Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 9
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 9
I tell this gut-wrenching story because we have no idea what the future will bring. Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall. The United States of America has been a great civilization—the shining city upon a hill—since we fought for our independence after our country was formed on July 4, 1776. I realize that I would have never been born if Lady Liberty hadn’t opened her arms to my grandmother back at Ellis Island, so I am eternally grateful.
Now I have my own family to look after and care for. I married Nicki in 1999, and we have three children ages seven and under, so following through on the deep desire in my heart to produce my own food and provide places of refuge is very real to me. Whenever Nicki and I talked through my vision, she was on board, especially as we discussed what was happening to our nation in recent years.
We felt as though the scales were coming off our eyes and could clearly see the world around us. We agreed that our economy is based on paper money that is backed by absolutely nothing, and most of us use a piece of plastic to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have from someone who doesn’t even own them. With federal deficits flying through the roof and state governments straining to balance their budgets, it all seems like a house of cards.
If history is a guide, it reminds us that it wouldn’t take much—a run on the banks, a stock market collapse, a cataclysmic event or, God forbid, a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city—to see it all start tumbling to the ground.
What is Wealth?
As God spoke to me about Joseph, I was prompted to do a study in Scripture about what He considers wealth. I read that Abraham grew wealthy with cattle, gold, and silver. Isaac planted a field and reaped a hundredfold harvest. Jacob, through his wisdom and discernment, grew his flocks and herds. Job was blessed “twice as much” later in life with sheep, camels, and donkeys. God describes His own wealth in Psalms by saying, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. After reading that, I realized that it probably would be a good idea to own cattle on a hill or two myself. I also knew I needed to find sustainable
sources of water since water is even more important for life than food. I began a nationwide search to find the right land while crisscrossing the country on a forty-five foot tour bus that was part of a six-month promotional tour for my book, Perfect Weight America, during the first half of 2008.
We looked at properties in Idaho, California, and North Carolina but didn’t find what we were looking for. In the fall of 2009 after a long search, we found just the right place—seven different pieces of property totaling 8,600 acres in southern Missouri’s Ozark mountains and north Georgia’s Blue Ridge mountains.
Talk about being “all in.”
The best part about my God-given vision is that the dream to produce the world’s healthiest foods and beverages, to provide water, food, shelter, clothing and protection to people who need it most, to offer places of refuge and best of all hope to a lost and dying world, isn’t mine alone.
This is my invitation for you to join me in my mission to transform the health of this nation and world, one life at a time.
You, too, can live beyond organic.
- Glen
Glen B. Stewart
Healer 2.0
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 8
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 8
Pharaoh believed everything Joseph said and put him in charge of all the land in Egypt as well as the food storage program.
During the seven years of “plenty,” Joseph made sure that enough food was set aside to see Egypt through the coming famine. Sure enough, when the rains didn’t fall and crops failed throughout the entire known world, people came from all countries to buy grain from Joseph—including Joseph’s brothers.
When the contingent from Canaan arrived, they were led into a palace chamber where Joseph heard requests for food and grain. When his brothers walked in, Joseph recognized them, but they didn’t know who he was because it had been more than a decade since they had seen him.
The brothers all bowed to him because he was an important person—just as Joseph had dreamed years earlier.
After a few meetings with his brothers, Joseph couldn’t keep it in any longer. “I am Joseph!” he said. “Is my father alive?”
But his brothers couldn’t answer him because they were afraid.
“Come here,” Joseph said. “I am your brother, the one you sold. Do not worry, and do not be angry at yourselves for selling me because God has put me here to save people from starving.” He also said one of my favorite lines in the Bible: “What you meant for bad, to hurt me, God has meant for good!”
How is that for an unbelievable attitude?
So Joseph sent his brothers back with food and provisions, and eventually his father, his brothers, and their families came to live in Egypt with Joseph, where they had all the food that they needed.
Not only did Joseph’s provision save the lives in his family, but there is evidence in Scripture that this worldwide famine caused starvation among people everywhere and the only ones who survived were those who obtained food through Joseph by his God-given wisdom.
God used Joseph to save the world. Today, we believe that the story of Joseph was a foreshadowing of the One who was to come that would bring spiritual salvation to the world, Jesus our savior.
Jordan, you need to be a Joseph.
What did that mean?
When I first heard that voice in the stillness of my heart, I went back and reread the story of Joseph in the last thirteen chapters of Genesis. I was struck by the wisdom that God gave Joseph to store up food during seven years of plenty in advance of the seven years of famine that were coming. I’m sure that many people in Pharaoh’s court thought Joseph was nuts, but because of his foresight and trust in God that he was given the right interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream, there would be enough to eat in the land of Egypt and in Joseph’s own family. The future nation of Israel would be saved.
So the Lord told me to be a Joseph, a person who could provide food, hydration, shelter, and protection to people in coming years.
I’m thirty-six years old, and those of us in Generation X don’t think much about impending doom or the end of the world. We have known only economic prosperity throughout our short lives, although the Great Recession of the last few years have given many of us pause that the U.S. economy will never be as vibrant as the decade from the late-1990s to 2008.
The point is that no one is immune from great hardship and difficulties, and those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. In fact, those in my own family experienced great tragedy at the hands of outside forces.
My late grandmother, Rose, was born in 1922 in a pastoral Polish village that could have doubled as the set for Fiddler on the Roof. She was the youngest of seven children born to Gidalia and Simma Catz.
Her Jewish family faced growing harassment during that uneasy era following World War I, and then Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany in 1933. He moved quickly to pass repressive anti-Jewish laws—and persecution of Jews intensified elsewhere throughout Europe.
Amid this hostile environment, Rose’s family talked about fleeing Poland. Fortunately for them, there was still time to get out. Thirteen-year-old Rose joined her parents and several siblings and immigrated in 1935 to the United States, where the family settled in Queens, New York. They were among the last wave of European Jews to arrive in America prior to World War II.
Two of my great-aunts—my grandmother’s oldest sisters, Sonya and Dora— were already married with their own families and felt they didn’t need to come to America. They had husbands and jobs, and they believed their government would protect them from the likes of Hitler.
After the war, we learned what happened to Sonya and Dora as well as their families. During the Nazi blitzkrieg that swept Poland in 1939, they were rounded up by the SS and paraded through the streets along with other Jewish families. Then the children—screaming with fright—were separated from their parents and shot before their horrified eyes. Next, the women were ordered to gather, and they were gunned down in front of their husbands.
And then all the men stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the machine guns.
It’s hard to believe that such inhumanity could happen, but this massacre—the forerunner of Hitler’s “Final Solution” for European Jewry—happened less than seventy-five years ago. In the annals of time, this is a blink of an eye.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 7
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 7
I’m Jewish, and one of my favorite stories in the Tenach, or Old Testament as we call it today, is about Joseph. It’s one of the great stories in history.
Joseph was born in Canaan many centuries ago—long before Moses or Jesus came to this earth. He was the eleventh of twelve sons born to Jacob and the son of the love of Jacob’s life, Rachel.
Joseph must have been something special because his father clearly favored him over his older brothers and showed everyone how he felt by giving Joseph an elegant robe “of many colors.”
Jacob’s favoritism of Joseph caused jealousy in the family, and his older brothers didn’t react well. They barely spoke to Joseph and let it be known that they hated him with a passion. They grumbled among themselves and couldn’t say a kind word about him.
One day, when Joseph was in his late teens, he told his brothers about a strange dream he had.
“Guess what, guys? Last night I dreamt we were tying up bunches of grain out in the field when suddenly my bunch stood up while all of yours gathered around and bowed to mine.”
The brothers looked at each other in disgust, but Joseph continued. “Then I had another dream that the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me.”
“Who do you think you are?” one of his older brothers said. “Do you think that you are better than all of us? Do you think that we would ever bow down to you?”
This made the brothers dislike Joseph even more.
A few days later, Jacob asked Joseph to run an errand for him—check on his brothers out in the fields, which were quite a distance away.
When the brothers saw Joseph approaching, they hatched a plan to kill him. But Reuben, the oldest brother, calmed the hotheads down. “Let’s not kill him,” he said. “Just throw him in a well out here in the field.” Reuben suggested this because he was secretly planning to come back and rescue Joseph when the other brothers had left for the day.
Joseph had a rude reception upon his arrival. His brothers grabbed him, yanked off his beautiful robe, and threw him into the empty well. A little while later, a band of Ishmaelite traders passed through the fields, saying they were on their way to Egypt, where they planned to sell their goods.
“Why don’t we sell Joseph to these people?” said one of the brothers. “That way we never have to see him again, but we don’t have to kill him.”
The other brothers liked the idea, and Reuben wasn’t there to stop them. So Joseph was placed on the auction block, and off he went—hands and feet bound—to Egypt. Once there, Joseph found out that he belonged to an important man named Potiphar, an assistant to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Meanwhile, back at home, the rest of the brothers had to create a storyline about what happened to Joseph since his parents—especially his father, Jacob—would be worried sick about him.
One of the brothers took Joseph’s beautiful robe, dipped it in animal blood, and returned to Jacob. When the father saw this, he cried out, “Some animal has killed my son!” Then he fell to his knees in tears, and he was inconsolable for days.
What happened to Joseph? Well, he started out as a slave, but the Lord was with him and no matter where Joseph was placed, he chose to do what was right. So Potiphar made him his helper and put him in charge of everything he owned.
Things were looking better for Joseph, but then he got royally messed with when Potiphar’s wife accused him of making unwanted advances towards her. It was her word against his, and she won—despite the horrible lie she told. Joseph was thrown into prison and languished there for years until one day when Pharaoh heard that Joseph had an uncanny ability to interpret dreams. Pharaoh had a crazy dream that he couldn’t figure out, and nobody could explain it to him.
Joseph was brought before Pharaoh, who asked him, “Can you understand dreams?” “I can’t, but the God I serve gives me the wisdom,” Joseph replied. So Pharaoh described his troubling dream, which Joseph immediately explained. “God is warning you,” he began. “There will be seven years where nothing will grow and there won’t be food for anyone.”
This wasn’t what Pharaoh wanted to hear. “What can I do?” he asked. “God has shown you what to do. There will be seven years that will be very good prior to those bad years. So good that there will be extra food for everyone. So you should set aside a portion of each year’s harvest. That way you’ll have enough to get you through the lean years.”
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 6
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 6
Frequently people would walk in and comment about how my recommendations—from a stock boy, mind you—had helped them. What an opportunity to live my purpose by sharing my struggles and how I became victorious!
While working at the health food store, I also began an exhaustive study on nutrition and natural health. Due to my passion for digestive health, I focused a great deal on probiotics like the Lactobacilli, Bacilli, and Saccharomyces species. After meeting with hundreds of people in the health food store—and hearing from hurting folks following the publication of my story in the Townsend Letter—I knew there was a real need to take the very nutrients and compounds that improved my health and formulate them into whole food nutritional supplements. I named my first formula Primal Defense®.
While I was in no position to start an organic, sustainable ranch and farming operation at this point, I could do the next best thing: put whole food nutrients and compounds into nutritional supplements that would empower extraordinary health. Thus, Garden of Life was born.
Since I also had a deep desire to transform people’s health one life at a time, I decided to share my healing story with the world. In 2002, I wrote my first book Patient, Heal Thyself, sharing the message of health and hope with more than 1.1 million copies in print. I can’t tell you the number of people who contacted me to say, “Jordan, reading your story was like looking in a mirror. You went through exactly what I’m going through now. Our stories are so similar. Your journey from sickness to health made me believe I could get well and by following your suggestions, I am so much better.”
Since then, I’ve authored twenty books and shared this message live in front of hundreds of thousands of people on five continents and forty-four states throughout this great country. I’ve hosted a pair of TV programs—Extraordinary Health and Perfect Weight America—that have aired on several cable networks. I’ve been interviewed and featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and on TV programs such as Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, and Inside Edition. I’ve appeared on dozens of faith-based TV programs sharing the message of health and hope.
In the meantime, Garden of Life grew beyond my wildest dreams. By the mid-2000s, our products were being sold in sixty-seven countries and in more than 10,000 health food stores and thousands of doctors’ offices.
During my various speaking tours, I would drive by and sometimes visit ranches and farms while I was on the road. Nearly every time I stepped on a working farm or ranch, I was disappointed in what I saw. American agriculture had become “agribusiness,” which is a commonly used term that reflects the big corporate nature of many farm enterprises throughout the fruited plain. Huge machinery, chemical fertilizers, and automation had taken over, and the business model could be summed up in a simple sentence: produce the biggest yields possible for the lowest possible cost. If this means dousing your crops with pesticides and herbicides, feeding your livestock genetically modified cornmeal, or picking your fruits and vegetables before they ripen and then gassing them before going to market, then so be it.
Plain and simple, food has become a manufactured commodity these days; all one has to do is watch a few episodes of Unwrapped on the Food Network to see firsthand how America’s “favorite” foods are processed and packaged. But even before our food is mass-produced in some industrial bakery or far- off factory, the ingredients have been sprayed with pesticides, pumped up with additives and preservatives, and stripped of vital nutrients.
More often than not, I would visit local and organic farms, not conventional farms, in search of healthy dairy and meat products. And while these producers were always much more conscientious than those at the large farms, a lack of resources usually kept these small farmers from producing foods and beverages of the highest quality and safety.
My travels across the U.S. continent added more fuel to the fire burning deep in my gut to one day produce the world’s healthiest foods and beverages, without chemicals and preservatives, and as God intended. Food whose quality would go beyond organic.
And then the Lord spoke to me with words I’ll never forget.
Jordan, you need to be a Joseph.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 5
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 5
There is something powerful about having the faith to take action. My action first required an eight-step walk from my bedroom to my parent’s closet to ask my mom to take my picture. Eight steps might not seem like much, but many times during my illness I would attempt to walk those eight steps only to wake up hours later with my face planted in the tile, glasses broken having blacked out due to my extreme anemia. Another step of faith I ventured on required a 2,300-mile trip to learn from a man I’d never met and follow principles that I had never heard of.
If you had asked me at any time during my illness—“Jordan, what can I pray for?”—I would have responded, I want my health back. I want my old life again.
I got my health back, all right, but I didn’t get my old life back. Instead, I received a new life and a vision, a passion, and a mission to see the health of this nation— and world—transformed one life at a time.
When I returned to South Florida, I was eager to share my testimony with anyone and everyone who would listen. Those who had seen me at my lowest were amazed to see me in good health.
You know how it goes: people tell other people and word of mouth gets around. One of those persons who heard about me was Dr. Morton Walker, a medical researcher and columnist for the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients, a newsletter that publishes information about the latest news in alternative medicine written by researchers, health practitioners, and patients. Dr. Walker was keenly interested in talking to me after hearing how I had overcome Crohn’s disease and other ailments by following a biblically based health plan and supplementing my diet with probiotics.
Dr. Walker called me in the spring of 1997, and we had a friendly interview. Then he wrote a lengthy article about my battle back from “death’s door.” The story entitled “One Man’s Journey from Sickness to Health” was a detailed account of my two-year battle against incurable diseases and the health program that brought me life again.
I don’t know how many people read the Townsend Letter, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that several thousand people contacted me asking about the diet and the probiotics that helped me. Many of these letters and phone calls were from hurting folks with inflammatory bowel disease and other health challenges. They were desperate to know where and how they could eat the foods and acquire the probiotics that helped nourish me back to health.
I really believed I could help these people, and Lord knows I was touched by their stories of how illness had brought ruin on their lives. It was then, out of my parents’ friends’ garage, with my dad’s credit card and a dream, and based on my belief that food is the best medicine, that I began to formulate whole food nutritional supplements and started a company called Garden of Life®.
At the time of my interview with Dr. Walker, I was working in a health food store in Palm Beach Gardens, stocking shelves and earning a whopping $4.25 per hour. I didn’t really like what I was doing since stacking cans of organic black beans wasn’t exactly my passion. But each and every day, people would walk into the health food store, and I would hear and see them out of the corner of my eye, asking an associate for help with their child with autism, their sister with breast cancer, their mom with osteoporosis, or their dad with arthritis.
My colleagues didn’t always have an answer, but I—never being short on words—enjoyed offering my opinion whenever those questions came my way. Though I did not know all the answers, I remember striking up a conversation one time with a woman suffering from psoriasis, a skin disease marked by red, itchy, and scaly patches.
“Ma’am, I don’t know a whole lot about psoriasis,” I began, and then I reached into my back pocket and showed her a copy of my “before” picture. “What I do know is this: once I was dead and now I am alive. Would you like to know how?”
She nodded her head with a grateful look on her face, and then I told her my story. Often times, I was asked to describe what foods I ate or nutritional supplements I took. On other occasions when I struck up conversations within the store, I would recommend avoiding an entire food group or suggest an important book to read.
Amazing things happened in that health food store. I’d be stocking shelves when customers would walk down the aisle a couple of weeks later with big smiles on their faces. They would seek me out. Some would even be jumping up and down, but nearly all of them would hug me and say:
“Jordan, remember me? I’m the woman with the skin condition. Look at me now.”
“Jordan, remember me? I’m the one who had a child who couldn’t focus and couldn’t behave in school. Now he’s doing great in the classroom and is behaving well.”
“Jordan, remember me? I had terrible digestive problems, but now I’m symptom-free.”
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 4
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 4
Within a few weeks, I no longer resembled the proverbial ninety-eight-pound weakling that tough guys kicked sand on over at Mission Beach. As I walked up and down the boardwalk, I performed chin-ups and worked the monkey bars in the beachside parks. I slowly but surely regained my stamina. I was starting to feel like my old self again.
We pulled into the Boney’s parking lot at about a quarter to eight that morning— fifteen minutes before opening time. The spacious parking lot was nearly deserted, but I never took anything for granted.
“Follow me, guys.”
I led them toward the front door, which was still locked. I leaned against the glass and cupped my hands over my eyes. Then I saw him—Matt!
Matt was the dairy guy at Boney’s—and my new best friend. Shortly after I purchased my motor home and began camping out near the Pacific Ocean, I quickly found out that Boney’s was my best bet to find cultured dairy and organic meat. Deliveries, however, were sporadic, and it wasn’t uncommon for Boney’s to sell out of their shipment of cultured dairy products within an hour of opening. Sometimes Matt stashed away a few cartons in the back for me, but I couldn’t count on that.
Since I was pounding at least two quarts of cultured dairy every day—and could keep only a two-day supply on hand in my ice chest—this presented a problem. I counted on a regular supply of cultured dairy to provide the proteins, vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and healthy fats that helped me tremendously with my digestion, my immune system, and my weight gain. If Boney’s was out of cultured dairy, then I could check two other stores in San Diego, but both were a good half-hour drive from Pacific Beach.
Matt looked up from inside the closed store and noticed me waiting outside. He smiled and waved back, then shot me a thumb’s up. The cultured dairy had arrived that morning.
“It’s going to be a good day, guys,” I said. Then I explained to Kenny and Jason why Matt was smiling.
I purchased eight quarts of cultured dairy that morning, as well as two bags of ice for my cooler, an assortment of fruits and veggies, and dinner that evening—wild sockeye salmon. That would be enough to keep three young guys fed and happy.
We hung out at the beach the rest of the day, and I can remember gazing at the horizon and thinking some deep thoughts. I don’t know if my reflections were prompted by having two longtime friends come and show their support by visiting me in San Diego, or whether I was feeling optimistic about the times ahead. Because I was going to have a future, thanks to my new biblically based diet and the organic “living” foods I was eating.
But I already knew from personal experience that the foods fueling my recovery weren’t always available, and the thought of not having access to these healthy organic foods some day gave me pause. That afternoon, something in my heart stirred for the first time. I knew it sounded crazy, but I could not deny the feeling in my gut.
While gazing out at the blue Pacific, I decided that one day I would have my own ranches and farms where I could grow and raise these powerful foods for myself, my future family, and my friends and loved ones. I can remember that feeling like it was yesterday.
Keep in mind, I was a penniless ex-college student still dependent upon my parents when this thought formed in my mind. I was just twenty years old with no college degree, no opportunities on the horizon, and no job. But the thought was so real that I decided to tell Kenny and Jason what I was thinking— that one day I would raise and grow my own food, go beyond organic with uncompromised quality, and provide people everywhere with foods and beverages of biblical quality.
“Awesome,” Kenny said. “If anyone can do it, you can.”
Jason thought it was great, too. “You be sure to remember me when you start this ranch and produce these products because I want to be there with you when it happens.”
We serve an amazing God whose nature is to give us immeasurably more than we can ever ask or imagine. Today, sixteen years later, Kenny and Jason are both key members of the Beyond Organic team, but I’m getting ahead of my story.
The fact is, even though I had this desire to raise and grow my own food that day in San Diego, my imagination wasn’t nearly big enough to envision what God had lying ahead for me.
But the first thing God did was to complete His healing of my body during my forty days in San Diego. I was physically reborn and gained twenty-nine pounds during that time.
Considering my diseases were considered medically “incurable,” and with what I’d been through for nearly two years, this was an absolute miracle.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 3
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 3
We’re not talking the Four Seasons here.
I had a single stainless steel pan to cook my meat or fish, a cutting board, and a few kitchen utensils. I opened my ice chest and unwrapped the thick butcher paper, which contained a couple of pounds of hamburger. This wasn’t your typical ground beef, the most frequently purchased type of meat in supermarkets around America.
This hamburger came from cattle that grazed in pastures—in other words from cows that were grass-fed, not given troughs of ground-up corn laced with antibiotics to help these animals overcome digestive issues due to the confined environment in which they were raised. I reached for a stick of organic butter in the cooler and cut off a half-inch, which
I dropped into the saucepan. The guys helped me pat the hamburger into fist-sized patties, and then I set them one-by-one into the pan. The pleasing aroma of sizzling meat filled the tiny motor home.
“What else have you got to eat?” Kenny asked.
“Raw veggie juice and some cottage cheese with fruit and honey. That’s pretty much it, although I think I still have some cultured dairy left,” I said.
I opened my ice chest and saw that I was down to a quart of cultured dairy. “Sorry, guys. I’m almost out of dairy. There’s not enough to share. I hope that’s going to be okay.” (I’ll have a lot more to say about the health benefits of cultured dairy products throughout this book.)
Kenny and Jason looked at each other and grinned. “That’s going to be all right,” Jason said. “We’ll survive.”
Okay, maybe my raw kefir didn’t look that appetizing to the guys. And maybe my hamburger wasn’t the way they were used to eating it since I bought 100 percent whole grain buns—not your typical hamburger buns made with enriched white flour.
I can assure you that my burgers hit the mark for three hungry young men, and the cottage cheese, honey, and pineapple for dessert was a fan favorite as well. Then I reached for my last quart of cultured dairy.
“I hope you don’t mind that we have to get going early tomorrow morning,” I told the guys. “I need to do a little shopping.”
The Promise to Myself
Forgetting to set my alarm was not an issue.
The local water ski club began firing up their outboard engines shortly after 5:30 a.m., no doubt to take advantage of the glassy conditions on Mission Bay. But from our spot near the water, it sounded like a 747 taking off.
I drove us to a nearby health food store—Boney’s Market on Garnet Avenue, Pacific Beach’s main commercial thoroughfare. (Boney’s became Henry’s Marketplace before turning into a Sprout’s Farmers Market in 2011.) I silently shot up an arrow prayer, asking for the delivery of Steuve’s cultured dairy products that morning—kefir, cream, and cottage cheese.
Natural, raw-certified cultured dairy products were hard to come by because so little was produced and local demand was so high. My favorite product was raw kefir, which came in quart-sized cardboard containers. I often consumed two, sometimes three quarts a day because the powerful proteins, important enzymes, and billions of live, friendly bacteria in the raw kefir colonized my gut with good germs and crowded out the bad bacteria that had been making my life miserable for nearly two years.
One of the main reasons why Bud Keith wanted me to come to San Diego was because the state of California was one of only a handful of states that had legalized the retail sale of raw cultured dairy products. In my home state of Florida, for instance, unpasteurized dairy products were not legal to sell.
Not so in California, for which I was grateful. When raw cream was available at Boney’s, I liked to mix it with raw carrot juice, a common practice in Europe where they believe the combination improves the absorption and utilization of the fat-soluble vitamins and carotenoids found in carrot juice. But most of the time, I chugged cultured dairy like it was going out of style—more than a half-gallon a day.
My new diet—heavy in cultured dairy, salads made from organic produce, grass- fed beef and wild-caught fish, cultured veggies like raw sauerkraut, raw carrot and vegetable juices, and a powerful probiotic supplement containing beneficial microorganisms from healthy soil and plants—put me on a fast road to recovery.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 2
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 2
I don’t know why, but I believed him. Hope swelled in my heart. I smiled for the first time in nearly two years and told my mother that I was going to get well.
You see, once my illness set in and I knew the severity, I realized that this wasn’t just about me. I suddenly knew how important good health was and that there must be others suffering as I was. I also knew that God doesn’t waste our pain. We only go through and overcome painful circumstances in life so we can benefit others who are going through similar experiences. In fact, a year into my illness, there was a moment that would change my life forever when I asked my mother to take a picture of me at the depth of my suffering.
“Jordan, I don’t want to take your picture,” my mom said. “It breaks my heart just to look at you.”
She had a point. I was standing in front of my parents’ closet, wearing just boxer shorts, and you could practically count every rib in my emaciated body. I had lost nearly half of my body weight and stood at just 111 pounds. I looked like one of those Holocaust survivors, not much more than skin and bones.
“Mom, you need to take my picture.” “Jordan, I don’t want to take your picture. Why do you insist?” “Because the world is not going to believe what God is about to do in my life.”
Kenny and Jason couldn’t believe how much better I looked when I picked them up at the airport. I had arrived in San Diego weighing an unhealthy 116 pounds, but I had added nearly thirty pounds during my forty-day health experience.
“You guys ready for dinner?” I asked. “The menu is pretty simple. I hope you don’t mind.” “Since when did you learn how to cook?” Jason teased. “I wouldn’t really call it cooking, but it’s healthy and doesn’t taste too bad either,” I promised. I pulled into the bayside parking lot and found an unobtrusive spot. I had purchased the dilapidated motor home in San Diego after spending a few weeks with Bud Keith and his family to get my bearings. He urged me to spend as much time as possible near the beach, breathing in ocean air by the lungful and catching the sun’s rays to give my body a vitamin D boost.
Bud also talked nonstop about the importance of eating whole and natural foods as consumed by our biblical ancestors. “I know why none of the other doctors have helped you,” he said. “You need to follow a health plan that is based on the Bible, one that’s been proven through history and confirmed by science.”
Now, I was a young man of deep faith, but during those dark times, I was miserable. Sure, I read the Bible every day, but I never thought of God’s Word as anything more than a spiritual book. While the Bible gave me insight into the Creator of the universe and taught me how to act and live, I couldn’t recall reading anything about health or nutrition in the Old or New Testament.
But as Bud expounded upon his philosophy, his thinking could be boiled down to two powerful points:
Bud gave me an eating plan that outlined what foods he wanted me to eat, and he also gave me plenty of “homework,” meaning he handed me several books to read. One of them was called The Milk Book by William Campbell Douglass, M.D., which opened my eyes to the virtues of consuming grass-fed cultured dairy products. Bud thought drinking raw unpasteurized milk and cultured dairy such as kefir from grass-fed cows would be greatly beneficial to my digestive tract and help my ailing immune system. He also directed me to eat grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, as well as drink raw juices made from organic fruits and vegetables.
That made for a limited menu, but for a twenty-year-old nomad with no access to a kitchen, that would have to work.
“Tonight we’re having grass-fed beef burgers,” I announced to Kenny and Jason.
My well-used RV, which had more than 80,000 miles on the odometer with sleeping accommodations for two above the cab and two bunk beds at the rear, didn’t have many of the creature comforts that you’d find in more modern motor homes. I had a two-burner propane stove and a combo toilet/ shower— but no refrigerator. To keep my meat and dairy products properly refrigerated, I filled a cooler with new ice daily and made sure nothing stayed longer than two days.
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 1
Can Consuming Organic Food Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk Transform Your Life From Sickness and Disease Jordan Rubin Interview part 1
I personally invite you to experience a rare interview with Jordan Rubin, a man who dramatically transformed his life from near death to become the vibrant man he is today. Jordon accomplished this seemingly impossible task with a total diet transformation to Organic Foods, Grass Fed Beef and Cultured Milk products made from Grass Fed Cows free of Antibiotics, Bovine Growth Hormone and Genetically Modified Grains and Corn. These cows instead were pasture raised naturally, and the amazing nutritional differences as a result literally saved Jordan’s life. Jordan was on a passionate mission to share his revolutionary breakthroughs with the World after that. As a result, Jordan wrote several books on his life changing revelations and founded Beyond Organic.
Today I have the honor to share Jordan’s amazing story via the first chapter of Jordan’s newest book: “From Tragedy to Destiny”
I maneuvered the ’68 Dodge bunkhouse motor home past the manicured lawns and bay windows of the Pacific Beach homes atop Crown Point, a finger of land that overlooked San Diego’s Mission Bay, an aquatic recreational playground. The year was 1996, and I was a few months away from my twenty-first birthday.
It was getting late in the day, and I was looking for a place to encamp for the evening and cook dinner. Parking around Mission Bay could be tricky because local authorities didn’t want transients—like myself— parking overnight in beach lots or bothering residents in nearby homes. But as long as you were unobtrusive and moved along first thing in the morning, you could usually get away with parking overnight near one of the bay’s many inlets.
“How does this place look?” I asked my two passengers, Kenny Duke and Jason Dewberry. Kenny had been my close friend while growing up in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and Jason was my college roommate at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Unfortunately, I had to medically withdraw from school during my sophomore year when I became seriously ill with a variety of life-threatening ailments. Now I was living in San Diego, trying to get well.
Kenny shrugged his shoulders. “Fine with me,” he said. Kenny and Jason had flown in from the East
Coast to check up on how I was doing. They were amazed at my transformation when I picked them up at the airport. I had put on a good thirty pounds since they last saw me—pounds that I desperately needed.
A grin came across Kenny’s face. “So is this what you have to do every night, move around like a vagabond?”
“It hasn’t been too bad,” I replied. “Being near the water is nice.” Actually, looking for a new place to park every night was the least of my worries.
Twenty-two months earlier, my good health—something every college student takes for granted—was suddenly ripped away from me. I had been a counselor at a summer church youth camp when I began experiencing nausea, stomach cramps, and horrible digestive problems. I limped home, having lost twenty pounds in less than a week.
As my health continued to deteriorate, my parents took me to doctor after doctor in an attempt to reverse the downward trend, which was threatening to spiral out of control. Over the next few months, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and exhibited symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, diabetes, extreme anemia, heart problems, urinary tract and prostate infections, yeast (Candida) overgrowth, parasites, and multiple viral infections.
My body was shutting down. The worst moment happened in the hospital late one night when I overheard a nurse crying in the hallway, telling a fellow nurse, “He’s not going to make it through the night.”
I did survive my brush with death, but my continuing health problems led to severe depression. I was down and out in every possible way. I looked into the mirror and didn’t know who I was seeing in the reflection. Most nights, I slept no more than forty-five minutes at a time. There was no escape. Day after day, night after night, was misery. I felt trapped in a prison that was my own body.
When I wasn’t in a hospital room, I visited dozens of doctors and health practitioners and was put on medication after medication. Nothing worked. My parents, feeling the pressure to do something, sent me to alternative medicine clinics in Mexico and Germany, but these desperate attempts did not work out as hoped for.
I felt great guilt when my parents mortgaged their future and spent a fortune of money on trying to get me well. My friends didn’t come around very much anymore because when you go from being the life of the party to the death of every conversation, people can’t really relate to what you are going through.
Except for Kenny and Jason. When they flew out from the East Coast to see me in San Diego, it was great to hang out with them and reminisce about old times.
They knew, when I had landed in San Diego five or six weeks earlier, that I needed wheelchair assistance from the plane to the baggage claim. Waiting for me was a nutritionist named William “Bud” Keith, who my father had reached out to after hearing about him from a friend. Bud told me over the phone that I could become well again by following the health plan in the Bible.
When I spoke with Bud, he offered to introduce me to the Bible’s eating plan if I would come to his hometown. “If you come see me, I will teach you how to eat and live, and I promise you in three months, you’ll be working out on the beach in San Diego.”
There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 20
==> There is Nothing that Creates More Anxiety and Fear of the Unknown Than Being Told – You Have Breast Cancer part 19
One of the most dramatic Cancer Fighting changes you can possibly make is to eat Organic Foods instead of Commercially Grown Foods. Let’s talk about Organic Grass Fed Beef and Grass Fed Milk products first.
What are the critical differences between Commercial Beef and Milk Products vs Organic vs Grass Fed Beef?
The differences are literally night and day. Commercially Raised Beef is fed toxic antibiotics, toxic Genetically Modified Grains and is subject to deadly disease like eColi. In addition, Commercially Raised Beef and milk products are known to be disease causing. In stark contrast, Grass Fed Beef and Grass Fed Milk products are disease reversing and preventing in fact.
Jordan Rubin was so compelled that Grass Fed Beef and Grass Fed Milk products literally saved his life he founded Beyond Organic.
Here is Jordan Rubin’s life transforming story in his own words.
What are the critical differences between Commercial Beef and Milk Products vs Organic vs Grass Fed vs Beyond Organic Beef and Milk Products?
We all know the terrible repitation Commercial Beef and Milk Products have on the human body. So let’s take this discussion deeper into Organic vs Grass Fed ve Beyond Organic Beef and Milk Products.
Both are so called “Organic” – I priced Grass fed beef (ground) at Publix $9.99 a pound. Whole foods $8.99 a pound. Beyond Organic is cheaper $8.00 a pound wholesale! Plus it is Better than even the Grass Fed available at those 2 places. It is Better than Organic beef, because this grade still includes being Grain Fed.
The USDA allows the “Organic Farmers” to stipulate the interpretation themselves!
Beyond Organic proves it in reassuring contrast…
Beyond Organic is Grass and beneficial Herb and forb fed, period. Plus, the Cattle genes are actually superior healthwise and are from India, etc. These have better genetics than western species that were bred excusively for Fast Weight Gain and Fat “Marbleing”.
The Beyond Organic Beef and Milk Products are much healthier and does Not have the Antibiotics, Genetically Modified Grains (Highly Toxic) fed to them, raised in a huge shed, etc.
This Beyond Organic beef and cultured milk products are actually Health Enhancing, in Stark Contrast to Commercial beef which is disease causing.
I am a passionate natural health researcher since 1983, and Beyond Organic is incredible in it’s entire breakthrough health framework.
When you become a Beyond Organic Member you have the option to be compensated for referring other Beyond Organic Members.
It is a given that I always look at product quality first, then look at the compensation in situations like this. The money is a distant 2nd place to me and my integrity. Yet Beyond Organic is superb in it’s compensation for those who are interested.
Quite frankly, whenever I see that an otherwise great health product is sold via “Network Marketing”, I compare the pricing of their products to what is already on the market. Then I compare it to premium Nutritional products, quality and pricing wise.
Transparently speaking, I have Never seen a Nutritional product sold via MLM or Network Marketing in 30 years that is both Superior in Quality and actually Less Expensive in Pricing than available anywhere else. Not Amway, Shaklee, Pharmanex NOBODY ~ Except for Beyond Organic. That’s why I personally endorse them exclusively and am Proud to share their amazing story with you.
And of course, you will be Proud to know there is No Better, or More Inexpensive Nutritional Product line of the Same Quality out there. This is critical, because your integrity will falter when you find another product being sold in Walmart etc. is better someday as with all of the other MLM and Network Marketing products out there. I been there, and it sucks. ~ Glen
There are several ways to purchase Beyond Organic products become part of this amazing organization. The “Mission Member” status gets Wholesale pricing on all their products, and allows you to share the life transformations available while being compensated for it as a definite plus…
For those of you who know the value and want to share this amazing product line seriously, Get the “Business Builder” package as it is best for passionate people like yourselves.
Get all the details on this breakthrough Health Enhancing “Beyond Organic” product line here.
Chef Michael Smith’s: Old-fashioned beef stew
(The ingredients were substituted with Grass Fed Beef and Organic Veggies for their Cancer Surviving and Cancer Prevention qualities. Not so surprising is the fact that these healthy substitutions actually are much more flavorful. Healthy Dining – does Not have to taste like “Diet” food! – Glen)
OLD-FASHIONED BEEF STEW
I love the way braising transforms inexpensive, tough cuts of beef into tasty, tender stew. The earthy flavours of root vegetables combine with the full body of the beef stock and aromatic red wine to form a rich flavour base. The secret, though, to a great beef stew is patiently browning the meat.
What you need
2 pounds or so of Grass Fed beef
A sprinkle or two of sea salt and freshly ground pepper
A splash of extra virgin oil
6 organic carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
A few stalks of organic celery, roughly chopped
A few organic parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped
A few organic onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1 organic turnip, peeled and roughly chopped
4 organic tomatoes
½ bottle or so of hearty red wine
3 or 4 cups of homemade grass fed beef stock
A few bay leaves
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary
Another sprinkle or two of sea salt and pepper
What you do
Preheat a large, thick-bottomed pot over medium-high heat.
Pat the grass fed beef dry with a clean towel, then cut it into large cubes and season it.
Add a splash of oil to the pot – enough to cover the bottom with a thin film – then toss in enough meat to form a single sizzling layer.
Sear the grass fed meat on every side until it is evenly browned. Be patient when you’re browning the meat; it takes a little time but it’s worth every minute. The caramelized flavours are the secret to a rich, hearty stew.
As the pieces brown, remove them from the pan, adding more oil and meat as needed. Once the meat is done, discard the remaining oil – but keep all the browned bits in the pan. They’ll add lots of flavour to the stew.
Put all the grass fed meat back into the pot and add half of the organic vegetables (reserve the other half). Add the organic tomatoes and enough wine and beef stock to just barely cover the works. Add the bay leaves and rosemary, and bring the pot to a simmer. Continue cooking until the grass fed meat is almost tender, about an hour, then add the remaining vegetables. Adding the organic vegetables in two batches allows the first to dissolve into the stew and the second to retain their shape, colour and texture. Continue simmering until the grass fed meat and organic veggies are tender, another 30 minutes or so. When the stew is tender, taste it and season as you like.
Freestyle variations
You may use any combination of organic root vegetables you have on hand and any cut of grass fed beef that is labelled for stewing, simmering or braising. Try using fresh thyme instead of rosemary. At the last second, you can also stir in a sliced organic green onion or two or a few handfuls of organic green peas for a burst of colour and flavour.
Serves 4 to 6, with leftovers
Michael Smith is the host of the Food Network’s Chef Abroad, Chef at Home, Chef and Large and The Inn Chef. He is based in Fortune, PEI.