“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

-Hans Hofmann

Through my work and travels I have been lucky enough to have been exposed to various eclectic cuisine running the gamut from small local cafes to iconic five-star restaurants.  I have experienced some amazing food! Yet when I think about the most luxurious and exquisite meals I have had, visions of simple food made from a few natural ingredients are what most excite me.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire elegance and have an appreciation of the finer things in life.  But to me, beauty lies in simplicity.  I don’t need the fillers, additives, excessive amounts of sugars, fats, salts and other measures taken to taint the natural goodness of real food.  And thanks to you, my community, I now have a plethora of additions to add to my mix of basics.

Thank you!

For those of you following my Basic Plan, or for all of you looking forward to eating in a way that sustains UltraWellness, I am thrilled to announce that I have chosen a winning recipe for you to enjoy.  In a moment we’ll highlight this week’s winner, but let’s first explore what makes a Basic Plan recipe noteworthy.

I’d like you to refer back to last week’s blog  for the essentials on how to create your personal UltraMeal.  The two plans are ultimately the same except there is a bit more flexibility regarding carbohydrate intake with the Basic Plan.  Remember, this plan is for you if your blood sugar is under control and you are making progress in the 7 Keys of UltraWellness.

Let’s explore some tips on how to effectively integrate carbohydrates into your diet.  I know this is a confusing topic but after reading this you should be an enlightened carb consumer!

1. This is a slow carb plan NOT necessarily a low carb plan.  Carbohydrates are essential for our body to function and I want you to include the right choices in the appropriate portions.  Choose primarily from starchy vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and fruit.  Of course, get rid of all refined carbohydrates and sugars.
2. If you are transitioning from an Advanced Plan start small and progress slowly.  Keep insulin from spiking by taking 1 serving of complex carbohydrates with each meal.  Hint: 1 serving of carbohydrate is equal to 15 grams.  As insulin sensitivity improves, you can increase your consumption of slow carbohydrates to 30 grams per meal and 15 grams per snack.
3. Eat 3 meals per day with 2 snacks.
4. Regardless of the Plan you are on always eat a carbohydrate with some protein, fiber or anti-inflammatory fat.  Never carb it alone!

This is merely a template for ensuring optimal insulin sensitivity.  It is most important that you listen to your body and adjust the amount of carbohydrate based on your individual needs.

Here are examples of SLOW burning carbohydrates that you can play with:

Starchy Vegetables:

• Sweet potato (1/2 cup
• Cooked Carrot (1 cup)

Whole Grains:

• Black or brown rice (1/3 cup)
• Quinoa (1/3 cup)

Legumes:

• Lentils, Chick Peas and Black Beans (1/3 cup)
• Black eyed-beans (1/2 cup)

Fruits:

• Apple (1 small)
• Peach (1 medium)

For a complete list of carbohydrate guidelines, please join my community and check out the Downloads section for my report on “Low Glycemic Vegetables.”

There are various ways to incorporate these nutritionally dense carbohydrates into a meal.  Like I said, I like to keep it simple yet interesting.  Many of your recipes achieved that and I can’t tell you how difficult it was to select just one!

There was one which embodied all of the principals of whole foods eating and accomplished creativity, elegance, flavor, fun and of course… simplicity.  I am proud to announce this week’s Basic Plan winning recipe.  The winner is…

Dr. Mark Hyman’s Recipe Contest: The Ultimate Blood Sugar Solution Meal

Roasted Red Pepper & Cannellini Bean Soup

By Michele Rusinko

Roasted Red Pepper & Cannellini Bean Soup

Serves: 8-10

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

A creamy and comforting soup for lunch or dinner.

• 3 red bell peppers, roasted
• 6 cups vegetable broth (low sodium)
• 8 cups cannellini beans (preferably soaked overnight)
• 1 cup basil
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• dash sea salt to taste

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roast peppers until lightly blackened, about 20 minutes (or
blacken over a gas burner). Blend peppers, broth, beans, basil, garlic, salt and pepper.

Further Comments?

You can also reserve 2-3 cups of the beans and add after blending – I find the recipe as written
not only to be easier on your digestive system but a great way to “hide” beans from those who
refuse to eat them, especially kids.  Also, I make my own vegetable broth (boiling a sweet onion, garlic, fresh parsley, salt & pepper for about an hour while the beans are cooking (I also buy my beans dry, soak and then boil).

The easiest way for a beginner is to buy the broth and beans but it is much healthier (and tastier) to prepare your own!

Nutritional Analysis:

Serving Size (about 1 cup): Calories 305, Fat 12 g, Sat 1.5 g., Cholesterol 0 mg, Fiber 10 g, Protein 15 g, Carbohydrates, 36 g, Sodium 60 mg

Why Dr. Hyman Chose “Roasted Red Pepper and Cannellini Bean Soup”

• Gluten and dairy-free
• Low glycemic load, high fiber
• Lean plant protein
• Easy to prepare and allows for flexibility-not a rigid recipe so you can use any herbs available
• Kid-friendly bean recipe
• Able to have leftovers and use as a quick lunch the next day
• Appropriate for Basic Plan.  Serve with a green salad for a complete meal

Congratulations to Michele for providing us with a clear example of how simple ingredients can make a winning meal!

I like to think that what Hans Hofmann was referring to in the quote above is the sort of whole foods lifestyle that celebrates nothing more or less than that which nature has provided us with.  Let’s remove the myth that good food means exorbitant amounts of harmful ingredients so that we can unveil simple pleasures with significant health rewards.  Cheers to getting back to basics and celebrating all the tasty creations you and your loved ones can cook up!

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Will you try this recipe with me?

What confuses you about slow and low carbohydrates diets?

Have you tried to a “low” carb diet and how did it work for you?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

In my work as a functional medicine doctor I often have patients ask me how they will achieve their health goals with cravings for the foods they have always loved.  They say, “Doc, I trust your advice would help me if I could only live on food that tastes like cardboard, but I just don’t think I can do it.  I don’t’ have that kind of willpower.”  But what they don’t yet know is that eating well is actually more pleasurable than most of the junk food filling the shelves of our current grocery stores.

I love when I see patients return after a few weeks of implementing my suggestion to trade in their SAD diet (standard American diet) for an anti-inflammatory meal plan.  Undoubtedly the response is always the same: I didn’t know eating healthy food could not only taste good but feel so good.  The taste of good health lingers long in the body and looks good on all of us!

The next comment is usually about how excited they are to experiment with new foods but need to get out of a rut.  They need new recipes and diversity too.  I have provided several delicious recipes for you in previous blogs and I even have recipes on the Blood Sugar Solution website.  Of course, there are great recipes in my books as well.  If you have been following my work you know that I enjoy meals that are simple to prepare yet flavorful.  And apparently you do too!

I want each of you to achieve your goals and then sustain them for the rest of your life.  The best way to keep reaping success after you complete one of my programs is to maintain this whole foods lifestyle and stick with the principles of anti-inflammatory eating day in and day out.  I have wanted to make more of these recipes available to you so you have no difficulty doing this but I have been so busy and needed some help.

Then I thought, who has the best experience cooking tasty, fresh, real whole foods that are gluten and dairy-free?

YOU!

So I asked you to participate in our recipe contest to help me provide more of these recipes and this is what happened.

The recipes came pouring in. Being that this was the first time we held a contest like this we didn’t know what to expect.  You exceeded our wildest expectations and sent in over 240 recipes illustrating the vast amount of sheer culinary genius among you.  These recipes are incredible!  I found myself consumed with anticipation to get in the kitchen and start cooking up some of these meals.

What I enjoyed the most was your creativity, enthusiasm and understanding of how to prepare appetizing dishes within the scope of anti-inflammatory guidelines.  For example, are you curious to learn about a breakfast sausage that helped one of you shed over 90 pounds?  Or, how to make a muffin without using an ounce of flour?  With the warmer weather approaching I was happy to learn about how to make strawberry ice cream without the cream! I had so much fun reading each and every single recipe that I often found myself with a big grin on my face.  I even laughed out loud and starting singing to myself when I read about your “Simon + Garfunkel” Chicken!  Who doesn’t love a good Pad Thai dish but wonders how the glycemic load of all those noodles and sweet sauce won’t affect insulin levels?  You surely showed us how.  Each recipe was as interesting and creative as the next and I am so excited to share your creations with you in an upcoming e-cookbook we are working on.  Stay tuned for details about that.

But back to our contest.  I’m sure you’re eager to learn about which recipe was the winner and I am about to share that news with you.  But first I want to tell you a little bit about the criteria I used to select the winners.  Yes, I said winners!  You all were so incredible that I had no choice but to choose two of your recipes.  I decided it would be helpful if there was a winning recipe for the Basic track participants and one for the Advanced track participants.  Spoiler alert! Next week I will share the winner for the Basic plan and I will provide the full recipe with nutrition facts for you.  But now, let’s discuss how I chose these winners.

When I think about what makes a recipe unique the 7 keys of UltraWellness come to mind.  I want a recipe to include ingredients and cooking methods that help your body improve your digestion, cool inflammation, optimize your nutrition, balance your hormones (especially insulin), boost your detoxification pathways , energize you and empower your metabolism and of course boost brain function.  Now I know this seems like a hard bill to fit but it is actually easier than it sounds.  This is what I look for:

1. Are the ingredients all whole foods and recognizable?  I don’t want to wonder what an ingredient is or where it is made… remember I like foods grown on a plant, not made in a plant.
2. I look for recipes that do not call for refined or processed carbohydrates and I always stay away from any artificial sweeteners.  A good recipe doesn’t rely on sugar or salt to satisfy the palate.
3. To fuel my long day I need to stay energized and prevent crashes in my blood sugar.  Lean sources of clean protein and healthy fats are critical in a successful recipe.
4. Does it allow me to stick to a hypoallergenic diet with special attention towards eliminating gluten and dairy?  I also take interest in recipes that limit other potentially allergenic foods such as corn, soy, peanuts, eggs and yeast. These come in handy when I do the UltraSimple Diet Challenge.
5. Like you, I love to eat and enjoy the entire process of meal preparation.  Choosing wonderfully smelling fresh herbs and colorful spices engages my sense of smell and sight and draws me into the act of cooking.  This is where life can become an art and the more fun I have, the better!  Research shows that when we enjoy being in the kitchen we improve our health not only by cooking high quality meals at home but also by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system, improving digestion and releasing stress.
6. The health of our Earth is truly important to me. I know that when I choose ingredients and animal products that are sourced from organic producers that I’m voting with my dollar to protect nature.  The best part is, my ecology benefits too as food grown without toxic chemical input decreases my mortality.  Talk about sustainability!
7. I’m pretty busy, so finding a recipe that is both easy to make and allows for leftovers is critical.  I know that packing a healthy lunch, snack or making a quick dinner is just as important to you too.

Choosing just one recipe was really difficult because many of you accomplished the aforementioned in your submissions.  But this recipe took the prize.  Drum roll please…

Dr. Mark Hyman’s Recipe Contest: The Ultimate Blood Sugar Solution Meal

SPICED GROUND TURKEY WRAP WITH WATERCRESS AND AVOCADO

By Mona Solar

Spiced Ground Turkey Wrap

Serves: 1 (could serve 2 if used as a smaller meal or part of a meal which includes a small salad or soup)

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

A luscious, spicy ground turkey wrap makes a quick, savory lunch or dinner.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 1 medium size carrot, julienned
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger root, minced
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon coriander
• 1/8 teaspoon turmeric
• few dashes cayenne pepper (adjust to your taste)
• 1/8 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon parsley, minced
• 5 ounces ground turkey
• 2 tablespoons chicken or vegetable broth *optional
• 2 romaine lettuce leaves, rinsed (if making into wrap)
• 1/4 avocado, mashed with a fork
• 1/2 cup baby spinach, rinsed
• 1/2 cup watercress, rinsed

Preparation:

1. In a medium sauté pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and carrots and sauté until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Add garlic, ginger, cinnamon, coriander, turmeric, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Sauté over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Add the ground turkey, breaking it up into pieces with a spoon. Cook ground turkey until browned, about 6 to 8 minutes.
4. Add 2 tablespoons of chicken or vegetable broth (optional) and cook for 1 minute.
5. Reduce heat to medium-low and add fresh minced parsley. Remove cooked turkey mixture from heat.
6. Spread a layer of mashed avocado onto romaine lettuce leaf. Add spinach, watercress, turkey mixture and roll.

Notes:

* The broth is optional. I use homemade broth in many of my dishes to aid digestion and to add another layer of incredible flavor.

Nutritional Analysis:

Serving Size (2 wraps): Calories 566, Fat 36 g, Sat 5 g., Cholesterol 70 mg, Fiber 9 g, Protein 40 g, Carbohydrates, 27 g, Sodium 314 mg

Serving Size (1 wrap): Calories 283, Fat 18 g, Sat 2.5 g., Cholesterol 35 mg, Fiber 4.5 g, Protein 20 g, Carbohydrates, 13.5 g, Sodium 157 mg

Why I Chose “Spiced Ground Turkey Wraps”

• Gluten and dairy-free
• Low glycemic load
• Nutrient dense and full of anti-inflammatory phytonutrients which promote wellness in all 7 keys of UltraWellness
• Lean protein
• Healthy fats: 67% monounsaturated fat
• Easy to prepare and allows for flexibility – not a rigid recipe so you can use any available spices
• Adapt to vegetarian/vegan diet by swapping turkey for tempeh or beans
• Celebrates our senses with bright colors, deep flavors, interesting smells, layers of texture (creamy, chewy, crunchy)
• Able to have leftovers and use as a quick lunch the next day
• A complete meal appropriate for both Basic and Advanced Plan participants

Congratulations to Mona and truly to all of you who participated!  I hope this inspires you to enjoy some time in your kitchen this weekend.  I know I will.  I’m heading out to my local farmers market today to gather some fresh ingredients to prepare this recipe for you!

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Will you try this recipe with me?

What would you do differently to personalize it for you or your family?

What other ideas for anti inflammatory meals come to mind-share?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Never before in human history have we seen “adult onset” or type 2 diabetes in children.  There has been an over 1,000% increase in type 2 diabetes in children over the last two decades(1). Fifteen years ago 3% of new cases of diabetes in children were type 2 diabetes.  Now it is 50%(2).   Forty percent of children are now overweight and 2 million are morbidly obese, exceeding the 99^th percentile for weight(3).

Scientists say that we have only 3,600 cases of type 2 diabetes in children(4).  Nonsense.  Almost all of those 2 million morbidly obese kids have either pre-diabetes or diabetes or what we should call “diabesity”.  In adults 25% of diabetics and 90% of pre-diabetics are not diagnosed. In children most of the cases are missed(5).

A study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that medications don’t work and general lifestyle instruction isn’t much help either to treat type 2 diabetes in children. And the disease is more rapidly progressive and aggressive in children. Kids who haven’t even learned to swallow a pill are now facing giving themselves daily insulin injections.  Poor and minority kids are more heavily afflicted.

Do we really think we can medicate our way out of a bad diet? Can we really overcome the 54 gallons of soda consumed every year by the average American, or the 34 teaspoons of sugar consumed DAILY by the average child in America with a medication(6), or some handouts on eating better?  One of the drugs used in the study, Avandia, has been responsible for over 200,000 deaths from heart attacks since it was introduced in 1999(7).  The Food and Drug Administration has restricted its use. Should we be using this in children?  This is pharmageddon.

Putting these little children on insulin sooner doesn’t make any sense either. Starting insulin in diabetics is a slippery slope, leading to a cascade of increasing weight gain, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The sugar comes down, but everything else that kills diabetics gets worse.

Adult diseases are now commonplace in children.  I recently spoke at an Emory University conference on childhood type 2 diabetes.  I met a pediatric gastroenterologist and wondered what he was doing at a conference on diabetes.  He told me he now has 5-year-old patients with cirrhosis from fatty liver caused by years of drinking soda. There has been an over 50% increase in strokes in children aged 5 to 14(8).  We are now seeing heart attacks in teenagers, and twenty year olds needing cardiac bypass surgery because obesity and diabetes clogs their arteries.

This is a disease that is nearly 100% preventable and reversible. But it won’t be solved in the doctor’s office, clinic or hospital.  It has to be fixed where it begins; in our homes, communities and our society and in our government policies and industry practices. This is a social disease and we need a social cure.

This study should be a national wake up call.  A siren blaring the insanity of our current medical approach to obesity and type 2 diabetes for both children and adults.

When a five year old has cirrhosis and an eight year old has a stroke this is not about personal choice or better medication. Now that scientists have proven that fast food and sugar are biologically addictive, we can’t blame the individual or the family. Can a heroin addict just cut down?

We need a massive call to action, a national coordinated multi-pronged campaign. We need President Obama and all the Republican candidates to stand before the nation and declare we will end type 2 diabetes in children by the end of this decade, just like President Kennedy mobilized our nation to get a man on the moon by the end of the 1960’s.

The food industry must be held to account.  Simple policy changes could have enormous impact.

The food industry tries to convince us that all calories are the same; that a snack of carrots or Oreos is the same as long as they are 100 calories each. The science proves otherwise.  Sugar calories act differently in the body, driving biology toward diabetes.  And carrots aren’t addictive but sugar is.

The food industry has hijacked our taste buds, our brain chemistry, our kitchens, our homes, our schools and our communities.  When children have nearly unlimited access to sugar and processed food, when we have 600 calories more per day of sugar calories per person than 30 years ago we have to have an honest accounting of the playing field(9).  The food environment is designed for kids and adults to fail.

The SNAP program (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), or food stamps, was started to provide “good food to hungry people” but now provides bad food to the overweight.  While it is true that poverty and obesity go hand in hand because sugar calories and processed food are cheap and because government subsidies lower the prices of corn and wheat products, there is no reason that the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) should put $4 billion of taxpayer money into the coffers of soda manufacturers every year by allowing the use of food stamps to buy soda.

That is more than 29 million a day or 10 billion servings a year of soda that our government feeds the poor in this country.  Then the government pays again through Medicare and Medicaid for obesity and diabetes related illness.  Maybe we should call it the “Supplemental Nutrition Obesity Program”.  You can’t buy alcohol, cigarettes or prepared meals with food stamps, why should kids buy soda with them.

We can’t ignore or accept this any longer.

The food industry blames the victim and tells us we are just lazy, it’s about our sedentary lifestyles. Eat whatever you want, we are told, but just exercise more.  You would have to run 4 miles a day for one week to burn off just ONE fast food meal. That strategy won’t work. You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.  Moving is important, but changing the food environment is more important.

We now have a nation where 75% of the applicants for military service are unfit to serve because of obesity(10). The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two Surgeon Generals have called this a national security issue.  Childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes also affects our global economic competitiveness because health disparities lead to an achievement gap. As our kid’s waist sizes grow, their brain power shrinks.

We need community action and policies to support healthy communities. Since our government, corporations and health care institutions fail to provide solutions, mothers stand arm to arm in front of convenience stores to block kids from entering after school.

But there are things that can be done.  We need a grass roots movement and government policies and programs to change the food landscape and the built environment to give our children a chance to have happy, healthy successful lives.  Children with obesity and diabetes live harder poorer lives, they often don’t finish school and earn much less than their healthy counterparts.

We may not be able to win the war in Afghanistan, but we can end this. But it will take an approach that works on all the forces that drive obesity and diabetes in children simultaneously – at home, at school, in local neighborhoods and communities, in the media, and in corporate regulation and government policies that foster health rather than disease.

Here are a few initiatives and ideas that may help shift this frightening tide of poverty and disease:

1. Stop government subsidies for junk food. Stop or reduce subsidies of agriculture products that allow for the glut of cheap, high-calorie, nutrient-poor sugars and fats from corn, wheat and soy into the marketplace.
2. Tax sugar. We should tax sugar (and maybe even processed junk food with added sugars.) A one cent per ounce tax would raise $15 billion a year, while a 10 cent per ounce tax could raise $150 billion per year(11). This could support national food programs and community projects to fight obesity and diabetes and promote health, and help cover the hundreds of billions of dollars of health care costs from increasing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.  The food industry has blocked initiatives for this tax in 30 states by pouring millions of dollars into lobbying and donations such as the $10 million Coca-Cola gave to a hospital in Philadelphia to swing the vote in the legislature(12).
3. End junk food marketing to children.  We are one of the only countries that allow this.  Studies show that the worse the food, the more the marketing.  The average 2 year old can recognize and name junk food from their baby carriage in the supermarket(13).
4. Fund community-based initiatives. Support healthy eating with community kitchens, gardens, and cooking classes that teach how to make good food cheaply. Children need life skills on how to care for and feed their bodies.  We are raising the first generation of Americans who don’t know how to cook. If implemented, the new health care bill and the new Council on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health provide avenues to support these programs.
5. Provide incentives for grocery stores and farmer’s markets in food deserts and all communities.
6. Make school lunches healthy by providing only real food and modeling healthy eating. Food can be both fun for you and good for you. Create national standards based on sound 21^st century nutritional science and common sense. Most schools have only a microwave or deep fryer, hardly the tools needed to feed our children real, fresh food. Any government-supported programs should have strict guidelines for what foods may be served. There is no room for junk food or sugar calories in schools.
7. Change zoning around schools to limit access to fast food and convenience stores.  We shouldn’t have to rely on parents blockading junk food stores after school, as a group of parents did in Philadelphia. We shouldn’t make it easy to get bad food!
8. The FDA should regulate sugar as a drug, not as a “GRAS” or generally recognized as safe substance.  It is a known toxin and is deadly when consumed in large quantities.

What are you doing in your home, your family, in your schools and communities to end the attack on our children and our nation’s future?  We have the power to take back our health.  It starts with small choices, local action and political advocacy.  Now more than ever we have the collective power to change this.  Let’s do it for our children’s sake.

Now I’d like to hear from you …

Do you have local programs in your schools to encourage healthy meals?

Are there any cooking classes offered to children in your community?

Have your children reduced or eliminated sugar from their diets?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

1. Ludwig DS, Ebbeling CB. Type 2 diabetes mellitus in children: primary care and public health considerations. JAMA. 2001 Sep 26;286(12):1427-30.
2.Pinhas-Hamiel O, Zeitler P. The global spread of type 2 diabetes mellitus in children and adolescents. J Pediatr 2005;146:693-700
3. Murtagh L, Ludwig DS. State intervention in life-threatening childhood obesity. JAMA. 2011 Jul 13;306(2):206-7.
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/health/research/obesity-and-type-2-diabetes-cases-take-toll-on-children.html?_r=1&hp
5. www.unitedhealthgroup.com/hrm/unh_workingpaper5.pdf
6. Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature. 2012 Feb 1;482(7383):27-9.
7. Nissen SE, Wolski K. Rosiglitazone revisited: an updated meta-analysis of risk for myocardial infarction and cardiovascular mortality. Arch Intern Med. 2010 Jul 26;170(14):1191-1201.
8. Tong, American Stroke Association, Annual Meeting 2011 (abs)
9. Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature. 2012 Feb 1;482(7383):27-9.
10. Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature. 2012 Feb 1;482(7383):27-9. And personal communication General Jack Keane
11. Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature. 2012 Feb 1;482(7383):27-9.
12. Personal communication NY State Commissioner of Health
13. http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2005/Food-Marketing-to-Children-and-Youth-Threat-or-Opportunity.aspx

INGREDIENTS
2 cups chicken broth
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1-3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken
2 tbs olive oil

Optional herbs such as bay leaf, rosemary, or thyme (place in cheese cloth if you want to take them out of the chicken after cooking)

PREPARATION
Heat oven to 250-275.

Rinse and trim chicken. cut into 1-2 inch pieces (against the grain if possible).
Pour 1 cup of broth into a glass or ceramic lined casserole dish. Add sliced garlic and optional herbs.
Place chicken pieces in casserole. Add more broth so that chicken is over half covered. Pour olive oil over the top.
Do NOT Salt
Place uncovered casserole in oven.
Check after 2 hours. If chicken shreds easily with a fork it is finished. If not cook up to one more hour. When the chicken is finished cooking take a piece of chicken and rub it around the inside of the casserole to wipe all of the brown fond off and mix it into the broth.
Pour the chicken and broth into a serving bowl and shred the chicken with two forks.

NOTES
The reason the cooking time is not precise is because ovens are very inaccurate at low temperatures.
There are several ways to serve this.
You can pile the chicken on lettuce and wrap it up with raw onions, cilantro and lime juice.
Use your favorite hot sauce.
Place it on a bed of cooked vegetables.
top it with the Walnut Pesto Sauce in the BSS book page 331-2.
If you are allowed grains or beans it will go very well on top of those.

2 cups diced, firm tofu
2 cups shitake mushrooms or another mushroom of your choice
1 cup cooked quinoa
4 cups spinach, kale or other leafy green of your choice
1 inch shaving of fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves crushed
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
Bragg Liquid Amino – soy sauce alternative

Heat olive oil in saucepan
Add ginger, garlic, sesame seed and spinach and cook until the spinach is reduced, stirring often
Add tofu and cooked quinoa and cook until tofu and quinoa are thouroughly heated

* You marinate the tofu in Bragg Liquid Amino for a 15 minutes before dicing
*Subsitute Bragg Liquid Amino with Dr. Hyman’s Ultra Broth and let the ingredients simmer

Recipe by Jacqueline Novick

Click here to read Part I of the story.

Part II of my TEDMED 2012 conference…

One day I found Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church in Southern CA in my office wanting to get religion about health.   After his appointment we went to dinner and over a bowl of cabbage and beet soup, I asked him to tell me about his church – –being a Jewish doctor from NY I didn’t know much about evangelical churches.

He told me his church had 30,000 members and they met every week in 5000 small groups to study, support and grow together.

It wasn’t a mega church it was thousands of mini-churches.  And the light bulb went off in my head here was a chance to test out this idea of peer support for creating health.

I said why don’t we put together a healthy living curriculum and deliver it through these small groups. Rick said yes because he had recently baptized 800 church members and after about the 500th one, he said to himself, “Wow, we are a fat church, and I am fat, and we need to do something.”

We didn’t need highly trained health experts – except in designing the program…

So a little more than a year ago with Rick and Dr. Oz and Dr. Amen, a Christian, Jewish and Muslim doctor – which sounds like the beginning of a bad joke we launched The Daniel Plan – a social experiment to see if community support was more effective than medication or conventional medical care for treating and reversing disease and creating health.

The Daniel Plan (after Daniel the Prophet from the Bible who resisted the kings temptation of bad foods) is a wellness program delivered through small groups in the church.

We thought a few hundred people would sign up.  In the first week 15,000 people signed up and over the last year they have lost an estimated 250,000 pounds – or the equivalent of 10 tractor-trailer trucks loaded with soda. Thousands of people and many churches around the world signed up.

In fact I met recently with church leaders in Atlanta and Bernice King, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter who said that she thinks disease is a form of violence –and health is a basic human right.  She said that health is a form of non-violence to yourself and that she wanted to make this part of the King Center’s curriculum on non-violence.

And our social experiment worked.

We got biology to change by using the principles of functional medicine – the science of systems medicine, of network medicine, the science of creating health, through lifestyle-based interventions that optimized our BIOLOGICAL NETWORKS.

But we got behavior to change by using community and the power of positive peer pressure and SOCIAL NETWORKS.

Not only did they lose a quarter of a million pounds, but they also used less medication, and many stayed of the hospital didn’t need to go to the doctor as much. And the program was free.   And people reported more energy, better sleep, better blood pressure, better mood and even better skin and a better sex drive.

One man told me last year he was in the hospital 4 times and on 9 medications and this year he stayed out of the hospital and is only on one medication.   People lost 125 pounds, 90 pounds, 80 pounds, got off insulin and diabetes, and high blood pressure medication – it was like a gastric bypass without the pain of surgery, vomiting and malnutrition.

And those who did the plan together lost twice as much weight as those who did it alone.

E.O. Wilson in his new book, The Social Conquest of the Earth that it is our drive to join a group that makes up human.  It is the longing to belong – and the power of peer pressure can be force for both good and evil – It can drive war and violence, but it can also be a force for healing.

Here was the big insight for me: the community was not just a delivery system for health education. The community was part of the cure and the group was the medicine.

So what did we do? We created an interactive curriculum delivered through multiple media – online education, videos, articles, recipes, webinars all done in small groups and community events. We did this at Saddleback by changing the culture – Pastor Steve, who was born again, again went from serving ribs and donuts for breakfast to being a health champion, grabbing donuts out of the mouths of the men in his small group.

Over a thousand people showed up and volunteered to be health champions for their group. We changed what was served at bible breakfasts, the menus in the refinery and even what people served in their homes and their small groups.  People learned to create health together – - to shop, cook, eat, exercise and play together.

We didn’t treat disease.  We didn’t create a weight loss program.

We taught people self-care and combining that with caring for each other they created a small miracle – something heath care or health care reform has not been able to achieve.

In the most unlikely place, a large Church, we demonstrated that a community-based solution is more effective in treating and reversing chronic disease than our modern health care system. People helped each other create health.

I think this is the seed of a bigger possibility. In every home, community, school, workplace or faith based organization there are health champions waiting to be asked to show up and to help each other to take back our health.

We have a vision to scale this to a billion people and turn health care upside down.

And this is possible not just in rich countries. Peers for Progress created pilot programs in the poorest of countries to treat diabetes in Cameroon, Uganda, Thailand and South Africa based on peer support.  The peer support group models were more effective than conventional medical care for improving the health of diabetics and health care costs decreased 10 fold.

So after the meal of the skinny Haitian chicken and the beet and cabbage soup – I thought, what if we could tackle this problem not one by one by one in the doctor office and clinics but by the tens of millions in people homes, and churches, and schools and workplaces.

What if we could take the 36% of Americans who are eligible for work but NOT working – and create a Health Corp like President Kennedy’s Peace Corp or a the call to action that would be the equivalent of getting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

And create millions of community health workers, engage our world’s latent health champions because they are out there in every community, in every organization, of peers, people helping people that with a little training has been proven to produce better results than doctors or our health care system for the worst problems of our era.

Maybe I thought – this isn’t a medical problem like an infection or broken bone, maybe chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity are social diseases and we need a social cure.

Maybe it is the power of each one of us supporting each other that will help us all take back our health.

Acute disease can be left to the hospitals, but creating health and healing of chronic disease seems to happen best in the community – with people helping people, where each one of us lives – where we eat, cook, learn, work, play and pray.

That is where health happens.

When I was at Paul Farmer’s mountain clinic in Haiti – there was a plaque in French that said, “The happiest man is the one who makes others happy.”

An old African proverb says that if you want to travel swiftly travel alone but if you want to travel far, travel together.

Let’s all do this together!!

To help facilitate your journey to health, click here to join my online community.

Now I’d like to hear from you …

What do you think we can do to take back our health?

If you already are part of a community would you share your experiences?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Last week I gave a talk at TEDMED on how social networks may be an unexpected solution to our heath care crisis.

Here’s how my talk went…..

I want to tell you a story of how a skinny Haitian chicken and a bowl of beet and cabbage soup turned my world upside down and helped me think differently about how we might deal with the crazy explosion of lifestyle driven chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and obesity – what I like to call DIABESITY!!!

How can we even think about solving this problem that will cost the global economy $47 trillion over the next 20 years and by the end of this decade will kill 50 million people a year, killing more than twice as many people as infectious disease.

How do we think about a world—where now there are more people who are overweight than are starving?

How do we think about a world where there soon will be half a billion diabetics and almost a billion pre-diabetics and only a fraction of doctors and health care workers needed to take care of them? These are not just diseases of affluence, but are exploding in the poorest countries on earth.

So what does a skinny Haitian chicken have to do with rethinking how we approach chronic lifestyle driven diseases? My RE-thinking started on Jan 1, 2010 –the first day of the first month of the first year of this new decade. I had just finished a book about Paul Farmer, who successfully tackled the worst diseases in the worst places on the planet.

Paul Farmer successfully treated TB and AIDS — which everyone thought were untreatable in the face of extreme poverty in places like Haiti, Lima or Rwanda.

Paul realized we didn’t need a new advance in science, or a new medication but something very simple —- to rebuild community and connection in broken communities.

Paul’s genius was his insight that the key to solving insoluble health care problems was each other, was people helping people, or what some call peer support.  Paul’s genius was the idea of accompaniment – accompanying each other to health, helping each other build back their communities with clean water, food, going to each others houses making sure their sick neighbor knew how and knew when to take their medication.

And it wasn’t just a better delivery model for the right drug or the right information.  The community was part of the medicine, part of the cure.

That was how I spent that first day in January of the new decade — an auspicious day. Thinking about how Paul’s insight about infectious disease might help us solve our epidemic of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

And as this idea was shaking up my world, disaster happened. On January 12, 2010 just a few days later that massive earthquake hit Haiti.

Two days after that, I arrived at sunset with Paul Farmer who I just called out of the blue because I knew he would know where to go and asked him to come with us on a small plane with our small medical team.  We arrived into chaos, devastation and overwhelming suffering, we unloaded our plane and went directly to the main public health hospital in Port au Prince.

After a week of 20 hour days amidst amputated limbs and amputated lives – I finally got to sit and eat a meal of rice and some skinny Haitian chicken with the director of the hospital – Dr. Alix Lassegue.  As we had our first meal in days and tried to find some meat on that skinny chicken I asked Dr. Lassegue what was the most common admitting diagnosis here before the earthquake – here in the main public hospital in Haiti that served 8 million people!

I thought he would say – TB, AIDS, or malaria. But here in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere in one of the poorest countries in the world, it wasn’t TB or AIDS but diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure — 90% of which are preventable and often reversible through lifestyle.

Those chronic diseases have reached every corner of the globe and touch everyone on the planet – it is you or someone you know or love. Most of these conditions – heart disease, high blood pressure, many cancers, and stroke, even dementia – are caused by the same ROOT problem.

DIABESITY — the continuum from a little bit of belly fat to pre-diabetes to full-blown type 2 diabetes.

I am thinking to myself while sitting in the crumbling hospital building in Haiti where diabetes was the main admitting diagnosis, “How do we deal with this crazy, overwhelming problem of obesity driven disease that’s getting worse and worse, and costing more and more despite our best efforts to treat it with medication and surgery?”

How do we deal with the fact that diabesity will soon affect 1 in 2 Americans – that’s EVERY OTHER PERSON IN AMERICA. And that full blown type 2 diabetes affects nearly 1 in 10 Americans and 1 in 5 African Americans and 1 in 4 Medicare patients.  And that 1 in 3 Medicare dollars is spent on diabetes.  And that 1 in 3 children born today will have type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.

And that 80% of the world’s diabetics are in poor countries and that half all diabetes and almost all of pre-diabetics are not even diagnosed.

So it was in the aftermath of being up to my elbows in blood, pus and broken bones, broken lives and broken hearts that I first understood what I had completely neglected over the last 15 years of diving deep into systems biology and genomics.

I was so hyper-focused on biological networks and systems medicine or NETWORK medicine as the answer to solving the puzzle of chronic disease — on turning the dials on biology for individuals –that I missed something much more important.

That most chronic disease is very often a SOCIAL disease and not just a problem of biology!!!!

We know that you are more likely to be overweight if your friend’s friend is overweight than if your parents are overweight. That the genetic threads that connect us may be less important than the social threads – that our social connections and our ancient need to be part of a tribe may be a way out of our epidemic of chronic disease…

That just maybe SOCIOGENOMICS – or how social networks influence health and disease and how social networks alter gene expression, are where we need to look for the solution.

In some places, gastric bypasses are being touted as a cure for diabetes.  As if you could cut out a poor lifestyle like a wart. Is this really a solution for our 400 million diabetics at a cost of $30,000 per person – or $12 trillion?

We can’t medicate our way out of a bad diet. Taking a statin while downing a double cheeseburger, fries and a soda just doesn’t make any sense.

But there has been a new drug discovered – that can beneficially modulate thousands of genes and enhance the function of dozen of hormones and regulate tens of thousands of protein networks and can prevent cure and even reverse most chronic disease. And it works faster, better and is cheaper than any other drug discovered and it is available to almost everyone on the planet right now…

It is food – we now know that food is information, not just calories, and that it can upgrade your biologic software.  The majority of chronic disease is primarily a food borne illness.  We ate ourselves into this problem and we have to eat ourselves out of it.

High cholesterol is not a statin deficiency, and diabetes is not an Avandia deficiency. It is not doing the same things better. What we are doing is not really working.  It is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Statins increase the risk of diabetes by 48% in women. Avandia, the #1 blockbuster drug for diabetes, killed nearly 200,000 from heart attacks since it was introduced on the market in 1999.

So statins designed to prevent heart attacks causes diabetes and the drugs designed to treat diabetes cause heart attacks.

This is Pharmageddon.

Even if those approaches worked, we just don’t have enough doctors and hospitals and health care workers to deal with the massive number of chronically sick people on the planet.

After Haiti I realized that the answer had to be somewhere else.  If social networks can promote unhealthy lifestyles, maybe we can use social networks to create health.

We know how to prevent, treat and even reverse diabetes and heart disease so why don’t we do it, why have we failed so miserably at this.

We can eradicate type 2 diabetes just like Larry Brilliant helped eradicate smallpox.

But people give up when they try to think about the obesity and chronic disease that’s’ killing most people on the planet.

It’s TOO overwhelming. It is TOO big. But I don’t think it is – I think it is a small problem, it’s a local problem, a community problem.

After I came back from Haiti I lay awake thinking about how are we REALLY going to deal with this I thought maybe we need to decentralize and democratize health care.

I realized that if you were sick, the best place to create health might NOT be the doctor’s office or clinic but your own community with a little help from your friends.

I realized that getting healthy is a team sport!  Click here for Part II of the story.

Let’s all do this together!!

To help facilitate your journey to health, click here to join my online community .

Now I’d like to hear from you …

Do you think community is an effective cure for chronic illness?

Have you joined with friends or family to take back your health; how has that worked for you?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

If you saw the recent 60 Minutes segment by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the dangers of sugar you might be scared off the sweet stuff for good.  It causes heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer and it makes super bad, super dense, super dangerous cholesterol particles.   The data is pretty strong on this.  Scientists even locked kids in a hospital, fed them sugar and measured their blood every 30 minutes.  It didn’t take long for things to turn bad inside.

But if you are thinking that diet soft drinks or artificial or even natural sweeteners are the answer for getting off sugar, think again.  Diet drink consumption has increased 400 percent since 1960.  It may or may not cause cancer, but the evidence is mounting that it leads to weight gain rather than weight loss.  Those who consume diet drinks regularly have a 200 percent increased risk of weight gain, a 36 percent increased risk of pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome, and a 67 percent increased risk of diabetes. A study of 400 people found that those who drank two diet sodas a day or more increased their waist size by five times.

Seems you can’t outsmart Mother Nature.  Tricking your brain into thinking you are getting something sweet plays dirty tricks on your metabolism.  Artificial sweeteners disrupt the normal hormonal and neurological signals that control hunger and satiety (feeling full).  A study of rats that were fed artificially sweetened food found that their metabolism slowed down and they were triggered to consume more calories and gain more weight than rats fed sugar-sweetened food.

In another alarming study, rats offered the choice of cocaine or artificial sweeteners always picked the artificial sweetener, even if the rats were previously programmed to be cocaine addicts.  The author of the study said that, “[t]he absolute preference for taste sweetness may lead to a re-ordering in the hierarchy of potentially addictive stimuli, with sweetened diets . . . taking precedence over cocaine and possibly other drugs of abuse. “

The use of artificial sweeteners, as well as “food porn,” the sexy experience of sweet, fat, and salt in your mouth, alters your food preferences.  Your palate shifts from being able to enjoy fruits and vegetables and whole foods to liking only the sexy stuff.

My advice is to give up stevia, aspartame, sucralose, sugar alcohols like xylitol and malitol, and all of the other heavily used and marketed sweeteners unless you want to slow down your metabolism, gain weight, and become an addict.  Some may be worse than others like aspartame that is what we call an excitotoxin that can cause neurologic symptoms like brain fog, migraines or worse.  And some may just give you bad gas because they ferment in your gut, like the sugar alcohols (anything that ends in “ol” like xylitol).  Others like stevia, which comes from a South American plant, may be slightly better and could be enjoyed from time to time, they all keep us yearning for more and more – so our brains get confused, we eat more food and we get fatter.  There are ways to cut cravings by naturally balancing your blood sugar.

So if you want something sweet, enjoy the real thing from time to time.  But stay away from fake sugars or fake food or factory made science projects of any kind.

To learn more please see The Blood Sugar Solution. Get one book or get two and give one to someone you love – you might be saving their life. When you purchase the book from this link you will automatically receive access to the following special bonuses:

• Special Report—Diabetes and Alzheimer’s: The Truth About “Type 3 Diabetes” and How You Can Avoid It.
• More Delicious Recipes: 15 Additional Ways to Make The Blood Sugar Solution as Tasty as It’s Healthy!
• Dr. Hyman’s UltraWellness Nutrition Coaching – FREE for 30 days!
• First 30 minutes of The Blood Sugar Solution Workshop DVD

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Do you drink diet soda?

How have they affected your health and your weight?

Do you use artificial sweeteners and will you continue to do so?

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Recipe by www.healthylivinghowto.com

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Bake Time: none
Makes: 12 bars, 6 servings

Ingredients
6 Servings (6.6 oz.) Life Time Fitness VeganMax (Pea & Rice Protein Isolate)
6 Tbsp. Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder
6 Tbsp. Chia Seeds
1/4 c. + 2 Tbsp. Smart Sweet Erythritol Non-GMO
1/8-1/4 tsp. NuNaturals Pure White Stevia Extract Powder
1/8 tsp. Celtic Sea Salt
12 oz. Native Forest Organic Coconut Milk
6 Tbsp. Almond Butter, Room Temperature
1 Tbsp. Organic Vanilla Extract
6 Tbsp. Filtered Water

For Topping
Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder
Bob’s Red Mill Flaked Coconut, Unsweetened
Sliced Almonds

Directions
1. In a large mixing bowl, mix together all dry ingredients.
2. With a large spoon mix in coconut milk, almond butter and vanilla extract.
3. Finally mix in water.
4. Using your hands form into a large ball of dough.
5. Dust a piece of parchment paper with cocoa powder and then plop dough in center.
6. Using your hands press and shape dough into a large square and then cut in 6 even strips and then cut each strip in half.
7. Dust the top with more cocoa powder, smear with a teaspoon of almond butter and then top with sliced almonds or unsweetened coconut flakes.
8. Store covered in the refrigerator, can be eaten cold or at room temperature.

Recipe Notes

When you start mixing the wet with the dry, what forms are crumbles. This is good. You want the mixture to be very crumbly, the smaller the crumbles the better. Once your get your hands in the bowl and start working it, what forms is a big dough ball. It actually becomes quite play-doh like. The texture of the bars is very soft, cookie-dough like. They do firm up just a little in the fridge but don’t harden and will soften at room temperature.

Recipe by Vanessa Romero