeeding. As a result of this (and other factors), I always need to take extra care in supporting my detoxification pathways.

Toxins come in through our air, food, water, and skin. Once they are in our bodies we need to change their shape to make them less toxic and get them safely out of our systems. Toxins go though two phases of detox: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 adds a chemical handle onto the toxin (usually a hydroxyl group). Phase 2 then grabs the handle and pulls the toxin out of the body (commonly this is glutathione that attaches to the hydroxyl group). Now the toxin needs to safely exit out of the body. This happens through the sweat, urine, and feces. However, if you are consuming a diet low in plant foods, while consuming a diet high in salt and acidifying foods like processed foods, meats, and dairy, then you will not be able to excrete the glutathione-bound toxins in the urine and therefore they will get reabsorbed back into the body! Same with the gut. Without enough soluble fiber from plant foods, the toxins will stick around and get reabsorbed back into the system. This is another reason why a plant-rich diet is so important.

Detox Benefits of this Salad
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You are going to love this nutritious raw kale slaw. It's full of detoxification and antioxidant compounds, and just bursting with the fresh, bright flavors of basil, mint, and cilantro. All tossed in a slightly spicy and gingery, creamy almond butter dressing. What I love about this salad is that it lasts up to 5 days in the refrigerator! Once it's made, you can take out portions as needed to easily fulfill part of your daily raw veggie needs.

I've been serving a large plateful of this Thai-style kale slaw with fried eggs for breakfast, or tossed with leftover rice and garbanzo beans for lunch. It's also delicious served with a thai-style main dish for dinner, such as Thai Coconut Fish Sticks, Thai Fish Curry with Garden Vegetables, or this Vegan Thai Green Curry.

And not to forget the oh-so-important nutrition information! As you might guess, this salad is rich in detoxifying compounds. Kale and cabbage both come from the cruciferous vegetable family, a family of vegetables known for their detoxification powers. Did you know that there is research showing that autistic children who consume sulforophane (one of the active compounds in cruciferous vegetables) show positive behavioral changes as a result of this nutritional superstar? Sulforophane is most concentrated in broccoli sprouts, but can also be found in raw (or lightly steamed) kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, radishes, watercress, and arugula!

Cruciferous vegetables are also very beneficial in calming down autoimmunity. Once consumed, sulforophane travels to our cells and changes how our genes are read. It literally allows us to read hundreds of beneficial antioxidant and detoxification genes. The result is a cell that has less toxins, and less inflammation. Can you function in a messy, dirty house? I know I can't! The cell is the same. It can't function very well if it has lots of toxins and debris lying around. Detoxification is, in essence, cleaning up the house of the cell. Antioxidants, then we could say, are the repair crew. When your cells are "clean" you might notice increased energy, clearer thinking, and less pain!
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Even though it may be winter, you can still eat the colors of the rainbow and give yourself a hearty dose of powerful phytochemicals! Consuming the deep reds, magentas, and oranges you see in this salad means that you are flooding your body with plant chemicals that prevent DNA damage, stimulate the immune system, reduce inflammation, block substances we ingest from becoming carcinogens, and of course mop up free radicals. In fact, I should rename this salad to The Anti-Cancer Salad! My children even love this salad (minus the red onions). I came downstairs yesterday morning to find that they had all packed a container of it their school lunches (along with chicken-vegetable soup or turkey black bean chili)!

If you haven't worked with fennel before then you are in for a treat. This delicious vegetable adds complex flavors to this salad. I love eating it raw but it's also delicious braised or roasted! We like to added it to fresh juices, in fact, since this recipe only uses the bulb, you can save the stalks to make green juice (combine green apple, parsley, kale, lemons, and fennel stalks for a delicious elixir). If you need some visual assistance in cutting up fennel then check out the tutorial I prepared for you at the bottom of this post.

One more note on the ingredients here….this recipe calls for either chopped or segmented blood oranges. To chop them you just peel, slice, and then chop into pieces. To segment, you need to peel them and then cut into wedges around the membranes. I like to use a small serrate knife to do this. It's really very easy but if you've never done it before it can seem daunting. Food52 has a great, short video on doing this that I suggest watching for guidance if you need it. You can view it here.
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Indulge a little too much during the holidays? Feeling the need to cleanse and reset? Drinking too much alcohol, eating a lot of sugary foods, and just eating too much food in general can tax your detoxification pathways. If you are not detoxing properly, you can end up with lowered energy, increased pain in the body, poor circulation, and sluggish digestion.

By consuming this salad, which is rich in plant-based chemicals that promote detoxification, you can relieve some of the unwanted symptoms of a holiday hangover and begin to regain balance. In fact, if you include raw plant foods such as kale, cabbage, arugula, broccoli, collards, ginger, pomegranates, lemons and limes, blueberries, cranberries, black currants, and raspberries in your daily diet (try green smoothies, fresh juices, and big salads), you will find that indulging in (healthy) holiday treats once in a while will be easier for your body to handle. Hint, hint….try serving this salad at your next holiday gathering!
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If you have a baby or toddler and are ready to introduce them to the lovely world of green smoothies then keep reading. If you are an adult who's curious about green smoothies or have a child who has never tasted one before, then keep reading. This post is for you too!

By about 8 months of age, most babies are ready for green smoothies. We like to avoid plastic sippy cups and instead use small glass or ceramic cups (I just go to the thrift store for these) for introducing green smoothies and other liquids. This gives babies and toddlers the opportunity to learn how to properly drink from a real cup right from the beginning. And, as an added bonus, they lessen their exposure to very toxic substances found in plastic: BPA and BPS!


                        Tom's TED talk on cruciferous vegetables

Why introduce green smoothies to a baby? This is the perfect time! Children's taste buds develop in the first 3 years of life so it's best to take advantage of this time and offer a wide variety of healthy food choices. This helps to establish a taste bud-brain connection to different flavors and textures! Kale and other dark leafy green vegetables can have a strong flavor but are also a powerhouse of nutrients. The amazing chemicals in kale and other raw cruciferous vegetables assist in detoxification. In fact, sulforophane in these dark leafy greens ramps up phase 2 detoxification in the liver, providing over 72 hours of protection from both environmentally and internally produced toxins. Considering that cancer is the leading cause of death by disease for children in the US today, I think it's very important to make sure that older babies and toddlers are receiving at least one small serving of raw cruciferous vegetables every one to two days. Green smoothies are a perfect way to get them in!
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If you've been shopping at your local Farmer's Market lately you might have noticed some beautiful purplish-green leafy vegetables for sale called mustard greens. My bet is that you've also wondered what you could do with them if you were to purchase them! Mustard greens are spicy and slightly bitter. I like to add them to soups and stir-fries. They are part of the lovely cruciferous vegetable family—the types of vegetables we highly recommend getting into your diet everyday in order to boost your body's own detoxification abilities. Read more about that in this post.

I grow mustard greens in my garden, and this summer I've had more than we can eat! I pondered for a week or so how I could preserve them, other than lacto-fermentation (as in a mustard green kim chi), and came up with this pesto recipe (which can be frozen). While I was figuring out how to preserve them, they began to bolt. This means that they send up flowers so the plant can bear seeds. When a plant bolts, the greens start to become bitter. I did not want to waste them so I used them anyway. I would suggest looking for tender young mustard greens to use in this raw pesto recipe, though it's still delicious if your greens have begun to bolt!
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Happy New Year! Cheers! This is our favorite green juice recipe, in fact, our children think it's the bomb! They love it. Serve it in a pretty glass with a stainless steel or glass straw. I think you'll find that this green juice is very mild tasting and quite enjoyable to drink. This recipe is part of our new Elimination Diet Program and Book! We've been receiving so many emails asking about the Elimination Diet and where to find it. Our Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook (where the old program was) is out of print now. We spent our summer completely updating the book with 100 new recipes and plenty of new up-to-date science! It will be available this spring, published through Grand Central Life & Style. We also removed the elimination diet from the book because it deserved its own book. We have a brand-spanking new elimination diet program coming for you soon online. We can't wait to share this powerful healing tool with you, complete with new recipes, menu plans, and more!

If you are setting new year's intentions that revolve around eating well (I like intentions far better than resolutions) then this juice recipe is a great one to add to your repertoire! Through our research we've found that it's quite important for all of us, children included, to add some sort of raw cruciferous vegetable to our daily diets. You can make raw salads, green smoothies, or fresh juices. Cruciferous vegetables include kale, collard greens, mustard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, arugula, bok choy, daikon radish, horseradish, radish, turnips, rutabaga, watercress, and bittercress (a common weed).
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If there was one thing you could do right now to improve your health would you do it? Eating raw cruciferous vegetables daily might be our saving grace in this increasingly toxic world. Cruciferous vegetables will upregulate or "produce" the enzymes your body needs to eliminate environmental toxins and properly metabolize estrogen. They also provide the sulfur, folic acid, and magnesium these enzymes need to function optimally. Worried about cruciferous vegetables causing thyroid problems? If you closely examine the scientific literature, you will see that people who have thyroid issues after eating cruciferous vegetables are iodine insufficient. Eating nori, cooking your beans with kombu, and eating wild caught Alaskan salmon are ways to increase your iodine intake. We (including our children) also take a kelp extract supplement daily. Researchers are now finding that environmental toxicants have a major role in the rise of thyroid related disorders.....so eating raw cruciferous vegetables protects your health on many levels.
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Did you know that the food you consume actually changes how your genes are expressed? Every time we eat we tell our bodies which genes to turn on and which genes to turn off. Did you know that there is more gene expression within two hours after eating than any other time of the day? Why? Because food contains gene signaling substances. This is the fascinating world of nutrigenomics, the idea that food is information not merely calories. The Standard American Diet (SAD) turns on genes for heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, and more. Even many gluten-free diets fall into this category. I see many people swapping out wheat bread for super refined gluten-free imitations of bread. These breads, as well as many other refined gluten-free foods, are not healthy even though they may come from a health food store. Basing your diet around organic, seasonal vegetables and fruits is a way to prevent disease, reduce allergies and inflammation, and maintain vibrant health.

This month I am participating in the wonderful blogging event, New Year, New You, hosted by the Daily Bites Blog. This week's theme is Eat More Produce! Kale is a super food, no doubt about it! We have it growing in our garden practically year round. This winter is very mild so the kale didn't die back. We go out everyday and pick what we need for whatever we are making. Kale is one of the easiest ways to Eat More Produce, especially in the wintertime when most fruits and vegetables are out of season. Kale can be chopped and added to just about any soup or stew, added to green smoothies, or sautéed alone or with other ingredients like in the recipe below. Compounds from kale and other brassica family vegetables have been shown in scientific papers to turn on genes that assist with antioxidant formation, increase detoxification, and turn on gene cell cycle arrest. In a nut shell, they help to prevent cancer, and assist in stopping cancer cell growth.
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As I mentioned in my last post, I have a few Thanksgiving side dish recipes to share. I don't have time to share all of the recipes I will be preparing this year but here is my menu.....squash from our garden stuffed with a Red Quinoa, Cranberry & Apple Filling; a Yam Casserole topped with Chopped Pecans & Cinnamon; Sesame Crackers; Roasted Red Pepper Dip served with plenty of raw veggies; Gluten-Free Dinner Rolls; Cranberry-Pear Sauce; Cranberry-Orange Punch; Herb Roasted Turkey; Wild Rice Stuffing; and Mashed Red Potatoes with Roasted Garlic. I will make my Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake and an apple pie for dessert. A friend of mine is bringing a few raw salads, and of course, I will be making this divine Brussels Sprouts recipe. The combination of the almonds, dried cranberries, and shallots creates a balanced, flavorful dish that is worthy to be part of any Thanksgiving Dinner.
Last week we harvested our Brussels Sprouts, just before the cold temperatures hit. This was the first year that I had grown them and I definitely plan to allot a larger space in the garden next year to grow more. We love brussels sprouts prepared most any way!
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