Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Woman, 15 Kids--U Gotta See This
"Somebody needs to pay for all my children. Somebody's got to be held accountable"
Save yourself some time. Go to around 2:15 in the video and see for yourself. This is part of America--an ungrateful, make someone else take care of me and my kids, no shame whatsoever woman.
Bill Ayers Hosted Obama Fundraiser
Please go here for the complete article
Ayers’ impact on America cannot be underestimated. While many have exposed and condemned his leadership in the radical and violent Weather Underground – and the group’s efforts to terrorize the country in the 1960s and ’70s – he has done far more damage to our students’ minds.
Ayers, a retired college professor, and his progressive comrades have come to the conclusion that shaping young minds in the liberal direction will have more impact than blowing up a few buildings. After all, what are a few building repairs to a massive federal government? Thus, he’s been busy promoting radical indoctrination of school-age students.
That’s why he teamed up with the likes of Peterson, who has been openly calling on public school teachers to include left-wing propaganda in their daily lessons. Ayers and Peterson are soul brothers in the effort to fundamentally move America to the left.
Ayers’ impact on America cannot be underestimated. While many have exposed and condemned his leadership in the radical and violent Weather Underground – and the group’s efforts to terrorize the country in the 1960s and ’70s – he has done far more damage to our students’ minds.
Ayers, a retired college professor, and his progressive comrades have come to the conclusion that shaping young minds in the liberal direction will have more impact than blowing up a few buildings. After all, what are a few building repairs to a massive federal government? Thus, he’s been busy promoting radical indoctrination of school-age students.
That’s why he teamed up with the likes of Peterson, who has been openly calling on public school teachers to include left-wing propaganda in their daily lessons. Ayers and Peterson are soul brothers in the effort to fundamentally move America to the left.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Jeff Novick, Calorie Density
Penn State has done a number of studies regarding calorie density. This is the idea of eating foods that are less calorie dense. Here's an article from the Pritikin Longevity Center.
BTW, Jeff Novick has an excellent Facebook page. After I've made a comment there, he's often followed it up with a comment of his own.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Debt Abyss
Mark Steyn
In the course of a typical day I usually receive at least a couple of emails from readers lamenting that America is now the Titanic. This is grossly unfair to the Titanic, a state-of-the-art ship whose problem was that it only had lifeboat space for about half its passengers. By contrast, the SS Spendaholic is a rusting hulk encrusted with barnacles, there are no lifeboats, and the ship’s officers are locked in a debate about whether to use a thimble or an eggcup.
A second downgrade is now inevitable. Aw, so what? We had the first back in the summer, and the ceiling didn’t fall in, did it? And everyone knows those ratings agencies are a racket, right? And say what you like about our rotten finances, but Greece’s are worse. And Italy’s. And, er, Zimbabwe’s. Probably.
The advantage the United States enjoys is that, unlike Greece, it can print the currency in which its debt is denominated. But, even so, it still needs someone to buy it. The failure of Germany’s bond auction on Wednesday suggests that the world is running out of buyers for western sovereign debt at historically low interest rates. And, were interest rates to return to their 1990-2010 average (5.7 percent), debt service alone would consume about 40 percent of federal revenues by mid-decade. That’s not paying down the debt, but just staying current on the interest payments.
And yet, when it comes to spending and stimulus and entitlements and agencies and regulations and bureaucrats, “more, more, more/how do you like it?” remains the way to bet. Will a Republican president make a difference to this grim trajectory? I would doubt it. Unless the public conversation shifts significantly, neither President Romney nor President Insert-Name-Of-This-Week’s-UnRomney-Here will have a mandate for the measures necessary to save the republic.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Yelp Reviews
My best friend has the same kind of business I do. He lives in the Seattle area. He got a Yelp negative review. He did everything to pacify this customer, all to no avail. Eventually the customer admitted the problem was not even caused by his business, but would not change her Yelp review.
Which brings me to this: Sometimes I go in a business and I'm awed by what they do. Case in point is Buffalo Wild Wings in Brea. It's a new business and they have both indoor and outdoor service. In fact, for you smokers they even have a designated smoking area. It's a two story building with over 120 TVs. It's a beautiful place.
So I go to Yelp and look at the reviews for BWW and some offer only 1 star. Of course I understand the service could have been bad, didn't like the food, or whatever. But sometimes the negative review can be more a reflection of the person writing the review than the business itself.
Which brings me to this: Sometimes I go in a business and I'm awed by what they do. Case in point is Buffalo Wild Wings in Brea. It's a new business and they have both indoor and outdoor service. In fact, for you smokers they even have a designated smoking area. It's a two story building with over 120 TVs. It's a beautiful place.
So I go to Yelp and look at the reviews for BWW and some offer only 1 star. Of course I understand the service could have been bad, didn't like the food, or whatever. But sometimes the negative review can be more a reflection of the person writing the review than the business itself.
John Mackey--CEO Whole Foods
Below is an article by Melanie Moore about John Mackey. What I love is Mr Mackey isn't doing this as some kind of marketing ploy. This is something he totally believes in, and I would bet it is one of his life's greatest passions.
Also what makes me very excited is CEOs of most food companies want you to eat their junk foods. Not John Mackay, even though that's where the profit is. I look forward to the day when an owner of McDonald's says "Enough, I will not feed this to my patrons."
-----------------------------------------
Visit with John Mackey for a few minutes and you first get a tutorial about backpacking, not nutrition. You’ll learn about hiking trails, ultra-light backpacking gear, and you, too, will begin referring to the Appalachian Trail (the trail that runs from Georgia to Maine), as “the AT.” The avid backpacker and Founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market was just back from a hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—a trek he “figured [he] might as well do” during the week he had between a meeting in Boston and a speech at Dartmouth.
“They describe New Hampshire as one big rock with patches of dirt,” he said. “I think that’s pretty accurate. Still, it’s got the most spectacular views of any place on the AT.” He’s hiked the AT twice and in the past nine years has hiked a total of more than 10,000 miles.
“Generally on the AT, I average about two miles an hour and that includes breaks,” he said, describing the more difficult conditions in the White Mountains. “There, we were averaging about 1.2 miles per hour; it’s so rugged.” He hikes with ultra-light gear totaling 15 pounds, including food and water. “You’d be surprised how much more enjoyable it is when you’re packed really light. Not only can you do more miles, but they’re more pleasurable miles because you’re not always thinking ‘when’s the next break so I can get this pack off my back?’”
His favorite trails are in the United States. “The most beautiful trail I’ve done is the Pacific Crest Trail that goes from Mexico to Canada up through the Sierras and the Cascades,” he said. “There’s a trail they call the John Muir Trail; the Pacific Crest Trail and the John Muir Trail share 192 miles, and that is so beautiful. You do three national parks—Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite. You’re up over 10,000 feet for most of the hike. It’s just spectacular. I’d also say the Colorado Trail is beautiful. There are unmatched backpacking opportunities in the United States.”
While he can talk trails and gear, technical hikes and elevation like an expert, it’s not long before he moves the conversation to his passion: whole food nutrition and how diseases can be prevented and reversed with a healthy diet.
“What surprised me, and I just think it’s the most exciting news in the world, [is] the human body really wants to be healthy and it’s far more resilient than I realized,” he said. “That people are able so quickly to get off all these medications, to lose weight so quickly, to have their cholesterol drop. We have so many stories.” Mackey is sharing the fruits of his “intellectual binge” (reading voraciously about nutrient values of foods and how the human body is impacted by everything one eats).
“I want to create a culture of wellness at Whole Foods,” he said, explaining the incentive-based programs for Whole Foods employees to monitor their biomarkers for improvement with vigilance. “We’re going to make these programs available to the public,” he said.
“Here are the gruesome facts,” he said. “Two thirds of Americans are overweight. Over half of those are obese, and the trend lines are horrible. The obesity rate’s doubled in the last 30 years. If I showed you on a state-by-state basis over the last 40 years, it’s just horrible. And our children are now obese. Americans are killing themselves. We spend 80 percent of our healthcare dollars on diseases nobody should ever have. No one should ever get (type 2) diabetes. We’re doing it to ourselves out of ignorance and, mostly, out of food addictions. We get addicted to sugar. We get addicted to fat. We get addicted to salt. I might make the case we get addicted to high inputs of protein as well.
“There’s not going to be a vaccination for cancer. There’s not going to be a pill you can take to prevent heart disease. We do all these high-tech interventions on people,” he said, pointing out that 10 percent of Medicare expenses go to putting heart stints into people with heart disease. “These are radical interventions we’re doing for people that don’t fundamentally work. You’ve got to protect yourself.”
He’s putting his money where his mouth is, providing generous incentives for employees who take the responsibility to monitor their bodies and their biomarkers and work toward improvement. He says getting discipline in one aspect of your life (diet or exercise, for example) leads to improvement in other areas and to a continuum of improvement that he calls “the virtuous circle.”
While he’s careful to point out that with 62,000 employees at Whole Foods, it will take a while to fully realize the “culture of wellness,” he identifies three key initiatives that are significant steps in that direction.
“One [step] is the discount card program. I’ll explain how it works: if you work for the company, you automatically get a 20 percent discount by just being on the team. Then we’ve got four levels of additional discounts you can get: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. [The levels] are based on four objective biomarkers that you can measure. One is whether you use tobacco in any form; we test that. If you do, that disqualifies you; you can’t have nicotine in your blood or you’re not eligible. The second is we do your best score between your BMI, and because some body builders complain about that, we also do a height to waist ratio (although most of the people that were complaining about the BMI failed the height to weight ratio, too. It helped a few people but, in general, it took away the excuse). And then [we test] cholesterol and blood pressure. We bring the labs to the stores, and I think it costs us $71 a person to go through that test.
“The best thing about it is, we had a big improvement in 2011 over 2010; a lot more people qualified for some kind of discount. I think we had 7,500 the first year, and I believe over 10,000 in 2011. Of course not everybody takes the test, but we had more participation and more people that qualified for additional discounts.
“The team members that do it are proud of it. It’s a badge of honor. I’m boasting, I am platinum, so I’m pretty proud of that, and the team members notice that when I travel around and get into one of our stores and buy something, they see it. A lot of them will tell me, ‘I’m platinum too’ or, if they qualify for their card, they talk about it.” He estimates that after the program has been in place five years there will be as many as 25,000 employees qualifying.
The second initiative, which Mackey says has had even more important results than the discount cards, is a program called Total Health Immersions. For that he’s created an Advisory Council, made up of physicians who use dietary changes to prevent and reverse heart disease, diabetes, and other life-threatening diseases brought on by obesity, high cholesterol, and other conditions resulting from foods patients eat. (See also the box on “The Nutrition Prophets”)
Whole Foods works with four different immersion programs: Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 diet, Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat To Live program, Dr. John McDougall’s program, and Eat Right America’s program. Both Engine 2 and McDougall’s programs are vegan; the others allow two or three moderate serving a week of animal foods.
Mackey is clearly proud of the results: “We’ve had over 1,200 team members go through [immersion] programs. It costs us over $3,000 per employee; we’ve invested close to $4 million in that program.
“But the results… I mean, every time I travel to the stores, I have team members come up, a lot of them with tears in their eyes, and tell me it’s completely changed their lives. We’ve had dozens of team members lose over 100 pounds in 8 or 9 months from being on the program. We’ve seen people completely not only lose weight but reverse diabetes. And they say type 2 diabetes is a disease that you can’t cure. It’s nonsense. You can cure that disease. Most of it can be cured in 30 – 90 days. People get off all their medication and normalize their blood sugar.”
The results are dramatic, but so are the dietary changes required by these immersion programs. And the changes must be permanent to keep the biomarkers normalized.
“Joel [Fuhrman] said it best,” Mackey counters. “He said, ‘people call this diet radical, but don’t you think having your chest cracked open is radical? Isn’t taking 17 prescription medications a day radical?’ This diet is not radical. It’s just eating whole foods that are mostly plants. A lot of these [doctors] have been saying this for a long time but nobody would listen to them. It’s not a message people want to hear.”
While he’s seen amazing results from employees who have had transformational experiences, he says there is still a reluctance to try it.
“At first, we had a lot of skeptical team members,” he said. “They’d say ‘well, I guess if they’re paying for it, I’ll do it.’ Or it’s easy to dismiss Rip—‘sure that guy’s a world class athlete, he’s Superman.’ But [it’s different] when you have some guy you work with who has lost 120 pounds and his cholesterol and blood pressure have plummeted and he’s gotten off all medications in less than a year and that guy is in there telling you what a difference it can make.”
According to Mackey, team members now are enrolling in the immersion programs with a better attitude and more determination.
“We’re going to open that up in 2012 to the public. Rip’s doing a public immersion right now and we’re going to open all these up to our customers because it’s such a revolutionary thing.”
The third initiative, Wellness Clubs, are completely for Whole Foods customers.
The third initiative, Wellness Clubs, are completely for Whole Foods customers. The concept is putting the ideas from immersion into a club. The price ($45 a month), is not insignificant, and Mackey immediately lists the benefits of membership. “First of all, you have unlimited classes not only on healthy eating but on exercise, on stress management, yoga, how to sleep better, and lots of cooking classes. We also give you a 10 percent discount on all of our healthiest foods, which ends up being about 5,000 items in a typical store: all of our fresh produce, fruits and vegetables, 100% grass-fed beef, some seafood, some chicken, and then all the healthy bulk foods that we sell, lots of the our Health Starts Here selection of items, and prepared foods.” The Health Starts Here foods are selected based on Fuhrman’s nutrient density scoring system, or ANDI.
The Wellness Clubs also include membership in a supper club modeled on one of Mackey’s favorite Austin restaurants, Casa de Luz. Anyone can participate, but Wellness Club members get a $5 discount on the meal.
Interestingly, Austin did not volunteer to be one of the initial pilots for the Wellness Clubs. However, the regional president of the southwest, Mark Dickson, is one of the success stories of the immersions.
“Mark is an amazing guy,” Mackey said. “But his weight had crept up to where he was pretty seriously obese. He didn’t want to go to the immersion program because he just thought he was going to fail at it. But finally, partly because I kept nagging him about it, he did the McDougall one. This was last April. I visited that immersion. In only seven days, he’d dropped 10 pounds, his blood pressure dropped 30 points, and his cholesterol dropped 40 points. He was excited because of those results, but the most important thing was he said, ‘John, I’ve stuffed myself every meal. I’ve never been hungry. I’ve loved the food. I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.’ And now, six months later, he’s lost 75 pounds. And he’s dropped all his medications. You’ll not recognize the guy. I’m thinking about calling him Slim. It’s amazing.
“So when the regional president has such amazing results, obviously that filters through the rest of the region. The Wellness Clubs with all those benefits, combined with these public health immersions, [are] the two major pillars for our educational initiatives.”
Mackey personally became a vegan eight years ago and thought he was healthy. “I just assumed that [being vegan] made me healthy. I was addicted to olive oil. As long as it was vegan, I ate a lot of junk food.” His wakeup call was a cholesterol test. “My cholesterol was 199 and I said, ‘How can it be 199? I’m a vegan.’” His blood pressure also had begun to creep up. He turned to books: first, “The China Study,” Dr. Esselstyn’s book, then Joel Fuhrman’s books, and McDougall’s. “Suddenly it all fit together. And then I watched my blood pressure plunge and my cholesterol dropped really low. So I had my personal experience with it.” He acknowledges that it takes time to improve. “I’m still on a journey. I think everyone is. I don’t think my diet’s perfect. I don’t hold it up as perfect. I’m doing a lot better now than I was a year ago, and I was better a year ago than I was two years ago.
“I don’t do any oil at home,” he said. “My wife’s on the same program so that makes it easier. But I travel more than half the time. Every time you go to a restaurant, even if you can avoid the oil, you’re still going to get a lot of salt. The chefs don’t know how to cook without oil. I say, ‘Just sauté it with water,’ and they say ‘I can’t do that.’
“This is why the obesity crisis has become what it is,” he said. “People eat more and more meals out and restaurants don’t have to list their ingredients. They use oil or butter or cream because they know that’s what sells. It’s not like it’s a plot; they’re partly meeting a big part of what the market wants. [People] want rich food because that’s what their palate has gotten used to.
“We eat an amazing amount of fried foods, potato chips, and soda. When I was a kid, Cokes were in those little six-ounce bottles. My parents didn’t let me have a Coke every day; it was a special treat, if I was good, and that did limit it right there to a certain extent. Now people buy Cokes in two-liter bottles and I’ve seen people drink one of those every single day. People are into cheese; they tend to eat cheese every day. A hundred years ago, per capita, we ate three pounds of cheese per year. Now we eat 36 pounds of cheese per person per year. And cheese is 70 to 80 percent fat, most of it saturated fat.”
Even in the face of these daunting trends, Mackey is optimistic about the prospects for turnaround both within the individual and in the American culture.
“The good news is, and that’s the hope, is that the human body can heal itself fairly quickly. I wouldn’t have predicted that, but I’ve seen it happen over and over again and I’ve experienced it myself.
As for the culture, he’s optimistic there as well. “There’s an old saying, an economist said it, and that is ‘if something doesn’t work, it will stop.’ I think people are really waking up to this issue. Don’t underestimate America’s ability to respond. We’re not dead yet. Americans are sick of being sick. People are very interested in food and we’ve reached a dead end. There are not going to be any high tech solutions.
“People fear, and rightly so, being decrepit. People are focused on their lifespan; but we want to increase our healthspan. I don’t think you ever have to be decrepit--maybe if you live to 110 or 120. We should have a long life and a long healthspan. But right now, we seem to be programmed to self-destruct; we like to put it off as long as possible.
“Here’s the good news: people could be so much healthier,” he says, buoyant in his optimism. “People think that if you’re fit, you’re healthy. Fitness is important but equally important, or more important, is what we’re putting into our bodies every single day. If people could better inform themselves and start to take their biomarkers on a regular basis, they will be able to make better choices; you’ve got to know your numbers.
A former runner, he compares biomarkers to race times. “I learned that lesson early, when Jim Fixx dropped over dead with a heart attack....They did the autopsy on him and some of his arteries were closed up 98 percent. So I actually think diet is more important than exercise.
“[Knowing your biomarkers] is kind of like a game, like ‘I’m going to run a marathon in under three hours.’ It’s the same way with your biomarkers. You want to get your cholesterol down, your blood pressure, your weight. It’s kind of fun, and if people took those numbers as seriously as they took their times, they would see their health and their vitality and their longevity increase…and,” he adds, “they’d have a happier life.”
He’s not finished with his revolutionary initiatives. Mackey said he and Whole Foods Market are working on a solution for lower income people living in “food deserts,” like the Del Valle area near Austin where there is not a grocery store.
“I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “We’ve got a very exciting idea that can make healthy foods accessible to a lot of the poorest people [in the nation]. We’re going to be doing some experiments in that regard in the next few years, but we’re not ready to talk about it yet. It’ll be ready for prime time in a year or so.”
Also what makes me very excited is CEOs of most food companies want you to eat their junk foods. Not John Mackay, even though that's where the profit is. I look forward to the day when an owner of McDonald's says "Enough, I will not feed this to my patrons."
-----------------------------------------
Visit with John Mackey for a few minutes and you first get a tutorial about backpacking, not nutrition. You’ll learn about hiking trails, ultra-light backpacking gear, and you, too, will begin referring to the Appalachian Trail (the trail that runs from Georgia to Maine), as “the AT.” The avid backpacker and Founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market was just back from a hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—a trek he “figured [he] might as well do” during the week he had between a meeting in Boston and a speech at Dartmouth.
“They describe New Hampshire as one big rock with patches of dirt,” he said. “I think that’s pretty accurate. Still, it’s got the most spectacular views of any place on the AT.” He’s hiked the AT twice and in the past nine years has hiked a total of more than 10,000 miles.
“Generally on the AT, I average about two miles an hour and that includes breaks,” he said, describing the more difficult conditions in the White Mountains. “There, we were averaging about 1.2 miles per hour; it’s so rugged.” He hikes with ultra-light gear totaling 15 pounds, including food and water. “You’d be surprised how much more enjoyable it is when you’re packed really light. Not only can you do more miles, but they’re more pleasurable miles because you’re not always thinking ‘when’s the next break so I can get this pack off my back?’”
His favorite trails are in the United States. “The most beautiful trail I’ve done is the Pacific Crest Trail that goes from Mexico to Canada up through the Sierras and the Cascades,” he said. “There’s a trail they call the John Muir Trail; the Pacific Crest Trail and the John Muir Trail share 192 miles, and that is so beautiful. You do three national parks—Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite. You’re up over 10,000 feet for most of the hike. It’s just spectacular. I’d also say the Colorado Trail is beautiful. There are unmatched backpacking opportunities in the United States.”
While he can talk trails and gear, technical hikes and elevation like an expert, it’s not long before he moves the conversation to his passion: whole food nutrition and how diseases can be prevented and reversed with a healthy diet.
“What surprised me, and I just think it’s the most exciting news in the world, [is] the human body really wants to be healthy and it’s far more resilient than I realized,” he said. “That people are able so quickly to get off all these medications, to lose weight so quickly, to have their cholesterol drop. We have so many stories.” Mackey is sharing the fruits of his “intellectual binge” (reading voraciously about nutrient values of foods and how the human body is impacted by everything one eats).
“I want to create a culture of wellness at Whole Foods,” he said, explaining the incentive-based programs for Whole Foods employees to monitor their biomarkers for improvement with vigilance. “We’re going to make these programs available to the public,” he said.
“Here are the gruesome facts,” he said. “Two thirds of Americans are overweight. Over half of those are obese, and the trend lines are horrible. The obesity rate’s doubled in the last 30 years. If I showed you on a state-by-state basis over the last 40 years, it’s just horrible. And our children are now obese. Americans are killing themselves. We spend 80 percent of our healthcare dollars on diseases nobody should ever have. No one should ever get (type 2) diabetes. We’re doing it to ourselves out of ignorance and, mostly, out of food addictions. We get addicted to sugar. We get addicted to fat. We get addicted to salt. I might make the case we get addicted to high inputs of protein as well.
“There’s not going to be a vaccination for cancer. There’s not going to be a pill you can take to prevent heart disease. We do all these high-tech interventions on people,” he said, pointing out that 10 percent of Medicare expenses go to putting heart stints into people with heart disease. “These are radical interventions we’re doing for people that don’t fundamentally work. You’ve got to protect yourself.”
He’s putting his money where his mouth is, providing generous incentives for employees who take the responsibility to monitor their bodies and their biomarkers and work toward improvement. He says getting discipline in one aspect of your life (diet or exercise, for example) leads to improvement in other areas and to a continuum of improvement that he calls “the virtuous circle.”
While he’s careful to point out that with 62,000 employees at Whole Foods, it will take a while to fully realize the “culture of wellness,” he identifies three key initiatives that are significant steps in that direction.
“One [step] is the discount card program. I’ll explain how it works: if you work for the company, you automatically get a 20 percent discount by just being on the team. Then we’ve got four levels of additional discounts you can get: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. [The levels] are based on four objective biomarkers that you can measure. One is whether you use tobacco in any form; we test that. If you do, that disqualifies you; you can’t have nicotine in your blood or you’re not eligible. The second is we do your best score between your BMI, and because some body builders complain about that, we also do a height to waist ratio (although most of the people that were complaining about the BMI failed the height to weight ratio, too. It helped a few people but, in general, it took away the excuse). And then [we test] cholesterol and blood pressure. We bring the labs to the stores, and I think it costs us $71 a person to go through that test.
“The best thing about it is, we had a big improvement in 2011 over 2010; a lot more people qualified for some kind of discount. I think we had 7,500 the first year, and I believe over 10,000 in 2011. Of course not everybody takes the test, but we had more participation and more people that qualified for additional discounts.
“The team members that do it are proud of it. It’s a badge of honor. I’m boasting, I am platinum, so I’m pretty proud of that, and the team members notice that when I travel around and get into one of our stores and buy something, they see it. A lot of them will tell me, ‘I’m platinum too’ or, if they qualify for their card, they talk about it.” He estimates that after the program has been in place five years there will be as many as 25,000 employees qualifying.
The second initiative, which Mackey says has had even more important results than the discount cards, is a program called Total Health Immersions. For that he’s created an Advisory Council, made up of physicians who use dietary changes to prevent and reverse heart disease, diabetes, and other life-threatening diseases brought on by obesity, high cholesterol, and other conditions resulting from foods patients eat. (See also the box on “The Nutrition Prophets”)
Whole Foods works with four different immersion programs: Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 diet, Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat To Live program, Dr. John McDougall’s program, and Eat Right America’s program. Both Engine 2 and McDougall’s programs are vegan; the others allow two or three moderate serving a week of animal foods.
Mackey is clearly proud of the results: “We’ve had over 1,200 team members go through [immersion] programs. It costs us over $3,000 per employee; we’ve invested close to $4 million in that program.
“But the results… I mean, every time I travel to the stores, I have team members come up, a lot of them with tears in their eyes, and tell me it’s completely changed their lives. We’ve had dozens of team members lose over 100 pounds in 8 or 9 months from being on the program. We’ve seen people completely not only lose weight but reverse diabetes. And they say type 2 diabetes is a disease that you can’t cure. It’s nonsense. You can cure that disease. Most of it can be cured in 30 – 90 days. People get off all their medication and normalize their blood sugar.”
The results are dramatic, but so are the dietary changes required by these immersion programs. And the changes must be permanent to keep the biomarkers normalized.
“Joel [Fuhrman] said it best,” Mackey counters. “He said, ‘people call this diet radical, but don’t you think having your chest cracked open is radical? Isn’t taking 17 prescription medications a day radical?’ This diet is not radical. It’s just eating whole foods that are mostly plants. A lot of these [doctors] have been saying this for a long time but nobody would listen to them. It’s not a message people want to hear.”
While he’s seen amazing results from employees who have had transformational experiences, he says there is still a reluctance to try it.
“At first, we had a lot of skeptical team members,” he said. “They’d say ‘well, I guess if they’re paying for it, I’ll do it.’ Or it’s easy to dismiss Rip—‘sure that guy’s a world class athlete, he’s Superman.’ But [it’s different] when you have some guy you work with who has lost 120 pounds and his cholesterol and blood pressure have plummeted and he’s gotten off all medications in less than a year and that guy is in there telling you what a difference it can make.”
According to Mackey, team members now are enrolling in the immersion programs with a better attitude and more determination.
“We’re going to open that up in 2012 to the public. Rip’s doing a public immersion right now and we’re going to open all these up to our customers because it’s such a revolutionary thing.”
The third initiative, Wellness Clubs, are completely for Whole Foods customers.
The third initiative, Wellness Clubs, are completely for Whole Foods customers. The concept is putting the ideas from immersion into a club. The price ($45 a month), is not insignificant, and Mackey immediately lists the benefits of membership. “First of all, you have unlimited classes not only on healthy eating but on exercise, on stress management, yoga, how to sleep better, and lots of cooking classes. We also give you a 10 percent discount on all of our healthiest foods, which ends up being about 5,000 items in a typical store: all of our fresh produce, fruits and vegetables, 100% grass-fed beef, some seafood, some chicken, and then all the healthy bulk foods that we sell, lots of the our Health Starts Here selection of items, and prepared foods.” The Health Starts Here foods are selected based on Fuhrman’s nutrient density scoring system, or ANDI.
The Wellness Clubs also include membership in a supper club modeled on one of Mackey’s favorite Austin restaurants, Casa de Luz. Anyone can participate, but Wellness Club members get a $5 discount on the meal.
Interestingly, Austin did not volunteer to be one of the initial pilots for the Wellness Clubs. However, the regional president of the southwest, Mark Dickson, is one of the success stories of the immersions.
“Mark is an amazing guy,” Mackey said. “But his weight had crept up to where he was pretty seriously obese. He didn’t want to go to the immersion program because he just thought he was going to fail at it. But finally, partly because I kept nagging him about it, he did the McDougall one. This was last April. I visited that immersion. In only seven days, he’d dropped 10 pounds, his blood pressure dropped 30 points, and his cholesterol dropped 40 points. He was excited because of those results, but the most important thing was he said, ‘John, I’ve stuffed myself every meal. I’ve never been hungry. I’ve loved the food. I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.’ And now, six months later, he’s lost 75 pounds. And he’s dropped all his medications. You’ll not recognize the guy. I’m thinking about calling him Slim. It’s amazing.
“So when the regional president has such amazing results, obviously that filters through the rest of the region. The Wellness Clubs with all those benefits, combined with these public health immersions, [are] the two major pillars for our educational initiatives.”
Mackey personally became a vegan eight years ago and thought he was healthy. “I just assumed that [being vegan] made me healthy. I was addicted to olive oil. As long as it was vegan, I ate a lot of junk food.” His wakeup call was a cholesterol test. “My cholesterol was 199 and I said, ‘How can it be 199? I’m a vegan.’” His blood pressure also had begun to creep up. He turned to books: first, “The China Study,” Dr. Esselstyn’s book, then Joel Fuhrman’s books, and McDougall’s. “Suddenly it all fit together. And then I watched my blood pressure plunge and my cholesterol dropped really low. So I had my personal experience with it.” He acknowledges that it takes time to improve. “I’m still on a journey. I think everyone is. I don’t think my diet’s perfect. I don’t hold it up as perfect. I’m doing a lot better now than I was a year ago, and I was better a year ago than I was two years ago.
“I don’t do any oil at home,” he said. “My wife’s on the same program so that makes it easier. But I travel more than half the time. Every time you go to a restaurant, even if you can avoid the oil, you’re still going to get a lot of salt. The chefs don’t know how to cook without oil. I say, ‘Just sauté it with water,’ and they say ‘I can’t do that.’
“This is why the obesity crisis has become what it is,” he said. “People eat more and more meals out and restaurants don’t have to list their ingredients. They use oil or butter or cream because they know that’s what sells. It’s not like it’s a plot; they’re partly meeting a big part of what the market wants. [People] want rich food because that’s what their palate has gotten used to.
“We eat an amazing amount of fried foods, potato chips, and soda. When I was a kid, Cokes were in those little six-ounce bottles. My parents didn’t let me have a Coke every day; it was a special treat, if I was good, and that did limit it right there to a certain extent. Now people buy Cokes in two-liter bottles and I’ve seen people drink one of those every single day. People are into cheese; they tend to eat cheese every day. A hundred years ago, per capita, we ate three pounds of cheese per year. Now we eat 36 pounds of cheese per person per year. And cheese is 70 to 80 percent fat, most of it saturated fat.”
Even in the face of these daunting trends, Mackey is optimistic about the prospects for turnaround both within the individual and in the American culture.
“The good news is, and that’s the hope, is that the human body can heal itself fairly quickly. I wouldn’t have predicted that, but I’ve seen it happen over and over again and I’ve experienced it myself.
As for the culture, he’s optimistic there as well. “There’s an old saying, an economist said it, and that is ‘if something doesn’t work, it will stop.’ I think people are really waking up to this issue. Don’t underestimate America’s ability to respond. We’re not dead yet. Americans are sick of being sick. People are very interested in food and we’ve reached a dead end. There are not going to be any high tech solutions.
“People fear, and rightly so, being decrepit. People are focused on their lifespan; but we want to increase our healthspan. I don’t think you ever have to be decrepit--maybe if you live to 110 or 120. We should have a long life and a long healthspan. But right now, we seem to be programmed to self-destruct; we like to put it off as long as possible.
“Here’s the good news: people could be so much healthier,” he says, buoyant in his optimism. “People think that if you’re fit, you’re healthy. Fitness is important but equally important, or more important, is what we’re putting into our bodies every single day. If people could better inform themselves and start to take their biomarkers on a regular basis, they will be able to make better choices; you’ve got to know your numbers.
A former runner, he compares biomarkers to race times. “I learned that lesson early, when Jim Fixx dropped over dead with a heart attack....They did the autopsy on him and some of his arteries were closed up 98 percent. So I actually think diet is more important than exercise.
“[Knowing your biomarkers] is kind of like a game, like ‘I’m going to run a marathon in under three hours.’ It’s the same way with your biomarkers. You want to get your cholesterol down, your blood pressure, your weight. It’s kind of fun, and if people took those numbers as seriously as they took their times, they would see their health and their vitality and their longevity increase…and,” he adds, “they’d have a happier life.”
He’s not finished with his revolutionary initiatives. Mackey said he and Whole Foods Market are working on a solution for lower income people living in “food deserts,” like the Del Valle area near Austin where there is not a grocery store.
“I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “We’ve got a very exciting idea that can make healthy foods accessible to a lot of the poorest people [in the nation]. We’re going to be doing some experiments in that regard in the next few years, but we’re not ready to talk about it yet. It’ll be ready for prime time in a year or so.”
Friday, November 25, 2011
Leo Tolstoy--The First Step
Not long ago I had a talk with a retired soldier, a butcher, and he was surprised at my assertion that it was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about it's being ordained. But afterwards he agreed with me: `Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things! trusting you. It is very pitiful.'
This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that a man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity -- that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself -- and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!
Once, when walking from Moscow, I was offered a lift by some carters who were going to Serpukhov to a neighbouring forest to fetch wood. It was Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart with a strong, red, coarse cartman, who evidently drank. On entering a village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered. It squealed in a dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig squealed still more loudly and piercingly, broke away from the men, and ran off covered with blood.
Being near-sighted I did not see all the details. I saw only the human-looking pink body of the pig and heard its desperate squeal, but the carter saw all the details and watched closely. They caught the pig, knocked it down, and finished cutting its throat. When its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. `Do men really not have to answer for such things?' he said.
So strong is humanity's aversion to all killing. But by example, by encouraging greediness, by the assertion that God has allowed it, and above all by habit, people entirely lose this natural feeling.
I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order of good actions is indispensable; that if a man's aspirations toward right living be serious they will inevitably follow one definite sequence; and that in this sequence the first virtue a man will strive after will be self-control, self-restraint. And in seeking for self-control a man will inevitably follow one definite sequence, and it this sequence the first thing will be self-control of food. And if he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling -- killing.
"But why, if the wrongfulness of animal food was known to humanity so long ago, have people not yet come to acknowledge this law?" will be asked by those who are accustomed to be led by public opinion rather by reason. The answer to this question is that the moral progress of humanity -- which is the foundation of every other kind of progress -- is always slow; but that the sign of true, not casual, progress is its uninterruptedness and its continual acceleration.
And the progress of vegetarianism is of this kind. That progress is expressed in the actual life of mankind, which from many causes is involuntarily passing more and more from carnivorous habits to vegetable food, and is also deliberately following the same path in a movement which shows evident strength, and which is growing larger and larger -- viz. vegetarianism. That movement has during the last ten years advanced more and more rapidly. More and more books and periodicals on this subject appear every year; one meets more and more people who have given up meat; and abroad, especially Germany, England, and America, the number of vegetarian hotels and restaurants increases year by year.
This movement should cause special joy to those whose life lies in the effort to bring about the kingdom of God on earth, not because vegetarianism is in itself an important step towards that kingdom (all true steps are both important and unimportant), but because it is a sign that the aspiration of mankind towards moral perfection is serious and sincere, for it has taken the one unalterable order of succession natural to it, beginning with the first step.
One cannot fail to rejoice at this, as people could not fail to rejoice who, after striving to reach the upper story of a house by trying vainly and at random to climb the walls from different points, should at last assemble at the first step of the staircase and crowd towards it, convinced that there can be no way up except by mounting this first step of stairs.
Connecting Google Calendar to Maps
I use Google Calendar everyday. All appointments go there, and whatever else I need to be reminded of. A few of the reasons why I like Google Calendar is that not only are all my appointments stored there, but if I ever need to find someone or something, I can just type in a "keyword" in the "search" box and anything with that word in in will pop up.
Also, if I want to move an appt around, all I do is click on it and move it. And I like being able to view my calendar from either a day's, week's or month's perspective.
Here's how Calendar is good for my business. When I'm on the road (I do AC and appliance repair) I can just touch the customer's phone number in my calendar and it will dial for me.
But here's something else I figured out how to do and this is really a cool feature. (Too bad Google doesn't automatically offer this.) Let's say I have to go to your house and fix a clothes dryer. Now I can go to your appointment in my calendar and click on this link and it will give me a map to your house.
And here's how I do it. Once you learn this, it becomes yours too. (And it might seem complicated but it's not.)
1. Go to Google Maps and enter in the address, then press "Enter"
2. Google Maps will then display a map of that address. In the upper right hand corner of that web page, you'll see a picture of a link. It's kind of small, but there will be 3 boxes next to each other, and the one on the right is the box with the link. Click on that link with your mouse.
3. Highlighted in blue is the link that you want to copy. Hover your mouse over the highlighed link, right click your mouse and then press "Copy". (You now have that link saved on your clipboard.)
4. Go to you appointment in Calandar, and in the box that says "description", paste in the link saved to your clipboard. How you do that is by going to the "Description" box, left clicking your mouse inside the box, then right clicking your mouse and then click "paste" to put the link in the "Description" box.
Then, when it's time to go to the appt, just click on the link in the box and a map will display showing you where you need to go. Sounds complicated, but do it a couple of times and it will become easy.
Also, if I want to move an appt around, all I do is click on it and move it. And I like being able to view my calendar from either a day's, week's or month's perspective.
Here's how Calendar is good for my business. When I'm on the road (I do AC and appliance repair) I can just touch the customer's phone number in my calendar and it will dial for me.
But here's something else I figured out how to do and this is really a cool feature. (Too bad Google doesn't automatically offer this.) Let's say I have to go to your house and fix a clothes dryer. Now I can go to your appointment in my calendar and click on this link and it will give me a map to your house.
And here's how I do it. Once you learn this, it becomes yours too. (And it might seem complicated but it's not.)
1. Go to Google Maps and enter in the address, then press "Enter"
2. Google Maps will then display a map of that address. In the upper right hand corner of that web page, you'll see a picture of a link. It's kind of small, but there will be 3 boxes next to each other, and the one on the right is the box with the link. Click on that link with your mouse.
3. Highlighted in blue is the link that you want to copy. Hover your mouse over the highlighed link, right click your mouse and then press "Copy". (You now have that link saved on your clipboard.)
4. Go to you appointment in Calandar, and in the box that says "description", paste in the link saved to your clipboard. How you do that is by going to the "Description" box, left clicking your mouse inside the box, then right clicking your mouse and then click "paste" to put the link in the "Description" box.
Then, when it's time to go to the appt, just click on the link in the box and a map will display showing you where you need to go. Sounds complicated, but do it a couple of times and it will become easy.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Fasting for 6 Weeks
Happy Thanksgiving.
This is a book about fasting. It's a fascinating read, and it's free.
If fasting might seem like a taboo subject, or not mentally stimulating, I assure you this book you will find compelling.
This book is not only about the act of fasting, but a look at our medical complex and how this man, a doctor himself, overcame his own misbeliefs and saved his life.
This is a book about fasting. It's a fascinating read, and it's free.
If fasting might seem like a taboo subject, or not mentally stimulating, I assure you this book you will find compelling.
This book is not only about the act of fasting, but a look at our medical complex and how this man, a doctor himself, overcame his own misbeliefs and saved his life.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Obama Voter, OWS Protester
This is the quintessential Obama supporter:
To go along with the quintessential OWS protestor:
Do you see any similarities?
BTW, I had to go back in and add this last paragraph. And I do mean this sincerely, not tongue in cheek. No, when I say similarities, I don't mean because they are both black.
To go along with the quintessential OWS protestor:
Do you see any similarities?
BTW, I had to go back in and add this last paragraph. And I do mean this sincerely, not tongue in cheek. No, when I say similarities, I don't mean because they are both black.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Playing With The Neighbors' Kids
Today I lost a dollar. I bet the kid across the street that a race to the white van I would beat him. The odds were in my favor. I have a Harley 1200 Sportster and he's on a skateboard. He won.
I like playing with these kids. They're fun and like to play. I get a chance to be a kid too. I have a movie theatre type popcorn machine and the other day I brought it outside and cooked up a whole bottle of popcorn. All the kids tell me now is when am I going to make popcorn again.
But here's the problem and this is what this post is about. Though I get along well with all the parents of the kids that I know, in the back of my mind I can't help but think that they think I might be a pervert. It's not natural for an 'ol geezer to have fun with kids. Besides the parents kids, no other adult would even think of actually coming out to play with the kids. I am definitely an exception to the rule.
And in our state of what I would call "hyper-sensitivity", I would think that most people, even if they would like to spend time with the kids, probably say why bother, I'll just be labeled as some kind of freak.
So yeah, that does go through the back of my mind, and I'm very careful on my bounds around the kids. It'd be easier to just say screw it, and not bother. But I'm robbing myself of the joys of being around these great kids, and I know when I was a kid, I always loved to hang out with the adult.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
A Case For Home Gym
Let's say a goal would be to work out 2% of the day. Rounded off, that's 30 minutes/day of exercise. My guess is that more than 95% of us do not do this on a daily basis.
So, what about joining the 1% club? Fifteen minutes per day of exercise rounds off to 1% of our day devoted to exercise. (Add a few minutes because we think about it too;)
So if we made it a goal to be part of the 1% exercise club, the reality is, it's not worth our time to drive all the way to the gym to exercise for only 15 minutes. It'd be a waste of gas and time going to and fro.
So get on over to Craigslist and buy a piece of gym equipment that we'll use in the house for a limited time each day. It'll add up and our body will thank us.
So, what about joining the 1% club? Fifteen minutes per day of exercise rounds off to 1% of our day devoted to exercise. (Add a few minutes because we think about it too;)
So if we made it a goal to be part of the 1% exercise club, the reality is, it's not worth our time to drive all the way to the gym to exercise for only 15 minutes. It'd be a waste of gas and time going to and fro.
So get on over to Craigslist and buy a piece of gym equipment that we'll use in the house for a limited time each day. It'll add up and our body will thank us.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Dwolla and Google Takeout
This post should actually be 2 posts, but since they're both computer related, here you go.
This first link is about a company called Dwolla. It's only a 2 year old company that charges a quarter to move money, no matter how small or large the transaction. If Dwolla is successful, though you may not of heard of it now, we will be using it in the future in our everyday lives.
This from PC Mech A complaint I’ve had for a good long time concerning any web site where you post anything be it status updates, photos or the like is that there is no way to go to a specific part of the site, hit a button and download a copy of everything in your account for archive purposes.
Fortunately, Google has stepped up to the plate and truly does have a 1-click download-everything way to backup a bunch of your stuff. Not everything, but it’s better than nothing.
The super-easy backup Google offers is called Google Takeout.
This first link is about a company called Dwolla. It's only a 2 year old company that charges a quarter to move money, no matter how small or large the transaction. If Dwolla is successful, though you may not of heard of it now, we will be using it in the future in our everyday lives.
This from PC Mech A complaint I’ve had for a good long time concerning any web site where you post anything be it status updates, photos or the like is that there is no way to go to a specific part of the site, hit a button and download a copy of everything in your account for archive purposes.
Fortunately, Google has stepped up to the plate and truly does have a 1-click download-everything way to backup a bunch of your stuff. Not everything, but it’s better than nothing.
The super-easy backup Google offers is called Google Takeout.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Facebook Business Page
I've just created a Facebook (FB) business page for my appliance, ac and heating business. And I'm excited about it.
Here's why:
My customers can go to their FB page and if they have "liked" my FB business page, whenever I post they will see it on their wall. Since I operate my business out of my home instead of an actual storefront, this is the best home I've ever found for my business.
#2. I don't have to worry about emails and bother my customers with mass emails. While this would most likely engender antipathy, posting compelling ideas on my FB page creates interest. I stay in front of the customer and the customer knows where to find me if he or his friends need appliance/heating/ac service.
BTW, if you "like" me on my FB business page, I'd be grateful.
America Lazy
During a weekend trip to Hawaii to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, President Obama had some tough words for his own country. “We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades,” he said.
That didn’t sit well with Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who fired back on Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel. According to Krauthammer, Obama is willing to point out everyone’s shortcomings except his own.
“No one is asking him to go out there and to be a jingoistic cheerleader,” Krauthammer said. “But when you call your own country ‘lazy’ when you are abroad, and call it ‘unambitious and soft’ when you are home, I think what you are showing is not tough love, but ill-conceived, ill-concealed contempt.”
Krauthammer then blamed Obama, rather than the American people, for the poor state of the economy.
“Look: Why are people reluctant to invest?” he asked. “We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world — in the industrialized world. Obama has spoken about it. It’s the one issue on which the Republicans would have agreed on lowering that rate, eliminating the loopholes. And in three years in office, he has done nothing.”
Krauthamer also directed blame toward the National Labor Relations Board, charging the agency with “trying to shut down a $1 billion plant that was constructed as a favor to Obama union allies.”
“People look abroad and say, ‘This isn’t a place I want to do business,’” Krauthammer huffed. ”It’s his issues, his overregulation, over-taxation and all the red tape he has added. And now he blames Americans’ laziness? I think it’s unseemly.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/14/krauthammer-rips-obamas-ill-conceived-concealed-contempt-for-u-s-its-unseemly/#ixzz1doyh6w7E
Monday, November 14, 2011
Little Genius or Just Smart
This kid develops apps for the iPad. Here he is giving a talk at a TED conference.
My Diet
Here's a video by Jeff Novick, one of my favorite guys, about reading food labels. Now I know you'd think reading a food label is boring, but I challenge you to watch this and not have your jaw drop.
In my nutritional journey it has taken a lot of zigs and zags. I started thinking about foods that I eat in its relationship to health around my later twenties. Nutrition or what I eat is definitely a fundamental part of my life.
Here's where I'm at presently in my diet. I abstain from alcohol. Also I don't eat any animal products. This means steak, chicken, pork, fish, milk, ice cream, cheese and yogurt. Also I'm avoiding most processed foods--chips, white breads, cookies, candy, white rice, carbonated drinks--you get the idea.
Now I'm learning about the deleterious effects of salt. I've always been borderline hypertensive, at least for the last 30 years. I've pretty much kept it under the 140/90 range of what is then considered high blood pressure. Even though I've read and heard many times about salt's ill effects, I've only now taken it to heart.
Here are some of the facts that I have read: Our recommended intake is about a teaspoon per day, which is 2300-2400 milligrams. Or 2.3 to 2.4 grams. The average American gets 3500 milligrams, and for some it's much higher than that. Our actual requirements for sodium is 350-400 milligrams/day, so says the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Institute of Health. That means we're getting 10Xs the sodium per day that we need.
By watching Jeff Novick and his videos, he recommends that when one is buying a food product, look at the ingredients, and not have the sodium number higher than the calorie number. In other words, if the calorie content per serving is 250 calories, the sodium content should not be over 250 milligrams. If you adopt that as your standard, there will be a lot of food tossed.
I thought being vegan was radical. Try eating a low sodium diet, now that's radical. What I'm finding is that I'm being drawn to eating not only more whole foods, but fresh whole foods. Look at a can of tomato sauce and look at the amount of sodium. And remember, that's only what they call one serving. And listen, I'm not even thinking of going organic. I don't even want to see a movie about that;)
In my nutritional journey it has taken a lot of zigs and zags. I started thinking about foods that I eat in its relationship to health around my later twenties. Nutrition or what I eat is definitely a fundamental part of my life.
Here's where I'm at presently in my diet. I abstain from alcohol. Also I don't eat any animal products. This means steak, chicken, pork, fish, milk, ice cream, cheese and yogurt. Also I'm avoiding most processed foods--chips, white breads, cookies, candy, white rice, carbonated drinks--you get the idea.
Now I'm learning about the deleterious effects of salt. I've always been borderline hypertensive, at least for the last 30 years. I've pretty much kept it under the 140/90 range of what is then considered high blood pressure. Even though I've read and heard many times about salt's ill effects, I've only now taken it to heart.
Here are some of the facts that I have read: Our recommended intake is about a teaspoon per day, which is 2300-2400 milligrams. Or 2.3 to 2.4 grams. The average American gets 3500 milligrams, and for some it's much higher than that. Our actual requirements for sodium is 350-400 milligrams/day, so says the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Institute of Health. That means we're getting 10Xs the sodium per day that we need.
By watching Jeff Novick and his videos, he recommends that when one is buying a food product, look at the ingredients, and not have the sodium number higher than the calorie number. In other words, if the calorie content per serving is 250 calories, the sodium content should not be over 250 milligrams. If you adopt that as your standard, there will be a lot of food tossed.
I thought being vegan was radical. Try eating a low sodium diet, now that's radical. What I'm finding is that I'm being drawn to eating not only more whole foods, but fresh whole foods. Look at a can of tomato sauce and look at the amount of sodium. And remember, that's only what they call one serving. And listen, I'm not even thinking of going organic. I don't even want to see a movie about that;)
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
India Skyscrapers Sewage
Friday, November 4, 2011
Veg Source Beginning
I've gone to this expo around six, seven times. These people are responsible for changing my life. Not changing my life is some small way, but in ways I could never have dreamed of. And as the years pass I daily give thanks to this door that's been opened to me. Though the vegsource people know me only in passing, their influence on my life can never be diminished.
The video is Jeff's opening talk at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo--it's a wonderful video. Below is an email I sent to Jeff after watching the video.
Wonderful video Jeff, it brought tears. I really enjoyed learning the genesis of vegsource. No doubt you folks have change my life in a most wonderful way. I'll be posting this on my blog.
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