Thursday, May 29, 2008

Living in the raw

Row_of_peppers_2 I love the idea of incorporating more raw food into my diet - no, I'm not talking about raw meat or anything like that - I'm talking about more fruit, salads, smoothies, nuts and seeds, etc. Would you believe that you can even get raw chocolate cake and apple crumble? Or flapjacks, cookies and ice-cream?

Karen Knowler is The Raw Food Coach. She is also an author, presenter, former MD of The Fresh Network (The UK's raw and living foods organisation), founder of The Fresh Festival and creator of Get Fresh! magazine. Karen has appeared on LK Today (GMTV), Channel Health, The Wellbeing Channel, Rude Health, LBC radio and Radio 4, as well as appearing regularly in the press in her capacity as raw food expert and food/life coach. She really knows her stuff and she makes the idea of raw food seem an absolute 'no-brainer' (without appearing to be the slightest bit 'crusty' or 'cranky').

This week Karen posted four different YouTube videos on her blog which, together, answer the following questions:

Q1: So what is raw food?

Q2: Why do people choose to eat more raw food or begin a raw food diet?

Q3: What does a typical raw food diet or menu plan look like?

Q4: How much of a difference would it make eating half your diet raw and going all raw?

Q5: What about eating out?

Q6: What are the biggest potential pitfalls of following a raw diet?

Q7: How do you get started?

Q8: How long does it take to start feeling and seeing a difference?

Q9: What do you consider "must know" information that anyone new to raw foods should have?

Q10: Where do you see the concept of raw foods going in the future?

To view the clips with the answers to all these questions click here.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

How to beat the fraudsters

BurglarAt least once a week I receive an email purporting to be from a bank or credit card company, claiming that they are updating their records and requesting that I click through to their website and provide them with items of personal information such as a PIN number, password or account number. And, of course, I immediately press the 'delete' key because, as we all know, the email is likely to be a con. It will send us to a clone of a genuine website where, if we provided the information they are asking for, we would be providing criminals with all the information they need to commit some form of identity fraud.

If you're worried about identity fraud (and you probably should be...), check out How to beat the fraudsters by MSN money (and click on the links at the bottom of the page for even more information, including an article about celebrity victims of identity fraud - Steven Spielberg, financial guru George Soros, Oprah Winfrey, Oracle computer boss Larry Ellison, Robert de Niro, Tiger Woods, Will Smith and Jennifer Lopez have, apparently, all been victims of identity crimes costing tens of millions of pounds.)