Wow! This free hour-long “event” by John and Ocean Robbins, “The Healthy Kitchen Power Hour” is amazing.
I’ve read or heard most of the raw information in it (radical news-reader that I’ve been for decades), but was excited to hear how they put so much media-repressed information about food into one very easy-to-understand presentation, with passion, facts, and some interesting family history (even though I’d heard the history before too).
Some listeners might be overwhelmed by the seriousness of the need to make radical changes in this most basic human activity of eating, except that the Robbins begin first by stressing the potential personal power that’s within all our reach: They offer a slew of tips on how to create new habits to overcome the major issues people have with cooking.
Those major issues most people have are: time, cost, and stress or confusion about what’s good and what’s not. They respect the listener by assuming that they already want to make change (most people do), and save the “Here’s the dire consequences if you don’t” till after they’ve made the listener imagine how easy it could be. That’s when they explain with a few facts why it’s so important to us personally and to the planet. Personal power first, and then a gentle kick in the butt.
It was crafted well, a very good sell. (Not that I need to be sold. For me, it was terrifically reinforcing of some new improvements I’ve recently begun.)
It’s personable voices telling personal stories and advocating simple good sense around probably the most important animal thing we do: eat. It’s simple and it’s huge; it’s about human survival.
In the end they sell a personal 6-week course, in which they coach participants through making changes – and I hope they get a lot of participants. It’s the sort of thing that could be evolved into local versions everywhere, and should.
Personally, I’m tickled that I “invented” for myself some of their tips decades ago – such as the idea of pre-printing a personal shopping list – with our family’s personal favorite healthiest foods on it – in columns that matched the floor plan of our food coop. It made shopping super efficient and helped us avoid impulse buying.
So it was nice to have John Robbins, long a hero of mine, present an idea we must have both plucked out of the same ethers – to help everyone eat more healthy in this fast-paced world.
Here’s the link to the free webinar. I hope it still plays; if not, somewhere on the site, I hope, you will find a new link.
This post is very different from most of what I write about, and it’s more salesy than anything I’ve ever written. But the thing is free. And it’s about the most basic aspect of our health, which includes our mental health.
And I’ve been thinking a lot recently that I have no idea how people can recover from the sort of trauma we’re dealing with here while eating the average American diet.
So, for all my suffering readers who need to improve their mental health, please begin with your food. It’s a huge step to take, and a spiritual one (as John Robbins touches on lightly in this video). I think the video can help almost anyone in America.
It’s free. And it’s about personal power.
http://healthy.foodrevolution.org/welcome/#sthash.M3psIx1S.dpbs