Robyn O’Brien is the co-founder of rePlant Capital, an impact investment firm, deploying integrated capital from soil to shelf in order to build soil health and financial resiliency for farmers. She is also the founder of Do Good, a strategic advisory firm, and the AllergyKids Foundation. Random House published Robyn’s book, The Unhealthy Truth, in 2009, and her TEDx talks have been translated into dozens of languages and viewed by millions around the world.
Meet Rick Friday, a cartoonist who was just fired for highlighting the fact that in 2015, the CEOs of Monsanto, Dupont Pioneer, and John Deere made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers
According to KCCI, Des Moines, Iowa, “Rick Friday has been giving farmers a voice and a laugh every Friday for two decades through his cartoons in Farm News.” But after publishing a popular cartoon last week, he was fired, for calling attention to how much the CEOs of Monsanto and Dupont are paid.
As he shared on his Facebook wall,
“Again, I fall hard in the best interest of large corporations. I am no longer the Editorial Cartoonist for Farm News due to the attached cartoon which was published yesterday. Apparently a large company affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned in the cartoon was insulted and cancelled their advertisement with the paper, thus, resulting in the reprimand of my editor and cancellation of It’s Friday cartoons after 21 years of service and over 1090 published cartoons to over 24,000 households per week in 33 counties of Iowa.
I did my research and only submitted the facts in my cartoon.
That’s okay, hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country.”
He only submitted facts in his cartoon. But apparently, even facts aren’t allowed in the free press, and Rick was fired. According to KCCI, Friday received an email from his editor at Farm New cutting off their relationship a day after the cartoon was published.
If these companies didn’t want anyone to see this message, they sure chose the wrong way to handle this.
We think Rick Friday is a hero. Please share so that others can see his story and scoop up this amazing talent.
Today, a life threatening allergic reaction to food sends someone to the emergency room in the United States once every six minutes. EpiPen is now a $1 billion brand.
Today, one in eleven children struggle with asthma, and one in four are affected by allergies. The incidence of allergy has increased significantly over the past two decades, and allergy to peanuts has more than quadrupled from 1997 to 2010. Approximately 30 million children – more than 1/3 of our kids – are affected by one of these four new childhood epidemics. This is not something we can just accept.
An official statistic held that allergies affect some 7 million Americans, including about 6 percent of children below the age of three. That information came courtesy of U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Lester M. Crawford, J., D.V.M., Ph.D., speaking before the Consumer Federation of America on April 22, 2002. But that data is now over ten years old.
Today, it is now estimated that up to 15 million Americans have food allergies, 1 in every 13 children. That’s roughly two in every classroom.
The Centers for Disease Control also issued a report in 2008 that said that there has been a 265% increase in the rate of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions over the prior ten year period.
This begs explanation
An allergy is basically an overreaction by your immune system to a protein that it perceives as a threat—for example, the proteins in particular types of food, the dust mite protein, or pollen. For people without allergies, these proteins are harmless. But if you’ve got an allergy, your immune system sees these proteins as dangerous invaders.
To drive the invader out, your immune system mobilizes all its resources: mucous, to flush out the intruder; vomiting, to force it out; diarrhea, to expel it quickly. Such conditions may make you feel sick, but they’re actually evidence of your body’s attempts to get well.
A key aspect of the immune response is known as inflammation, characterized by one or more of four classic symptoms: redness, heat, swelling, and pain. Inflammation doesn’t occur only in allergic reactions; it flares up whenever your body feels threatened, in response to a bruise, cut, bacteria, or virus as well as to otherwise harmless pollen, dust, or food. Scientists now believe that much of our immune system is found in our digestive tracts, where many of these inflammatory reactions occur in the form of stomachaches, cramping, nausea, bloating, and vomiting.
Ironically, the immune system’s inflammatory reaction—meant to heal and protect the body—often causes more problems than the initial “invader” in the cases when allergic reactions become life-threatening.
Common Symptoms of Food Allergy: Immediate Reactions
rash or hives
nausea
stomach pain
diarrhea
itchy skin
eczema
shortness of breath
chest pain
swelling of the airways to the lungs
anaphylaxis
Food Allergies and Food Sensitivity: Our Immune System Overreacts Again
At first glance, the distinction between “allergies” and “sensitivity” may seem like a meaningless word game. But understanding the relationship between these two conditions is crucial to grasping the true nature of the allergy epidemic—and to seeing how even the supposedly healthy foods in our kitchens may be harmful to our health.
As we’ve seen, allergies are an overreaction of our immune system, a kind of exaggerated response to a perceived danger. When a child comes in contact with these proteins (peanut, egg, wheat, etc.) her immune system “recognizes” the protein as dangerous, just as it would have seen the danger in the bacterium that causes pneumonia or the virus that causes mumps. In response, her immune system creates special “fighter” proteins called antibodies designed to identify and neutralize the “invader.”
These fighter proteins are known as immunoglobulin E, or IgE for short. When they’re released into the bloodstream, their purpose is to “seek and destroy” the invader, which they do by creating one or more of the classic food allergy symptoms, such as the hives, or the diarrhea with which other children respond, or, in more extreme cases, the anaphylactic shock that can kill a child within minutes.
The classic IgE response occurs within minutes or even seconds, because IgE proteins are some of the most aggressive antibodies we know. That immediate IgE response is the defining characteristic of an allergic reaction.
Food sensitivities start out in a similar way. If a “sensitive” child is exposed to a protein that his system perceives as a threat, he’ll manufacture another type of fighter protein, known as Immunglobulin G, or IgG. Although IgE and IgG antibodies play similar roles, they produce somewhat different—though often overlapping—symptoms.
A crucial difference between the two, though, is their reaction time. The less aggressive IgG antibodies typically produce a delayed response that might not appear for hours or even days after the child has consumed the offending food.
So even though food sensitivities and food allergies both produce painful, inflammatory, and potentially dangerous responses, this delayed reaction time has led many doctors to give food sensitivities second-class status. Partly that’s because they don’t present an immediate and obvious threat to children’s lives: only the IgE proteins trigger anaphylactic shock, for example, and in that sense, only the IgE proteins can kill (though the IgG reaction can have serious long-term consequences). I also think that traditional doctors tend to downplay the importance of nutrition, frequently dismissing the idea that such symptoms as earache, eczema, crankiness, brain fog, and sleep problems might be related to a child’s diet.
However, an article in The Lancet, Britain’s most respected medical journal, casts another light on the subject. The article referred to doctors who use elimination diets—diets that begin with a very limited, “safe” array of food choices and then add potentially problematic foods back into the diet, one by one.
The reason to do an elimination diet is to identify which foods in your diet might be triggering symptoms like skin rashes, fatigue, or stomach ache. Often, some foods affect us without our realizing it and we live with the symptoms, taking medicine to alleviate the suffering. But if you eliminate these foods from your diet, you may find that your symptoms disappear. What becomes even more interesting is that when you reintroduce the offending food, you may suddenly suffer drastic symptoms which make it clear that the food was indeed triggering one or more problems. An elimination diet can sometimes reveal with dramatic speed that a particular food you’ve always believed was harmless is actually causing such chronic symptoms as headache, digestive problems, and even more serious complaints. Masked by your daily diet and by the slowness of the food-sensitivity reaction, the offending food does its dirty work without ever realizing that it is the culprit behind your—or your child’s—disorders.
When you take a break from eating that problem food, however, and then add it back into your diet, you see how powerful its effects are and how responsible it may be for a seemingly unrelated problem. Foods that you thought were safe for you turn out to be highly problematic, indicating the presence of a previous undiagnosed food sensitivity. As a result, the authors of the Lancet article conclude that the prevalence of food sensitivity (referred to in the article as “food intolerance”) has been seriously underestimated.
Certainly, food allergies are far more dramatic. Whenever you read about a kid who died within minutes of eating at a fast-food joint or after breathing in the peanut dust from a friend’s candy wrapper, that’s an “IgE-mediated” food allergy. They’re fast, they can be deadly, and I’m glad doctors want to give them the attention they deserve.
But I also think doctors should be looking at delayed reactions, too, the “IgG-mediated” responses to food sensitivities. And some doctors do look seriously at both. Most conventional doctors, though, tend to focus on IgE immediate reactions. I think there are lots of reasons why they should view the two types of reactions as part of a larger, single problem.
First, both reactions have the same ultimate cause: the immune system’s overreaction to apparently harmless food. According to internationally acclaimed author and physician Kenneth Bock, M.D., there’s also quite a bit of overlap between IgE and IgG symptoms. Both can contribute to inflammatory responses in multiple body systems.
True, the delayed IgG reactions are less likely to cause hives and are more likely to produce a host of apparently vague symptoms, such as headache, brain fog, sleep problems, joint pain, fatigue, and muscle aches. But both the immediate and the delayed responses are immune system problems triggered by a supposedly “harmless” food.
Conventional doctors’ tendency to separate “IgE-mediated” food allergies and “IgG-mediated” food sensitivities into two separate problems has the effect of minimizing the allergy epidemic. Remember, IgE allergies, IgG sensitivities, and asthma—three similar ways that our immune systems can overreact—are all on the rise. It makes sense to find a doctor who is willing to address all three as symptoms of a greater underlying issue.
Common Symptoms of Food Sensitivity: Delayed Reactions
fatigue
gastrointestinal problems, including bloating and gas
itchy skin and skin rashes like eczema
brain fog
muscle or joint aches
headache
sleeplessness and sleep disorders
chronic rhinitis (runny nose), congestion, and post-nasal drip
Five Take-Aways:
1. Even if your kids can’t talk, their skin speaks volumes! Did you know that the skin is a person’s largest organ? Even when your kid is too young to tell you how he feels or too used to her symptoms to identify them (when kids hurt all the time, they don’t know they hurt!), you can often read your child’s condition in his or her skin.
Does your kid have eczema? Does he get rashes around the mouth, especially after he eats a certain food or swallows a certain beverage? Rashes around the knees, elbows, or armpits? Does he have “allergic shiners”—that is, dark circles under the eyes?
These are all inflammatory reactions, signs that the body is trying to rid itself of what it perceives as “toxic invader.” In your child’s case, that “toxic invader” might be an apparently harmless food, to which your kid is either allergic or “sensitive.” Keeping that invader away from your kid may bring relief from symptoms—and it may clear up other problems, such as brain fog, crankiness, sleep problems, inattention, acne, and mood swings.
2. Look below. Your kids’ bowel movements, not to be too delicate here, also speak volumes. Runny poops are a sign that a person isn’t properly digesting his food. And indeed, as we got the allergens out of some children’s diets, poops tend to firm up.
3. Chronic ear infections are often a sign of dairy allergies. In some cases, milk may have ill effects like eczema, upset stomachs or chronic ear infections for children who are allergic or sensitive to it.
4. Find a doctor who is willing to work with you, test for both IgE and IgG allergies and sensitivities and to address the important role that elimination diets can play in managing allergic symptoms like eczema, ear infections and chronic mucous.
5. More research is needed. Food allergies are impacting a growing number of Americans. It is impacting everything from how schools feed children to what snacks airlines choose to carry on planes. Napster co-founder, Sean Parker, recently donated $24 million to Stanford to conduct research to get to the bottom of this condition, what is triggering it and how to cure it.
6. Find a friend. Find an ally to help you get safe snacks in the classroom or meet with your Congressman to discuss this epidemic. The landscape of childhood is changing. It is changing families and changing the food industry. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.
Always discuss individual health inquiries and medical issues with a qualified personal physician and/or specialist.
The Allergy Solution: Unlock the Surprising, Hidden Truth about Why You Are Sick and How to Get Well by Leo Galland, M.D., and Jonathan Galland, J.D. is going to be published on May 10, 2016.
I can’t wait for this book.
An epidemic of allergies is spreading around the world. One billion people suffer from allergic diseases such as asthma, hay fever, eczema, and food allergies. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning doctor Leo Galland, M.D., reveals the shocking rise of hidden allergies that lead to weight gain, fatigue, brain fog, depression, joint pain, headaches, ADHD, digestive problems, and much more. Astonishing new research shows how each of these is linked to the immune imbalance that is at the root of allergy.
A brilliant clinician, Dr. Galland has unlocked the power of this breakthrough science to help thousands of patients who have struggled with mysterious symptoms answer the question: “Doctor, what’s wrong with me?” Here, he is joined by his son, Jonathan Galland, J.D., a passionate health writer and environmental advocate, in exposing the truth that just as the earth’s environment is out of balance, our bodies are out of balance. The modern world, with pollution, unhealthy eating habits, lack of exercise, and excessive exposure to antibiotics, is fueling the rise in allergies.
The Allergy Solution takes an in-depth look at how we can balance immunity through nutrition and lifestyle to reverse allergies without drugs. It offers an easy nutritional program, starting with a Three-Day Power Wash designed to “clear the tracks,” to help us take back control. Do you suffer from asthma, eczema, or sinusitis? Are you sick of pain, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, depression, anxiety, or wondering what is behind your mysterious symptoms? Let Dr. Galland’s clinical experience and unique insights into cutting-edge science guide you back to health.
Key Messages:
An epidemic of allergies is sweeping the world.
Over a billion people in the world have allergies, making allergic disorders among the most prevalent condition in the world. What makes that so astonishing is that allergies were originally considered to be exceptional and uncommon. The frequency of allergic rhinitis (nasal allergies) for example, has increased in the US from 10 % of the population to 30 % over the past 40 years.
Allergies like disguises and are great mimics.
Although most people think of allergies in terms of symptoms like itching, swelling, and sneezing, allergic reactions can cause a huge variety of symptoms that are not usually considered to be allergic. The science shows there is a role for allergy in causing weight gain, headaches, joint and muscle pain, a range of digestive symptoms, mood problems, poor mental focus, ADD, insomnia and more.
The allergy epidemic is fueled by 3 factors:
Eating fast food or processed food, environmental toxicity—indoor and outdoor— and depletion of beneficial intestinal bacteria. Environmental toxins create vicious cycles that drive the allergy epidemic. In each of these, an environmental toxin, either synthetic or natural, damages a surface of the body (the respiratory lining or the skin or the intestinal lining).
The damaged lining tissue becomes a site where allergy develops. Good nutrition can stop the cycle from snowballing. Yet the standard American diet increases the snowball effect.
Examples: (a) Automotive and industrial emissions damage the lining of our respiratory tracts and increase the inflammation you experience when exposed to pollen. They also make allergenic plants produce more pollen, and it’s a pollen that is more allergenic than normal pollen.
(b) Dust mites are major indoor allergens. But they’re not just allergens, they’re toxic. They secrete an enzyme that damages the lining of your respiratory tract, producing inflammation there that makes allergic sensitization more likely. Chemical toxins run interference for dust mites, preventing our bodies from resisting the dust mite enzyme.
Allergies can be reversed, not just suppressed with drugs
By drilling down into the science of allergy, The Allergy Solution reveals hundreds of new ideas that will change the way the world views allergy and health. It is a scientifically validated approach backed by hundreds of references to research from around the world.
Allergy starts in the gut
The gut is the largest part of the immune system, which is the source of allergies. Proper functioning of the gut protects against toxins and allergens in your digestive system. It contains trillions of bacteria, which play an important role in allergies, and in supporting health, or allowing illness to happen. These aspects of the gut work together to determine your immunity, allergies, metabolism, and mood.
Leo Galland, M.D., a board-certified internist, is recognized as a world leader in integrated medicine. Educated at Harvard University and NYU School of Medicine, he won the Linus Pauling Award for his trailblazing vision that created a new way to practice medicine for thousands of doctors. Dr. Galland has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Self, and Men’s Fitness and has appeared on the TODAY show, Good Morning America, the Dr. Oz Show, PBS, CNN, and Fox. He is the author of The Fat Resistance Diet, Power Healing, and Superimmunity for Kids and the director of the Foundation for Integrated Medicine. Join his natural health community at drgalland.com and on facebook.com/leogallandmd and twitter @LeoGallandMD
Jonathan Galland, J.D., a leader in integrated health education, is a health writer for the Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen. He holds a degree in Law, which supports his research and presentation of the environmental health aspects for The Allergy Solution, expanding the book to include a strong environmental message. He is founder of pilladvised.com, which brings together integrated medicine and environmental health. Jonathan created the recipes and meal plans for The Fat Resistance Diet, featured in Fitness, Woman’s World, on The Dr. Oz Show, and in The Washington Post. He has appeared on Martha Stewart Living Radio and given dozens of radio interviews. In addition to his degree in Law, he holds a degree in Asian Studies, speaks Chinese, Japanese and Italian and brings an international understanding of the worldwide nature of health and environmental and issues. To help educate the public on the impact of allergies in their lives, Jonathan co-wrote the script for the upcoming public TV special on The Allergy Solution. Join the movement to save your health and protect nature on facebook.com/jonathangallandjd and twitter @JonathanGalland
Ever heard of a QR code? It’s those weird looking little squares with black and white squiggly lines and no words. You then use an app to scan them into your phone, and they tell you the hidden information that they contain.
A handful of companies think this is a great way to tell you about the ingredients in your food.
Not the most efficient way to get information.
It turns out that a handful of out-of-touch politicians in DC think these are a good idea for labeling GMO ingredients. A good idea for whom? The biotech industry or the chemical companies? The soda companies who still refuse to label GMOs and keep sneaking them into their cans?
I’m not sure when the last time they set foot in a grocery store was, but those pushing this agenda obviously have no idea how 21st century consumers shop.
Have you ever tried to download an app in a grocery store? Or response to something on your phone with little kids in tow? Can you imagine scanning in every single item you placed in your grocery cart, provided that you actually had your phone within reach and actually could get wi-fi reception in the store?
Any suggestion that this is a solution is just another attempt to keep us in the dark about GMO ingredients in our food.
Americans need labels to read when they shop, not apps to download. And if the food industry can spend the money on launching a new app and applying these new QR codes to their products, they can add the simple words “Made with GMOs.”
QR codes are a joke, and this new video from Just Label It does a great job of showing just how difficult it would be for consumers to scan a code every time they pick something up at a store.
Americans need to be able to see, at a glance, whether or not their food contains GMO ingredients. Our own food companies have already labeled GMOs on their products overseas. General Mills, Campbells, ConAgra, Kellogg’s and others are already putting words on their packages here.
So whose interest are these QR codes protecting? It looks like it’s big soda and big biotech.
A few months ago, the Senate released the newest version of the DARK Act, a piece of legislation that is anti-consumer, anti-transparency, and anti-labeling. It is a bill that is backed by Monsanto, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and a dwindling number of food companies that are still trying to keep consumers in the dark.
This group, firmly entrenched in the past, has proposed voluntary electronic or QR code for consumers to scan with their smartphones to find out if their food contains genetically-modified ingredients. What’s a “QR code”? Those black and white squares you see on packaging without any words.
There is no way that this is a solution, and several of us flew to DC a few weeks later to meet with Republicans and Democrats to discuss how anti-American this proposed legislation is.
Well, apparently, it’s back.
This “compromise” is a high-tech gimmick to keep Americans in the dark about what’s really in their food. Thankfully, a petition launched to urge the Senate to reject this confusing scheme and require simple, mandatory GMO labels.
Please reach out to your local Senator (link below). Many of them have kids and grandkids, too. Talk about it in a way that resonates with them as parents.
If you’re not sure what an electronic or QR code is, you’re not alone. The processed and junk food lobby knows consumers won’t know how or won’t take the time to scan every label in the grocery store. It is only something identifiable with a smart phone.
And those who don’t own smartphones — especially disadvantaged and marginalized communities, and rural America — won’t have the ability to find out if their food contains GMO ingredients at all.
“With liberty and justice for all” or just those with smart phones?
This is not equal, and we should not stand for it.
This proposal by the the processed and junk food lobby is unacceptable. Campbell’s knows it and recently broke with the industry to demand mandatory GMO labeling for all Americans. Since then, General Mills, ConAgra, Kellogg’s, Mars and others have joined and already labeled their products if they contain GMOs.
So whose interests is the Grocery Manufacturers Association protecting? Certainly not American consumers, when these ingredients are labeled around the world, in China, India, Russia, across Europe, Japan, Australia, the UK, and on and on.
We must ensure the Senate acts in the interest of all Americans who want GMO food labeled. We must ensure that the chemical corporations making these products are held accountable.
Intel is happy to promote their products with the campaign “Intel Inside.” It’s time for the chemical companies to do the same.
If food companies can add a “QR code” square to the package without added costs, they can add the words “made with genetically engineered ingredients.” As a matter of fact, General Mills, Campbells, Kellogg’s, Mars and ConAgra already are.
In May 2009, I was on a book tour when I first met Paul Hawken. He has been a visionary and leading voice in sustainability for decades, a founder of Smith & Hawken.
After I spoke, he took me by the shoulders and shared some powerful and inspiring insight, and it’s been an incredible friendship ever since.
When he sent me his book, Blessed Unrest, I fell in love with the way that he describes this global movement to bring sustainability to our world in the way in which he described it. It was the deep understanding that we are all moving this forward together.
But nothing more eloquently describes the hope he has for our future than a commencement address he gave that same year.
I reread it as I prepare to give my first commencement address this May, in part for the inspiration and in part because it is such an elixir of hope.
Grab your favorite beverage and enjoy. And if you don’t already know him, please meet the amazing Paul Hawken
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.
Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.
Today yogurt maker Dannon announced their commitment to 21st century customers by responding to calls for food free-from GMOs. Dannon announced that they are going non-GMO with their products.
For the last few years, I have been giving a presentation to corporations and investors called “The New Food Economy.” In it, I highlight how this demand for free-from is not a trend or a “fad” but rather a fundamental shift in food consumption for 21st century families now dealing with diabetes, food allergies, cancer, autism and other conditions and diseases. There is so much data to support this, and when it is presented accurately, it creates a fundamental understanding.
Dannon now understand that this demand is no longer a fad or a trend. According to President and CEO of The Dannon Company, Mariano Lozano, “Our ambition is to produce healthy food that is affordable, creates economic and social value and nurtures natural ecosystems through sustainable agriculture.
It is exciting to see large companies responding to customer demand. It is also very smart to meet the 21st century consumer where she stands, in the grocery store shopping for someone she loves who is now looking for cleaner food.
The full announcement is below.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—The nation’s leading yogurt maker, Dannon, today announced a pledge to its farmers, retail customers and consumers to further improve sustainable agriculture practices for its milk supply, to increase transparency for its portfolio of products and evolve to more natural and fewer ingredients for flagship brands.
Dannon’s Pledge key components:
Dannon commits to offer products coming from a more sustainable agriculture by working with its dairy farmer partners and their suppliers to progressively implement the use of sustainable agriculture practices and technology that leads to better soil health, better water management, an increase in biodiversity, and a decrease in carbon emission.
Dannon commits to bring all products from three flagship brands (Dannon®, Oikos® and Danimals®) towards the use of fewer and more natural ingredients that are not synthetic and non-GMO. Importantly, Dannon also commits that for these brands the feed of its farmers’ cows will be non-GMO, within a transition period of 3 years. The ambition is to evolve the remaining brands over time.
To ensure full transparency for consumers, Dannon also commits to declare by December 2017 nationwide on label the presence of GMO ingredients in its products. In the meantime, if one state implements a GMO labeling requirement, since Dannon favors a nationwide labeling system, it will label the presence of GMOs nationwide according to the state requirements.
The first impact of these changes will be visible starting July 2016, when the company will move to more natural ingredients which do not contain genetically modified ingredients for its flagship brands Oikos, Danimals and Dannon. These brands represent 50 percent of the company’s current volume. For the company’s foundation ingredient – milk – Dannon is going one big step further. Starting in 2017 and completing the transformation by the end of 2018, Dannon will work with its farmer partners to ensure that the cows that supply Dannon’s milk for these flagship products will be fed non-GMO feed, a first for a leading non-organic yogurt maker. To further improve transparency, by December 2017, Dannon’s labels will note the presence of GMO ingredients in all products in which such ingredients remain. Looking further into the future, Dannon’s ambition is to also evolve the other brands in its portfolio, beyond Dannon, Oikos and Danimals, over time.
The changes will enable consumers to make everyday choices for themselves, their family and children consistent with their wish for natural and sustainable eating options, choosing which agricultural and environmental model they favor.
The broad pledge started with the relationships the company has forged with its dairy farmers. Dannon began to evolve its milk supply model in 2010 to work directly with the farms that provide its milk. “We created a new way to work with dairy farmers to improve our shared sustainability priorities,” said Mariano Lozano, President and CEO of The Dannon Company. “Our ambition is to produce healthy food that is affordable, creates economic and social value and nurtures natural ecosystems through sustainable agriculture. Although our journey is independent from that of our organic sister companies, we have learned a lot from and are inspired by Stonyfield and Happy Family.”
As expressed in the company’s pledge, Dannon’s priorities for agriculture focus on soil, water, biodiversity, carbon and energy, and animal welfare. Dannon has already started work on the first phase of its commitment by encouraging practices, such as rotating crops, managing fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide application in the production of feed for a portion of the cows providing the company’s milk supply.
“Dannon’s pledge to use more sustainable agricultural practices with their producer-partners will drive innovation and improvements and represents a bold and important step toward greater transparency,” said Dr. Molly Jahn, Agronomy Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former Deputy Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Dannon’s leadership in sustainability sets an ambitious benchmark for other dairy companies.”
Ken McCarty of McCarty Family Farms, which has been a farmer partner to Dannon since 2011, added, “We’re proud of the partnership we have with Dannon. It’s uncommon in the dairy industry to have such a close working relationship with a milk buyer. Not only does it give us reliability in the market, it gives us reliability for our families and our community. And it encourages all of Dannon’s farmer partners to convert to practices that better serve our natural resources and environment.”
Recognizing the importance of the pledge, Dannon is inviting others to join them in support of the pledge. To learn more about the pledge, visit www.DannonPledge.com.
“It’s our mission to bring health through food to as many people as possible,” said Lozano. “And it’s our passion to help people enjoy the benefits of yogurt every day in a sustainable way. While this commitment is ambitious, we believe it’s necessary to continue to serve Americans using a sustainable and transparent model.”
This afternoon, I had a call with a friend who has had a tough year. We are at that age, where we suddenly find ourselves not only losing our parents, but also losing friends to things like heart attacks and cancer.
That had suddenly happened last spring to my friend, and then this winter, he took a particularly bad hit to the head. It compounded a lifetime of injuries accumulated playing sports, skiing and just living a courageous life. And it took him out.
For the last three months, he’d been seeing specialists, physicians and all kinds of people in the health field, but as I listened to him today, I heard something else.
We spoke about how our bodies have this weird way of hanging onto things, emotions and memories. The tension in your back or shoulders, the stomach churning. More often that not, it’s born out over a habit of coping. Our bodies are so strong. They can handle a lot, until they get some kind of external shot to the system.
And he talked about the work he is doing to heal. To put the parts back together. The broken parts.
As he talked, I listened, thinking about the glass bowl that once broken can be mended but it’s never the same. You always see the crack.
And I said, “What if the broken parts are meant to happen? To make room for what is supposed to evolve? Maybe we hold on so tightly to what we think we should be, according to some inherited programming, and we have to break, to let ourselves open up to what we are supposed to become?”
And I talked about how this work broke my heart over and over again. Expectations shattered, relationships changed, broken bodies and dreams. I fought it for a while. I’d lay with it at night, thinking, “This sucks. This really hurts.”
And I remember getting to a place where I realized that the hurt, the push against my expectations, my beliefs, my definitions, were my boundaries being challenged. I got to the point where I realized that those moments were designed to teach me something, to make me strong, to expand my vision.
And I’d lay there and think, “Help me understand the lesson I am supposed to learn quickly.” I’d say it to myself almost like a prayer.
And one day, I realized that the hurts, the setbacks were teaching me things. They were making me stronger, making room for new things, an authenticity. And I realized that my heart had to break to make room for all of the love that was needed to do this work. The boundaries had to come down, the walls had to fall.
And I had no intention at all to put it back together. I didn’t want to do anything with the broken pieces. They’d made room for what was supposed to evolve, to be, for what this work was supposed to become.
So as I listened to my friend, he shared where he was and how he was trying to heal, to put the parts back together.
“But what if you aren’t supposed to? What if this is all happening for a reason, opening you to something you may not yet see?”
What if we are like seeds, and we are meant to break open to allow what is inside to fully form and become what it is supposed to be? That’s a beautiful thing not something to be resisted or fixed.
And as I listened, I thought about how deeply I truly believe that we are here to evolve into our own unique design. How great it is to see a friend brave enough to do it. We are here to become the best version of ourselves that we can be. We are here to own our story. We have to break through old designs, dismantle those protective outer shells. Sometimes, life happens, and things happen that get us there faster than we were going to get there ourselves.
There really are no accidents. And once you realize that all experiences, even the terrible ones, are here to teach us something, show us something, you stop fighting them and let them teach their lessons.
Life throws curve balls. Our happiness is defined by how we handle them.
The seed has to break open to allow the breakthrough, and it has to break open in order to root down.
Maybe we’re not that different, and things have to break open to make room for us to root down and become all that we are meant to be.
Our youngest turn 11 today. I can’t think about it without my eyes watering, as she so completely changed our lives.
We’d had three kids in less than three years, and we were wrecked. We’d always talked about having four children, but at that point, it seemed unfathomable.
So we waited. A few years later, our youngest child arrived. I remember the night before she was born. We had pork chops for dinner. There was a Texas beer called Shiner Bock in the fridge.
But nothing could have prepared us for how that child would change our lives. Just before her first birthday, she had an allergic reaction that changed everything.
We aren’t the first parents to have this happen, and unfortunately, we won’t be the last. A life threatening allergic reaction to a food now sends someone to the emergency room once every six minutes in the U.S. EpiPen is now a $1 billion brand. Classrooms, preschools, playgrounds, Sunday schools, families and holidays are forever changed. The number of Americans with peanut allergy has more than quadrupled since 1997. And it’s not getting any better.
But there is a silver lining, and I think it is a big one: Food allergies force you to #rethinkfood. They move you away from processed foods which can often have hidden ingredients, and they move you towards a simpler way of eating. They break your dependencies on fast food, and they teach you how to create a food independence, to grow your own, to learn to cook.
A few years after our fourth child’s diagnosis, one of the older children turned to me and said, “Mom, her food allergies were a blessing. They helped all of us eat better.” And she was right. We ate better, we had to dump the junk, we ate less processed foods because we were never sure if production had changed. We looked out for her, we looked out for each other, and as we learned about food as a family, we learned that others wanted to learn, too.
None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.
And today, doing nothing is no longer an option. 1 in 5 children has eczema, 1 in 10 has asthma, 1 in 13 has food allergies, 1 in 68 has autism and ADHD seems to be everywhere. Together, these conditions are known as the 4As and earned our kids the title of Generation Rx. It’s not OK, not when you add these on top of the escalating rates of pediatric cancer, diabetes and obesity.
I could not turn my back on this. I could not unlearn what I learned about our food system, about the double standard and how we allow ingredients into our foods like artificial growth hormones (rbGH), artificial dyes, additives and genetically modified ingredients (GMOs) that other countries do not allow. I could not turn my back.
Genetics don’t change this quickly, but in the last twenty years, our food has. Correlation is not causation, but a correlation of this magnitude merits investigation and precaution. Labels matter. Labels on allergens, on sugar, on fat and on GMOs.
Our children are not a science experiment. American families can not take personal responsibility for their health if they are not informed about what is in their food or how it is made. It is a fundamental freedom that exists around the world, enjoyed by all of our key trading partners. But here in the United States, that freedom is not ours because it is one that is lobbied against by the agrochemical industry, the chemical companies making these GMOs and the ones selling the weedkiller that the World Health Organization declared a “probable carcinogen.”
Why?
Look around. How many people do you know with cancer? It’s expected to impact 1 in 2 men in the U.S. and 1 in 3 women. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in American children. It took 50 years for #tobaccoscience to be exposed, we can’t afford to wait that long.
Americans deserve to know how their food is made. We know if milk is pasteurized and if orange juice comes from concentrate. We should know if our food has been genetically engineered to withstand additional applications of weedkillers like Roundup.
Anything else is un-American. It is not the American way. It is not how we protect the health of our country, our families and our economy.
And this is not the way that it will always be. In the last ten years, since our youngest child’s allergic reaction, I learned what it means to be brave. I learned how to lead and I learned how to ask why. Why are so many American so sick? Why do we spend more on healthcare and disease management than any other country on the planet? And what can we do to protect our health?
We’ve come together, with teams of scientists, farmers and pediatric specialists. We have stood up for our rights, our children, our health, our families. We have stood up for our country. And every time that we do, we inspire someone beside us to do the same.
Courage is so contagious.
And love is a rocket fuel. Look into the eyes of your children, your parents, someone you love, and know that 30 years from now, when they ask what we did to create change when we learned our food system was so full of so much artificial junk, we will be able to say: We fixed it.
We fixed it as families, parents inside of big food companies and entrepreneurs starting new ones, and we did it as Americans to protect ourselves, our economy and our standing in the global marketplace.
So let’s #dumpthejunk and change the name of this generation of kids from Generation Rx to Generation Strong.
April is Stress Awareness Month, as with the school year winding down, most parents can feel it! But it’s not just parents that are feeling the stress. Across the board, Americans are living with more and more stress. Thankfully, there is a lot that you can do with diet and nutrition to help manage it.
This Raspberry “Cream” (dairy-free!) Smoothie packs a nutritional punch, as it is brimming with antioxidants, healthy fats, magnesium and probiotics! It takes care of you from the inside out. It’s a great snack for between meals and also makes a quick breakfast that you can take on the go. This recipe uses coconut-milk yogurt for the base, which is perfect for those who are sensitive to dairy or have digestive issues, but you can also substitute any non-dairy milk or yogurt of your choice.
Serves 1
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 0 minutes
Ingredients
1 cup organic raspberries, frozen
6 ounces vanilla-flavored coconut-milk yogurt with probiotics
1 teaspoon Raspberry-Lemon Flavor Natural Calm 1 cup ice
Directions
Blend all ingredients until smooth.
Enjoy immediately.
Our friends over at Natural Vitality actually put together a little book to help manage stress, this month or anytime. You can grab your FREE copy of the Calmful Living book here.
Meet Rick Friday, a cartoonist who was just fired for highlighting the fact that in 2015, the CEOs of Monsanto, Dupont Pioneer, and John Deere made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers
