Our new hero is the Chef or Cook who can prepare healthy whole foods and beverages that are appealing, taste great, and support the well-being of the Body, Mind, and Spirit.

These Food Preparers are our Roll Models and play the role of setting an example for individuals, parents, caretakers, and food service personnel.

Four of my best examples of the Healthy Hero are: Emeril and his Green show, Martha and her personal growth, Jamie and his school lunch program, and Alice and her watershed effect on the food service industry over the years.

We have watched Emeril for a long time when he would fix rich foods and BAM! the spices with flair. Then he refined his recipes and style even further and brought a larger audience to the Food Network and his growing group of restaurants. His latest project and approach is his best yet. He appeared on Good Morning America yesterday and featured foods which were easy to prepare with common ingredients that were not processed. It was a pleasure to see people enjoy that food.

Emeril has been helping people make the transition to Green Eating with more natural recipes that are made with ingredients that promote health. To watch Emeril grow and change for the better encourages his audience to follow suit and that is a very good omen for everyone. I think we may have Martha to credit for his change of heart, since she influenced him when he appeared on her show over recent years.

Martha Stewart has taken strides to grow as a person and as a personality for Good Living. Her magazines, her TV shows, her product lines, and her radio presence is making significant changes in market trends, product placement, and conceptual templates for living a healthy and valuable Life. Martha has been influenced by her daughter and she continues to prepare healthier food, garden with sustainable practices, and incorporate many aspects of a healthy Lifestyle into her every day choices.

We’ve watched Martha go from what was expected to what was viable to what was worthy of Good Living over the years. The people she’s worked with, the industry’s treatment of her business, the stint in prison, and her family and friends who now sustain her have seen such a remarkable transformation. Martha ‘walks the talk’ with yoga, her travel, her food selections, and even her horses and animals who are so special to her along with every tree, bush, flowering plant, and root that she now understands to be a part of the whole – interconnected, interacting, and integral to a healthy Lifestyle.

Jamie Oliver has done more for young people in the last two years than many chefs hope to accomplish in an entire lifetime. He has brought significant attention to the health issues of food that passes the standards set in the public school system. He has shown everyone on the food chain just how bad the lunchroom had become, leading our kids to degenerative disease, obesity, and life-long health problems. He has given the food service personnel in schools as well as administrators creative solutions and demonstrations to show the benefits of healthy food.

Jamie’s gimmick of being the naked chef worked for him to give him a brand and a name; but the work that he has done for young people, families, and school districts in two countries far exceeds his earlier mark in the food industry. He has brought his bright eyes, his emotional luster, and his delightful recipes to kids who are picky eaters, lazy grazers, and reluctant to change. He has given kids some self-confidence to make healthy choices and to learn how to create good food in the kitchen and in the cafeteria. This is going to pay off for a long time…

And naturally, there’s the original Alice Waters who transformed her restaurant, then her neighborhood and community, then the country with her charming attitude, hard work and dedication to her natural approach, and her willingness to share her wisdom with people in her establishment and in her books and talks to audiences that were thinking along the same lines. Chez Panisse became the hub for seasonal fresh ingredients from the good earth that were sustainably grown and prepared with care and love.

Alice got kids out of the classroom and into the garden, touching the soil, and learning where their food comes from with respect, excitement, and reverence for local and natural whole foods for whole people. Alice helped people to realize the value of local artisans who took the ‘slow food’ approach to food preparation following the careful cultivation and provision from local organic and sustainable growers and producers. Alice has touched all of our lives over the years and she continues to live the way that is exemplifies a hero’s ‘Way of Life’.

I know that Alice inspired me to open my Natural Foods Restaurant, The Origin Trail, in the 1980s and that continued to lead to my understanding and awareness of genuine Well-Being and the movement toward ‘Sustainability’. All of these Chefs and Cooks have been instrumental in the continuous development of a mindset that is taking hold in every aspect of the way we approach food now. The Green movement owes its existence and its acceptance to these early pioneers and the on-going pursuits of these people who care and contribute to the health of people and the planet.

You are a hero in your kitchen, too! You are a hero in your beautiful garden. You are a hero when every morsel of food that comes from the sovereign soil is given the love, the care, and the wisdom that comes with knowing our place in the endless cycle of Life. You are the treasure that unwraps the magnificent bounty of the earth!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 8th, 2011 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.