Do you want to look and feel your best? Want to know a Savvy Secret? Last month I
attended the Great Falls Friends Network annual kickoff luncheon with Nora Pouillon
as the guest speaker. For those who don’t know who Nora is, she is an icon and
a beautiful example of the power of food to create health and vitality. Real food is medicine and the fountain of
youth of which Nora is the poster child. Nora is a celebrity chef in Washington
DC. Nora has cooked for and entertained multiple Presidents, including hosting
Michelle Obama’s private birthday party. Vitamix, the gold plated blender
company for health conscious connoisseurs hired her to do a promotional photo shoot.
She posed naked in a beautifully provocative pose with only the Vitamix in
front of her, tastefully hiding any private parts. What is remarkable about
this picture is that she was in her 60’s when photographed.
Today, Nora is in her 70’s. I have
been proudly showing the picture of the two of us together on my iPhone. (Yes,
I shamelessly asked to have my photo taken with her during her book signing
after buying multiple signed copies for gifts).
When I ask people to guess her age, most are guessing 20-30 years
younger. Yes, no Photoshop here…
Do you want to look and feel your best at any age? What’s the Savvy Secret? Ask Nora
Pouillon! As the author of Savvy Secrets: Eat, Think & Thrive and
Seven Steps to Optimal Health, I can attest that Nora has the secret
ingredients.
As Michael Pollan would say, “Eat real food”. I used to teach a Super Foods cooking class
for living social’s demo kitchen in Washington DC and quote Michael and many
would ask, “What’s that?” What do I mean
by real food? Food that is unadulterated.
Food found in nature the way God intended it to be. Most importantly, food that the body recognizes
and can be assimilated and utilized in our cells for energy. In plain English,
food that is VOID of chemicals, preservatives, pesticides and radiation. It is
increasingly shocking how little of the standard American diet, SAD diet,
includes real food.
This picture is in my book,
Savvy Secrets where I say
that we live in a fast food world, so we need to discover how fast and easy it
is to prepare and eat real food.
Food
does not have to be expensive but it cannot be fake. Nora began teaching other
women how to prepare real food on a budget. And yes, you do pay more for
organic food but as Nora says, “You can either pay now or the doctor later.”
Nora Pouillon came to the US in the sixties as a 21 year old
Austrian bride married to a French journalist working for the Voice of American.
She was stunned at the lack of real food
found in our groceries stores. Americans would fill up with huge baskets with
the only bread available, Wonder Bread, cans and boxes. The only vegetables
available were iceberg lettuce and hard tasteless hot house tomatoes. This
was better living through chemistry.
Today, I am a health coach and many of my clients are from
Europe who become sick (and gain as much as 65 pounds) in the US, eating
similar diets. The difference? The US is the only country that has allowed GMO,
hybridized and chemically altered crops in agriculture. Similarly, I have
clients who must eat gluten free and dairy free here, but can travel to Europe
and eat pasta, breads and dairy without ill effect. Not only has Europe banned GMO food and many
of the chemicals and preservatives allowed in the US but there is also diversity in food, not found here. This
includes a wide variety of plants from heirloom seeds that naturally hybridize to be resilient to bugs and the unique
stressors to its own environment.
Remember in Kindergarten when we were taught to eat the
colors of the rainbow? That is diversity,
and diversity in the diet is the #1 thing we can all do to prevent cancer. A famous study looked at the 20% of women
with BRAC 1 and BRAC 2 genes who did NOT get breast cancer to see what they
were doing that we could all learn from.
Diversity in the diet was the most significant factor. Yes, we are all creatures of habit.
Yes, we can choose to
eat local, organic seasonal vegetables and fruits to not only look and feel our
best, but also to prevent chronic illnesses like cancer.
Nora was born in Vienna during world war two. Since WWII we
have introduced 80,000 chemicals, (many produced during the war) into our environment
in the form of pesticides now in our food supply.
I am building an integrative wellness program for a local
oncology group and gave a lecture for our Nutrition Support group last week. I
explained how we allow now up to 3800 new chemicals into our environment each
year and how it is impossible for FDA to test each one, much less in
combination with other chemicals. The
problem with this is that we never account for the synergistic effect. 1+1=3.
Just like if you smoke and drink you are many times more likely to get
lung cancer than if you only smoked or you only drank. There is a synergistic
effect on the body. The same is true
with chemicals and to illustrate, here is a very shocking study testing a “no
response rate” for lead salts and mercury salts. Individually these chemicals
in the tested dose do not create a negative response in animals. When combined, with only 1/20th of the other metal, all the animals in
the test died. Think about this. How many chemicals do you consume on a daily
basis in combination with other chemicals, not only in your food, but in your
haircare, skincare, cosmetics and cleaning supplies?
So here’s the beautiful truth. Our bodies want to protect
us. When these foreign bodies enter the system, either the immune system is
activated to fight them (when the immune system is over reactive we get
autoimmune issues) or these chemicals are stored in our fat cells, safe from
our brain and vital organs. This of
course leads to our obesity epidemic and why a good health coach can help you
address these and other stressors in your life in order to meet your health
goals.
A healthy immune system can rid the body of these toxins. It’s best to
avoid as many as you can in the first place.
Nora Pouillon instinctively knew all of this 30 and 40 years
ago. As a young wife and mother she began to question where her food came from.
When she began to entertain guests from the World Bank and fellow journalists
as a housewife with a small budget, she needed to seek wholesale prices for beef.
She called a farmer who said his meat was particularly flavorful and marbled
because his cows were fed corn to fatten them up. She asked how this was
possible because that was not their natural diet, he said he just gave them
antibiotics and growth hormones. She was horrified. So she called a number for
“natural beef” and talked to a farmer that said his cows were only grass fed,
he fed them no chemicals or hormones or antibiotics and he was particularly careful
when he slaughtered them not to stress the cows because stressed cows emit
cortisol which affects the meat. He also
said he did not fumigate the carcasses as is commonly done. Imagine that! So he
told her to meet him in a parking lot with cash.
When she arrived with her two children to the designated
parking lot in Chevy Chase, Md, she noticed a few other station wagons waiting.
A white van showed up, the man jumped out, looked around nervously, gave them
their meat and hurriedly spun off. Nora’s jaw dropped as she felt she had just
witnessed a drug deal. One of the other mothers laughed and said that it was
illegal to buy meat that was not processed in a USDA plant and shared her story
of how eating organic vegetables and organically raised pastured meat was
necessary to heal her cancer. Another shared that the clean bone broth soup she
made allowed her to heal without the side affects others were experiencing from
chemotherapy and radiation. What is
remarkable to me, is that this was in the 70’s!! I share the power of bone
broth soup now with my patients and clients.
This is definitely a
savvy secret that should no longer be a secret!
Where does Nora’s inspiration come from? Her father’s mantra
was, “Health is the most important thing you have in your life, and you must
take care of it. No money in the world can buy it for you.”
My eyes have only recently been opened. I thought this
organic movement was new and yet the Grande Dame has been in my own backyard
for years! Just as President Obama initially thought Nora’s restaurant was in
Finland, I only recently discovered her restaurant. I applaud and thank GFFN for the opportunity to
meet this amazing woman.
Here’s a simple solution to start your health journey. First
heal the gut with bone broth soup. Use bones from organic grass fed beef that
have been pasture raised without growth hormones, antibiotics or fed GMO corn
or HFCS.
Mineral Rich Bone Broth
Ingredients:
4 Quarts of filtered water1 ½ -2 lbs of bones
2 Tablespoons Braggs Apple cider vinegar
2 tsp or to taste unrefined sea salt
cloves from 1 whole head of fresh garlic, peeled
and smashed
Directions:
Place all ingredients in a 6 quart slow-cooker and
set heat to high. Bring
the stock to a boil then reduce the heat setting
to low. Allow the stock to
cook for a minimum of 8 hours and up to 24 hours.
The longer it cooks, the
better.
Turn off the crockpot and allow stock to cool.
Strain and put into glass jars
for storage in refrigerator for a few days or the
freezer.
You can drink the broth or use it as a base for
soups, stews, or any recipe
that calls for soup stock.
I
like to add a tablespoon of liquid from sauerkraut for extra probiotics and
flavor and drink as a tonic when I’m needing an immune boost. You can drink the
broth or use it as a base for soups, stews, or any recipe calling for soup
stock.
Or better
yet, grab a friend and go visit Nora at her famous restaurant in Washington, DC
to rejuvenate and experience the power of real wholesome organic food. Maybe an upcoming field trip for the Great
Falls Friends Network? Thank you again for such an inspirational lunch!
I also loved
reading Nora’s book and couldn’t put it down. To learn more about Nora, I
recommend her book, My Organic Life
Carpe
Am I saying no to sugar; no, to sweetness? Become a monk and
move to Tibet? No. Seriously though, how do we really want to treat
ourselves? What can we do that is more loving and nourishing to our
bodies? What happened to apple bobbing and making apple butter and real pumpkin
pies with natural unprocessed ingredients in the right combination that nature
intended?
