The Family Dinner Recipe: Purple Power Breakfast Shake

Laurie David and Kirstin Uhrenholdt

Laurie David is an author and producer who works on a variety of environmental, food, and agricultural issues. Her most recent book, The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time, is an inspirational, practical, and green guide to the vital family dinner ritual and how to accomplish it in today’s busy world. Laurie was a producer on the 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the HBO documentary Too Hot NOT to Handle, and executive produced the TBS comedy special Earth to America! She also authored the bestselling book Stop Global Warming: The Solution is You! and co-authored The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming. A regular blogger on the Huffington Post, Laurie has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. She was named a 2006 Glamour Woman of the Year and has been profiled in People, Glamour, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Elle, Wired, House & Garden, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. Kirstin Uhrenholdt grew up on a fruit-farm in Denmark, pickin’ n’ pruning and making pie. She then, by a stroke of good luck, ended up on a cargo ship to Greenland, doing among other things a lot of dishes, a lot — more than you can imagine. She escaped and became a beer wench in Appenzelle, Switzerland, where they speak a language no one understands. Eventually she landed in L.A. where, lo and behold, she was kidnapped by some actors, some heavy rockers, and some kosher people. Presently she is living happily ever after.

Comments

1. 

   

   Replante4 says:

   This is an awesome recipe. The only thing I would change is I would leave out soy. My breast cancer team of doctors have advised me strongly not to eat soy. Soy can cause out bodies to produce estrogen. Estrogen will fuel a breast cancer cell or lump. Check labels on everything. Salad dressings, sauces have soybean oil, etc.
2. 

   

   sdehav says:

   I am so surprised that you; being a breast cancer website; would not only endorse but promote “The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time by Laurie David and Kirstin Uhrenholdt (Grand Central Life & Style, 2010). Laurie is a very special friend and champion of Breastcancer.org. We’re pleased to share Laurie and Kirstin’s delicious, healthy recipes as part of Think Pink, Live Green!”

   How can she be a champion of breastcancer.org knowing that soy is so controversial. Some doctors prohibit ingesting soy all together due to the hormone positive breast cancers.

   Doctors should be reviewing the content before it’s posted. We cannot send mixed messages to the women out there. There are several women who do not have any other source for education other than your site. I found your site very informative while I was going through my battle. In fact, it is the best website out there but endorsing someone who recommends soy milk was a true disappointment.
3. 

   

   Dr. Marisa Weiss says:

   We understand that some women may be cautious about soy consumption, since soy contains substances called isoflavones, which may act like estrogen in the body. This may be of a particular concern for people who have estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer. In that situation, you want to avoid anything that might stimulate the receptors, possibly leading to extra cell growth.

   The safety or dangers of soy are not well understood. But four things are reassuring:
   1) Isoflavones only have a weak estrogen-like effect (much weaker than your body’s natural estrogens).
   2) There are only low levels of isoflavones in unprocessed soy foods (like soy milk, edamame [soy beans], and tofu [a curd of soy milk]).
   3) Soy also contains proteins that may help maintain normal cell growth and activity.
   4) People living in Asia who depend on soy foods for their protein tend to have low levels of breast cancer (this is in part due to their other healthy habits, like being at a healthy weight, staying physically active, consuming minimal amounts of alcohol, not smoking).

   We also know that hormones work in very complicated ways. Very low doses can have a different — even opposite — effect compared to high doses of the same hormones.

   Even less is known about the possible impact soy may have on the risk of breast cancer recurrence in women who have been diagnosed with estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer. Studies are inconclusive. Many doctors recommend only moderate consumption of soy foods, as part of a balanced diet, and avoidance of highly concentrated soy supplements (such as those found in powders and capsules) because of their high isoflavone concentrations.

   The recipe lists other options if you wish to avoid soy products.

   To learn more about soy and hormone-receptor-positive breast cancers, see our Soy page in Breastcancer.org’s Nutrition section.