Organic
Connections NOV–DEC 2012
The AwArd-winning MAgAzine of nAturAl VitAlity
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FARM-To-TABlE PAssIon
amy kalafa
school lunch REVoluTIonARY THE GODByS
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Getting Along in the World Where We Live
In this issue
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here are upwards of 7 billion different viewpoints in the world. In light of this, it’s no surprise that there are conflicting views on politics, religion, world affairs and various other aspects of life, right on down to the food we eat and how it should be produced.This lack of accord happens in families and between friends, groups and nations. As we’ve seen, the result can be polarization, intolerance, human suffering and, in the extreme, violence. I don’t mean to get too heavy here, but it does raise the question of how we successfully navigate this maze of opposing views in our daily lives. Is the answer more lawyers, PR firms and lobbyists? Isn’t that what’s going on now? I’d like to hope there’s a less adversarial way we can get along together. As we tell our children, our actions can often have consequences— positive or negative. We have the power to potentially increase or decrease the quality of someone else’s life. That’s a big responsibility. Remember the Golden Rule we all were taught? That wisdom was passed down for generations as a way of helping us evaluate our actions by simply putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes. If we realize that nearly every person, every corporation and every country believes they are doing the right thing even when diametrically opposed to others, we begin to see the magnitude of the problem. Somehow we all have to get along, and the room is getting more crowded by the day. In the natural products industry, we understand the value of thinking holistically. We realize that the whole, working synergistically, is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s those organic connections that are the key to nature’s amazing healing power. Despite the conflicts played out in the daily news, I believe the world is moving in a positive direction. I think this new course is motivated by a global recognition of climate change. Necessity serves as a catalyst for thinking beyond our own self-interest and opening our hearts to our fellow humans, as well as respecting our plants and animals and caring for the soil, air and water of our living planet. I’m encouraged by the numerous intelligent and heartfelt people who are becoming part of the solution in their personal and business lives. Technology has dramatically increased our ability to connect and to express ourselves. I feel optimistic that we can learn to work together in harmony with each other and with nature. What do you think?
Ken Whitman
Organic Connections magazine is an award-winning publication brought to you by Natural Vitality—a purpose-driven human nutrition company. Our core belief is that you can’t be fully healthy in an unhealthy environment. We publish Organic Connections to help inspire and educate readers with profiles of people working to make our world healthier and more sustainable. To learn about Natural Vitality’s broader mission and our Natural Revitalization environmental action initiative, visit www.naturalvitality.com.
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Amy Kalafa Filmmaker Amy Kalafa is a key figure in the school lunch revolution. From her groundbreaking documentary Two Angry Moms to her book Lunch Wars, getting better food for our kids has become a personal passion.
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Chef Andrea Reusing Award-winning chef at North Carolina’s farm-to-table Lantern restaurant and author of Cooking in the Moment, Chef Reusing talks to us about using local ingredients and cooking with seasonal produce.
12 The Godbys Naturopath Dr. Dennis Godby and his sons are running to promote broader awareness of alternative medicine and the need to transform our healthcare model to incorporate preventive and natural modalities rather than just more drugs and surgery.
publisher
Organic Connections™ is published by Natural Vitality 8500 Shoal Creek Boulevard, Building 4, #208, Austin, Texas 78757 Editorial Office 512.222.1740 • e-mail info@organicconnectmag.com Product sales and information 800.446.7462 • www.naturalvitality.com © 2012 Natural Vitality. All rights reserved.
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Amy Kalafa
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Filmmaker Amy Kalafa once described herself as a “shy, private person,” who most likely would never have thought of being any sort of revolutionary. Yet she now finds herself a key figure in a revolution—the battlefield is school cafeterias and the issue is the health of our children. It all started in 2007, when Amy made the groundbreaking documentary Two Angry Moms, focusing her camera on the need to reform the state of food in our public schools. She thought that would probably be the end of it—she’d tour with the movie for a few months, say her piece, and move on to her next project. However, since that time, popular demand and constant inquiry have kept her front and center on the issue. In the intervening years, she has created a nonprofit organization with 9,000 members, and recently she even published a book, called Lunch Wars, which details for anyone how to start a school food revolution in their area. Also to her credit, all of this work has been performed in addition to holding a full-time job and raising a family. “I had no anticipation of how big it was going to get,” Amy told Organic Connections. “It was a little movie—I made it because it was important to me; and we didn’t have a lot of money, so it was a low-budget film. But the issue got really big right at the time the movie came out. I don’t know if it was the movie itself or the fact that the media paid a lot of
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School Lunch REVOLUTIONARY by Bruce Boyers
attention to the movie that ultimately gave the issue a lot of impact. It was on the cover of USA Today, and we were in the New York Times and in film festivals. Then I traveled around the country with it. Normally when you make a documentary, you go on the road with it for as long as you can—nine months, a year. It came out in 2008; it’s now 2012 and I am still traveling around with the movie, which is totally amazing.” Two Angry Moms details the adventures of Amy herself, who set off to film school districts all over the country that were making strides in the fight for decent school lunches. Her story alternates with that of Dr. Susan Rubin, a dentist turned nutritionist, who was already engaged in an ongoing battle for better school food within her own district and was also campaigning generally for better school food. The film takes the viewer through the unhealthy condition of school food as it exists in many schools, and then shows us what could be possible and is actually happening in places like Berkeley, California, where fresh food for the entire district is sourced locally. In following Dr. Rubin, we see the process of how ordinary parents can group together, work with food service personnel and school administrators, and bring off much-needed changes. Wonderful Evolution
the film are school administrators and food service directors. “Today, almost everybody who works in school food service realizes that the food has to get better and that there are things they can do to improve it. They are much more open and welcoming to suggestions. And parents and students themselves realize that there’s a crisis in children’s health, that food absolutely impacts their health, and they all want something else too.” Community Power
Since the release of the documentary, Amy has definitely seen a change in awareness in the audiences she addresses. “There’s been a wonderful evolution,” she reported. “When the movie first came out and I would go to the screenings, there was even hostility. There’d be food service directors or administrators there who didn’t want to be told that they weren’t doing a good job, and that’s what they thought the film did. Once they saw the movie, they would realize that the heroes of
While many engaged in the school lunch battle might point to the government and its policies and subsidies as barriers to change— and there certainly are such issues involved— Amy points out the power a community actually has through the creation of its own wellness policy. Although the USDA mandates requirements for a lunch program, including minimum nutritional standards, it also charges every school district with
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creating its own wellness policy that ad- it does nothing to tell your school district dresses nutrition and physical education of what the quality of the food should be. That’s students within that school district. This totally up to not just the parents—it’s up to encompasses specific qualities of the school the community. It’s actually a local issue. food and the school food culture. “That’s why I think there’s so much power “With school lunch, you hear many people in school food, because it’s incumbent on trying to polarize it,” Amy said. “But really, the community to make its own wellness school food is not a political issue. The way policy; every school district is required to the mandate works for school food is that have one. You can take that policy right every community has to be responsible for from the USDA website and have these very
and wants of your school district. Then it’s up to food service and administration and everybody in the community to make that policy work.” The Gauntlet
At the point a parent starts on this path, he or she will begin to run the gauntlet of objections from those who, for various reasons,
Even kids who bring a healthy lunch wil often trade it, or they’ll dump it in the garbage. They have access to a lot of food that you probably wouldn’t want them to be eating— but that’s the general school food environment. its own school meal program. The govern- minimum standards; but if you want to do would rather leave things as they are. “A lot ment sets some very basic standards and better in your community, you can have a of it is myths and misconceptions,” said Amy. guidelines, and yes, it has requirements, but wellness policy that’s tailored to the needs “You’ll hear people say, ‘Well, the kids won’t eat healthy food.’ You’ll always hear, ‘There’s not enough money in the system to get better food.’ You’ll hear, ‘We don’t have kitchen space; we don’t have equipment; our staff isn’t trained.’ ‘The kids don’t have enough time to eat a real meal.’ ‘We don’t know how to source locally.’ ‘We can’t afford organic food.’ ‘There are just not enough farms around; the demand outweighs the supply.’ Food service directors will say, ‘I can’t go to 16 different suppliers; I get it all off of one truck’—and on and on and on.” But having seen plentiful examples of how these barriers can be overcome, Amy knows the path through them and has good advice for the rest of us. “There are creative people out there with solutions to all of those challenges,” Amy asserted. “A lot of it has to do with hiring chefs to run school meal programs. In many, many places, that’s been a huge part of the solution. A chef who’s had restaurant experience knows, first of all, how to make food that people like to eat, and also knows how to stretch a budget.” Several examples of this kind of creativity are shown in Two Angry Moms. Berkeley, California, Unified School District hired Chef Ann Cooper, who implemented a fully local food supply system for the entire district. ConVal School District in New Hampshire hired Chef Tony Geraci, who converted the student bodies to wholesome food by treating them as customers, fully 6 organic connections
involving them in the process of choice and educating them on food sources. And in Dr. Rubin’s school, her committee aided in hiring a chef to take over and convert the food system there. A Personal Mission
Since the release of Two Angry Moms and its considerable aftermath, Amy has stuck by the school lunch issue mainly as a matter of personal passion. “I am a documentary filmmaker and I have to make a living,” Amy said. “I have a kid in college and all of that good stuff, so I work full time for clients. I think what’s really motivating me to stick with the school lunch issue is just the fact that people still want the help. My inbox every day is full of letters from people saying, ‘This is terrible! There’s a crisis. Do you know what to do? How do we get it going?’—that kind of thing. So I act as a clearinghouse of information to help people get started. I also teach people how to be advocates, because that was not a skill I had when I began. I was this shy, private person, and I kept it to myself that I ate organic food and grew food in my backyard. “I try to empower people to stand up and say, ‘No! There’s a better way to feed kids! And I know how to do it. Let’s work together on it.’ What motivates me, really, is hearing from so many people who are exactly where I was ten years ago.”
the details of putting together a wellness policy. These and many more lessons thoroughly arm any concerned parent. “It’s really a handbook for anybody who wants to know anything about how they can get involved,” Amy continued. “I did it in chapters so that if you’re interested in school gardens, you can go to the chapter on school gardens; or farm-to-school programs—there’s a chapter on that. I tried to make it a resource book so that you could read it cover to cover, but you could also go to a particular subject and just focus on one area of involvement. Because this is a huge issue. It’s a lot to take on, and it can be quite overwhelming.” Ignoring Doesn’t Work
One lesson Amy learned from her own experience, and from interacting with many other parents, is that school food is not an issue a parent can simply ignore. “Every parent has their own way of reacting to it,” Amy said. “Parents who are very concerned will certainly send their kid to school with a packed lunch, and that’s what my husband and I did for many years. You can kind of turn a blind eye and think, ‘Well, sorry for all those other kids, but at least my kid has good food.’ “As I learned when I made the movie, that’s not true. Even kids who bring a healthy lunch will often trade it, or they’ll dump it in the garbage. They have access to a lot of food that you probably wouldn’t want them to be Lunch Wars eating—but that’s the general school food Recently, in an effort to provide more infor- environment. The school is basically teachmation to those who need it, Amy published ing kids that this is okay, and most kids want her book called Lunch Wars: How to Start a to be like everybody else. “So every parent, once they realize what School Food Revolution and Win the Battle that environment is like, will probably want for Our Children’s Health. “What caused me to get involved at some level. It’s really hard to write it was that I was getting, on some to ignore it. Susan Rubin, who was the other days, hundreds of e-mails from people who ‘angry mom’ in the movie, said she got inhad a pretty long list of questions as followvolved when she started finding candy wrapup to the movie,” she recalled. “I had created pers in her kids’ backpacks every day when templates for e-mails that I would send out in response to individual questions, and I they came home. And she was sending them started collecting more information and to school with a packed lunch.” putting these templates together.” In fact, Two Angry Moms begins with The book is a how-to guide, which takes Amy herself meeting with a staffer in her the reader step by step through the way to daughter’s cafeteria and looking through the reform the school food scene in their area. It computer to see that her daughter—who begins with having parents actually sample came to school daily with a packed lunch— the cafeteria food for themselves. It instructs had been buying numerous items without them on connecting with other concerned Amy’s knowledge. The list included cake, parents in their area. In plain English, it lays chips and numerous sweets. out the rules and regulations under which the “As a parent you have to find a way that you school district must operate. It enumerates can be involved,” Amy stressed. “It might just
be, for example, going into schools and showing kids how to make a smoothie out of fruit—I met a mom who does that. What I tried to do in the book is give people lots of different points of entry.” Although Amy would probably like to move on, her conscience has not let her. “You see, I’m a filmmaker, and it’s like, ‘Okay, next?’ But this genuinely caught me up, and it is something I’m so passionate about,” she said. “It wasn’t just an interesting topic about which to make a film; I feel as if I have to keep going, you know? I have to, until I see that there’s real significant change in the school systems on a district-by-district level, and I think that we have a long time till we get there. “But it’s great to be part of this movement,” Amy concluded, “and it feels really good to be doing what I can. I hope other people will feel that way too.” ■ For more information, or to obtain a DVD of Two Angry Moms, please visit www.angrymoms.org. To join Amy’s Angry Moms social network, visit angrymoms.ning.com. Lunch Wars: How to Start a School Food Revolution and Win the Battle for Our Children’s Health is available from the Organic Connections bookstore.
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Chef Andrea Reusing
Farm-to-Table Passion
Lantern restaurant has garnered high praise for its passionate marriage of Asian cuisine with local North Carolina ingredients. It has been named one of “America’s Top 50 Restaurants” by Gourmet magazine, one of the “Best Farm to Table Restaurants in the state of North Carolina” by the American Farm to Table Restaurant Guide, one of “America’s 50 Most Amazing Wine Experiences” by Food & Wine, and “Restaurant of the Year” in 2009 by the News & Observer. But for Lantern’s James Beard Award– winning chef, visionary and cofounder, too much freedom. I find sourcing locally Andrea Reusing, her work is simply an really focuses the cooking, and it focuses
I find sourcing locally really focuses the cooking, and it focuses decision making. And I love that challenge. extension of her continuing passion for decision making. And I love that challenge.” the rich flavors found in local, sustainably Reusing’s choice of career began at an early produced ingredients. age. “Cooking for me stemmed from just “The utilization of local ingredients loving to eat and being hungry all the time,” brings me more flavor, in a lot of ways, than she recalled. “I wanted to be able to prepare anyone who’s using ingredients from all things that I had eaten in different places and over the place,” Chef Reusing told Organic was trying to duplicate foods that I’d had in Connections. “It provides me as well with restaurants and people’s houses. That’s how I a natural restriction from which to draw started cooking when I was a teenager.” ideas to assemble the menu. When you Not surprisingly, her love of local, fresh can pull any possible ingredient from any produce also began when Reusing was young. place in the world at any time, it’s almost “My mother and father were both raised in 8 organic connections
by Bruce Boyers
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, so I grew up going to farms with my grandparents and my parents,” she continued. “My grandparents lived in a very rural area, so I didn’t really ever see cooking seasonally as different, or cooking with ingredients that grew in your garden or grew nearby as something that was unusual.” It would be in the professional stage of her life that these two complementary elements would merge and come into play. The Local Establishment
Upon completion of college, Reusing was living in New York City, working as a public policy consultant. It was there she met her future husband, who lived and had a business in North Carolina. Deciding she was ready for a change away from the hustle of New York, Reusing moved with him to North Carolina, where she encountered somewhat of a culture shock. “Things are a little bit slower, and I was a little bit anxious,” she said, laughing. “It took me a couple years to adjust, but once I did, this really felt like home. I’ve now been here 17 years.” Sometime after her move, Reusing commenced her career as a professional chef. In 2002 she and her brother, Brendan, decided to open an Asian restaurant in the city of Chapel Hill, a historically progressive university town. Initially they didn’t concentrate on locally sourcing their produce and meats. “I had the idea to open a restaurant that was going to be financially successful, and not go out of business,” she recounted. “There were only a few Asian restaurants here at the time. When we first opened, I would say that the percentage of local we used was much less than it is now. The main focus was just trying to get open and survive day to day.” But in North Carolina, Reusing had discovered a flourishing local food scene. “This is one of the older farmer-run farmers’ market
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Cooking in the Moment
areas in the country, so there was already a very thriving community of farms and restaurants when I arrived. I wasn’t cooking professionally in New York, but I shopped at different farmers’ markets there. The ingredients I found here were, in many ways, a lot better.” It wasn’t long before she began broadening her local sourcing, and this finally became the method through which she obtained the majority of her ingredients. “We knew tons of farmers just from being in the community and going to farmers’ markets,” said Reusing. “There are about 300 small farms within 25 or 30 minutes of here. So there was no challenge in finding them; the challenge became organizing the menu so as to allow us to use as much of their meat and produce as possible.” That organizing process resulted in a menu planned around local ingredients seasonally available. “For the most part, availability determines the menu,” Reusing pointed 10 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s
Reusing’s art has not been limited to creating and operating an award-winning restaurant; in 2011 she published a cookbook entitled Cooking in the Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes. As the title implies, the book takes the reader/cook through a year of meals created around seasonally available ingredients—over 130 recipes in all—supported by text and photographs that help celebrate each season. Her reasons for creating the book were quite specific. “I was constantly having conversations with people who told me that they wanted to be able to cook dinner after going to the farmers’ market,” Reusing related. “They didn’t want to have to stop off at the grocery store, but they felt intimidated or they felt that it was too challenging to only go to the farmers’ market to make a meal or two. I realized the opposite was true of me—I ended up cooking that way most of the time, more out of laziness, really, and not following recipes. I was just trying to use up what I had in the CSA box, or what I had brought home from the restaurant, or what I had grabbed at the farmers’ market. So it actually started as me writing down very simple basic recipes for friends.” Reusing envisions the book as a confidence builder for home cooks. “What I hope that it can do for people is be useful, help get dinner on the table quickly, and also demonstrate that food doesn’t have out. “We have a couple things that are on to be complicated to taste really good,” the menu year-round, like a tea-and-spice she explained. “There’s been this kind of smoked chicken. On that, we change the ‘foodie-ism’ that has crept into the way we ingredients that are in the rice with it, as think about food and the way we think well as the vegetables that go along with it, about cooking in our own homes. In the throughout the course of the year. We start last 10 years it seems as if there’s been a off in early spring with asparagus; then we trend for people who are not in the food do sugar snap peas; next we do some sort of business to feel like there needs to be some early spring braising mix; then we go into sort of special training to just have people green beans, and then broad beans. It kind over for dinner, or to even cook for your own of follows the year that way. family. I hope the book helps counter this “In the winter it’s usually just braising greens, idea and encourages people to believe that which is a mix of mustard greens and kale; the ultimate shortcut in cooking is to use but we’re really lucky that we have the kind of really good high-quality ingredients.” climate here where people can grow a lot even in January and February.” Passion beyond the Kitchen Reusing pays close attention to the ways that crops are grown and the methods by Taking her enthusiasm for local agriculture which animals are raised—and she has far outside her restaurant, Reusing is on the seen the results in the taste. “I’ve noticed board of advisors for the Center for Envithat people who care about what they are ronmental Farming Systems (CEFS), a joint growing have food that’s a lot more flavor- effort between two of North Carolina’s ful,” she said. leading universities and its Department of
Agriculture. Since 1994 CEFS has been heavily researching and promoting organic, sustainable and local agriculture, and today its impact is being felt statewide and is setting a remarkable example for many other states in the nation.
In the last 10 years it seems as if there’s been a trend for people who are not in the food business to feel like there needs to be some sort of special training to just have people over for dinner, or to even cook for your own family. “I believe the work that CEFS does is vitally important to the future of North Carolina agriculture,” Reusing said. “We’re an agricultural state, yet probably well less than 5 percent of what we eat is grown here. Their approach—to try to help North Carolina feed itself—is important from many standpoints: food security, community and the environment. But there is something that’s way more intangible, and that’s the quality of all of our lives, including healthcare and our connection to each other.”
Reusing sees local and sustainable food systems as our only hope for long-term survival. “The answer to how local food systems could fix the overall food system is complicated—but I guess the short answer is it’s the only way to fix the food system,” she said. “If the food system is getting bigger and more consolidated, and fewer and fewer farms are producing more and more of our food, it’s a very brittle system. What we need is more resilience in terms of economic models, to feed community and economic development, and more resilience in terms of defending ourselves from future climate change. We also need more resilience to superbugs; many authorities, including the CDC, fear that we’re approaching what they call a ‘postantibiotic era’ because of superbugs, due to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in factory farms. Community food systems can address our ability to produce farm animals without using antibiotics.” In addition, Reusing is a member of Chefs Collaborative, a national chef network that is working to expand the sustainable food landscape through chef connections, education and responsible buying decisions. “Chefs Collaborative is an organization that tries to foster networks of chefs working toward sustainability and allows them to support each other in this effort,” Reusing said. “One thing we’re focusing on right now is an initiative about sustainable meat production, and looking at how chefs can help each other eliminate barriers to local and regional pasture-based meat sourcing in their own kitchens.” But it all relates back to Reusing’s first love—and probably always will. “I love transforming ingredients into surprising things that people have never experienced before,” she concluded. “I love the camaraderie that comes from working in a kitchen in very close quarters. I love the long-term friendships that cooking has allowed me to establish with people over the years.” ■ For more information, please visit www.andreareusing.com. Chef Andrea Reusing’s book Cooking in the Moment is available from the Organic Connections bookstore. Cover photograph and photographs on pages 8 through 11 reprinted from Cooking in the Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes, copyright © 2011 by Andrea Reusing. Photographs copyright © 2011 by John Kernick. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.
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The Godbys
Running for Naturopathy by Anna Soref
about alternative medicine. It may seem a bit random, but if you’ve been using running as a vehicle for change for most of your life, like Dennis has, it makes pretty good sense.
On a warm, clear August morning, an unusual sight made its way down the shoulder of a busy highway in Washington State. A tall, lean man ran slowly but steadily, pushing a jogging stroller. In place of a baby, though, were supplies like a sleeping bag and food. The man running wore a white T-shirt with “the run” spelled out in big block letters on the front and back. Jeremiah Godby got a lot of attention that day—which was precisely the plan. The 19-year-old was on a mission to build awareness about naturopathic medicine. The running was not some fringe activity Jeremiah did to avoid a summer job. In fact, his dad wholeheartedly supported it. The previous year his father, naturopathic doctor Dennis Godby, began The Run campaign to raise awareness about our nation’s broken medical model. The Run boils down to delivering this message: “To transform the nation’s health, the USA must undergo a paradigm shift in the way it thinks about health and disease.” Last year’s inaugural run hit 16 states, bringing the message to thousands of people, including 24 members of Congress; high school classes in Washington, DC; shop owners in Winnemucca, Nevada; and college students in Dayton, Ohio. When The Run hit Boulder, Colorado, Governor John Hickenlooper declared An Ailing Healthcare Model August 26 National Alternative Medicine Awareness Day. Dennis wants The Run to You’d think for a man who is such a believer evolve into a permanent organization to help in naturopathic medicine that working as transform America’s health. This past August, a practitioner in this field would be the Dennis’s two sons ran across the West Coast dream job. But the day-in, day-out “touch pushing baby strollers to get the word out one person at a time” approach was lacking
meaningful effect for Dennis. He found his work as a clinical naturopathic physician simply not impactful enough to alter the path of our ailing medical system—a system he says relies on pharmaceutical drugs with nasty side effects that don’t treat root causes. “People are suffering across a broad spectrum, from life-threatening diseases like diabetes to joy-threatening conditions like anxiety,” he remarks. “They need to learn that options exist outside of drugs, such as diet and exercise. “People simply aren’t taking care of themselves. We have to realize that our health, what we eat and our exercise, is a personal responsibility because it affects the whole society. So when we make these individual choices about how we take care of ourselves, they become communal choices,” Dennis points out. Alongside lack of awareness and responsibility concerning wellness, Dennis was tired of alternative forms of medicine constantly playing second fiddle to drug-based medicine. “I remember one time when I went to this meeting of local business owners in Sacramento and nobody had ever heard of a naturopathic doctor; nobody knew what it was that I did for a living. I mean, it was pathetic. There is a real lack of awareness
To transform the nation’s health, the USA must undergo a paradigm shift in the way it thinks about health and disease.
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about it. I felt as if this group was symbolic of the rest of the nation,” laments Dennis. Naturopathic Medicine
Naturopathic medicine is based on the belief that the human body has an innate healing
One thing that particularly stuck with me is that during last year’s run we talked to thousands of people and there wasn’t one person who said, ‘You know, there really should be more drugs; we need to use more pharmaceuticals; we need more surgery.’ No matter how little they knew about alternative medicine, they knew intuitively that we need to transform our model, not just rearrange the chairs on the Titanic, but really overhaul the system. ability. Naturopathic doctors (NDs) teach their patients to use diet, exercise, lifestyle changes and natural therapies to enhance their bodies’ ability to prevent and combat disease. Naturopathic medicine uses a wide range of healing modalities, including herbalism, acupuncture, homeopathy and nutrition. Dennis doesn’t want to see mainstream medicine disappear—just become more holistic. “I don’t see MDs as the enemy. I think that naturopathic and conventional doctors are perfect complements to one another. MDs have access to a lot of needed equipment that we don’t have; we have lots of functional tests that they don’t. Naturopathic medicine uses diagnostic tests to gauge a host of issues, such as imbalances in hormones, inflammation and digestion, in order to determine underlying causes. “Conventional medicine is great for emergencies and surgeries, things like that,” Dennis says. “If a car hits someone, they go to a hospital. If someone is in a diabetic coma, they go to the hospital; but then they can see us to prevent that from happening again. I think that if we can get our egos out of it and do what is necessary and best 14 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s
for our patients, then we can move forward.” Dennis believes the relationship between attitudes and beliefs and one’s health is also something that mainstream medicine doesn’t pay enough attention to. “We don’t talk about it, but I see it all the time in my patients—how attitude affects our health. There is so much pressure to be perfect these days. It’s particularly evident among patients who are moms, and it results in adrenal fatigue. A positive, grateful attitude is very important. I often cite the story of Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, where he attributes his surviving a German concentration camp 100 percent to his attitude. I think we can have a lot more control over our lives than we think, with attitude.”
practitioners but from feeling beat up by the general lack of awareness of naturopathic doctors. People ask all the time, ‘Are you a real doctor?’ It gets tiring after a while. We go to medical school for four years, we take more classes than MDs, we take 18 more exams, and we work really hard. But yet when we graduate, people say, ‘Are you a real doctor?’” Dennis would like to see more alternative clinicians in high-profile positions like Dr. Oz and Dr. Weil, both of whom are MDs. “Sometimes when I see them I get kind of irritated, not really at them but at us. Again, we aren’t doing enough to publicize ourselves, and there should be NDs up there with MDs. That’s why the point of The Run is to get our name out in the media and tell stories about how important natural medicine is; not that we are better, but we just need to raise our profile.” There are organizations that exist representing naturopathic doctors; however, Dennis finds they simply can’t do enough. “There is an organization called AANP, American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, which I think does a great job but it results in small changes at the state level. Yet even with these we don’t really think ‘Let’s get the word out to people; let’s go in and introduce ourselves.’ We kind of hang out like minor players; so it is not actually reaching the people, in my opinion.” Running, Again
It was these issues that had Dennis itching to get out and educate people about natural medicine. “I just thought that I would be more effective outside of the office. I felt like I had a mission to get out and tell American people about alternative healthcare and raise awareness, because just teaching individuals one by one, we are not going to accomplish anything. Sure, we are going to help those who come to us, but whenever I turned the corner, obesity and diabetes continued to worsen.” It becomes easier to understand how a doctor in his fifties would run across the country to promote a cause when you realGreat Doctors, Not Great Promoters ize he’s done it before. In 1978 Dennis was a recent university graduate with a degree Where naturopathic medicine does fall in exercise physiology and nutrition, and down for Dennis is in the area of promo- he was feeling compelled to do something tion. “For some reason naturopathic doctors about the lack of awareness of exercise are the worst marketers; it’s unbelievable. I that pervaded that era. “Back in 1978, very don’t really have an explanation for it, but few people exercised. There just wasn’t the it’s very frustrating. I think part of it is this understanding of the importance of either lack of belief in ourselves, not so much as physical fitness or nutrition like there is now,
so I decided to do a cross-country run to see us with messed up lips, weird sunburns promote it,” he says. From Corvallis, Oregon, and pushing strollers and they want to to Calgary in Alberta, Canada, Dennis know what we’re doing,” relates Jeremiah. would cover a total of 1,420 miles, running “Once they find out and they see this kid out about 39 miles a day. He ran again in the 1980s, from San Francisco to Washington, DC, to promote peace in Central America. The political run garnered some publicity, including a photo op with the then governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. But it also had a spiritual impact on Dennis. “I was running 30 miles a day. I didn’t always know where or when I’d get food and drink or a place to sleep. I remember one time during the 1978 run I had hypothermia; another time I encountered a bear. I learned a lot about appreciation and gratitude and a realization that running like that can make a difference. “It comes down to making a judgment call of what’s the best use of your time. People say, ‘Why don’t you spend your time teaching people nutrition, or something like that?’ I guess I am an activist and I need to create momentum, and teaching one by one is too slow. We need momentum and we need to get organized.”
really should be more drugs; we need to use more pharmaceuticals; we need more surgery.’ No matter how little they knew about alternative medicine, they knew intuitively
The RUN
The 2012 Run
Running 30 miles a day, suffering cold sores, cramps and sunburn, is not how most college kids spend their summers. But Isaiah and Jeremiah want to spread the message they’ve acquired firsthand from being raised in a household that practices holistic medicine. “Growing up with my dad doing naturopathic medicine, we were amazed at how few people knew about it. We’d see people get sick and then just become sicker with conventional medicine. My brother and I got to learn firsthand how cool and effective naturopathic medicine really is,” Jeremiah says. This year’s run kicked off in August with Jeremiah launching his 1,000-mile run in Blaine, Washington. Isaiah ran 760 miles beginning near the California-Mexico border town of San Ysidro. Their routes had them meet up at a rally in Central Park in Davis, California, on September 13, the last day of The Run. They blogged and tweeted throughout The Run, and Dennis helped organize the rallies and events along the route. The brothers ran a combined 1,760 miles over the course of a month without the support of a chase vehicle or medical expert. They pushed their belongings in a jogging stroller. Their determination to run is enough to get observers’ attention. “People
doing this to try and change things, they get really excited and inspired.” As word spreads of The Run, larger crowds gather at the rallies. But for the Godbys it’s often the chance interactions with people that affect them the most. “I remember last year I was in Ohio and we stopped in a bar to use the bathroom. There were these biker guys sitting at the bar and they asked what we were doing,” Dennis recalls. “We told them, and they were really interested and excited about it; they were practically in tears. And these are men who maybe are steelworkers or retired steelworkers, who are at a dark bar drinking in the middle of the day—not your typical guys into holistic medicine, but they were really into it. “One thing that particularly stuck with me is that during last year’s run we talked to thousands of people and there wasn’t one person who said, ‘You know, there
that we need to transform our model, not just rearrange the chairs on the Titanic, but really overhaul the system.” The Run smacks of that once ubiquitous bumper sticker “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” The same logic can be applied to a group of men currently running across the country to promote doctors who use safe, preventive, effective medicine instead of drugs. Maybe one day we will fund our schools as well as we fund our military. Maybe one day we will fully embrace naturopathic physicians and their healing modalities. Until then, the Godby family will run. ■ For more information on The Run, visit www.therun.org. organic connections
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