Chronics. You can have real problems Dr Neil Spector Dr Bill Ron thank you so much for talking with us about Lyme disease today thank your pleasure thank you very much you've been listening to Dr Neil Spector the center chair in breast cancer research at Duke University Medical Center he's an associate professor of medicine as well as pharmacology and cancer biology He directs the experimental therapeutics program for the Duke Cancer Institute and is a common scholar is book is gone you know heartbeat of physicians search for true healing you also heard from Dr Bill roles for certified o.b.-g.y.n. Who has written about why. Chronic immune system dysfunction His books include unlocking why and suffered long enough you can find them on his website roles that are a w l m d dark we have a link to it from our website Lynn Sigel produced today show. And rest Henry did the engineering gave great edits are interviews for the people pharmacy is produced at the studios of North Carolina Public Radio w The People's Pharmacy theme music is by. The people made possible by relics industries makers of orderly smooth extra gear 20 Cre with 20 percent your year for extra skin protection 80345733 gnarled arm while the other crazies are free to buy a cd of today's show or any other People's Pharmacy broadcasts you can call 80732334 Today show is number 1000 in the number 807322334 or look for it on our website People's Pharmacy dot com When you visit our site you can check out information our prescription drugs herbal medicines and home remedies share your thoughts on Today show we'd love to have you at the website you can also sign up for our free newsletter or the free hot cast of the show you can listen at your own convenience or share. Thank you. This is Kerry means you can pay our. 88.5. Years. A point. 335. 7 in Fall River and 336-6535 Big 829-4541. On the Web mountain m.t.n. 8 dot org Thanks. Welcome to the by revolution from the heart of nature. We have the potential of food to transform our lives. Realizing. All of. The threshold of opportunity in the human. How to live in ways that the web of life each other and future generations it's a revolution. From the heart of nature and the human heart. The pioneers revolution from the heart of nature we celebrate social ones. With breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet creating a future of hope. Support for the Bioneers revolution from the heart of nature's provided in part by Organic Valley family of farms funding also provided by a grant from the Park Foundation and by the generous support of listeners like you . If you are what you eat in the us you might add that. The standard American diet. Abundantly green sugar coated with a. Life. Preserver. Delivered to the group health care system many of whose troubles start in the kitchen. Counters are. Story gets worse. Casualties of today's wild weather extremes and rapidly shifting patterns and by the way. Is contributing mightily to the climate crisis. Against Nature. The real. Agribusiness monopoly. Quality is a deeply unfair food system. Have little access to quality food or to enough food. In the us they come in many forms but the common thread community people are banding together to a new food culture and develop practices that prize health and build equity. Remarkable. For local food security determination and good. And training young people is at the center anything. And healthy food. Any of the Detroit black community food security network Catherine couch director of community project and. Of the Fair Food Network My name is Neil Harvey. Welcome to the Bioneers revolution from the heart of nature. The 1960 s. And early 1970 s. And probably most of you know the sixty's was a time of great turmoil in a country where many of the valuable being questioned. There was this revolutionary consciousness that the bell up and so I am unapologetically a product of that time period. Co-founder and executive director of the Detroit black community food security network he says the food movement to build reliance food security and social and economic justice is inextricably connected with many other inequities African-Americans and people of color have a long face the burdens of history of white supremacy and racism. Current reality there's a kind of ghost in the machine for too few and his own awakening came as shock. Spoke at a binary conference one of the figures in the that had a profound influence on me as Malcolm x. When I was in the 8th grade in 1960. 3 plate the entire LP record of a speech to the grassroots but in the speech Malcolm x. Talked about food on the plantations the plantations all which Africans worked he said that there were 2 halves of the house slave in the field. And he said that the house slave ate what they call higher more of the food that was similar to the master's food. The fields 8 to kind of were food the food that with castoffs that the masses didn't want of the pig now and the feet and the tail in fact there's old saying in the black community to black folks everything but the . But so this out a profound influence on me because Malcolm x. In those days we were good eaters and he's still good and so he really kind of Mama because up to that point I hadn't really thought about food within a social or historical context I don't we thought about food in terms of whether or not I like the way we taste it and when I could get more and so I started to think about food more critically with him this larger context of society and I started to make changes in my diet personally and then later I started to learn about this what we're calling the food movement and seeing how it intersects with these other movements for justice in the society. Hometown of Detroit has a classic case history of how food intertwines was an economic and social inequalities. During the 1950 s. Detroit residents enjoyed a vibrant economy and employment driven by the auto industry and then with corporate dnd realization and globalization business largely abandoned the city and the tax base vaporized with it since then red lining and other discriminatory policies of short circuited access to healthy food for Detroit's black population nearly 85 percent of the city's residents. Has been working to bypass Detroit's failing food system altogether the vision of the Detroit black community food security network is to ensure access to healthy food with dignity and respect for all Detroit's residents by building an alternative food economy that's the real story coming out of the trade today. Starts with dispelling the burdens of history held by the black community about agriculture itself we have a particular problem in the African-American community and I found also from talking to some Latino is that it's not unique to the African-American community but because of our historical experience many of us see agriculture in a very negative way but in the after American community in particular because the big spirits up in their cropping we often see agriculture as a system that exploits labor in order to make others wealthy so there's many people in the black community that are trying to run as far from agriculture as they can and so part of our work is to reframe agricultural work and to build a new cadre of people who are dedicated to farming and so we're also in addition to the crops we're growing we're growing new farmers. The network the Detroit community you know wide range of projects such as Dean town farm on 7 acres inside a city owned park they extend the growing season with enclosed hoop houses off the grid solar energy provides the power they water their crops which rainwater they store in a retention pond and run through drip irrigation they raise bees to pollinate the crops and produce honey and they've established a large scale composting operation but that's just the beginning of what long term food security looks like we also do quite a bit of Agra tourism and we're exposing people to urban agriculture so our farmers the production farm and a learning institution so we have hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who visit our farm each year the 2nd of our programs is called the food warriors youth development program functions of 3 sites in the city of Detroit and we're dealing with young people between the ages of 5 and 12 we're teaching them about creating raised beds gardens about food justice about nutrition and about the importance of exercise but we are we're growing new farmers because we know it's absolutely necessary that this be an intergenerational movement we have a new program that we implemented this summer called food and flavor and so this program is dealing with young people who are 14151617 years ago and they also are creating gardens but they're taking the things they grow in those gardens and creating value added products and selling them as sort of a harvest festival we have 6 of the young people from that program come out and fill up Britain better pickles that they had made and each one of them went home with $30.00 in their pocket in addition to the $50.00 stipend that they get each week so they were thrilled and so were making the connection between agriculture and the ability to make a living. This intergenerational work is growing not only food it's growing consciousness and agency that same next generation of inspired junk food system Pathfinders committed to social justice is rising across the country such as in California you know when I 1st started series the number one question that I got was how do you recruit the kids so think about what the assumptions are behind that question there is such a conversation in our culture about young people being disaffected uninterested blah blah blah blah blah we have found exactly the opposite young people are no different than you and I they have the same deep longing to make a difference and to be part of their community as everybody else does and we have 4 operating principles that series and one of them as young people are intelligent response of all capable creative and caring and must be essential participants in creating our collective future Catherine couch is an entrepreneur chef activist and former director of communications for the Hunger Project in 2006 when she learned a woman in her community drug dealing with stage 4 breast cancer she cooked healthful meals and delivered them to the family that experience inspired her to launch the series community project a youth empowerment program The provides almost 100000 healthy meals a year to seriously low income patients in Sonoma County. Catherine couch spoke at a buying years conference the model is we bring teenagers into the kitchen and now also a garden and we prepare 100 percent organic whole food meals for primarily very low income people in our community that are dealing with a health crisis we engage over a 1000 volunteers a year in our work and we use it as a platform to talk about the connection between food and health and what a healthy food system actually looks like we take on a new client they receive $8.00 to $24.00 weeks of meals for everyone in the family for complete dinners a pint each of soup and salad a healthy dessert and then what we call extras these are all food based products many of them also have medicinal herbs in them and then basic nutrition education so if you're going through cancer treatment you are not a good candidate for let me teach you everything you need to know about healthy eating eating is not at the top of your less most of the time and you know you so our thought is if it's not beautiful they're not going to take that 1st buy if it's not delicious they're not going to keep eating it and if it's not nourishing they shouldn't be eating it at all so what we do is we build in just little bits of information that help the patients connect the dots between what we're sending them and their health I love the perma culture concept of stocking functions and that's what we've tried to do in this model we've tried to figure out all of the impacts that we can build into a model that all of us are familiar with right everybody is familiar with Meals on Wheels people making meals and delivering them to people who need them and we've tried to take that model and figure out how to build as much transformation and positive impact as we can over the years Catherine couches in the transformative effect the program has on the youth who participate. So we bring them into the kitchen and we put them in what we call the most important job which is making the meals for our clients and they're empowered with a job they're supported by adult mentors by staff but they are the primary chefs and gardeners in the program they commit to a minimum of 3 hours a week for 3 months the average teen is involved for a year many for 345 years they start at the end of 8th grade and say all the way through high school we have a team leader program we have 2 teens to serve on as full voting members on our board of directors and we're really really committed to empowering young people to become the activist that we need for the next generation they all learn to cook and eat kale which I like to say and that's not where the transformation is the transformation as we do it you know program so half an hour of every staff we're talking under church and education and food systems education but about every 12 weeks we do a 2 week block where clients come in every day and so every single young person that we work with has had multiple people look at them and say thank you for helping save my life that's where transformation happens when we tap into that in ourselves right our ability to make a difference in the world around us that's the core power of our model for the inside of our work Catherine couch is even higher aspirations for series at the heart is job creation and social service for some of the most vulnerable in society the group formed a partnership with a housing community at the old converted naval base run by the nonprofit Alameda point collaborative about $200.00 families who live there including $250.00 children every family was previously homeless and has an adult who's permanently disabled young residents are invited to participate in an afterschool program in the on site kitchen to make healthy meals for the residents. Series also trains federally run health clinics and other service organizations to incorporate healthy food into their programs one provides veterans going through cancer treatments with the healthy meals and nourishment they so desperately need Catherine couch says the nourishment goes far beyond the food itself. And what we found is that this is with clients getting an average of 14 weeks of me. When they were surveyed 3 months after leaving the program had increased written vegetable consumption by 23 percent 75 percent had reduced the amount of fast and processed food and white flour and white sugar that they're eating and 82 percent of clients had weight move in a positive direction 100 percent said the food help them recover so this is what happens right you get diagnosed with a serious illness you are more motivated than you have probably ever been in your life to change your diet and then what happens when you come to Sirius's for 81216 weeks you're getting these incredible beautiful delicious nursing meals you get familiar with food that you weren't familiar with you realize that it actually does taste good and most importantly that you feel better when you're eating this way so the 93 percent they learn that healthy eating helps them feel better and then 93 percent say that we helped reduce the social isolation that they felt on the side 50 percent more teens are encouraging their friends and family to make healthier choices and 28 percent increase in the number of kids who are cooking at home so this is a model that's now been replicated in a number of communities around the country and has the potential to be used in a lot of very very interesting situations where population has a very high degree of chronic illness and we can bring together in our generation way young people empower them to make food for people in their community and begin to transform the relationship that that community has with food and with health. As Catherine couch and are proving transformational changes are rising by meeting this basic human need through building community they were replacing the diet with compassion justice health and dignity because it can be medicine but also a community. When we return we'll hear from Aaron has tremendous about the ingenious innovations of the Fair Food Network and more from the unique and Catherine couch on what Love Got To Do With. A nourishing future creating a just and healthy food system I'm Neil Harvey you're listening to the Bioneers revolution from the heart of nature. To explore all available Bioneers radio shows podcast and video programming and to hear more from Mali and Katherine couch please visit Bioneers dot org. We need to reimagine what the food system could look like we have to grab the potential of food to transform our lives our towns our cities our communities and our planet and it's not just about realising attentional it's an absolute necessity for our future. Aaryn Hesterman has spent his life reimagining the food system he's a trained agronomist and professor for granny for over a decade he served as director of the Kellogg Foundation's food in society program where he became deeply committed to food justice and racial justice as a fellow Michigander he's a colleague of mine. He's the author of Fair food growing a healthy sustainable food system for all our in Hesterman founded the Fair Food Network to provide breakthrough alternatives. Thinking a solve the whole problem approach one of its most successful programs directly helps people struggling to put food on the table much less healthy food it's called double up Food Bucks. The way double up Food Bucks works is that anybody with. Electronic Benefits Transfer card has to be food stamps it's now called Snap Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program it's a federal program anybody with an e-card can come to a participating farmers market and double their money if they spend their food assistance dollars on locally grown fruits and vegetables. You go to a farmer's market you spend $20.00 of your food assistance money you get $40.00 worth of produce that you bring home we started with 5 farmers markets in Detroit back in 2009 the program is now in over $150.00 farmers markets across the state and we are starting to operate in grocery stores of 20 grocery stores now this program as well in the state of Michigan 90 percent of Michigan residents live in a county where this program operates now it's not perfect access we have to grapple with but we know that it's actually working double up food boxes help bring Michigan to number 3 in the nation for Snap sales at farmer's markets only California New York are ahead of Michigan now. We're really proud of the program it's put about $7000000.00 into the pocket of farmers selling at farmer's market since we started the program money that would have been there without this program bringing new customers into the market it's a win win win right wing one prominent time families are bringing home more healthy food farmers are putting more money in their pockets and more food dollars are staying in the local economy and all of these 3 have ripple positive benefits in the community we're simultaneously addressing both supply and demand both affordability and access and generating multiple wins at the same time aren't Hesterman says expanding model programs like double up Food Bucks across the country can change the game after all naps is the single largest line item in the u.s. Federal Food and Agriculture budget averaging $7500