The Moringa Talk | Danielle Arsenault | The Real

please welcome to the stage danielle arsenal [Applause] as a raw food chef and educator I believe that food is a vehicle for four things innovation impact investment and integration and I'm gonna talk to you about those four things and how one special superfood can bring those four things into your life last week I was gonna do a talk on cacao and chocolate but I had this sneaking suspicion that a lot of you already know how amazing chocolate is not just the taste but of course the amazing health benefits there's a lot of stuff online already and the experts have shared this with the world but waiting in the wings of the proverbial superfood stage is an up-and-coming nutrient dense plant dubbed the miracle tree or The Tree of Life this superfood has actually been shown to eradicate malnutrition in the poorest parts of the world and even in our own backyard I'm talking about the Moringa tree who's heard of Moringa okay good Moringa comes from India and now it grows all over the world throughout the tropics it's been used for centuries in Ayurvedic medicine to treat over 300 ailments that's a lot why don't we know about this I was first introduced to Moringa in 2012 when I went to Haiti and I went there to study a permaculture design certificate I was going to study how to design and create a self-sustaining highly efficient eco system with little human influence after it was set up but that's not all I learned I was going to spend three months there integrating my experience with those of the local communities and little did I know at the time this would be one of the most influential experiences of my life where I stayed in Haiti was a place called sadhana forest and their main mission is to introduce food security sustainable living through ecological transformation waste land reclamation and education and it was here that I first saw the Moringa tree growing on every corner weaving in and out of the neighborhoods but to the locals it was just a tree they didn't eat it it was here that I learned the power of Moringa and the incredible health benefits that had held someone told me just offhand oh yeah that tree it's good for you can eat it that was it and then I was at sadhana forest and this place they called The Waste Land it was actually a place in Haiti that the Glo khals would go and dump their garbage and burn tires and used the bathroom if they felt like it it was a place that sadhana forest was trying to reclaim so we were there building up the soil planting trees for food security for these people for the future but not only that we weren't there to show them we were there to be with them to be integrated into their community to be one with them and that was really really important here I was in this absolutely stressful place with 30 other people from all over the world and we were all in this thick intense emotionally and physically difficult place one morning after breakfast and we would do communal duties and help each other out and we did a lot of physical labor lots of digging lots of you know tilling the compost planting gardening and they had this library and it was you know sun-bleached books and like all dusty this place was completely dusty there was no we had no shelter it was just this open place and I found this little book on Moringa so I started reading about it and the first thing that I read was Moringa is an adaptogen an adaptogen allows our body to adapt to stress so it cuts back or gives more activity where we need it and when we need it most I was like this is awesome I totally need this right now I'm stressed so I started eating the Moringa just picking it off the trees and then walking down the road and the more I learned about it from this little book more I shared it with other people and then we all started picking it and eating it and then we actually started putting it on our food because we were living off-grid there was no electricity no refrigerator so and this was for three months so you can imagine like as a person who loves vegetables there was no kale or spinach and those are like my favorite things so I was really missing that green in my diet and Moringa is high in chlorophyll chlorophyll is the green blood the lifeblood of every green plant chlorophyll is only one molecule different from human blood that is why when we eat greens they are so beneficial to us because our body recognizes it I parties like yeah I know that stuff that's good for me and it processes it so much easier here I was in this just ridiculously hard place but my passion and drive to share Moringa with the locals was huge this was a place that roads were totally potholed and when I first arrived in port-au-prince and the heat of the Haitian Summer Sun I was led to the back of a flatbed truck and that was going to take me to my destination I went to the back of it there's nowhere for me to sit so I had to stand up and hang on and there were all these other local haitian women and men with these like gigantic bags of who knows what was inside and this trip that took me to sit on a forest I saw every malnourished child every pile of burning garbage and every open sewer this was a world I'd never seen before a world where walls and roofs were not mandatory a world where people were making less than five dollars a day in 2012 to me when I learned about this Moringa and I saw that the people weren't eating it I thought I have to I have to share this how do I tell people about this in a respectful loving kind open way without making them feel like they're doing anything wrong so we held a party a gigantic party actually turn into like this huge festival we had hula hoopers and the kids came the whole entire community we had face painting and dancing and people were you know we had the accordion and the djembe and the guitar and the violin and I brought my ukulele and people were singing it was awesome so I was in the kitchen and I could hear the sounds of this music wafting in through the kitchen and I was there with a bunch of local Haitian women and we were learning from each other but I was there to show them how they can incorporate Moringa until they're already tried and tested dishes I wasn't there to show them how to do something different I was just going to lightly encourage them and show them how they've got this awesome dish hey do you know you can just add a few like little marina petals on top and it's gonna enhance the health of yourself and of your family they were super excited especially when they learned that Moringa has more Pro vitamin A than carrots more vitamin C than oranges more iron than spinach for potassium the bananas and more chlorophyll than wheatgrass that was huge I believe that we can create innovation in food systems by utilizing the ancient knowledge of raw local plant-based foods and Moringa was one of those foods I believe that we can invest in local communities to improve lives when we did everybody loves a good party so here we were with the sounds of the warm rich violin and the deep bass of the djembe for the first time these people came together and tried the Moringa the food that was sitting outside their homes the whole time and they were so excited that was worth it to me it's fast forward four years I got to go to Nicaragua and I was able to build a house for a family living in slum conditions I was amazing it was not easy either because we were tasked with building a house from the ground up in two days with no power fools hammer and nail screwdriver we built a house like that with six people in two days it was super intense I think we worked like 14 hours a day naturally we would take breaks and you know we'd walk around the dusty streets and play soccer with the kids I think guess what there it was again the moringa it was he was on the streets and was there and guess what the people didn't need it but I sure did I picked it and I started snacking on it and that little bit that I was snacking on provided me a plant-based protein with the ability to allow my body to recover from hard work not only is Maringa a complete protein it's also a potent anti-inflammatory it allowed my body to process the lactic acid build up and soften the post recovery inflammatory response after such hard work Moringa saved me over those two days I believe that we can incorporate these ancient secrets into modern-day plant-based cuisine that tastes awesome I'm going back to Nicaragua next year I'm gonna build a house for a family in need but this time I'm gonna have a community cooking class and I'm going to inspire locals to incorporate Moringa into their everyday tried and tested dishes so that they can improve the health of their families and the generations to come this is a plant that needs to be shared with the world but when something becomes popular it has a propensity to become exploited so unless you're picking it off the tree yourself it's really important to align your values with the company who pays attention to every single step of the process that the product quality and integrity is there that there's no child labor that there's fair wages at every single step and that the Moringa is while be harvested and not deforested to plant Moringa that it's toxin-free organically grown and fairly traded a lot of meringue out there as a food isn't tested for contaminants and may contain traces of mold and heavy metals we don't want that we can take something that's popular and it can be beneficial to us but if we don't take care and if we don't think about the planet we'll just wipe it out it'll be gone chocolate let me tell you that's something that's exploited a lot of it is still linked to child labour I think it's time it's time to bring the power of Moringa to the people and inspire them to take back their health with this veritable superfood it's not just for Nicaraguans and Haitians though the runner the breastfeeding mama they're always on the go to busy the coffee addict shift worker cholesterol too high don't eat enough vegetables the rich the poor and those looking to make an impact in their lives and the life and the health of the planet Moringa truly is a miracle tree thank you

Channel: Pachavega Living Foods Education

Views: 17,408

Rating: 4.8228784 out of 5

Keywords: Pachavega Living Foods Education, Pachavega, Vegan, Plant-based, Organic, Raw food, Whole Food, Speech, Talk, Moringa, Nutrition, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Peru, motivational speaker, keynote speaker, raw vegan, speech, tedx

Id: XTAtaaG43F8

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2017