352: Empowering Children's Health: Plant-Based Nutrition Movement's Impact | Meryl Fury

Maya Acosta  00:00

So welcome back to another episode, my friends, I'm bringing you a bonus episode every Friday for the month of August and September. It's a little surprise, these are on location interviews that I did while I was at the National Health Association Conference in June. As you know, that was the first time that I attended with my husband, Dr. Risk. And we had a wonderful time. I got to meet one too Huberman, Mark Huberman, Kathleen Gage, vielen, Hawkins, and all these individuals that I've never met in person. So I had a wonderful time. And so I'm introducing you every Friday to a new guest, a new individual, that I got to interview at the NH a conference. So I hope that you enjoy these conversations are very short. I found them on location, I didn't use a mic. I was just inspired to see why people went to the conference and what they were getting out of it. Some people are leaders, they offer support in their community. I have a position in there, I have a book author. So you'll see this is just a general introduction for all these wonderful conversations that I will have. And I hope that you enjoy. This is the healthy lifestyle solutions podcast, and I'm your host, Maya Acosta. If you're willing to go with me, together, we can discover how simple lifestyle choices can help improve our quality of life, and increase our longevity in a good way. Let's get started. We are at the National Health Association's annual conference. And we have Meryl Theorie. Hi, Mary, hi, Maya, what inspired you to explore a whole food plant based lifestyle, and how has it impacted your overall health and well being.

Meryl Fury  01:46

So I started eating mostly all plants all the time when I was 15. That's just a little couple of couple years ago, 45 years ago or so. And it came out of a change in the the economic situation in the country. So back at that time, something like 1975 ish, the price of beef went up real high. And my mother used to complain about how expensive it was to put three square meals on a table. And that's neat. It and dairy products and all that are really she was talking about me how expensive it was to put meat on the table even two times a day, this breakfast back then would have been like oatmeal and, you know, meat Oh, or, you know, some kind of hot cereal. But lunch and dinner would have definitely had me she was complaining about how expensive it was. And watching her go through all that upset was very upsetting for me. And one weekend, a friend of mine and I decided that we would stop eating meat to save our pet our mothers in particular from being upset about the family budget. And if we stopped eating meat, that meant something like two times seven, at least 14 Maybe 15 meals a week, they could just give that meat portion to our brother or sister or the father or whoever else, they could eat it themselves, they wouldn't have to worry about us. That's how it started. And from there, I just continued, I started learning about health, I started learning about our biology, I started studying and reading. Because of course, my mother, who was a gym teacher had been well trained in nutrition that was 1970, you know, should have been trained before I was born. So she was very afraid that I was going to grow up, you know, sickly, I was going to be skinny, I was going to be a weakling I was going to have, you know, poor bone formation or whatever she was worried about. So I had to be able to answer the questions that she would throw at me about nutrition. So I started studying. And then I got older, and I kept removing animal products from my diet. And it took a while it was a journey. But I belong to a co op, there was brown rice, and there were beans and there were mushrooms and there were fruits and vegetables. And that's what I did. I wound up hanging around a bunch of other college people who were vegetarian at the time. And that's how I how it started. And it just kept growing because I realized that over time, I just felt better without having animal products in my diet. That's how it started.

Maya Acosta  04:29

Awesome. And it turns out that you were right in the sense that choosing this way of life has given you quality of life. You're not dealing with any health issues.

Meryl Fury  04:37

I am not I am I will say I'm 62 years old. I do not have any health issues. You know, I beyond the ones I was born with, which is like, you know, sickle cell trait. You know, there's not much you can do with that. But I know that because I look at my family members right They show the effects of eating the standard American diet. You know, there's like blood pressure, and there's diabetes, and there's obesity, and there's just all kinds of things. And I don't suffer from those things for which I'm grateful.

Maya Acosta  05:14

So what does it mean to you to come to the NTJ conference

Meryl Fury  05:18

mark and one human as people are genuinely supportive of our nonprofit work, I lead a nonprofit it's called plant based nutrition movement, are physically located in the Chicago area. But we're our reach is really online, right. So we do a lot of zoom meetings and webinars and events. Our primary focus is helping people our mission is to help people transition from poor quality ways of eating to high quality ways that we knew which include lots and lots and lots and lots of plants, if not plant exclusive. Have you realized that people are on a continuum, that's a journey right? Along with that, we focus on child nutrition. Because in this country, we don't seem to really pay attention to what we feed our children. We feed our children a lot of on healthy foods all the time. And it's always a reason Oh, they're a kid, let them be a kid. And then there's what the USDA says it's okay for them to eat. And there's fast food in their commercials, there's marketing, there's what goes on in schools. And by and large, American children are just really malnourished, they're very poorly fed, very, very low quality foods. So our focus is to teach children directly teach their parents, their caregivers or grandparents or aunts and uncles, whoever else is around them. The importance of feeding them healthfully food so that they don't grow up with all the standard American diseases that come from the standard American diet. They don't, you know, our goal, if we could have anything, anything anything, it would be that no child ever has to deal with diabetes, or obesity, or high blood pressure, or heart disease, none of them. All those lifestyle diseases, in my opinion, should be eradicated for children. It shouldn't be an issue. There's no reason that in the last five years, the CDC has decreased our children's life expectancy four times. That is unconscionable. We're of the top 10 richest nations in the world regardless of how you want to define your age. And we were watching our children die. We're watching them die younger and younger, which is to me it's it's it's not acceptable.

Maya Acosta  07:41

This organization that you created in support group in you put a lot of emphasis on exactly that working with children trying to outreach to children, you have a podcast where you have these conversations. Last year, you had an online Summit, same thing geared towards supporting children, you do want to tell us anything about that about your work your mission.

Meryl Fury  08:03

Maya, thank you so much. I really love Maya. She's you know, that is just my passion. And it has become the driving force for our organization. It wakes me up in the morning, and it puts me to bed at night, making sure that we keep getting this message out to people that our children deserve better. They deserve better than chicken nuggets. They deserve better than pepperoni pizza, Jelly Bellies, Twizzlers, Twinkies, they deserve better than all time. They deserve real human food that supports their growth and their development physically, emotionally, psychologically, all of it. So that is what we focus on. We go into schools, we teach children directly in elementary schools, mostly at this point. But we also go into Boys and Girls Clubs, that's probably one of the easiest places to get in, or faith based groups, anywhere, we have a collection of people and children's specifically, and an educational setting. And we teach them about healthy food, we teach them how to cook it, we partner with community garden experts, and they grow the food, help the children learn about that. And then we take the produce from the garden, and we teach the kids how to cook it and they can taste it. Sometimes they like it, and sometimes they don't. But that's what it's like to be a kid. And that's how that is right. We do some Ensign online events, which are aimed towards parents and adults. And we have researchers and medical providers and culinary experts and educators, anybody anybody who can speak this message in so many different voices, a diverse audience and a diverse set of presenters so that we can get this message out to people because if we don't we're getting more of the same right now. Here's a scary another scary statistic. Right? Right now, one in 40s. No, yeah, one out of 40 Seven children are diagnosed with autism. Oh, that's crazy. That was not that way when I was a kid, I didn't know what autism was. That's what it is. And a lot of it has been found to be as I'm not saying all of it. But a lot of it has been found to be associated with the kind of chemicals that are in our children's diet, the food colors and the additives and preservatives and the GMOs and the all of this stuff, which would be eliminated by giving them way more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and mushrooms. So that's what we want. Because honestly, the next scary statistic is that by 2025, maybe half our children will have autism. Oh my god, yes, it's going that fast. It is going that fast. Right now, teachers can't even teach the way they used to teach when Maya was a kid when I was a kid, because the children can take that level of complexity in education, unless they're in some very tightly controlled, high input type environment. But the average kids in public schools are having a very hard time.

Maya Acosta  11:15

This is important work that you're doing. If people are interested in supporting your work your foundation or learning more about how they can help educate children. What's what they would you recommend?

Meryl Fury  11:27

Wow. So two links I would give one is our website, which is plant based nutrition movement. For the website, it's PBNM dot o RG. And then our podcast is growing a healthy child. And you can just find that anywhere you get your podcast. Those are the two main ones if you'd like to contact us directly, you can email us is really the easiest way. And that's at 6am seeds. Because our child nutrition project is called called 6 million seeds. That email is the number six M like and Mary seeds at PB N M dot O RG.

Maya Acosta  12:17

Awesome. Merrill. Thank you so much for sharing all of this and supporting the children. So thank you for your work.

Meryl Fury  12:24

My pleasure, Maya. Thanks so much. You've been listening

Maya Acosta  12:27

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