“Because it’s good for you!” Growing up that’s what I always heard from my mother and grandmother usually referring to proven herbal and food concoctions that were handed down in the family for what was ailing me. Sometimes it didn’t taste so great, but more often than not it ranged from pretty good to sensational, made with love and from unpolluted, delicious ingredients. And it worked. In such a short time where did we go wrong? What happened? We lost our way. We lost our direction. We abandoned our inherited good sense. We traded our common sense and creativity for the instant gratification of fast food, microwaved, pre-fabbed meals and produce grown from hybridized seeds requiring massive amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides with the end products requiring more chemical additions in their preparations to give it all some taste. We outsourced our responsibility to health to Big Pharma and Big Agra. We abandoned our heirloom heritage. We took the easy way out. We became lazy, sick, and health dependent.

Grandma, I’m so sorry. That delicious brisket and chicken for your Jewish penicillin that you used to brew with so much love now come from animals injected with hormones and antibiotics to keep them ‘healthy,’ ‘protecting’ them from sickness because their feed is so weak and non-resistant to disease which results in weak quality meat with no taste! What about us ingesting all those chemicals and antibiotics that don’t go away with cooking. We reap those ‘benefits’. We have become weaker and more prone to sickness. Just look at all the alarming statistics in the rise of childhood diseases and more pills for more problems increasingly in adults.

With Green, Sustainability and Organic we can fight ‘City Hall’. If seeds don’t germinate on their own without chemical fertilizers, they don’t belong in our food chain. The Egyptians planned and executed their colossal cities and pyramids on brain power and astral intuition built on Kamut, their ancient, organic, durum variety of wheat, the precious mainstay of their diet found stored in the pyramids and available today. Grandma and grandpa circumnavigated the globe in ships and covered wagons to get to their dream destinations on the strength of food grown from unadulterated seeds. Could we do that now? I doubt it. Our physical strength and strength of will has to be cultivated back into us. Vegetable produce from the myriad of small, green and sustainable farms sprouting up again around the country and from your own backyard or community gardens abounding in heirloom glory will give you a first time real taste of foods you’ve seen and eaten all your life but you’re tasting for the very first time. Real meat, real chicken, real eggs – all with tastes you’ve never tasted before.

Our grandparents used their pure intuition and good judgment to advise, advocate and administer home remedies based on knowledge handed down from their ancestors, knowledge of organic, sustainable foods and herbs planted and harvested by them from a healthy earth. We can start now. It’s not too late. Bring Organic, Green and Sustainability back home to increase our health security, our home security, and our national security.

Mom always knows what to do, if you listen to her. So call Mom. ‘Listen to your mom!’ Echos around the world probably every day in all different languages. But I’m talking about the Big Kahuna Mom, the one you don’t fool with, the Mother of us all who bestows Her miracles: conception, birth, our babies’ bodies growing and changing to adults…it’s magic, the body’s rejuvenation and rebirth after our wondrous immune systems repair the simple and the seemingly irreparable, given an even playing field… In the entire natural world around and within us She performs Her daily miracles. But we’ve become skeptical of Her talents and don’t notice Her miracles so much anymore not because they’re not happening, but because we’ve disrupted and corrupted Her and our natural order, pushed Her aside, have become afraid of ‘natural’ and have succumbed to….us – man conceived and made chemical health/living solutions. Fear is a product of bad health. We’ve succumbed to our fears which self perpetuate as we consume the same synthetic foods day after day — the proverbial revolving door. We hear about breaking ‘glass ceilings’. What about breaking the ‘revolving door’? It’s just another piece of glass. So what’s it gonna take, and who you gonna call?

It’s not good to mess with Mother Nature! She never meant for us to be lab rats. Willing to become aware is what we need to shatter the glass door. Just glass that’s all it is, put there by just people out there to profit from our just buying into their profit-from-fear sales pitches. Oh! This’ll cure you (and make you drug dependent) if the side effects don’t kill you first. Put organic/natural, green and sustainable back into your lives. Trust Mother Nature. She didn’t create all the chemicals we ingest every day. Man did. We did. We are our own worst enemy. We enslaved ourselves. It’s time to trust ourselves, our intuition and judgment again as our ancestors did. Just today a friend of mine was remarking on the number of deaths in her church in the past few months, all young people. She said, “They’re leaving all the old people all alone.” Very sad. This young generation is purportedly the first generation where their parents will outlive them. And it can be turned around.

I’ve just gotta get this out. We soiled our own backyards. We succumbed to the smoke and mirrors of the Big Businesses. We put all the chemicals into our ecosystem, our polluted food and water supplies, we corrupted our farm animal feed, our fertilizers, and our own pet’s food – our other children. We conjured all the prescription chemicals, all the ‘cures’, with the side effects. We did it all and we can undo it, or, at least, live side-by-side with all the different health beliefs to pick and choose from and combine.

Mother Nature is still all forgiving if we listen and act. Maybe these are our teenage rebellion years. Maybe. But now it’s time to grow up and take responsibility and then She’ll have our backs again. Start by a shopping awareness if planting is not an option (although window boxes can be very bountiful). Look for organic, learn about whole grains, read ingredient labels, be discerning and demanding about what goes into and on your body. Have long term goals and become the masters/mistresses of your own health fates. Download or invest in natural/organic cookbooks. Read. Become aware. Food is not the only answer, but it is the ultimate answer. It powers our whole body health and a healthy appetite to find out more. Her miracles are still there. We just have to call Her and listen.

“Docta, docta, what should I do? It hoits when I go like this.” Doctor’s reply: “So? don’t go like that!” Makes sense, doesn’t it?

An old joke usually delivered with a Jewish/Yiddish inflection but can be delivered with any or no inflection and is really universal for so many complaints and circumstances. For this blog, tho, I’m talking about health & wellness complaints from knee jerk reactions often imagined from ingesting too many TV commercials. People just love to complain and compare meds hoping for a one upmanship over another complainer. Nothing like the competitive comparative shopping for drugs from an electronic box by scripted acting touters paid by drug companies with the drugs’ names thought up by an ad agency yuppy think tank. Really. Since TV’s are here to stay, imagine commercials using a more natural approach grounded in common sense and education rather than following the Blind Big Pharma. Don’t get me wrong. There is a place for pharmaceutical meds, but within the Wellness spectrum. Just like with some natural food companies now advertising their products, Id like to see an equal distribution of commercials advertising natural vitamins and homeopathic/natural remedies for what ails you without having to ask ‘my doctor’ about the meds and the horrifying side effects. How about being given the choice of how I want to cure my problem? That way the airways are promoting education and the awareness of there being ‘another way’ so the herd breaks up into individuals and groups of who actually start to think and research independently taking control of their lives. Now that’s a healthy herd.