Shauna R. Martin - Energizing Superfood Juices and Smoothies: Nutrient-Dense, Seasonal Recipes to Jump-Start Your Health

ENERGIZING

NUTRIENT-DENSE, SEASONAL RECIPES TO JUMP-START YOUR HEALTH

SHAUNA R. MARTIN

FOUNDER OF Daily Greens Beverages

FOREWORD BY Mayim Bialik

In my almost forty years on the planet, I have seen many eating and dieting trends come and go. No fat, low fat, high protein, no carbohydrates, raw, only cauliflower soup You name it, and people have tried it! However, what remains consistently recommended by every leading doctor of every persuasion is that we need to eat less processed foods, more fruits and vegetables, and more foods in their natural state. Period.

I have been vegan for almost seven years and had been vegetarian for twenty years before that. I ate pretty healthy, but I have a confession to make: Since becoming a mom almost ten years ago, I have gotten in the habit of grabbing a handful of chips or pretzels or cookies here and there. Well, the here and there had lodged itself literally here and there, mainly around my hips and belly. This Mama had accumulated a little bit too much here and there here and there.

This past year, I heard about juicing as a way of life, and honestly, it sounded weird, even though it held the possibility of helping me get rid of my here and there, among other benefits. When I heard about Daily Greens through their founder, Shauna, her story really inspired me. I could relate to her perspective as a young mom who wanted to improve her health and designed these juices from that desire, but her experience battling cancer was really what touched me. I felt empowered because of her dedication and her motivation not only for her health, but for the health of others.

I had some concerns about attempting a juice cleanse despite all of my optimistic posturing. Although I never considered myself to have an unhealthy relationship with food, as I prepared to start the cleanse, I started to feel a sense of panic and impending doom. I felt like food was being taken away from me forever (even though that makes no logical sense!). Thankfully, I was able to acknowledge that these kinds of fears and this kind of panic were things that I could cleanse as well.

To make a four-day-juice-cleanse-story short, the juices tasted good enough that I didnt feel like I was being punished by drinking them. I snacked on raw stuff throughout the day like fruits and veggies. I simply wasnt hungry or grumpy at all. I felt full of energy. Simple foods started tasting really good to me, and that hasnt gone away even months after Ive finished the cleanse.

I felt so good after my four-day cleanse that I kept going. I ended up eating raw for nine whole days, with one or two juices a day. I lost weight off my hips and tummy and can fit into my old jeans again!

I took a chance and was inspired enough to commit to disciplining my eating for four days. It transformed my palate, made my body healthier, and put me back in control of my eating and my relationship with food.

If thats trendy, count me in.

Mayim Bialik, 2015

This foreword was written to accompany the original version of this book, Daily Greens 4-Day Cleanse.

I vividly recall sitting on the floor of my shower with water and tears streaming down my face trying to figure it all out. I could not stop thinking why? Why me? What did I do wrong? On July 28, 2004, my sons first birthday, I had been diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of thirty-three. And then, just a few weeks later, my younger sister was also diagnosed with breast cancer at thirty-one years old.

Happier periods of my life started flashing through my mind as I sat in that shower. I remembered racing with my younger sister through banana plantations by a house we lived in during a four-year stint in Puerto Rico. We were probably eight and ten years old at the time, and I recall running barefoot through the trees, stopping to pick a banana or an orange here and there. Sometimes we would gather mangoes and avocados to take back to our mother to serve with dinner. As I sat on my shower floor mourning the loss of my breasts, I tried hard to remember. Didnt I also recall plantation workers spraying down those banana trees with pesticides? Were those pesticides the reason why my sister and I came to have aggressive breast cancer, mine having grown unchecked into stage II breast cancer while I breastfed my son for nine months?

I flashed-forward a number of years to my grandmothers garden in Arkansas. My sister and I spent many happy hours helping her plant and pick tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, and all kinds of other wonderful vegetables. Again, I strained to remember that pesticide she used to put on the vegetables to keep the bugs away. What was it called? Sevin dust? Werent we told that we had to keep the cats away from it for fear of their ingesting it and dying from it? I remember Grandma hollering at us not to eat the vegetables until she had a chance to wash off the poison, and even the Centers for Disease Control reported in a study that a single dose of 250 mg consumed by an adult male resulted in moderate poisoning. Was this why we had breast cancer? Had we eaten fruits and vegetables covered in poisonous pesticides that later settled in our breast tissue to form cancer cells? Was that possible? I started thinking about our college days and the TV dinners heated with plastic wrap and consumed quickly while in the midst of cramming for exams. Was it all the chemicals in the processed food that we ate?

Shauna with her husband, Kirk, and son, Cooper.

We had no family history of breast cancer until we were both simultaneously diagnosed with the diseaseyears before our doctors would normally start screening us for breast cancer. In fact, no one in our immediate family had ever had any type of cancer. I had been to at least a half-dozen doctors who really had no answer for the why. Most agreed that it was probably somehow genetic, although they admitted they were stumped by the fact that both my sister and I had tested negative for the known genetic mutations for breast cancer. Most of the physicians that I saw just threw up their hands and said we would probably never know the cause. They confirmed that not enough information is known about the genetic predisposition to breast cancer and certainly not enough information is known about the environmental and food-supply factors that could potentially cause breast cancer.

One thing the doctors did all seem to agree upon was that our treatment plans should be the most aggressive available. Before all was said and done, we each underwent a year of mind-numbing chemotherapy, double mastectomies, and multiple surgeries to reconstruct our breasts. Due to my advanced breast cancer, all of my lymph nodes had to be removed from under one of my arms, leaving me with lymphedema (swelling caused by poor drainage of lymph fluid) in my left arm, hand, and torso, which I will have for the rest of my life. Then, after six years of hormone therapy, my team of doctors advised me that I should also remove my ovaries to eliminate the risk of more breast cancer or, even worse, ovarian cancer. So at the age of thirty-nine, I had both ovaries removed, putting my body into premature and permanent menopause. Prior to our breast cancer diagnosis, my sister and I were the pictures of health. We were raised as vegetarians by our military doctor father and our registered nurse mother, who are both very health conscious and taught us to eat right, exercise daily, and watch our weight. We have never been even remotely obese, smoked a cigarette, or touched a piece of red meat (all the supposed top risk factors for breast cancer). So again, I had to ask, why?