The “4Leaf Solution” — Featuring a 4-minute video

Posted on 07/15/2013 by J. Morris Hicks

The solution to enabling Mother Nature to sustain our species longterm

4 Sol 1In a recent blog entitled “Do you breathe air, drink water and have sex?” (see link below) I was making the case for the above solution.

Why are we the only species who can’t figure out what we should be eating on our own? Why do we need thousands of scientists, doctors and dietitians who seem to disagree on everything? And what’s going to happen if we don’t get it right pretty soon? I decided to try to explain as simply as I could in just four minutes.

After watching this video, I urge you to take a look at the series of six blogs listed at the end of this piece.

VIDEO:  The 4Leaf Story in 4 minutes

This video was produced by Giles Morgan, a young man I met through his mother, Kyrena Robinson, one of my blog readers who works at nearby Pfizer. For your convenience, I have provided the entire script below—along with a dozen PowerPoint slides.

The Script for My Video

Hello, I’m J. Morris Hicks and I want to talk about the simple solution to the food problem that is wrecking our health, our environment and even threatening our very existence.

My study on this topic began in 2002, when I became curious about the optimal diet for humans. After reading 30 or 40 books on the subject, I concluded that a whole foods, plant-based diet was probably best for our health. Then, over the same weekend in 2003, I read two more books that focused more on the environmental and social consequences of our food choices. That’s when I experienced my “blinding flash of the obvious,” saying: “Oh my God, we’re eating the wrong food!” 

4 Sol 2So what is the “right” food? We begin to answer that by observing Nature, which has a diet-plan for all species. Some animals eat other animals; some animals eat plants and so forth. Animals whose DNA is almost identical to ours, gorillas, eat nothing but raw plants.

4 Sol 3Then, there are people like the Tarahumara of Mexico.

They eat mostly corn, squash, and beans. And guess what? They rarely experience ANY of our chronic diseases.

4 Sol 4The clincher for me was disease reversal. Our book features five MDs who have enjoyed great success in reversing many chronic diseases—with whole, plant-based foods. Pictured along with Dr. T. Colin Campbell are images of those five pioneering medical doctors. Clockwise from Campbell are Barnard, Ornish, Esselstyn, McDougall and Fuhrman.

4 Sol 5Smart people (like this man) are “getting it” regarding my blinding flash of the obvious. Three of the above experts (Esselstyn, Ornish and Campbell) influenced President Clinton to adopt a whole foods, plant-based diet in 2010. He reversed his heart disease, lost weight and has never looked better.

4 Sol 6Protein Myth is alive and well.

Yet, the strongest animals in the world like elephants and horses—eat nothing but raw plants.

Sustainability–Part I. Even if animal foods were the 4 Sol 7healthiest diet for humans, eating them is simply not sustainable for much longer. On a per calorie basis, they require over ten times as much land, water and energy as a plant-based diet. If everyone ate the way we do in the USA, we’d need two planet Earths to feed us all and we only have one.

4 Sol 8Sustainability—Part II. In a seriously overpopulated world that is running out of enough land to grow our food, we continue to add 200,000 people every day (a city the size of Grand Rapids, MI) and we lose an area of land the size of South Carolina to erosion every year.

4 Sol 9Need more evidence? Also endorsing the plant-based diet are the United Nations, Albert Einstein and, most recently, our nation’s largest healthcare company, Kaiser Permanente. From their Spring 2013 Journal. “Physicians should consider recommending a plant-based diet to all their patients…encouraging whole, plant-based foods and discouraging meats, dairy products, and eggs as well as all refined and processed foods.” 

4 Sol 10A positive description. We felt that it was time for a more positive and descriptive way to define a near optimal diet than words like vegetarian or vegan. Those words say more about what you’re avoiding than what you should be eating. So we based our 4Leaf approach on the common ground wisdom of the five medical doctors mentioned earlier.They all agree with this simple statement by Dr. Campbell, “The closer we get to eating a diet of whole, plant-based foods, the better off we will be.”

The closest that we could possibly get would be 100% so we set the top bar at 80. That means that when you’re eating at the 4Leaf level, you’re deriving over 80% of your daily calories from whole plants. Even the 1Leaf level beginning at 20% delivers four times as many whole plant calories as the Standard American Diet.

4 Sol 11Based on overwhelming evidence, there is no doubt in my mind that the right food for humans is whole plants. The question is, how do we get enough people to change soon enough to make much of a difference? To help speed up the process, we’re working on a number of initiatives here at 4Leaf Global —more education, healthy (great tasting) foods and a brand new approach to corporate wellness.

4 Sol 12The global consequences of our food choices are incredibly complex—yet the solution is refreshingly simple. Eat more whole plants! Our book goes into great detail on all of the above topics and is written so that it can be easily understood by the average 8th grader.

Our 4Leaf Pledge to you. We’ll gradually help people everywhere understand the “big picture” consequences of their food choices. As a result, many of them will begin to improve their diet, take charge of their own health and do some very GREEN things for the environment—No less than our future as a species hangs in the balance. Now, I’m going sailing!

4 Sol 13

What’s next? Near the end of the above presentation, I posed the following question, “How do we get enough people to change soon enough to make much of a difference? That got me to thinking about other ways to make that happen—ways that might work better than trying to use just logic.

My thought process began with the following series of blogs posted in the past few weeks. I got the idea for this series after watching two videos of Dr. Campbell contained near the end of the first blog, A:

Want to help spread the word? Call me at 917-399-9700 if you’d like me to speak at your venue. That’s one thing that you can do to help ensure the longterm sustainability of our species.

Handy 5-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes 2 or 3 minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, visit our 4Leaf page and also enjoy some great recipes from Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member since 2012; click banner for more info:

Nutrition Certificate

Posted in 4Leaf for Life, Big Picture, Bill Clinton, Environment, Harmony Project, Video Included | Tagged | 6 Comments

“You’re Screwed” or “We’re F_ _ _ _ D?” Take your pick.

Posted on 07/14/2013 by J. Morris Hicks

Even Jimmy Kimmel knows we’re in trouble.

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel

Last week, I posted a blog about an Oxford scientist/professor who paints a pretty bleak picture for the longterm survival of our species. Imagine my surprise when I saw essentially saw the same message on Jimmy Kimmel Live (7-11-13 telecast).

Only Jimmy chose the more politically-correct “You’re Screwed” to the x-rated “We’re F_ _ _ _ D” version used by Dr. Stephen Emmott.

Jimmy’s 3-minute video would be entertaining if it weren’t so true.

Good News, Bad News. The good news is that awareness of our self-induced global dilemma is growing. The bad news is that we’re making a joke out of it, or in Jimmy’s case,  blaming all of the world’s woes on the U.S. Congress.

Congress is NOT the organization that can tackle the biggest problem in the history of humankind. That will require a hefty combination of global leadership, power, and MONEY.

Congress is NOT the organization that can tackle the biggest problem in the history of humankind. That will require a hefty combination of global leadership, power, and MONEY.

As the video started, I was struck by the similarity of the conclusions reached by two diametrically opposite types of organizations: a comedy show and a senior Microsoft scientist/Oxford Professor. Then I thought of the three stages of the acceptance of new truths.

So what is the new truth that I am talking about? The blinding flash of the obvious solution to the mess we’ve created—a well-planned, deliberate move in the direction of a plant-based diet for all humans. Without that crucial step, which will take powerful leadership, power and money—I am afraid that I would have to agree with their similar conclusions: “We’re screwed.” As for the stages of new truths, let’s begin with a quote:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. —Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 – 1860)

The big problem right now is that almost everyone seems to be aware of a gigantic dilemma down the road for all humans, but only a tiny few are talking about a realistic solution. As for the aforementioned truth—we’re currently in the ridicule stage and must successfully pass through the difficult violent opposition stage before we accept this new truth as self evident and finally get some traction. And for that, we need powerful and committed LEADERSHIP.

Dr. Stephen Emmott as he appears in the Forbes article referenced below.

Dr. Stephen Emmott as he appears in the Forbes article referenced below.

The pathway out of this mess. Dr. Emmott does a magnificent job of describing the global issues that we face yet, like others before him, he makes no mention of the single most powerful “behavioral change” that we could make to alleviate many of those dire realities. Like practically all of our most brilliant scientists, he probably believes that we truly “need” to eat animal protein in order to be healthy.

Once he realizes that we don’t need ANY animal protein, he will quickly grasp the staggering benefits of using 90% less land, 90% less water and 90% less energy to produce the same number of food calories. Maybe then he will see the ray of hope that I see—a plant-based pathway out of this horrible mess that our species has created.

Full of water-wasters. The bacon, the cheese and the eggs.

Would you pay $50 for this popular breakfast? Full of water-wasters. Bacon, cheese and eggs.

A plausible solution. In yesterday’s blog, I floated the idea of “cap & trade” type of solution for water. Essentially requiring that the food industry pay for the water that they use. Even at a ridiculously low price of 1/10th of a cent per gallon, it would add $3 to the price of quarter pound burger. (See yesterday’s blog, Are you ready for a $35 burger?)

When the price of a burger quickly jumps from $5 to $8 — and the prices of other water hogs (chicken, eggs, dairy) see similar increases, a shift to more plant-based eating will begin to happen. And when the price of water gets all the way to one cent per gallon, that burger will cost $35. People everywhere will become healthy because they can no longer afford the food that is making them sick.

The Oxford scientist/professor. Microsoft’s head of Computational Science (based in Cambridge, UK), Dr. Stephen Emmott recently presented the world with a terrifying wake-up call. And his message is simply this. Unless we make some HUGE changes in the way we live and reproduce, our future descendants are in deep trouble.

His book description. Deforestation. Desertification. Species extinction. Global warming. Growing threats to food and water. These driving issues of our times are the result of one huge problem: Us.

Water, our most precious of natural resources.

I don’t think one cent a gallon is too much for our most precious natural resource.

The Bottom Line. Awareness of our self-induced global problems is growing. But the “best and brightest” haven’t yet figured out the obvious solution. That’s because they’re all still trapped in the old protein paradigm that we “need” to eat some animal foods to be healthy. We need global leadership to urgently get busy working on a workable solution.

First, to begin dispelling the “protein” myth and second to organize a system for putting a price on our most precious natural resource—water. Those two steps will put the power of global economics in motion and billions of people will begin to eat healthier—in spite of themselves.

And maybe we won’t be “screwed” after all…

Just think of the ripple effect of benefits that would ensue: healthier people, lower cost of health care, global warming is curbed, finite fossil fuels last longer, water shortages are a thing of the past, world hunger ends, rain-forests are restored and the suffering of billions of animals in factory farms is almost non-existent.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Activism & Leadership, Big Picture, Water Pollution & Usage | Tagged | 2 Comments

Are you ready for a $35 burger?

Posted on 07/13/2013 by J. Morris Hicks

And much higher than that if the beef industry had to pay for water.

Like ours, Mr. Brown's book features a single apple on the cover. And like our apple, his tells a story.

Like ours, Mr. Brown’s book features a single apple on the cover. And like our apple, his tells a story.

               Water excerpt from Lester Brown’s book

Although many analysts are concerned about the depletion of oil resources, the depletion of underground water resources poses a far greater threat to our future. While there are substitutes for oil, there are none for water. Indeed, modern humans lived a long time without oil, but we would live for only a matter of days without water.

Not only are there no substitutes for water, but the world needs vast amounts of it to produce food. As adults, each of us drinks nearly 4 liters of water a day in one form or another. But it takes 2,000 liters of water— 500 times as much— to produce the food we consume each day.

(That’s mainly because we’re eating the wrong food.)

How much is water worth? Depends on how thirsty you are and how much demand there is for water. If a gallon of water were auctioned off to a group of extremely thirsty, super-wealthy Americans, it might bring a million dollars or more. Just depends on how thirsty they are and how much water is available. It’s all about supply & demand.

What's the most you ever paid for a quart of Evian?

What’s the most you ever paid for a quart of Evian? Maybe five bucks?

So, what’s the story on water? Is it our most precious natural resource? I would say it has to right up there with the air that we breathe. As Lester Brown says, we lived for centuries without oil but could only live for a few days without water. I learned a few years ago, that there has been the exact same amount of water on the planet for millions of years. All generations of creatures have always consumed the same water.

Water reserves in trouble. The fresh water that we drink comes from rain, snow and underground wells and aquifers. The quantity of water remains the same, but the location of that water is changing—lakes, rivers, streams, reservoirs, and underground aquifers. Although many of those bodies of water are in danger, the one that is most scary is the last one—the underground aquifer. Here’s what Lester Brown said in chapter six of his book:

If the pumping surpasses the sustainable yield of the aquifer, aquifers are depleted. When this happens, the rate of irrigation pumping is necessarily reduced to the aquifer’s natural rate of recharge.

At this point, grain production declines too. The resulting water-based “food bubbles,” which create a short-term false sense of security, can now be found in some 18 countries that contain more than half the world’s people. In these countries, food is being produced by drawing down water reserves. This group includes China, India, and the United States.

Forty percent of world irrigated area is now dependent on underground water. As world demand for grain has climbed, farmers have drilled more and more irrigation wells with little concern for how many the local aquifers could support. As a result, water tables are falling and millions of irrigation wells are either going dry or are on the verge of doing so.

How yummy is this going to look when it costs $60? FYI, cheese production is a HUGE waste of water as well.

How yummy is this going to look when it costs $60? Cheese production is also a HUGE waste of water.

Cap & Trade. We have “cap and trade” for oil; why not have it for water? Back to my question, what is water worth? Well, if you buy it in a quart plastic bottle, you might pay $10 or more per gallon.

But what about that quarter pound burger? Let’s say we charged the beef producers just one cent per gallon for that water. Sounds reasonable enough, right?

How much would that add to the price of that $5 burger? Would you believe thirty dollars? Now we’re talking a $35 burger. Too much of an increase too soon you say? Then let’s start out charging them just one cent for TEN gallons of water. That only adds $3 to the price of the $5 burger. And that 60% increase would probably be enough to cut the demand of beef by 25% or more in less than a year.

By the way, we’re not just picking on the beef industry. The pork, chicken, turkey, dairy and egg industries are also going to have to start paying the same amount for their water. Are you ready for a $50 Egg McMuffin? Compare that to a healthy bowl of oatmeal with flax milk, blueberries and banana for three or four bucks. (That’s what I had four hours ago and I’m just now getting hungry.)

Full of water-wasters. The bacon, the cheese and the eggs.

Full of water-wasters. Bacon, cheese and the eggs.

People everywhere would be searching for alternate sources of protein—and calories in general. They will do internet searches and will quickly learn that there is plenty of protein in all kinds of vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds. And they’ll soon start enjoying that delicious oatmeal and fruit for breakfast much more than they ever enjoyed that water guzzling and artery clogging Egg McMuffin.

Should we also start charging the potato and fruit farmers for water? What would that one cent for ten gallons do to a quarter pound of potatoes? It would add 1.5  cents. So what would happen? Dairy, beef and chicken farmers would soon be growing potatoes, apples and a host of other health-promoting, planet-nurturing, plant-based foods.

The Bottom Line. A global disaster is not far away if we don’t start making some seriously radical changes in how we’re using this planet and her finite natural resources that we need to make food—WATER, LAND and ENERGY. The global solution to a host of problems could be as simple as two words. SELL WATER.

Forget trying to get people to choose healthier foods to save themselves and the planet. As Sal Liggieri says, “that ain’t working.” Just sell the water and 80% of the world’s food calories would be coming directly from plants in less than ten years (my estimate). Want to shoot for 95%? Just raise the price of water.

Just think of the “ripple effect” (no pun intended) of benefits that would ensue: healthier people, lower cost of health care, global warming is curbed, finite fossil fuels last longer, water shortages are a thing of the past, world hunger ends, rain-forests are restored and the suffering of billions of animals in factory farms is almost non-existent.

Give Chelsea the microphone and her proud parents will help her fix the biggest problems in the history of humankind.

Give Chelsea the microphone and her proud parents will help her fix the biggest problems in the history of humankind.

Selling water around the world is the kind of powerful global initiative that Chelsea could champion with the full support of her very influential father and mother, perhaps the next president of the United States.

Soon, they would have the HUGE financial support of the Gates, Buffetts and Jobs of the world and we’d be up and running. In a few years, they can add one more ex-president to the “dream team.”

Sell Water — Get Healthy — Nurture the Planet — Save Grandchildren

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Activism & Leadership, Water Pollution & Usage | Tagged | 3 Comments