“Grow Young & Healthy Naturally” by Betty L Khoo-Kingsley

Review of “Grow Young & Healthy Naturally” by Betty L Khoo-Kingsley

Reviewed by George Jacobs of HealthPartners.sg

The book Grow Young & Healthy Naturally is like a giant buffet, a buffet not of food, a buffet of inspiration about how what we eat and other aspects of our lifestyle impact our lives and the lives of those around us. Unlike a food buffet at which many people eat and eat until they can barely stand, the buffet of inspiration in this book leaves us energized.

No wonder Grow Young & Healthy Naturally presents such an energizing and informative buffet. The head chef is Betty L Khoo Kingsley, author of such previous books as Cancer Cured Naturally and Cancer Cured and Prevented Naturally. Betty began her career as a writer for fashion and lifestyle publications before experiencing an epiphany, that the corporate life wasn’t right for her or maybe for anyone.

Betty’s decision so many years ago to become an environmental and natural health activist, plus being a gardener and eco-educator, was prophetic. Today, the five Cs – cash, car, card, club, and condo – have cursed us with other Cs, including Covid, cancer, coronaries, cholesterol, and climate change. The buffet that is Grow Young & Healthy Naturally includes the 70+ year-old Betty’s own story, plus the stories of 17 other amazing people, as well as 14 articles with titles such as “Reversing Aging – It CAN Be Done” and “Seeding StarSeed Solar Village.”

To whet your appetite for purchasing this photo-filled book – via Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation (https://www.kampungsenang.org/ – proceeds to charity) – let us summarize a few of the book’s stories, starting with that of chef Betty Khoo.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Betty on multiple occasions. For instance, I played the giraffe when Betty produced the Sufi play The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity, which airs many of the justifiable grievances that our fellow animals have about the way we humans treat them. Perhaps, Betty top trait is her openness to learn new things. After starting life on a pig and poultry farm, and being fond of chocs, ice-cream, syrup drinks, corned beef, ham, and bacon, Betty transformed herself, spurred in part by a bout with tuberculosis. Among the stops in her journey have been Darwin, Christmas Island, India, Queensland (with Kheng Chua and John Yeo), and a small village by the sea in Johor, Malaysia. Informing Betty’s journey have been the voices of people as widely disparate as Rudolph Steiner, Sai Baba, and the people celebrated in this book’s other chapters.

Linda Chan is one of the inspiring people whom Betty chronicled in the book. At age 60, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, at age 77, she is hale and hearty. Betty attributes this to Linda’s open-minded, open-hearted, and ever-cheerful personality, plus the care she received in Malaysia at the Aenon Health Farm and Dr Mohammed Isahak’s centre. Linda’s kind heart has led her to serve others at the Spastics Association, a hospice, the Canossian Wellness Centre, and Kampung Senang’s Holistic Lifestyle Centre. A loyal friend, Linda helped celebrate Betty’s 76 birthday in 2019 at New Green Pastures Café on Level 4 of Singapore’s Fortune Centre, joining in the singing and dancing, not to mention enjoying the delicious food prepared by the septuagenarian owner of the café, Sophia Teh.

Another sterling soul to grace the pages of Grow Young and Healthy Naturally is Evelyn Eng-Lim, a chemist who, influenced by such spiritual leaders as Jiddu Krishnamurti, decided to use her science knowledge in the service of the Earth and earthlings. Evelyn became editor of Nature Watch, the magazine of Nature Society (Singapore). For this task, she recruited Betty, as well as the vegan artist, designer, nature guide, and environmentalist, Andrew Tay, and turned Nature Watch into a first-class publication, full of amazing photos and stories from all over the world. Not content with educating people from the confines of an office, in 1999, Evelyn and her husband, Thian Soo, started to practice what they preach, founding Green Circle Eco-Farm, an organic farm. Green Circle is still there today despite countless obstacles. Furthermore, in the face of all the talk these days of high-tech farming, Evelyn and Soo hold fast to the belief that natural is the best.

In conclusion, chef Betty offers a recipe of 12 characteristics shared by the 17 people celebrated in Grow Young and Healthy Naturally. These are:

1. See all as ONE Humanity, including animals.
2. Have a strong LOVE for nature.
3. Love animals.
4. Garden – be happy to dig in the soil.
5. Avoid chemicals and plastics; endeavour to practice zero waste.
6. Be vegetarian or come as close as possible, eating heaps of fresh fruit and veg every day.
7. Find meaning in your life, via a spiritual practice or in other ways.
8. Try never to blame, complain, or ‘sweat the small stuff.’ Be quick to say Sorry, to Forgive and to move on.
9. Be thankful for what you have and share it with those who have less.
10. Be eternal optimists, always seeing rainbows, even in storm clouds.
11. Do not be ambitious for position or money, or strive for material luxuries.
12. Continue to learn, to grow, to care, and to share while confronting the challenges that life inevitably provides.

Let us hope that the stories in this book inspire its readers to strive to emulate the heroes described in its pages. They certainly inspired me.