TURN OVER A NEW LEAF
The Complete Vegan Eating Guideline To Detoxify, Cleanse And Balance Your Body In Six Weeks

Interview by Claudette Vaughan

It's an easy to follow food plan, 3 meals a day for 6 weeks that Gold Coasters, Di Skelly Heron and Graeme Heron devised. This wholistic Plan provides you with Shopping lists, Helpful Hints, Nutritional information, Health facts, and complete Menus. The recipes are high energy, high fibre, high protein with low fat, low G.I., no sugar, no sweeteners, no dairy and no wheat. Claudette Vaughan, caught up with Di Skelly Heron recently to find out more.

Abolitionist: Turn Over A New Leaf is described as a complete eating guideline to detoxify, cleanse, and balance one's body in a six-week program. What is involved here?

Di Skelly-Heron:The program is a complete plan on how to shop and prepare three meals a day for six weeks. The program outlines in detail how to prepare legumes, what your pantry requirements would be, detailed shopping lists and where to buy the ingredients listed.

Abolitionist: Your menus are stunning. The goodness of Essene Bread, Chilli Artichoke and Broccoli Pasta, Brazil Nuts Rice and Squash Salad and Polenta Pancakes to name just a few. Who devised them?

DSH: When the nutritionist said he would love me to develop a food plan he could use he gave me a list of ingredients to work with. All the recipes had to stay within these guidelines and could not include any sugar, dairy, wheat or sweeteners, artificial or otherwise. As I love cooking and come from a family of chef's dieticians and great cooks I felt confident in being able to create dishes within the guidelines which were healthy yet as tasty as any other foods you might choose. I have traveled extensively and lived in other countries over extended periods in my life and have drawn on the many food experiences of those years. I have always loved cooking "it's such a creative experience indulging all the senses. I never see cooking as work or a chore. I see it as an expression of my love for food and my family.

Abolitionist: The food is all vegan. Is that correct?

DSH: Yes, the program is completely 100% Vegan

Abolitionist: How did you devise this plan consisting of no dairy, low fat, low G.I? no sugar, no sweeteners and no wheat.

DSH: The food plan was devised after our first meeting with a Nutritionist/ Dietician. I had previously written a vegetarian cook book called 'The Twenty Minute Vegetarian' and he was looking for a program to use in his clinic which followed his protocol of no sugar, no dairy and no wheat to cleanse, detoxify balance (as in pH) the body. I offered to devise recipes based on the food list he gave to his patients. That's how the book started in 2001

Abolitionist: What kind of empirical knowledge has been built up along the way with your Food Plan Di?

DSH: Our personal experience in creating this book and following the developed food plan has been life changing. It has convinced us that you can take control of your health simply by following a positive natural food diet. We have seen a remarkable improvement in our general health. i.e. more energy, clearer thinking, calmness, less susceptibility to stress. In confirmation of how we felt, we saw outstanding improvement in the many tests we undertook over the three years it took to write the book. These included blood analysis reports, cholesterol readings, pH tests, blood pressure, heart stress test, hair analysis, urine tests, iron levels etc, using conventional and natural medical practitioners. Our experiences have been validated many times over by the myriad of emails we have received from book owners who reported all sorts of positive changes in their health over the six weeks of the program. It literally changes peoples lives. "It's very inspiring".

Abolitionist: What does 'optimum health' mean to you?

DSH: Optimum Health to me, means, that I don't have any illness, aches or pains such as arthritis or other muscle or structural problems. I have abundant energy to go about my business without experiencing swings in my moods or energy. Being physically fit, alert, happy and enjoying life to the max. I know through experience that the Turn Over a New Leaf Food Plan has been a major factor in both Graeme and me achieving all of this

Abolitionist: The Plan states that eating well is part of treating a perfectly balanced body. What else is involved Di?

DSH: I have no doubt that eating this way is probably the most important factor in maintaining perfect balance in our body. However, it's how we manage the rest of our lives that put the 'icing on the cake' or should I say 'the lentils in the soup' All the facets of our lives i.e. work, family, hobbies, relaxation, exercise, must feature and most of all, we must have lots of fun.

Abolitionist: I think you make a good case when you say that mineral supplementation is vital these days as intensive farming practices have leached out valuable minerals from the soil. How does one get vitamin B12 on your Plan?

DSH: In the book we state that one should consult with their Health Professional on suitable mineral supplementation before embarking on the program. We personally take a B12 in the form of Spirulina and a liquid B12 supplement, prescribed by our nutritionist and our B12 levels have been tested as normal despite following this Vegan food plan for nearly five years.

Abolitionist: How did the term you use " Kitchen Coach" come about?

DHS: The term 'Kitchen Coach' was coined in a conversation Graeme and I were having over dinner one night. We were talking about the amount of young and not so young people we had met since writing the book who were totally unaware of what constitutes natural food, how to prepare it and almost universally thought that vegan food was tasteless.

We began throwing ideas around about how we might get the message out that this perception is totally wrong. What was needed was more than cooking lessons. People needed the total package, improved food awareness, basic nutrition, kitchen efficiency, what and where to buy, the benefits of organic food, awareness of chemicals and pesticides and the health problems they create, awareness of how to prepare and cook natural whole food. We wanted to help stop the art of natural food preparation from becoming a lost, like so many other activities that have been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. The modern industrialised world is slowly talking over all these natural processes. We concluded they needed coaching 'Kitchen Coaching' After all there are coaches for everything else these days, Personal Coach, Business Coach, Life Coach all recent additions to the traditional Coaches we are all aware of. It is our intention to create Kitchen Coaches all over Australia so that people can learn how to reclaim these lost skills and take charge of the health and nutrition of themselves and their families.

Abolitionist: Your Plan is all about empowering others to take control of their dietary choices. Is that right?

DHS: Yes. We cannot make empowered choices about our food or our lives for that matter without knowledge and experience. This book, and others which are on the way, is about encouraging and motivating people to understand the importance of taking charge of this most basic necessity in their lives and most importantly giving them some, tried and proven, easy to use, tools to work with.

Abolitionist: Why organic Celtic salt and where can you buy it?  Would Macrobiotic sea salt be an acceptable substitute?

DSH: Organic Celtic Salt has a much higher mineral content than Macrobiotic Sea Salt and considerably less Sodium Chloride as the following table will attest. We have included a lot of information on this in the book on this subject. For more information go to www.turnoveranewleaf.com.au

All good health shops stock Celtic Salt.

Note: The Abolitionist strives to bring our readers something unusual and really worthwhile in what we are prepared to review. Not only do we highly recommend "Turn Over A New Leaf" to all adults, Di and Graeme have out a brand new book for kids called "Turn Over A New Leaf - Food Power for Kids". As any vegan mother will tell you there are not that many good plans available for kids making veganism fun for kids.

See our review and to order your copies please go to this website.

www.turnoveranewleaf.com.au