Carol Alt and Organic Avenue on WPIX News

Organic Avenue in the News!

This is a great little video and article on raw food and Organic Avenue. It's funny how you will never now how something like this will come out.

The reporter, Lauren Glassberg is a genius and went from eating everything to totally getting the raw organic vegan lifestyle.

Here is a link to the ABC News site with the video. Worth the 3 minutes.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6604275


Raw Vegan Video

Childbirth Orgasms: Women Speak Out ! | The Best-Kept Secret of Labor ? | BIRTH O | ABC News 20/20

Carol Alt on ABC Eyewitness News

This past Monday, Carol was on ABC Eyewitness News and they filmed it at Organic Avenue on the Lower East Side of NY.



My raw friend Carol Alt has launched an amazing product line called Raw Essentials. Over the last few weeks, Carol has met with most of the top major fashion and lifestyle editors in the US.

Carol Alt on the Howard Stern Show

This is one hour interview is in 5 parts.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5

India to Sell Cow Urine Soda Pop

Raw Food Miracle

This is amazing story of a local young man who discovered the raw food diet and ran with it.

Our friend David Wolfe spoke about him yesterday at Organic Avenue and after a quick google or two, I discovered the story of Philip McCluskey.

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight and Insight Meditation...

This is an amazing and inspiring video of a woman's journey through a stroke and back to life.

It clearly articulates the power of the human mind and the left brain and the right brain.

I have learned a technique that's 2500 years old, passed down from the Buddha, generation after generation that has given me glimpses of my right brain hemisphere. The process of deep meditation, daily, weekly, monthly helps further that experience.

www.dhamma.org

There are so many things about dhamma that I am grateful for and even more things that impress me. One that I want to point out, is the integrity of the experience. It's free. Free room, free board, free food, free course materials, free expert coaching. It's entirely funded by past students. They won't even except donations from anyone who has not completed a course.

The course itself is 10/11 days. There is a strict code of conduct that includes many things like:
No reading
No writing
No eye contact
No speaking
No sex or sexual like activities
No lying
No cheating

After the simple completion of a 10 day course, every person that I know has a new perspective of the possibilities for them.

When to Forgive

“Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle
by which what is broken is made whole again,
what is soiled is again made clean.”
-- Dag Hammarskjöld

Douglas and Andrew

I found this vintage photo of me and my brother Andrew. We live totally separate lives, but speak at least 3 times a week.

I am on the left in the big picture and on the right in the small picture.

This is to me is a perfect example that most chronic illnesses are lifestyle.

Being Present with a Past and a Future

The clock just struck midnight and I sit here reflecting on this past week and what they mean. I quickly remember that they, like everything else is empty and meaningless.

Meaningless to the point that we all add our own meanings based on the situation. Out of the blue and old friend of mine called me. This was a graffiti writer who I met when I was 13 and he was 21. That was a big age gap, but only a fraction of the gap between us and our mutual friend Henry Chalfant, who is now 68. When I met him, I was 13 years old. We became friends.

How does a 13 year old high school student befriend a 40 year man? In our situation, we had a connection through an underground sub-culture called graffiti. I was an ambitious young writer and Henry was the photo man. He was on a mission to capture the transient art that was being aggressively applied to the inside and outside of the NYC Subway trains.

There was something mature about Henry, stoic perhaps, but it was non-judgement and selective accessibility that made him safe and informative to talk too. Long before I knew the term mentor, I had found one.

During High School, I spent most of my time writing graffiti and working in the Food Emporium. I would work every hour that they would let me and push for more. It was mandatory to join the Union and it became a source of early capital. It was very hard to differentiate yourself in that environment. We all had menial tasks of unloading boxes, pricing things and labeling the boxes during the day. When the store would close, we would level the shelves by bringing all the merchandise up to the front to make things look full. It was a farce, because as soon as someone bought one item, you would see the gaping wholes in the shelves. If you did a good job of leveling, it would last for most of the day.

There was always some sort of breakage in an aisle, whether it was pickles or milk, something was always breaking. That turned out to be my break and opportunity to differentiate. When ever something would break, I would race to the aisle to clean it up. In the beginning, I would practically bump into the other workers that would be running away from it. For me, I wanted to go the extra mile and to get the OT (overtime). It worked like a charm. The managers loved me and I worked practically as many hours as I physically could.

With the money, I bought a 1975 Cutlass Supreme in auction. It was a fine car. It didn't do what I wanted in regards to the ladies, but it provided a lot of freedom to drive around.

It was now easy to drive to East Tremont Avenue to hang out with Seen and his crew and in a really bad trade with the late "sin", I ended up with a 1967 Camero Z28. It was a 4 speed stick that a barely knew how to drive.

It feels like yesterday, when I was driving up a hill in Riverdale, when the car stalled. I gave it to much gas and before I knew it, the car caught on fire as the extra gas engaged an exposed spark plug. I didn't have fire or theft insurance and the car crashed into a wall and burnt to a crisp.

I was deeply depressed that afternoon and then I had an idea. I would go back to the car, take off the vehicle identification tags and my license plate and go get a new car.

I was actually thinking about reading the classifieds, finding a car with the same make, model and color and stealing it. I felt that all I would have to do was put my plates on it and then it would be easy to get it away and call it my own.

The more I thought about it, the more troubled I became. It was hard to sleep or concentrate, I kept thinking about what would happen if I got caught. What about the person whose car it was. Would someone else rat me out who knew my car was in a fire...

By chance I called Henry to follow up about some graffiti photos and he asked what was up and I told him about my plot and how I was feeling. I was always totally honest with Henry and was precise about what was going on. He very calmly asked me if I could survive without the car? I told him yes. He then told me that what I was feeling was anxiety and as soon as I let the thought of stealing the car go, the anxiety would leave.

I did and sure enough, I felt a huge burden lifted. The thought of having that conversation with my dad would have been unconscionable. It's even funny to have thougt about that conversation.

Henry went on to document the graffiti subculture by writing books (Subway Art) and producing films (Style Wars) about it.

I got beat-up, set-up, jumped, betrayed, caught and released to the point that I was so fed up with the whole scene that I joined the US Army to get away from it. This was definitely the road less traveled for a 17 year, clean cut, jewish kid, but that's what I did.

Over the last 25 years, I have had very few contacts with that part of my life. Other than Jayson, Henry and Skeme, that part of my past is practically invisible. Jayson has a wife,three kids and lives in a house in NJ with an indoor half court basketball gym, Skeme has been in the army for 25 years and is presently in Iraq. We see each other every five-to-ten years. His mother has the same number and I call her to get his email periodically. Henry lives near by and we do chat on the phone and get together. He's far from a raw vegan, but has entertained the concept when we are together and by now, he's had at least 6 raw vegan meals with me.

The past came up when Jayson recently called and asked me if I still had this piece book with all Skeme pieces in it. I told him that I did, but wasn't sure where it was. He expressed an interest in purchasing it.

As I began my search for it, all of my cloudy past started to become clear. I found the book with some amazing and unique drawings and illustrations.


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I never really thought of selling it, but the thought entered my mind and it was worthy of consideration...

The skeme book had a story to it. I left the book at skeme's house one day for him to draw a piece in it. This was a customary process and usually you would get the book back in a week or so. This book got lost and totally dogged. Skeme wrote on practically every page. Most likely with the intention of not leaving room for anyone else.

About a year later, I saw the book in his house and quickly claimed it. I was disappointed that it was all bombed, but it had some good color and I put it away with the rest of my stuff. It's now 26 years later and it brings me back to a very humble and vulnerable time in my life.

In my storage facility, the same one that held original Paul Rand drawings, I found original Keith Haring drawings from 1980 and a one of a kind metal panel that's 20" wide. This was the year that Keith Haring found his voice and started to proliferate his now famous radiant baby and barking dog. I first met Keith in the Mudd Club in the Winter of 1980. He stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other graffit writers of the day. I remember meeting Ban 2, Futura 2000, Bilroc, Smiley 149, Alive 5, Zephyr and many other writers of the time period there. It was Fab Five Fred and Keith that were the most open and chill with me. It was a sureal time in my life. I was 13 years old and hanging out late night in same club with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. This was years before they were really discovered.

These are photos of what I found in my storage facility of Keith and the others of that day.









This was a very helpful exercise in remembering where I came from and forces my hand on thinking about where I am going...

Yet, the greatest challenge is to be present and am going to end this day with my vipassana meditation.

Alkaline Diet

So I finished my Juice Fast after 17 days and it was the best ever! I love fasting.

I just found this video from Dr. Robert Young on the PH Miracle.

More to come on the Acid/Alkaline impact on your body.

My 9th Day of Juice Fasting...

For over 9 years, I have had the privilege of eating a diet that is exclusively based on raw, uncooked plants. Everything is so yummy, it's really hard to stop eating and take a brake to fast.

Last week, I decided to do the Organic Avenue LOVEdeep 5 Day Cleanse/Fast.

I added a few extra Green Vibrance to the diet for additional hydration and protein. After the fifth day, I was feeling so good, I decided to continue. I am presently in the middle of the 9th day and feeling amazing.

I had a colonic yesterday at LYT (Love Your Transformation). It was a really effortless experience. Stephanie was my therapist and she did a great job making me feel comfortable and being unfazed that I was conducting business from the colonic table from both the side position and from my back.

It seems like there is still some cleansing to do, so I am going to continue for a bit longer...

Importantly, I have a strategy of how I am going to break my fast. Which is important, since the my body hasn't had any solid food for awhile.

I will point out, that my sleeping pattern changed dramatically. I feel like am practically awake through the night, listening and observing all sounds and sensations. The alarm on my blackberry goes off at 540am to get me up for yoga and I feel like I am already awake. As I walk the few steps to turn of the alarm, I discovered that turning on a light, ensures that I stay vertical. I have in the past, set my alarm, gotten up early, gone to the restroom and ended up re-setting my alarm and going back to bed.

The effort of fasting, getting up early and going to yoga is well worth it.

Below is an intersting article that I stumbled up about toxins in the body.



Chemicals Within Us @ National Geographic Magazine

By David Ewing Duncan
Photographs by Peter Essick
Modern chemistry keeps insects from ravaging crops, lifts stains from carpets, and saves lives. But the ubiquity of chemicals is taking a toll. Many of the compounds absorbed by the body stay there for years—and fears about their health effects are growing.

My journalist-as-guinea-pig experiment is taking a disturbing turn. A Swedish chemist is on the phone, talking about flame retardants, chemicals added for safety to just about any product that can burn. Found in mattresses, carpets, the plastic casing of televisions, electronic circuit boards, and automobiles, flame retardants save hundreds of lives a year in the United States alone. These, however, are where they should not be: inside my body.

Åke Bergman of Stockholm University tells me he has received the results of a chemical analysis of my blood, which measured levels of flame-retarding compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers. In mice and rats, high doses of PBDEs interfere with thyroid function, cause reproductive and neurological problems, and hamper neurological development. Little is known about their impact on human health.

"I hope you are not nervous, but this concentration is very high," Bergman says with a light Swedish accent. My blood level of one particularly toxic PBDE, found primarily in U.S.-made products, is 10 times the average found in a small study of U.S. residents and more than 200 times the average in Sweden. The news about another PBDE variant—also toxic to animals—is nearly as bad. My levels would be high even if I were a worker in a factory making the stuff, Bergman says.

In fact I'm a writer engaged in a journey of chemical self-discovery. Last fall I had myself tested for 320 chemicals I might have picked up from food, drink, the air I breathe, and the products that touch my skin—my own secret stash of compounds acquired by merely living. It includes older chemicals that I might have been exposed to decades ago, such as DDT and PCBs; pollutants like lead, mercury, and dioxins; newer pesticides and plastic ingredients; and the near-miraculous compounds that lurk just beneath the surface of modern life, making shampoos fragrant, pans nonstick, and fabrics water-resistant and fire-safe.

The tests are too expensive for most individuals—National Geographic paid for mine, which would normally cost around $15,000—and only a few labs have the technical expertise to detect the trace amounts involved. I ran the tests to learn what substances build up in a typical American over a lifetime, and where they might come from. I was also searching for a way to think about risks, benefits, and uncertainty—the complex trade-offs embodied in the chemical "body burden" that swirls around inside all of us.

Now I'm learning more than I really want to know.

Bergman wants to get to the bottom of my flame-retardant mystery. Have I recently bought new furniture or rugs? No. Do I spend a lot of time around computer monitors? No, I use a titanium laptop. Do I live near a factory making flame retardants? Nope, the closest one is over a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) away. Then I come up with an idea.

"What about airplanes?" I ask.

"Yah," he says, "do you fly a lot?"

"I flew almost 200,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) last year," I say. In fact, as I spoke to Bergman, I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight from my hometown of San Francisco to London.

"Interesting," Bergman says, telling me that he has long been curious about PBDE exposure inside airplanes, whose plastic and fabric interiors are drenched in flame retardants to meet safety standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration and its counterparts overseas. "I have been wanting to apply for a grant to test pilots and flight attendants for PBDEs," Bergman says as I hear my flight announced overhead. But for now the airplane connection is only a hypothesis. Where I picked up this chemical that I had not even heard of until a few weeks ago remains a mystery. And there's the bigger question: How worried should I be?

The same can be asked of other chemicals I've absorbed from air, water, the nonstick pan I used to scramble my eggs this morning, my faintly scented shampoo, the sleek curve of my cell phone. I'm healthy, and as far as I know have no symptoms associated with chemical exposure. In large doses, some of these substances, from mercury to PCBs and dioxins, the notorious contaminants in Agent Orange, have horrific effects. But many toxicologists—and not just those who have ties to the chemical industry—insist that the minuscule smidgens of chemicals inside us are mostly nothing to worry about.

"In toxicology, dose is everything," says Karl Rozman, a toxicologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, "and these doses are too low to be dangerous." One part per billion (ppb), a standard unit for measuring most chemicals inside us, is like putting half a teaspoon (two milliliters) of red dye into an Olympic-size swimming pool. What's more, some of the most feared substances, such as mercury, dissipate within days or weeks—or would if we weren't constantly re-exposed.

Yet even though many health statistics have been improving over the past few decades, a few illnesses are rising mysteriously. From the early 1980s through the late 1990s, autism increased tenfold; from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s, one type of leukemia was up 62 percent, male birth defects doubled, and childhood brain cancer was up 40 percent. Some experts suspect a link to the man-made chemicals that pervade our food, water, and air. There's little firm evidence. But over the years, one chemical after another that was thought to be harmless turned out otherwise once the facts were in.

The classic example is lead. In 1971 the U.S. Surgeon General declared that lead levels of 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood were safe. It's now known that any detectable lead can cause neurological damage in children, shaving off IQ points. From DDT to PCBs, the chemical industry has released compounds first and discovered damaging health effects later. Regulators have often allowed a standard of innocent until proven guilty in what Leo Trasande, a pediatrician and environmental health specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, calls "an uncontrolled experiment on America's children."

Each year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews an average of 1,700 new compounds that industry is seeking to introduce. Yet the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act requires that they be tested for any ill effects before approval only if evidence of potential harm exists—which is seldom the case for new chemicals. The agency approves about 90 percent of the new compounds without restrictions. Only a quarter of the 82,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. have ever been tested for toxicity.

Studies by the Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy organization that helped pioneer the concept of a "body burden" of toxic chemicals, had found hundreds of chemical traces in the bodies of volunteers. But until recently, no one had even measured average levels of exposure among large numbers of Americans. No regulations required it, the tests are expensive, and technology sensitive enough to measure the tiniest levels didn't exist.

Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took a step toward closing that gap when it released data on 148 substances, from DDT and other pesticides to metals, PCBs, and plastic ingredients, measured in the blood and urine of several thousand people. The study said little about health impacts on the people tested or how they might have encountered the chemicals. "The good news is that we are getting real data about exposure levels," says James Pirkle, the study's lead author. "This gives us a place to start."

I began my own chemical journey on an October morning at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where I gave urine and had blood drawn under the supervision of Leo Trasande. Trasande specializes in childhood exposures to mercury and other brain toxins. He had agreed to be one of several expert advisers on this project, which began as a Sinai phlebotomist extracted 14 vials of blood—so much that at vial 12 I felt woozy and went into a cold sweat. At vial 13 Trasande grabbed smelling salts, which hit my nostrils like a whiff of fire and allowed me to finish.

From New York my samples were shipped to Axys Analytical Services on Vancouver Island in Canada, one of a handful of state-of-the-art labs specializing in subtle chemical detection, analyzing everything from eagle eggs to human tissue for researchers and government agencies. A few weeks later, I followed my samples to Canada to see how Axys teased out the tiny loads of compounds inside me.

I watched the specimens go through multiple stages of processing, which slowly separated sets of target chemicals from the thousands of other compounds, natural and unnatural, in my blood and urine. The extracts then went into a high-tech clean room containing mass spectrometers, sleek, freezer-size devices that work by flinging the components of a sample through a vacuum, down a long tube. Along the way, a magnetic field deflects the molecules, with lighter molecules swerving the most. The exact amount of deflection indicates each molecule's size and identity.

A few weeks later, Axys sent me my results—a grid of numbers in parts per billion or trillion—and I set out to learn, as best I could, where those toxic traces came from.

Some of them date back to my time in the womb, when my mother downloaded part of her own chemical burden through the placenta and the umbilical cord. More came after I was born, in her breast milk.

Once weaned, I began collecting my own chemicals as I grew up in northeastern Kansas, a few miles outside Kansas City. There I spent countless hot, muggy summer days playing in a dump near the Kansas River. Situated on a high limestone bluff above the fast brown water lined by cottonwoods and railroad tracks, the dump was a mother lode of old bottles, broken machines, steering wheels, and other items only boys can fully appreciate.

This was the late 1960s, and my friends and I had no way of knowing that this dump would later be declared an EPA superfund site, on the National Priority List for hazardous places. It turned out that for years, companies and individuals in this corner of Johnson County had dumped thousands of pounds of material contaminated with toxic chemicals here. "It was started as a landfill before there were any rules and regulations on how landfills were done," says Denise Jordan-Izaguirre, the regional representative for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. "There were metal tailings and heavy metals dumped in there. It was unfenced, unrestricted, so kids had access to it."

Kids like me.

Now capped, sealed, and closely monitored, the dump, called the Doepke-Holliday Site, also happens to be half a mile upriver from a county water intake that supplied drinking water for my family and 45,000 other households. "From what we can gather, there were contaminants going into the river," says Shelley Brodie, the EPA Remedial Project Manager for Doepke. In the 1960s, the county treated water drawn from the river, but not for all contaminants. Drinking water also came from 21 wells that tapped the aquifer near Doepke.

When I was a boy, my corner of Kansas was filthy, and the dump wasn't the only source of toxins. Industry lined the river a few miles away—factories making cars, soap, and fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals—and a power plant belched fumes. When we drove past the plants toward downtown Kansas City, we plunged into a noxious cloud that engulfed the car with smoke and an awful chemical stench. Flames rose from fertilizer plant stacks, burning off mustard-yellow plumes of sodium, and animal waste poured into the river. In the nearby farmland, trucks and crop dusters sprayed DDT and other pesticides in great, puffy clouds that we kids sometimes rode our bikes through, holding our breath and feeling very brave.

Today the air is clear, and the river free of effluents—a visible testament to the success of the U.S. environmental cleanup, spurred by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 1970s. But my Axys test results read like a chemical diary from 40 years ago. My blood contains traces of several chemicals now banned or restricted, including DDT (in the form of DDE, one of its breakdown products) and other pesticides such as the termite-killers chlordane and heptachlor. The levels are about what you would expect decades after exposure, says Rozman, the toxicologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center. My childhood playing in the dump, drinking the water, and breathing the polluted air could also explain some of the lead and dioxins in my blood, he says.

I went to college at a place and time that put me at the height of exposure for another set of substances found inside me—PCBs, once used as electrical insulators and heat-exchange fluids in transformers and other products. PCBs can lurk in the soil anywhere there's a dump or an old factory. But some of the largest releases took place along New York's Hudson River from the 1940s to the 1970s, when General Electric used PCBs at factories in the towns of Hudson Falls and Fort Edward. About 140 miles (225 kilometers) downstream is the city of Poughkeepsie, where I attended Vassar College in the late 1970s.

PCBs, oily liquids or solids, can persist in the environment for decades. In animals, they impair liver function, raise blood lipids, and cause cancers. Some of the 209 different PCBs chemically resemble dioxins and cause other mischief in lab animals: reproductive and nervous system damage, as well as developmental problems. By 1976, the toxicity of PCBs was unmistakable; the United States banned them, and GE stopped using them. But until then, GE legally dumped excess PCBs into the Hudson, which swept them all the way downriver to Poughkeepsie, one of eight cities that draw their drinking water from the Hudson.

In 1984, a 200-mile (300 kilometers) stretch of the Hudson, from Hudson Falls to New York City, was declared a superfund site, and plans to rid the river of PCBs were set in motion. GE has spent 300 million dollars on the cleanup so far, dredging up and disposing of PCBs in the river sediment under the supervision of the EPA. It is also working to stop the seepage of PCBs into the river from the factories.

Birds and other wildlife along the Hudson are thought to have suffered from the pollution, but its impact on humans is less definitive. One study in Hudson River communities found a 20 percent increase in the rate of hospitalization for respiratory diseases, while another, more reassuringly, found no increase in cancer deaths in the contaminated region. But among many of the locals, the fear is palpable.

"I grew up a block from the Fort Edward plant," says Dennis Prevost, a retired Army officer and public health advocate, who blames PCBs for the brain cancers that killed his brother at age 46 and a neighbor in her 20s. "The PCBs have migrated under the parking lot and into the community aquifer," which Prevost says was the source of Fort Edward's drinking water until municipal water replaced wells in 1984.

Ed Fitzgerald of the State University of New York at Albany, a former staff scientist at the state department of health, is conducting the most thorough study yet of the health effects of PCBs in the area. He says he has explained to Prevost and other residents that the risk from the wells was probably small because PCBs tend to settle to the bottom of an aquifer. Eating contaminated fish caught in the Hudson is a more likely exposure route, he says.

I didn't eat much Hudson River fish during my college days in the 1970s, but the drinking water in my dorm could have contained traces of the PCBs pouring into the river far upstream. That may be how I picked up my PCB body burden, which was about average for an American. Or maybe not. "PCBs are everywhere," says Leo Rosales, a local EPA official, "so who knows where you got it."

Back home in San Francisco, I encounter a newer generation of industrial chemicals—compounds that are not banned, and, like flame retardants, are increasing year by year in the environment and in my body. Sipping water after a workout, I could be exposing myself to bisphenol A, an ingredient in rigid plastics from water bottles to safety goggles. Bisphenol A causes reproductive system abnormalities in animals. My levels were so low they were undetectable—a rare moment of relief in my toxic odyssey.

And that faint lavender scent as I shampoo my hair? Credit it to phthalates, molecules that dissolve fragrances, thicken lotions, and add flexibility to PVC, vinyl, and some intravenous tubes in hospitals. The dashboards of most cars are loaded with phthalates, and so is some plastic food wrap. Heat and wear can release phthalate molecules, and humans swallow them or absorb them through the skin. Because they dissipate after a few minutes to a few hours in the body, most people's levels fluctuate during the day.

Like bisphenol A, phthalates disrupt reproductive development in mice. An expert panel convened by the National Toxicology Program recently concluded that although the evidence so far doesn't prove that phthalates pose any risk to people, it does raise "concern," especially about potential effects on infants. "We don't have the data in humans to know if the current levels are safe," says Antonia Calafat, a CDC phthalates expert. I scored higher than the mean in five out of seven phthalates tested. One of them, monomethyl phthalate, came in at 34.8 ppb, in the top 5 percent for Americans. Leo Trasande speculates that some of my phthalate levels were high because I gave my urine sample in the morning, just after I had showered and washed my hair.

My inventory of household chemicals also includes perfluorinated acids (PFAs)—tough, chemically resistant compounds that go into making nonstick and stain-resistant coatings. 3M also used them in its Scotchgard protector products until it found that the specific PFA compounds in Scotchgard were escaping into the environment and phased them out. In animals these chemicals damage the liver, affect thyroid hormones, and cause birth defects and perhaps cancer, but not much is known about their toxicity in humans.

Long-range pollution left its mark on my results as well: My blood contained low, probably harmless, levels of dioxins, which escape from paper mills, certain chemical plants, and incinerators. In the environment, dioxins settle on soil and in the water, then pass into the food chain. They build up in animal fat, and most people pick them up from meat and dairy products.

And then there is mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently impair memory, learning centers, and behavior. Coal-burning power plants are a major source of mercury, sending it out their stacks into the atmosphere, where it disperses in the wind, falls in rain, and eventually washes into lakes, streams, or oceans. There bacteria transform it into a compound called methylmercury, which moves up the food chain after plankton absorb it from the water and are eaten by small fish. Large predatory fish at the top of the marine food chain, like tuna and swordfish, accumulate the highest concentrations of methylmercury—and pass it on to seafood lovers.

For people in northern California, mercury exposure is also a legacy of the gold rush 150 years ago, when miners used quicksilver, or liquid mercury, to separate the gold from other ores in the hodgepodge of mines in the Sierra Nevada. Over the decades, streams and groundwater washed mercury-laden sediment out of the old mine tailings and swept it into San Francisco Bay.

I don't eat much fish, and the levels of mercury in my blood were modest. But I wondered what would happen if I gorged on large fish for a meal or two. So one afternoon I bought some halibut and swordfish at a fish market in the old Ferry Building on San Francisco Bay. Both were caught in the ocean just outside the Golden Gate, where they might have picked up mercury from the old mines. That night I ate the halibut with basil and a dash of soy sauce; I downed the swordfish for breakfast with eggs (cooked in my nonstick pan).

Twenty-four hours later I had my blood drawn and retested. My level of mercury had more than doubled, from 5 micrograms per liter to a higher-than-recommended 12. Mercury at 70 or 80 micrograms per liter is dangerous for adults, says Leo Trasande, and much lower levels can affect children. "Children have suffered losses in IQ at 5.8 micrograms." He advises me to avoid repeating the gorge experiment.

It's a lot harder to dodge the PBDE flame retardants responsible for the most worrisome of my test results. My world—and yours—has become saturated with them since they were introduced about 30 years ago.

Scientists have found the compounds planetwide, in polar bears in the Arctic, cormorants in England, and killer whales in the Pacific. Bergman, the Swedish chemist, and his colleagues first called attention to potential health risks in 1998 when they reported an alarming increase in PBDEs in human breast milk, from none in milk preserved in 1972 to an average of four ppb in 1997.

The compounds escape from treated plastic and fabrics in dust particles or as gases that cling to dust. People inhale the dust; infants crawling on the floor get an especially high dose. Bergman describes a family, tested in Oakland, California, by the Oakland Tribune, whose two small children had blood levels even higher than mine. When he and his colleagues summed up the test results for six different PBDEs, they found total levels of 390 ppb in the five-year-old girl and 650 ppb—twice my total—in the 18-month-old boy.

In 2001, researchers in Sweden fed young mice a PBDE mixture similar to one used in furniture and found that they did poorly on tests of learning, memory, and behavior. Last year, scientists at Berlin's Charité University Medical School reported that pregnant female rats with PBDE levels no higher than mine gave birth to male pups with impaired reproductive health.

Linda Birnbaum, an EPA expert on these flame retardants, says that researchers will have to identify many more people with high PBDE exposures, like the Oakland family and me, before they will be able to detect any human effects. Bergman says that in a pregnant woman my levels would be of concern. "Any level above a hundred parts per billion is a risk to newborns," he guesses. No one knows for sure.

Any margin of safety may be narrowing. In a review of several studies, Ronald Hites of Indiana University found an exponential rise in people and animals, with the levels doubling every three to five years. Now the CDC is putting a comprehensive study of PBDE levels in the U.S. on a fast track, with results due out late this year. Pirkle, who is running the study, says my seemingly extreme levels may no longer be out of the ordinary. "We'll let you know," he says.

Given the stakes, why take a chance on these chemicals? Why not immediately ban them? In 2004, Europe did just that for the penta- and octa-BDEs, which animal tests suggest are the most toxic of the compounds. California will also ban these forms by 2008, and in 2004 Chemtura, an Indiana company that is the only U.S. maker of pentas and octas, agreed to phase them out. Currently, there are no plans to ban the much more prevalent deca-BDEs. They reportedly break down more quickly in the environment and in people, although their breakdown products may include the same old pentas and octas.

Nor is it clear that banning a suspect chemical is always the best option. Flaming beds and airplane seats are not an inviting prospect either. The University of Surrey in England recently assessed the risks and benefits of flame retardants in consumer products. The report concluded: "The benefits of many flame retardants in reducing the risk from fire outweigh the risks to human health."

Except for some pollutants, after all, every industrial chemical was created for a purpose. Even DDT, the archvillain of Rachel Carson's 1962 classic book Silent Spring, which launched the modern environmental movement, was once hailed as a miracle substance because it killed the mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever, and other scourges. It saved countless lives before it was banned in much of the world because of its toxicity to wildlife. "Chemicals are not all bad," says Scott Phillips, a medical toxicologist in Denver. "While we have seen some cancer rates rise," he says, "we also have seen a doubling of the human life span in the past century."

The key is knowing more about these substances, so we are not blindsided by unexpected hazards, says California State Senator Deborah Ortiz, chair of the Senate Health Committee and the author of a bill to monitor chemical exposure. "We benefit from these chemicals, but there are consequences, and we need to understand these consequences much better than we do now." Sarah Brozena of the industry-supported American Chemistry Council thinks safeguards are adequate now, but she concedes: "That's not to say this process was done right in the past."

The European Union last year gave initial approval to a measure called REACH—Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals—which would require companies to prove the substances they market or use are safe, or that the benefits outweigh any risks. The bill, which the chemical industry and the U.S. government oppose, would also encourage companies to find safer alternatives to suspect flame retardants, pesticides, solvents, and other chemicals. That would give a boost to the so-called green chemistry movement, a search for alternatives that is already under way in laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic.

As unsettling as my journey down chemical lane was, it left out thousands of compounds, among them pesticides, plastics, solvents, and a rocket-fuel ingredient called perchlorate that is polluting groundwater in many regions of the country. Nor was I tested for chemical cocktails—mixtures of chemicals that may do little harm on their own but act together to damage human cells. Mixed together, pesticides, PCBs, phthalates, and others "might have additive effects, or they might be antagonistic," says James Pirkle of the CDC, "or they may do nothing. We don't know."

Soon after I receive my results, I show them to my internist, who admits that he too knows little about these chemicals, other than lead and mercury. But he confirms that I am healthy, as far as he can tell. He tells me not to worry. So I'll keep flying, and scrambling my eggs on Teflon, and using that scented shampoo. But I'll never feel quite the same about the chemicals that make life better in so many ways.

PHD Ad-Venture to Pure

One of my favorite activities is eating raw food and it becomes even more fun to share a raw gourmet experience with others.

In the photo above, you will see six happy people who all consumed a multi-raw vegan meal @ Pure Food and Wine.

From Left to Right: Kayla Denny, Esther Cho, Rachel Garfield, Esther Cho, John O’Hara and Odalice Brito.

It is open to interpretation, but my impression was that people loved everything from the nut cheeses to the edible flowers to the ice cream sundaes.

We even had a tour of the kitchen with the evidence that Pure has no stove.

Service

Service is something that some people run to and some run away from. It's an interesting paradox, because it takes effort, it takes initiative and often goes unnoticed.

I remember joining "the service" aka "the army" and it was a brutal experience. Fortunately for me, we were at peace and all I had to do was put up with drill sargents screaming, enormous physical pressure and an aggressive bunch of peers.

Service was redefined for me when I did my first vippassana meditation. There were dozens of "old students" volunteering their time in order to support the efforts of the present meditators.

This video was a gentle reminder of how much more service we can all do...

Raw Mike introduces Wheatgrass to the Masses

Mike Guzman is a real leader. I have known him for almost two decades and he is constantly creating positive change in the world.

Instead of the normal coffee and buns in office meetings, Mike introduced the group to wheatgrass. As you would expect, there were mixed opinions. What I love is that he did it and that at least one person got it!

benefits to wheatgrass

http://shamelesscreative.blogspot.com/search?q=wheat

Live Ducks in a Bag

I love ducks and in my omnivorous days, I would frequently eat the ones that were hanging in the windows in Chinatown.



It's been almost a decade since I went down that path and almost forget all about them until I stumbled upon the following photos.

speechless...

Eat More Plants

Mark Bittman is a mainstream NY Times writer and he's not even a vegetarian. Very interesting for the masses. This talks about food pre-corn flakes.

Totally in Awe of our fellow creatures

who would have guessed that elephants can paint. This just blows my mind away. Most importantly, it's not as rare as one might think.



http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/NYBUFsurapa.html

Show me the love

This is an interesting video that articulates the breakdown in communication between male and female/advertiser and consumer.

It kept me wondering who actually made it. It begs the issue that we need to think differently about brand advertising and performance advertising.

From a performance aka DR point of view, at the end of the day, if you get the conversions below the target CPO/CPA then most people are happy. Unless, you really care about the brand, then everything matters and you have to plan all your communication to be relevant to your target consumer.

Fortunately, this all possible in 2008.

Equanimity

e·qua·nim·i·ty /ˌikwəˈnɪmɪti, ˌɛkwə-/

As I am winding down to meditate prior to laying my head to rest, all I can think of is how important it is to maintain a calm quite state of mind.

All things considered, most of us in the US are living quite well. Our definition of hunger is the sensation that we get in between meals. Few of us have ever experienced true hunger. Even though I have fasted extensively, from www.organicavenue.com juice Fasts and Cleanses to dry fasts and water fasts.

As I get more in-touch with my physical sensations, I experience the world in a different way. For example, I was offered a delicious salad this evening around 9pm and although I definitely could have eaten it and I was a little hungry, I knew intellectually, that I don't like to eat after 8pm and that I had a huge salad for lunch. Therefore, what was so tempting about eating?

It must be because food brings us pleasure and I like pleasure. Today, I was equanimous when it came down to the food. I was able to observe my cravings and create a strategy that enabled me to act on what my pre-intention was, not my cravings.

As I begin to reflect deeper into that concept, I can see my cravings and aversions come and go throughout the day. The key is to remain equanimous and not react to them.

I learned to practice vipassana meditation when I was living in India in 2004. I found a great little video that gives a summary of the practice.






"My own personal feeling…is that being a vegetarian makes one much more pacific as a person. I'm not quite sure whether that's psychological or whether in fact there is something physiological involved. But through getting in touch with your inner sea of calm, you also get in touch with nature and with the beauty of all aspects of the planet."
~ Rose Bird

Make Work Your Best Friend

If you don't like to be preached to, then this post isn't for you. I am not preaching about religion or even raw vegan food. This post is about work.

Work is my best friend. Through hard work and disciplined effort, I have earned freedom.

What do I mean hard work? Well it sometimes it means being the first one in and the last one out of the office for a sustained period of time.

It means following up on all interactions the same day. Without fail, I return every commerce related phone call and every commerce related email before I lay my head to rest.

This applies to my clients of course, to my team members and vendors/partners and even sales reps.

Having been in sales in one capacity or another for most of my adult life, I have a lot of compassion for what it takes to sell. I don't mind being sold to and in some situations, I like the aggressive sales person that has passion for what they are selling and how it could help me.

I find it easier in the long run to say no, not interested, no shot, if that's what I feel. There are considered decisions that take time and I will do my homework and ensure I make the best decision and if I get pressured, that will turn me off. Therefore, selling is as much of an art as it is a science.

What's really important about working hard is doing the important things first. That sounds so simple, yet it's so easy to avoid doing them and focus on whatever comes up. Time is not forgiving. A call that should have been made today, is far less effective tomorrow. A thank you note mailed the same day after a meeting loses its efficacy with every hour passing.

We live in the age were most people have multiple computing devices, cell phones, laptops and desktops. It's very easy to sit down at the computer with an important project at hand. A project with huge financial upside and somehow get distracted by checking your stock portfolio, reading personal email, searching for something obscure on eBay, checking your web analytics.

All of those things seem interesting and important, but the fact is they hold you back.

Part of my hard work is completed by developing tools that make me successful. Salesforce.com is one really powerful tool. In some respects it's priceless if it's used correctly and worthless if it's not.

There are many ways to use a tool like saleforce.com, but to me, the juice is all in my stage 4 report. We track all deals by stages. Stage 4 is the stage where you gave the client a formal proposal, Stage 5 is a verbal or a nod, Stage 6 is closed. Stage 4 is where the action is and I make sure that I live in my stage 4 report and look at each client and ask myself, do they need a phone call, do they need an email, should I show up at their office?

It's now approaching 2am. I just finished reviewing my stage 4 report and took the necessary actions.

Did I mention that I left NY last night and took a connecting flight from NY to Chicago to MSP to save $400 and avoid the Northwest Minneapolis monopoly. It was risky because there were winds in Chicago and all flights were delayed. We sat on the tarmac in LGA for 2.5 hours and as a result, I thought I would miss my connecting flight because we were arriving 1.5 hours after it was scheduled to depart. Turns out everything was delayed, so I did manage to catch the flight, rent the car and get to my hotel by 1am.

Then I logged in to the VPN, checked my email and started making calls to my team in SF asking where was this and where was that?

Then I had brain work to do. I had to review my prior notes, research current activities and mentally prepare a strategy for each meeting. This was the hard part, thinking through what I could say that would be most relevant and most differentiated.

I literally sit with my eyes close and walk through the entire meeting and write the script. This helps so much.

Another discipline, is writing up my notes and my action items while they are fresh in my head and taking action.

So my little trip to the Twin Cities took exactly 24 hours of which 20 of them were work.

I love it. I feel the positive impact. I know that the hard work will pay off.

On a related note, a close friend forwarded me an email resignation that they received from an employee who left without notice. As I read and re-read the email, I saw so many opportunities for that person to have worked harder, taken more initiative and more responsibility. It read that the company had the same problems now that it had when they started.

Isn't that interesting. That a person comes to work, sees problems and just observes them over the course of a year.

It reminds me of a little situation that I experienced a couple of weeks ago walking Ahimsa by the river. There was a huge pile of dog poop on the path near the water fountain. It was smeared a bit as a result of a few unsuspecting walkers stepping in it, but it was still largely in one place.

I watched about a dozen people walk by it. Some had dogs. Everyone exhibited a level of disgust, but no one did anything. At that point, I took one of the Bio bags out of my pocket, bent down and picked that shit up and dropped it in the trash.

It took me about 30 seconds. Granted I was repulsed, but I felt good after I did it. Less because of protecting other people from stepping in it. That's nice, but because I felt it was helping me to develop the habit of doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, whether I like to do it or not.

I Didn't Get Into This for Animal Rights...

It's 1:23am and I was winding down from a long day, but after inadvertantly reading an article about a slaughterhouse, I am know winding back up.

I became a vegetarian back in 1999 after meeting Denise. She was a strong advocate and I thought it was worth a shot. It's been almost a decade and not only have I not turned back, I have become deeper into my faith.

Soon after becoming vegetarian, I became vegan and then went raw.

I stumbled up this video and am compelled to share it with my friends who may or may not ever have seen anything like this...

A Different Friday Night

This past Friday was the end of a long week of pouring it on. Up early and working late. By Friday night @ 11:15pm, I was ready to pass out.

I was getting ready to walk home with Denise and Ahimsa (raw vegan havanese) and we bumped into an aggressive panhandler. This is a guy that we have seen in the hood for years. We actually met him once, but for the most part, we don't make eye-contact and he goes after the newbie party goers on the LES.

It was cold and raining and Ahimsa wanted me to carry him on my shoulders and this man, I will call T, began speaking to Ahimsa and asking him did he remember him?! We were pleasant, but were getting anxious to leave.

Instead, we began what became a 15 minute dialog about his baby's mother, his past escapades, his 17 days at the Salvation Army and his desire to get a home. I asked him had he been to AA and he said just started to moan and was looking for help.

I actually became a little aggressive, much more so than I can remember, but still in a compassionate way, and said to him, that g-d helps those who help themselves and that if he was serious, he could do something now.

He looked perplexed, had an unopened can of cheap beer in his pocket (one on deck), just completed a forty and was eagerly staring down some yuppies in front of the Stanton Social, but he continued to listen. Denise and I looked at each other and agreed to offer to take him to a midnight AA meeting on Houston Street.

There was little time left so we had to take a cab across town. Just walking two blocks took almost 10 minutes because T was shaking the cup at anyone who looked like they had money.

It's normally a pain to get a cab in the rain, it's harder when you have a dog, but much harder when you have a homeless drunk with you. We managed! I practically had to wrestle T's beer out of his hand and pour it out the window. I was actually getting a little attached to the outcome for a minute.

We got to the meeting, walked past a few guys smoking in front of the meeting, T of course was shaking his cup, looking for some change, even though he had about $75 cash in his pocket and makes about $200 a night in cash.

He said he needs to drink in order to shake the cup, but then he spends what he makes to drink. A vicious cycle. T is 39 years old, but looks more like 59.

As expected, they wouldn't let me sit during the meeting with a dog. I forget he's a dog and think that he's a prince or a little furry boy...

Denise asked where they should sit and I said front row and left. Ahimsa and I walked around the block about 5 times and then I had to take a pee... Even with the light rain, there were a lot of people on Houston Street. I walked past a slow McDonald's, picked up Ahimsa and snuck in there and waited patiently for the bathroom to clear.

When I got out, there was an email from Doreen from AdBrite, with the Subject "Raw". I was like wow, she's up and I called her and gave her some suggestions on what she should eat and told her to buy a recipe or two from Raw Chef Dan's website for a buck a piece.

Seventy-five slow minutes went by when Denise called and asked where we were. I told her downstairs and she warned me that the meeting was over and that people would be coming down now. She said that T was passed out and wouldn't get up. I picked up Ahimsa, walked up the stairs and there was T out cold. I tapped him on the back and he slowly woke up. He had broken a sweat and looked a little cloudy. He walked down the stairs and immediately, seemingly instinctively busted out his cup and began approaching the first people we saw in the street.

We weren't sure what to do with him now. He said he had been drinking all day. He slept on the train station. He thought the 28th Street shelter was dirty... We walked to Sixth Ave. and then headed North. He howled at women wearing skirts and begged from men and couples. He started mocking a man wearing a beret by calling him Picasso... I felt it was both funny and sad.

As we walked past a deli, I suggested we go in and get a bottle of water. He wanted to get a small one, I suggested a large one. He tried to get a clean cut guy in front of him to buy it and then tried to pay $1 instead of $2. My patience was wearing, but I mastered my emotions because I knew it would end soon.

We asked him what he was going to do and even suggested that he sleep in the emergency room. He had done that before, but preferred the train.

We walked to the West 4th Street station and said our goodbyes. Some kind man in the room gave him a meeting schedule and his phone number. I am not sure whether T had a phone, but he certainly could have based on the money that he makes.

I looked him in the eye and shook his hand for what felt like an eternity, but I knew there was not enough love there.. He had a firm handshake and a look of despair in his eyes. I candidly kept my hand out in the cold and didn't put my glove on or touch anything until I got home and washed my hand thoroughly.

We haven't seen him since...

Is Food an Addiction?

One thing for sure, as I grow, everything about how I perceive the world grows too. In some respects, I believe that ignorance is bliss. Yet, the purpose of my life isn't to achieve pure bliss, it's to create, to have a positive social impact and to love.

Bliss isn't love. Bliss to me is actually self-indulgence and perhaps even narcissistic. Not that those things are bad, it's just in the greater context of finding a deeper meaning to life than being high.

High? What does that mean and why do people go there through a range of external sources? I don't know. The few times that I dabbled were all in my teens. I haven't had a taste of alcohol in almost a decade. So speaking from my own experience, I did experimented because it seemed cool and I was into exploration at the time. After not so deep contemplation, I found that my life straight was pretty interesting. The pain, suffering, disappointment and anxiety added a level of mystery to my life. I was curious and constantly seeking feedback.

I love to create. I love a challenge. I love work. I manage to find meaning in the most trivial or complex tasks.

Clearly, the most challenging experiments have to do with dealing with people. It amazes me how "off" I can be in reading people and predicting their behavior.

I spent 2.5 years at Nimblefish in San Francisco, CA as the soul raw vegan or vegan period. Many of my friends and co-workers would go to Cafe Gratitude with me for lunch or dinner. Graham Gunst and his wife, read Raw Food Detox adopted the rawfood diet as a new years resolution and Graham lost a bowling ball or two and looked great.

Paul McGhee and his wife and baby would frequent Cafe Gratitude with me on the weekends and indulge in a fresh squeeze in the morning, but that was it.

Steve Bach even had a dinner with me at Cafe Gratitude and actually had them cater my going away party at Nimblefish.

All in all. I think most people became aware of the benefits of eating 100% raw/live vegan food, but at the time, no one took the proverbial bait at the time.

Since then, my buddy Gever Tully and I have eaten at Cafe Gratitude on my short visits to SF and I hear different raw stories from a lot of people.

It's now been three years since I started planting the raw seeds and we some success stories.

Francis Potter from Nimblefish is 100% raw vegan. He is even actively blogging about on his blog Success Zen.

Paul and his wife are now vegan and eating tons of raw.

There are also good signs coming from AdBrite.

Why doesn't everyone become a raw vegan?

I am starting to hallucinate that food is an addiction and that the addiction is more powerful than an untrained food eater.

Therefore, in order to eat this way, I believe that people need a strategy. Some things that might help the strategy:

1. Reading everything you can about raw vegan nutrition.
2. Associating with other people who are successfully living the lifestyle.
3. Fasting or doing a 5 day cleanse like the ones offered at Organic Avenue.
4. Getting a colonic or two from a raw vegan colon hydro-therapist like Gill Jacobs or the gentle team at LYT NYC.
5. Drinking only fresh pressed juices in the morning till noon and seeing how amazing you feel.
6. Signing up for a month of yoga and committing to go at least 5 times a week at a real studio like Jivamukti.
7. Making a written list of all the reasons that you must eat this way.
8. Attending any twelve step meeting that you can find and replace the "X" with food.
9. Smiling at every person that you see and saying to yourself, "I LOVE YOU"
10. Stand in the mirror naked and marvel and adorn your perfect self as you are, not as you think that you should be.

Living Life Full Throttle

Today was a long day. I had to get up at 6:30am to be at morning event downtown by 8am. It was hosted by EO, formerly known as YEO and WEO.

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES: Do you really know how your listeners perceive you as a leader and communicator?

Come find out how YOU are truly perceived as we focus on honest self awareness, concentrating on authority, energy and the ability to connect in a likeable manner. Speakeasy Inc. Expert, Dr. Leah Lorendo, will help each of us become significantly more aware and more effective of these attributes in this morning session.

Do you really know how your listeners perceive you as a leader and communicator?

Presented by Speakeasy Inc. Expert, Dr. Leah Lorendo.

I found it interesting that they said that most people fear public speaking more than death. What I really got out of it was to make sure that my body language, my voice and my message were all congruent. To really look people in the eye and to be present with them.

Of course, I think that I do that, yet I can easily recall at least 3 times today that I was typing emails while being on the phone with someone talking... I looked at my Blackberry as if I was expecting a baby a few times in conversation and I definitely turned my head a couple more times while conversing face to face with someone.

Live and learn. I am no more aware and we'll see how that goes.

I had a nice long phone conversation with Dr. T. Colin Campbell today. He wrote one of my favorite books, "The China Study" .

We were discussing everything from Vitamin B12 to the corruption and politics of the food industry. I love that guy...

I drank 16 oz of fresh OJ from Organic Avenue
Then had three blood oranges and then a some flax seed crackers and lettuce sandwich. I would love something sweet right now, but I don't eat after midnight...

There is a lot of action at AdBrite. The company is growing, my deals are closing and spending. At 11:23pm, we received the Insertion Order for a deal that we have been working on for several weeks. This was definitely turn a lemon into lemonade deal. I must have spoken to Doreen from AdBrite a dozen times today.

She is "full throttle" and a joy to work with. We see an occasional spark and I like the bright light.

I am also on the NY Board of NFTE, and we had a great board meeting this evening. There are so many things to work on and NFTE is amazing. It inspires me.

I actually recommended the org to a client last night and he's eager to get down.

So this day has gone past the 18 hour mark. I am wide awake and will tackle a few more things before I meditate and call it an night.

namaste.

What is a Vegan?

I was sitting with a software programmer this morning who is an orthodox Jew. His uncle was a vet and he wanted to recommend that I take Ahimsa (our puppy) to him. I asked if was a vegan. He asked me why. I told him that I wouldn't trust a vet who ate animals and then proceeded to ask him if he would eat his dog...

He told me he wasn't exactly sure what a vegan was and I actually didn't get a chance to tell him. Therefore, I had inspiration for todays blog posting.

It's interesting, there are so many discussions about who's a vegetarian and who's a vegan. I have heard many rumors about Steve Jobs being a vegan and even a raw foodie. There was a lot of information about Tony Gonzalez being a vegan.

I am ethically a vegan first and then a raw/live/wild foodist second.

The term vegan was created in 1944 in the UK by Elsie Shrigley and Donald Watson when they got fed up with term vegetarian because it came to include eating diary.

From Wiki...
The word "veganism" denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practical — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

One of the reasons that I got involved with Organic Avenue is because of Denise's commitment to being vegan.

Protein Powders, Hemp Seeds and Hemp Protein

I had a lunch meeting yesterday with a dynamic media executive in Detroit. We actually didn't eat at all. At some point in our conversation, we discussed protein shakes and Myoplex came up.

As many of you know, I don't know much about things that come in packages, but I was inclined to do a little research.

Myoplex does use 'fillers' such as artificial flavors, hydrogenated oils, vitamins, corn syrum and a bunch of other ingredients to most likely 'fill' and improve taste

Our friend , Dr. Colin Campbell did extensive research in his book the China Study that would highly encourage you to avoid many of the ingredients listed below..

Ingredient Details:
MyoPro (unique blend of whey protein concentrate from specially filtered and ion-exchanged whey protein, calcium caseinate, milk protein isolate, taurine, L-glutamine, sodium caseinate, egg albumin, and calcium alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG)), maltodextrin.

Nutrition Facts:
Serving Size(Packet) 1
Servings Per Box 20
Calories 280
Fat Calories 20
Total Fat (g) 2
Sat. Fat (g) 1
Cholesterol (mg) 15
Sodium (mg) 330
Potassium (mg) 550
Total Carbs (g) 24
Dietary Fiber (g) 0
Sugars (g) 3
Proteins (g) 42

At the end of the day, I am conservative and prefer simple foods. My immediate thoughts that I voiced were hemp protein and hemp seeds.

I found the following on Wikipedia when searching for hemp.

Food

Hemp seeds are highly nutritious, and contain beneficial omega fatty acids, amino acids, and minerals. The seeds can be eaten raw, ground into a meal, sprouted, made into "milk" (akin to soy milk), prepared as tea, and used in baking. The fresh leaves can also be eaten in salads. Products range from cereals to frozen waffles, hemp tofu to nut butters. A few companies produce value added hemp seed items that include the seed oils, whole hemp grain (which is sterilized as per international law), hulled hemp seed (the whole seed without the mineral rich outer shell), hemp flour, hemp cake (a by-product of pressing the seed for oil) and hemp protein powder. Hemp is also used in some organic cereals, for non-dairy "milk" somewhat similar to soy and nut milks, and for non-dairy hemp "ice cream."^[2][3] Given that seeds account for 50% of the weight of a female plant grown for seed, these products can be made cheaper than with soy, almonds, or flax.^{[citation needed]}

Within the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) treats hemp as purely a non-food crop. Seed can and does appear on the UK market as a legal food product although cultivation licenses are not available for this purpose. In North America, hemp seed food products are sold in small volume, typically in health food stores or by mail order.^[4]

Nutrition

Typical nutritional analysis of hemp hearts (hulled hemp seeds)

Calories/100 g	503
Protein	23
Carbohydrate	35
dietary fiber	35
Fat	30
Saturated fat	3
Palmitic 16:0	2
Stearic 18:0	1
Monounsaturated fat	4
Oleic 18:1 (Omega-9)	4
Polyunsaturated fat	23
Linoleic 18:2 (Omega-6)	17
Linolenic 18:3 (Omega-3)	5
Linolenic 18:3 (Omega-6)	1
Moisture	6
Ash	6
Vitamin A (B-Carotene)	37 IU
Thiamine (Vit B1)	1 mg
Riboflavin (Vit B2)	1 mg
Vitamin B6	0 mg
Niacin (Vit B3)	1 mg
Vitamin C	1.0 mg
Vitamin D	10 IU
Vitamin E	3 IU
Sodium	0 mg
Calcium	2 mg
Iron	0 mg
Source: [3]

30–35% of the weight of hempseed is oil containing 80% essential fatty acids (EFAs), linoleic acid (LA, 50-70%), alpha-linolenic acid (ALA, 15–25%) and Gamma-Linolenic_acid (GLA, 1–6%).^[5][6] The proportions of linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid in hempseed oil meet human requirements for EFAs. Unlike flax oil and others, hempseed oil can be used continuously without developing a deficiency or other imbalance of EFAs. Unfortunately the unsaturated fat makes the oil rancid quickly, unless it is stored in dark coloured bottles or mixed with chemical preservatives. This makes hemp oil difficult to transport or store. The high unsaturated fat content also makes the oil unsuitable for frying. This severely limits hemp oil's potential on the food market, although some marketing potential exists as a nutritional supplement.^[7] Cold-pressed hempseed oil is nutritionally superior to olive or flax oil, and so, makes a great alternative in salads, smoothies, and other non-frying uses. Cooking of any oil reduces its nutritional value, and may convert beneficial fatty acids to less benign substances.

Hemp seed also contains 20% complete and highly-digestible protein,^[8] 1/3 as edestin protein and 2/3 as albumins. Its high quality amino acid composition is closer to "complete" sources of proteins (meat, milk, eggs) than all other oil seeds except quinoa and soy.^[9]

Hemp oil is high is essential fatty acids.

Juice My Lawn or Give It Up

The headline of this posting is to inspire people to either plant organic wheatgrass in their lawn and juice it daily for themselves and their friends or to give it up and plant fruits and veggies. The dynamics of a traditional lawn have clearly been surpassed by the need for nature and truly local plant based nutrition.

I have only lived in two houses in my entire life. One was really just an apartment in a big house in Noe Valley, San Francisco and the other was a two bedroom house in Mysore, India. In neither experience did I get involved with the land or do any gardening.

At one point in my business career, I contemplated taking up golf because I thought it would be good for business. That fantasy ended quickly when my friend Govinda told me about how much more could be done with that land and resources of a golf course.

I was watched this video this morning and it was totally inspiring that I felt compelled to immediately blog and share it with my friends.

Please let me know how your lawn transformations are going.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile-All You Can Eat

I knew the day would come when cell phone plans had all you can eat options. I was a little adventurous back in 2001 when AT&T first rolled out their GSM/GPRS Service and I signed up for their charter plan. It was $99 for unlimited National calling with no roaming or long distance charges. The first year was tough, because coverage was weak, but it got better and better.

There were some challenges. AT&T was sold to Cingular and then Cingular was sold to SBC (The New AT&T) and they really didn't like unlimited plans. So they did everything they could to get me to switch. No warranty repair, expensive text messaging and Blackberry service, etc... I loved the unlimited plan and went through convoluted processes of buying phones on eBay or from the AT&T Store and then waiting a week or longer to get unlocked codes and using my old SIM card.

Well, today, that all ended and I migrated from AT&T Blue to AT&T Orange and I am on the new plan ($99.99 for unlimited anytime minutes) and another $50 for unlimited text messaging and Blackberry email and Web browsing.

This was a difficult decision for another reason, it was an opportunity to switch to the Apple iPhone. I thought long and hard about this. I played with my friends iPhones, I played with the one in the AT&T company owned store and read reviews.

At the end of the day, I use Outlook on my MacBook Pro through Parallels and Windows XP to manage over 10,000 contacts and 5 years of calendar history. I also rely heavily on email, the push email which actually comes to my Blackberry 8800 at the same time it hits my desktop email.

I can open and read attachments, it has a full keyboard, it has GPS with audible directions and a long battery life. I have an iPod Nano, but I find that I listen to the same music a lot and I have one meditation track that is part of my daily routine.

All of this fits in the one little device, Blackberry 8800 so I decided to stick with it and pass on the bling and cool factor of the iPhone...