One Meal at a Time: Sherry Strong at TEDxTokyo

good morning good morning it's great to stay up late good morning good morning to you I know it's not morning I'm not on drugs but who here this morning woke up singing they had so much energy before the alarm that's also not on drugs energy is directly related to the food we eat and when I speak to thousands of people each year including children that is the number one thing that they're losing we have terrible statistics about our health and well-being our lifestyle diseases but energy is a precursor it's your body's Way of telling you that something is out of balance and what I'm finding more and more it's very rare that people wake up with tons of energy and go to sleep with just the amount of energy that they have a perfect night's sleep we've heard about the GFC you're probably surprised I'm going to talk about the GFC but I think the global fat crisis is very important and if you think about the fact that right now for the first time in human history we have more obese people on the planet than starving people it's definitely an epidemic we think the pictures of starving children is compelling but the thing is is that there are obese children who are also suffering from malnutrition because the food that they're eating is incredibly denatured I wonder if mothers in Africa tell their children with plates of food in front of them not to worry about finishing their food because there are obese children in America now before you think I'm being too cavalier I've actually been one of those people yes I've been twice my size not ten foot four okay and I've had the worst of eating habits okay I started out life in what I call with of what I call a lethal recipe and you think it sounds extreme but it actually is contributing to people dying my mother was one of these people that was convinced by doctors and nurses that her baby would be far better off if she had this new baby formula that was better than breast milk and if you actually look at that recipe from the 60s it is exactly what we're finding is in our food today the lethal recipe is for fine grains refined sugars refined oils refined salt so chemically clean salts and chemicals there is actually msg and baby formula when I was a child and what it does is it breeds in people an addiction to food that is not nourishing their body the way we're processing foods today is extraordinary this I bought when I was on my travels it is crustless bread some people go to museums I go to supermarkets okay and I thought crustless bread that's ridiculous so I brought it home to Australia after trying after traveling with it for 12 days it was it was still soft and in the bag and I took it out of the bag I put it on my island bench to dry it out and four days later not only was it still moist but the whole house smelt and I couldn't stand it anymore so I stuck it back in the bag moist and five years later it's never grown any mold okay yeah yeah yes and some of you actually go to drive throughs or take away places where they use the exact same recipe in the foods that you're eating one fast-food place has a meal that has over 600 words in the ingredient list that's not including the fact that the the thing that makes that burger taste like it's been on a char grill instead of a stainless stairs tastes like a sting being on a char grill instead of a stainless steel grill actually has a flavor in it that can have up to 400 different compounds in it and you as a consumer have no right to know what's in it because that recipe is patented protected and it doesn't include the fact that the lettuce that's put on that burger is sprayed with chemical pesticides these are poisons it's given synthetic fertilizers and once it's picked it's sprayed with a cocktail of 11 different chemicals mmm mmm good I don't think so okay so what happens with these foods and if you look at things like the oils and salts and the grains how their process is not too dissimilar to how we actually take poppy SAP and turn it into heroin not me personally but you know the industry okay and so what you end up with is foods that are denatured their molecular structure has changed so that they're now addictive to the body highly addictive when you have them in their natural state the it they're self-regulating you have something that is also not nourishing so you're eating a lot of this food and the body's not getting its nutrients so it says feed me more I'm not getting what I need and you have toxicity that creates to the body that it actually creates this toxic environment in the body and so people don't feel so good the consumption concept is based on observing what we're meant to be eating in nature and if you actually look at the healthiest cultures on the planet they actually live according to what I call nature's principle so if you actually look at these slides you see the families that have the lethal recipe also have the highest incidence of disease in their in their countries okay this is Australia that was America this is Germany you can see the direct correlation between the packaged foods and the diseases with the exception of some countries like this one you may recognize a lot of their packaged foods is actually whole foods within packages okay this one okay and but we also notice is that even countries like Japan once they start to adopt this lethal recipe into their lifestyle if you look at the Okinawans who have this beautiful kind of history of being healthy and longevity their children the successive generations that are starting to adopt this lethal recipe are not getting well or adopting lifestyle diseases Boutin okay they feed their family on five dollars and three cents so eating well does not have to be expensive uh you obviously have to grow things yourself in Tinga the family in ecuador they remind me of the people saying we were happy that we were poor now these slides actually come from a beautiful book that succinctly puts we you are what you eat it's called the hungry planet what the world eats by faith lucille peter Menzel and basically what they've Illustrated is that when families actually put their food in front of them it tells a story about whether their children are going to grow up with lifestyle diseases or not so even this woman who feeds her family in a refugee camp in Chad in Africa you can see on a very meager budget her children more than likely won't have diabetes hey and they definitely won't become obese and I find it extraordinary to think that there are children in refugee camps that could actually possibly be healthier than children in private schools in Western countries so the consumption concept is basically based on nature's principle nature tells us what to eat in the quantity stated and by how easily it's obtained in nature that which is most abundant in nature we have the most of if it's harder to get in nature we have less of it and if you cannot get it in nature not only to be not needed its most likely harmful to the body if you think about that the Western countries are eating in that last eating most of what is most hard to obtain in nature we would eat very differently if we had to gather the food ourselves if you think about nutrients what nourishes and promotes growth within the human body the nutrient we can't survive seconds without is air isn't it amazing that it's everywhere the nutrient where most second life dependent on is water seventy percent of the planet is water 92% of your blood is water 80% of your brain is water but you probably know people with more than 80% water on the brain right okay see nature actually has this beautiful kind of concept but once we started to industrialize things and we out sourced our food we abdicated responsibility for actually sourcing our own food to other people and they made it about money as soon as money gets into food it becomes compromised because great food takes time it takes resources it's not something that when you do it cheaply it improves care improves our food our quality of our food so think about it if you had to have for dinner tonight chicken or egg who would choose chicken who would choose egg and of the people choosing egg how many your vegetarians now if you had to source that meal tonight for yourself and go out and gather the egg in the wild find the egg or go out and catch the chicken kill the chicken pluck the chicken disembowel it can bleed the chicken and prepare the chicken how many people would have the egg how many people would become vegetarian we eat very differently when we have to source around food think about children this is great for children I when I'm talking to kids in schools I say who here loves chocolate and by the way I believe that chocolate is God's Way of saying He loves us and wants us to be happy okay so I'm not anti chocolate but if you had to make it in nature could you imagine all the things that you have to do to make it how long it would take you imagine gathering the cane to beat the juice out of it and then drying the juice to get your sugar then milking the cow to getting the cream and the milk to make the butter you know if you're making a chocolate cake it's even more growing the wheat you'd work off way more calories making that thing than you ever would consuming it nature has an inbuilt protective mechanism against obesity but when we are no longer sourcing our food ourselves we make very different decisions so food is incredibly powerful it has the power to nourish energize and protect you and it has the power to make you sick and every day we're faced with choices of how we can do that and people say I don't have enough time it's too expensive and yet we see from the healthiest cultures on the planet time and money our Rees horses that we can't use as excuses anymore I think probably nutritionists and dietitians tend to talk too much about nutrients that are physical in the food and one of the things that I have learned I have observed is that the most powerful nutrients that nourish and promote growth aren't necessarily in our food but in the social context in which we eat because how we eat is as powerful as what we're eating I would much rather have a greasy hamburger with people who are positive loving and upbuilding than to have the most gourmet nutritiously prepared meal with people were angry depressed a negative okay saying that we can have something incredibly beautiful when we combine something that tastes good and the chef and the hedonist to me is definitely into that something that is grown well because when we take care of plants we take care of the soil we take care of the things that it take actually take care of us and that is why the healthiest cultures on the planet have no idea what their recommended daily intake of vitamin C is or how much protein they need because they're eating in accordance to nature and that varies depending on everywhere on the planet so that we have this really sustainable model and what I've observed most about the cultures that I respect the most and I think you know tend to have the best quality of life is that they share those meals with people that they connect with and so the nourishment that I think is important that stops us from overeating and certainly when I was starting my day off with a half a liter of Sara Lee ultra chocolate ice cream I'm wondering why the dryer was shrinking my underwear not my husband's at the time I wasn't actually sitting there with anyone deeply connecting with them and I know that if I'd had those those connections those important connections that I certainly would have been eating less and probably better quality food so the last thing I'd like you to leave with is the ideas your nutrients come in all forms in the thoughts that you think in the feelings you feel and if you can eat those meals that taste great and are good for your body with people who love you who are genuinely interested in you the world around you who loved food and care about you people were non-judgmental kind and forgiving you know people who tell jokes that don't hurt people and that they're actually there being present and connecting with you and having great conversations I can promise you there'd be a lot less obese people on the planet and obesity is not the big problem it's the de sickness and disease that comes from that and we actually have the power to eradicate that simply one meal at a time think slow seasonal local organic and whole go to a farmers market find out where your food comes from and share it with someone you love arigato

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 517,135

Rating: 4.7772927 out of 5

Keywords: ted x, tedx, tedx talk, heath, japan, ted talk, tedxtokyo, ted, tedx talks, food, english, nutrition, ted talks

Id: w8u3q8hZtfo

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2013