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WHAT exactly are ‘activated cashew nuts’? Apparently, “Activated nuts have been soaked in water and salt for a period of time, which starts off the germination or sprouting process, then dehydrated at a low temperature.”
Or as Amanda Chantal Bacon, founder of Moon Juice, says on her website: “Pure, alkaline water awakens the nuts' dormant properties, increasing digestibility and micronutrient, vitamin, and enzyme count.” This, I am sure, would explain why you pay the equivalent of R330 for about 450gm at Moon Juice, an LA phenom.
Bacon (and every time I read her name, a small giggle escapes my lips) has been trending online, thanks to her video describing a typical day chez Bacon. And really, don’t you think she’s kinda asking for the mocking she’s got with gems like this?: "At 8am, I had a warm, morning chi drink [which] contains more than 25 grams of plant protein, thanks to vanilla mushroom protein and stone-ground almond butter, and also has the super endocrine, brain, immunity, and libido- boosting powers of Brain Dust, cordyceps, reishi, maca, and Shilajit resin. […] I chase it with three quinton shots…" (that’s raw marine plasma, that is).
Yes, I know what you’re asking: what the hell is Brain Dust? Here we go (and check the verbiage on this!): “This enlightening mental potion has been alchemized with elite herbs used traditionally by great thinkers and meditators. An adaptogenic elixir to maintain healthy systems for superior states of cognitive flow, […] Delicious with nut milk water or tea. Makes approximately 25 servings depending on taste and desired level of potency. Don't be afraid to double dose!
“Wild Crafted Ingredients: Astragalus, Lion's Mane, Shilajit, Maca, Rhodiola, Stevia, Gingko.” Crafted, huh? How do you craft a plant? Are these bonsai herbs?
At R870 a bottle, that’s about R35 per serving – and don’t be afraid to double dose, folks!
I’ve been writing about health for over two decades and I’ve seen a stack of superfoods and superfads come and go.
Someone, I forget who, dubbed it the ‘superfood cycle’ – first it bubbles up in some place like LA, then it’s all over the place, with claims of amazing miraculous healing or de-aging properties, then somebody comes up with a dramatic, earth-shattering counter-claim – “Is kale a superfood or is it deadly?”
Think of quinoa, the vegan’s wonder protein which was the Coming Thing back in the very early 2000s or even earlier, when little exorbitantly priced shipments from Bolivia were being sold in San Francisco and New York. Then word got out about its antioxidants and flavonoids ‘n all, and demand soared.
Then we all discovered that Bolivians could no longer afford their staple food thanks to international demand, and they were even hungrier because farmers were shifting from other crops to quinoa to take advantage of the prices.
Twenty years back colonic irrigation was all the rage (still very much in evidence, sadly). ‘Natural health’ therapists were very keen to wash out your colon and show you all the nasty gunk they’d cleared away. (Somehow I was really glad I never got offered this internal scouring as a freebie.)
Now that we’ve begun to learn, in depth, how valuable our gut bacteria are, one stops to think: how did all those colonically cleansed people fare in later years? Did they manage to regrow colonies of flora to replace the bacteria which got a short, shocking Niagra-in-a-bucket trip to eternity? (If you want to know more about this concept, go here.
What a great racket. How much did the bacterially denuded host pay for this treatment? Like so many other unscientific solutions to health problems, the cost is …not insignificant, let us say. Like Brain Dust. Like goji berries, at a rand a gram, roughly.
We’re all in search of a silver bullet. A detox will do it; an antioxidant supplement; switching to soy, “the perfect health food”.
To which I’d respond: detox? In the Guardian in December last year, a professor of complementary medicine said there was no need for healthy people to detox: “The healthy body has kidneys, a liver, skin, even lungs that are detoxifying as we speak,” he says. “There is no known way […] to make something that works perfectly well in a healthy body work better.”
Antioxidants don’t shine so much since we discovered (among other things) that they might boost cancers. And soy? To save space, I’ll leave that to you to Google.
Just as we shouldn’t mess with eco-systems, we fiddle with our physical, highly-evolved systems at our peril.
And we make little gods out of expensive exotic herbs and foods (like those Bacon snacks on) instead of demanding and eating unprocessed real food grown or raised without ‘growth promoters’ like antibiotics, and other things added (modified corn starch with everything).
They are making big money out of often unsupported health claims: “The next trillion dollar industry globally, the Health & Wellness market space is dominated mostly by beauty and anti-aging product sales at $679 billion, followed by fitness and mind and body exercise ($390 billion) and health eating, nutrition and weight loss sales ($277 billion).”
Drink water when you’re thirsty, eat real, unprocessed produce and protein, and be active every day. That is the real secret of health. Don’t get taken for an expensive ride.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
