Smoothies are a delicious and simple way to increase the consumption of healthy and powerful food. It is an especially good method for stubborn kids or spouses (yes, that may include you), that might not otherwise eat a varied diet.

This is a simple recipe that is popular in Asia, especially China and Japan, and was recently featured on the award winning YouTube cooking channel “Cooking with Dog” with Chef and Francis (the poodle). Cooking with Dog is an extremely popular channel with over 44 million video views, and almost 250,000 subscribers. The National Taoism Examiner and his wife have enjoyed many of their recipes.

This recipe has just a few ingredients, but those ingredients provide plenty of benefits for men, women and children. You should definitely consider enjoying this recipe once or twice per week.

Recipe: serves 2
1 Ripe Banana
250ml Original Unfortified Soymilk (1.06 cups)
2 tbsp Ground Black Sesame Seeds
Honey (about ½ tbsp)
3-4 Ice Cubes

Place one banana into the blender with approx. 1 cup of soymilk and ½ tablespoon of honey. Thoroughly grind the black sesame seeds until they almost form a paste and then add the sesame seeds to the blender. Blend until all ingredients are smooth and mixed well. Enjoy.

Please note: Taoism does not recommend consuming food that is frozen or too cold; however, if you want to make a cool drink you could try 1 or 2 cubes. Food that is very cold may harm the spleen/stomach, weaken energy, cool the blood and harm the heart.

Health Benefits: according to the Tao of Nutrition by Dr. Maoshing Ni and Cathy McNease

Banana: clears heat, lubricates lungs, lubricates intestines, lowers blood pressure, aids alcohol intoxication. Good for: constipation, thirst, cough, hemorrhoids, hypertension and alcohol intoxication

Soymilk (Soybean): clears heat, detoxifies, eases urination, lubricates lungs and intestines, provides an excellent protein food. Good for: lung and stomach heat, dry skin, ferocious appetite, stomach or mouth ulcers, swollen gums, diarrhea, constipation, general heat problems.

Black sesame seeds: tonify liver and kidneys, harmonize the blood, lubricate the intestines, restore hair color, nourish Yin, promotes lactation. Good for: chronic constipation, premature balding or graying, chronic arthritis, joint inflammation, cough.

Honey: nourishes Yin, lubricates dryness, tonifies weakness, harmonizes, antidote to drugs, strengthen spleen. Good for: diabetes (small amounts), constipation, ulcers, dry cough, hoarse voice, burns, cold sores.

Take time, especially during the hot summer days, to enjoy this delicious and simple smoothie! Make sure you post a comment and thank Chef and Francis from the Cooking with Dog YouTube Channel.

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Do you have a story, photo or video from your area that would be of interest to Taoists? Feel free to email (TJ@theQiInstitute.com) and they may be included or featured in a National Taoism Examiner article.

Over the past few months there have been many articles and “news” coverage regarding organic food. Many people covering the topic for the mainstream news have an obviously slanted agenda against organic food. Viewing some of the articles headlines will suffice to expose this agenda: “Does organic food turn people into jerks?”, “Drug Resistant Bugs Found in Antibiotic-Free Meat”, “Antibiotic-Free Meat Not Free of Drug-Resistant Bacteria”, “The Problem With Organic Food” just to list a few.

Let us explore for a moment just what Organic and so called Conventional foods are.
Wikipedia provides a good starting point with their definition of organic food as: “… foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Organic Foods also do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives. (wikipedia.org)”

Mankind’s food legacy

Basically, organic food consists of meat, fruit, vegetables etc… that are grown naturally without artificial or synthetic manipulation in any stage of the planting, cultivating, harvesting and production processes. To state it even more simply, so called organic food has been the agricultural method throughout human history, until the invention of synthetic and artificial manipulation processes.

If we count organic or natural food only through the time frame of the advent of agriculture; then mankind has consumed organic food for approx. 10,000 years as evident with ancient Chinese/Taoist rice cultivation. If, however, we consider even earlier time periods and take into consideration the vast time frames that mankind survived by hunting and gathering, we are faced with a daunting fact that “prehistoric” man was eating not only organic/natural meat & vegetables, but also free range, grass fed, cage free, humane and ethically grown as well, for hundreds of thousands of years.

What is conventional food?

For the most part, conventional food did not exist until the 1940’s with the conclusion of WWII. The large chemical companies that were created for mass production of chemical warfare campaigns were no longer needed on the same massive production scale. With millions of dollars in lost revenue quickly approaching, these mega companies shifted their focus from chemical warfare on human enemies, to the Great Enemy of agriculture: pests, parasites, mold, fungi, bacteria etc…

All without making any changes to the factories; requiring just a simple change of labels and reduction of potency, some would argue if this reduction actually occurred.

Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO is another major component of conventional food, especially in the United States. This has the potential to be the most dangerous component of conventional food, so dangerous in fact that dozens of countries have banned GMO food and some have gone a step further and are moving towards banning non-organic or conventional farming all together.

Is there even a need for a debate regarding Organic versus Unnatural food?

The answer will vary of course depending on who is asked this question; however, the facts cannot be disputed. What we are faced with, is a method of either growing & hunting for food that has existed for over 10,000 years, compared to a new and unproven method that has only 60-70 years of experience that is rapidly and constantly changing. The long term effects of which no-one can answer with any certainty. What we do know, is that over the same time period (last 70 years) there has been an incredible increase in disease, illness and infection, the likes of which has not occurred in recorded history.

Where is the controversy coming from?

Clearly, the same companies behind the unnatural chemical and GMO movement are the same parties funding the “research” and propagating the stories under the guise of scientific data that is trying to usurp and replace Organic and natural food.

Better questions

• Instead of asking “Does organic food turn people into jerks?” perhaps, we should ask: does lobbying, promoting and producing unnatural and harmful food full of dangerous chemicals make you evil?
• How do the unnatural/conventional food practices reflect on our society?
• What does our continued consumption of this unnatural food say about the consumer and society?
• Is conventional food, a further sign of the moral decay of modern societies? If so, where will it end?
• What will come of mankind if we allow our food to become completely synthetic, void of all energy, nutrition and life force?

From a Taoist perspective; the greater question is not how can man improve the food, rather how can man return to simplicity and naturalness and live as a part of the world. How can we return to our original state, our original nature? Surely, Adam and Eve were not eating GMO/conventional food in the Garden of Eden. Does modern man really think that Adam and Eve would have been better off if the forbidden fruit was a GMO apple full of pesticides and herbicides? Perhaps, in that regard they would be correct, for they surely would have resisted and refused to eat it. Now that is worth pondering!

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The National Taoism Examiner was recently emailed a YouTube video regarding the top 10 longest living creatures. You will notice that the Taoism Examiner removed “human” from the list which did appear as #9, as Taoists view humans as belonging to their own kingdom or category, distinct from all other life.

Taoists have always been fascinated with longevity and since the time of Fu Xi, Nuwa (both approx. 8,000 B.C.E.) & Shen Nung (3,500 B.C.E.) have rigorously researched and catalogued all life that met the characteristics of longevity, i.e.: a life span of at least 100 years. The life forms studied included: minerals, vegetation, animals and humans, as these constituted the kingdoms that are “visibly living”.

Some of the minerals, vegetation and animals had such an extraordinary lifespan and contained a very high level of energy or Qi (Chi) that they were included in the Chinese Materia Medica as Forgotten Foods or Herbs. Shen Nung, the father of herbology, spent his entire life studying, testing and formulating many herbs or forgotten foods.

The ancient Taoists also created many Internal Exercises that would increase a person’s longevity, many of the exercises are named after animals with longevity; for example the turtle and crane exercises. Huang Di (over 5,000 years ago) in “The Classic of the Internal”, named the Internal Exercises: Yang Shēng Shù which can be defined as the achievement of a happy, healthy, and long life through the utilization of mental and physical movements to prevent and correct ailments, reverse the aging process, and improve all functions of the body.

It is in the Taoist tradition of studying longevity, that we explore this list of some of the animals with the longest life spans. Enjoy the list, ponder the possibilities and challenge for a moment your preconceived notions of: time, space and aging.

10) Tuatara lizard, over 100 years
9) Lobster, over 140 years
8) Red sea urchin, over 200 years
7) Bowhead whale, over 211 years
6) Koi carp, 226 years
5) Giant tortoise, over 250 years
4) Arctica Islandica, 405 years
3) Actarctic sponge, 1,550 years
2) Black coral, 4, 265 years
1) Immortal jellyfish, infinite!

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