ONE OF THE best secrets for losing weight is to stick to a plant-based diet of whole foods.
And whenever you can, I suggest you choose fresh, locally grown food, and I suggest you support your local farmers and farmers’ markets. As a chef, I’ve supported farmers’ markets and local, sustainable sources of food for many years. As an advocate, I’ve testified for food banks and lobbied for food security before Congress. As a member of the community, I’ve helped run food pantries to lend a hand to families in trouble. And today I have a food truck on the streets of New York that serves fresh, low-calorie food and visits public schools to educate children on healthy eating, sustainability, and food security.
When politicians talk, do you get as confused as I do? Tax policy, health care, the economy—do you walk away even more confused because of the political rhetoric—and the clash of statistics? Well, on the subject of food in America there is no debate—we have become trapped in what I call a circle of madness. Consider these horrifying facts:
• Obesity now affects 17 percent of all children and adolescents in the United States—triple the rate from just one generation ago.
• More than one-third of American adults are obese.
• Obesity-related conditions are sharply rising and include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death.
• Medical costs associated with obesity were recently estimated at almost $147 billion.
• At the same time, millions of American families and children, or almost 15 percent of our households, experienced food insecurity during 2011, and our food pantries are overwhelmed.
Something is terribly wrong. It really is a circle of madness. Through the buying decisions we make every single day, we are empowering gigantic companies to produce heavily processed, genetically modified foods from such tiny pieces of land that such production was never considered humanly possible. And we have more people hungry today that we’ve ever had in the history of our country. None of the choices we’re making as a nation are producing results we’re happy with. The irony is that we’re supposed to be the richest country in the world, and we produce the most food—but we can’t feed our own people!
As the saying goes, everything is connected. Let’s take energy independence, for example. Can you imagine how much less fuel our cars and planes would use if Americans weren’t the most obese people in the world? There is a direct relationship between your weight and the gas consumption of your car! How about genetically modified foods? Industrial farming and the advances in agritechnology have done nothing to help us end hunger or help increase food security in any way, and they’ve done nothing to make us healthier.
I am convinced that the high incidence of gluten intolerance today is specifically the result of hybridized wheat, GMO wheat that’s producing near-toxic levels of gluten, and for many people may be triggering digestive problems, autism, and weight gain. It’s all connected.
Local, sustainable food is key to a healthy diet. How do you think our fruits and vegetables could possibly survive a five-thousand-mile trip? Drugs! They’re being shot up and bathed in hormones, chemicals, colorants, and Lord knows what else. It’s science fiction; it’s like a horror movie. Don’t kid yourself about the food you eat. When food has five thousand miles on it, it no longer is what it was when it started. It might be less expensive, or it might be available off season, but it’s just not going to provide the nutrition it would have originally.
It’s time we put a stop to all this. It’s time we demand that food and restaurant companies stop the excuses and figure out how to deliver the healthiest, most delicious food and meals to us. That means they must cut way down on the bad fats, the bad carbs, the added sugars, the excessive sodium, and the elephant-sized portions—and crank up the good carbs, the whole grains, the good fats, the fresh produce, the healthy herbs and spices, and most of all, the taste. We must vote with our pocketbooks and reward those companies that do it right. Don’t let them BS you about how hard it is to make healthy food taste great—it does take extra work and it is somewhat harder to figure out, but I do it every day in my book recipes and my food truck.
When you’re out there shopping for food, find out where it was grown. Buy local whenever you can. If you’re a New Yorker and it was grown in Pennsylvania or Vermont or upstate New York, it’s local to you. It wasn’t grown in Belgium or China or Mexico. It hasn’t traveled five thousand miles to get to you—and it’s still food!
If we look to the hippies of the 1960s, if we look to the Italians of today, if we look to a lot of Third World countries where people eat local, fresh, sustainable food and home-cooked meals—all the lessons we need to learn are right there in front of us. It’s all about eating a largely plant-based diet of whole foods that are grown locally, prepared at home, and harvested, sold, prepared, and eaten within a few hundred miles.
What else do we need to know? It has to start at home. Children model your behavior more than they listen to words. Switch off the TV, turn off the video games and smartphone, go outside and play with them on the grass, and come home and cook together. You can make change happen instantaneously with every decision you make for your family in a grocery store—stick to the fresh food sections, shop the perimeter of the store, stay away from the packaged and processed food aisles. Do not buy processed foods. If you have to buy something that has to be slipped into a foil-cardboard sheath, then microwaved, then turned upside down after two minutes—you’re probably not making a very good choice for your family!
It’s always amazing to me how many parents will strictly monitor their children’s video game and TV habits, and will interview potential playdate partners, yet they will teach their children unhealthy food habits, leading to our being the most obese developed nation in the world, where early-onset diabetes among children is at epidemic proportions.
It all starts at home. Go and buy some fresh local food, cook it for your family, and enjoy the process—it’s wonderful! I do it every single day of my life, and I’m as busy as anybody. If you think you’re powerless and you can’t make change happen—guess what? We’ve totally got the power.
A while ago, I gave up apples. They bored me. They tasted bland. They didn’t taste like apples anymore. They tasted unripe and rotten—because of the way they were grown and shipped. I’d become jaded. I stopped eating apples, one of the greatest things you can do for your health. An apple a day really does keep the doctor away, and I recommend three a day!
The other day I bought an apple at the farmers’ market. It had been grown about a hundred miles from New York City. It was cheap, and it was one of the most delicious apples I’ve ever tasted! I was so happy to find that the locally grown option tasted so good. I went back and bought a bunch more, everyone in my house started eating them, and now I can’t keep count of how many we’re putting away. They’re under a hundred calories each—they’re a terrific snack! That’s just one example of how we consumers have all the power.
These are problems that are so easily solved. You don’t need to vote on it. You don’t need to start a group. You don’t need to rally people and get petitions signed. All you have to do is go to the grocery store and make a choice that tells the buyers what you want. And they’ll respond.
Why are there farmers’ markets now in urban areas where there weren’t any twenty years ago? Why is there a Whole Foods Market? Why does Whole Foods Market tell you where they grow their food? Because it’s important to know and we’ve empowered them with our buying decisions.
Understand that you can effect change instantaneously, tomorrow morning, with the choices you make. The breakfast you eat, where you go for lunch, where you shop, and what you buy can change the world. That’s how you make change happen. It’s so easy. We have the power.
You can’t change foreign policy when you wake up tomorrow morning. You can’t change economic policy when you wake up tomorrow morning. But we can change this! We should be thrilled! We’re always looking for places in our lives where we can help change the world for the better. Well, this is the place, and now is the time to put these principles into action. We can lose weight, live longer and healthier lives, and make the world a better place to live in.
We can make it happen.
I wish you lots of love, laughter, a very happy belly, and great success with your weight loss journey. Now let’s go out there and lose weight, keep it off, and change the world—one locally grown apple at a time!