Food Revolution Day May 19 2012 Covent Garden Market London Ontario

A very good friend of mine who runs this awesome blog http://runningforautism.wordpress.com/ is going to write a blog about the Food Revolution Day that I am coordinating in London Ontario! Kirsten is an amazing mother with 2 amazing kids and a cool hubby! I was her maid of honour in her wedding last year and I commuted with Kirsten for work at Canadian tire in 2010! 

So Kirsten sent me an email with her questions about the event and I thought this was a perfect way to write my blog today!

1. Date , time, place

This event will be hosted May 19, 2012 at Covent Gardens Market on King Street in London Ontario. Events start at 10am and continue through the day until 4pm.

2. A brief description of what it is including , what are the key events of the day.

The entire day will be focussed on trying to get people to cook in their kitchens, eating fresh local foods and not relying on quick convenient boxes of processed foods.

The Day starts off at 10:am upstairs in the Labbatt Room where Growing Chef’s will be engaging our children ages 3 -12 in creating their own Veggie or Fruit Character. They will also have colouring sheets for those who want to show their artistic talents. While the kids are learning and having fun, Britown Music will showcase some of their students to sing and entertain the kids and parents in the room! I am also please to announce that we are adding local recording artist Denis Gauthier to the artists who will be providing entertainment in the Labbatt Room while the kids are creating their masterpieces! The kids event will run continously until 12pm.

At 10:30 am we will be inviting parents and registered attendees to come next door while our volunteers and growing chefs keep your kids happy!

Parents will learn from Tracey Platero and Carole Persaud about how to keep your kids healthy and happy in the kitchen. How to deal with the peer pressure of other kids snacks at school! How to read and interpret the tricky labels on processed foods that are making our kids sick! What is the impact of those processed foods on our childrens bodies? This will be a valuable hour of information for parents!

At 12:00 pm families and registered attendees can join registered dietician Melissa Brionnes for a walk through Covent Market talking about the local products that are available and highlighting the vendors who have taken a challenge to create a Revolutionary Meal! The revolutionary meal is an idea for restaurants and vendors to create a meal that you know will have real food ingredients and will not be laden with extra additives that our bodies do not know how to process.

After being inspired in the Market come back upstairs !!

At 1pm come and listen to Dr. Kresimir Jug talk about Life By Design. “Life By Design is an essential part of transforming the world’s health. It is based on powerful principles that are scientific, logical and easy to follow. Health is your birthright. It is that natural, normal expression of living your Life By Design.”

At 3pm We are targeting young adults coming into their first apartments or people who want to start over with creating a healthy kitchen and staying healthy when you are shopping on a tight budget! Listen to Registered Dietician Melissa Brionnes and Organizational guru Margarita Ibbott share their secrets and tips!

This will wrap up our event! I am so looking forward to sharing all this information with you!

3. Website Link and or contact information.

https://gidsy.com/activities/london/7517/food-revolution-day-london-ontario - to register for events go here!

www.foodrevolutionday.com – to see if their are events in your local area go to this site! If you would like to host a dinner party, or create an event this page will also provide all the information you need!

For other questions about this event in London Ontario I am the coordinator Michelle Clermont and I can be reached at 226-234-4006.

4. Is there anyway for non-local people to be involved (example if someone wants to organize this in their own community, how do they do it.)

Go to www.foodrevolutionday.com there are lots of ideas from hosting a simple dinner party in your neighbourhood, a grocery store tour, a big event like ours or visit a farm! There are a ton of ways to participate on May 19 globally! There are over 313 cities participating, 193 public events and over 300 dinner parties!  Make this Food revolution grow!!

Personal Questions

1. What inspired you to do this?

My key inspiration is my daughter Megan,  Megan has been sick for 4 years. She is chronically ill. No doctors in the medical field can find specific reasons for the fact that she sleeps 3 hours a day, that her menstruation cycle is not a cycle its actually a constant flow. she is 15 years old and home schooled. Kids as young as 2 are being diagnosed with Fatty Liver Disease and that is NOT acceptable. Doctors were able to find that she has Mild Fatty Liver Disease which I also created a support group for on Facebook 4 years ago. I have over 215 members in that group who share their symptoms and challenges with dealing with Fatty Liver Disease. They are a small representation of the 30% of the world population that are currently afflicted by Fatty Liver Disease.  I have watched 8 people die in this circle of support in the last 4 years. This enrages me and also makes me passionate about raising awareness of the damage that processed foods are doing in our bodies.

Combining these factors means that my target audience is Parents, young adults and children. Awareness is key! The liver is an exceptional organ in your body and it can regenerate healthy cells as long as you are willing to give your liver a break!

2) What are you hoping to gain for you and your family through this?

Honestly for me this is about making a difference in the community. I want people to know who I am and know that I am here to help! I will be starting Ignite Health in the fall and I hope to make amazing contacts in London through this event! For Megan, I am finding volunteer opportunities for her that she can believe in and thats a win too!!

3) What are your thoughts about the fact that todays children are the first generation that on average will have  shorter life expectancy than their parents. Do you believe this event is a step towards reversing that trend?

This is exactly WHY I am creating this event at the root! I am scared for Megan, I see chronic illness in my child and not in myself? This is not logical! Parents and Children and those who are entering adulthood need to understand the risks they are taking in the grocery store, in the drive thru and know that every decision to buy sugary or diet beverages, every decision to have that drive thru meal for dinner is damaging you and your children and is shortening your life span. I KNOW that my bad decisions have created this for my daughter and I have also seen 2 men in their 30′s die of Fatty Liver Disease in the last 6 months! I am sorry but Megan is going to live longer than that and dammit i will make sure she outlives me if its the last thing i do! Please do not take your childrens health for granted like i did!!

 

 

 

I gave my child Fatty Liver Disease…please read to prevent it in yours!

I am in the process of writing a book on Foods and your Liver. This was a decision I made due to the challenge of trying to help my 15 year old daughter deal with her diagnosis of Non Alcholic Fatty Liver Disease in 2008. Looking back to her childhood I know how she was made vulnerable to the disease.

I was a full time working mother of 2 children. Balancing the demands of commuting, ballet, soccer, doctors appointments and all of the other things that keep parents busy. That resulted in quick decisions for meals. We did not have time to chop veggies, wait for them to cook or think through a complex recipe.

Add to that the picky nature of children , the demands for junk foods that they saw on the TV or saw in their friends lunch box were always in my ear.

My parents did not pay any attention to healthy eating, my ex husbands parents did not either. My kids were destined to be a product of that.

My kids loved chicken nuggets, kraft dinner, hotdogs, pizza, hamburgers, dunkaroos, fruit roll ups, granola bars, yogurt tubes. I loved the convenience of liptons side dishes and uncle bens quick rice side dishes. They could be ready in 10 minutes, I could microwave chicken with shake n bake and boil up some frozen veggies and have dinner on the table in 15 minutes!  Chocolate Milk, Fruitopia, Sunny Delight, Koolaid, Gatorade, were the beverages of choice.

This was perfection or it certainly seemed to be. My kids were not super fond of fruit, my daughter loved salads so i would make them , she would cover in ranch dressing but hey at least the veggies were getting in.

My son ate olives a ton of them, he would eat the meat on his plate and if we were lucky we would get a few bites of veggies in him. He loved Rice.

This quick and convenient cooking was mainstay. On weekends we would try to cook sheppards pie, fajitas, tacos, things they loved that were a bit more substantial.

They would take sandwiches for lunch and lots of snacks from the cupboard. They loved eating the Mr. Noodles packages raw!

What I know now is that all of those foods that they had as mainstays were filled with Sodium, MSG, High Fructose Corn Syrup and all of the other inventions that companies have added to products to make them cheaper to manufacture, more addictive to the consumer and easier on the pocket book have trapped families into a vicious cycle.

What I did know was that I was a heavier woman and if I didn;t get things under control I would be at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure as I aged. What I did not consider was that my children could be at risk before they reached adulthood. In my mind this was something to worry about after you turned 40. Not at 10.

My daughter always had stomach aches…I always guessed she just wasn’t pooping enough. In reality her liver was likely complaining and telling her not to eat these foods from an early age. She was clearly vulnerable and her weight started to be above the normal levels by age 8. I guessed early puberty, I had gained a lot of weight for that and I developed early too.

In 2007 her health at age 11 started to go downhill fast. She got pneumonia was on 3 doses of antibiotics to clear that, she never really recovered from that and it was followed by MonoNeucleosis. In Winter 2008 she was diagnosed with Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Life has been full of health problems for her since then.

In Early 2009 she started her first period and bled for 9 months solidly every day no breaks, very heavy bleeding. She became anemic and we started giving her iron supplements not knowing the iron was hurting her liver. Doctors put her on Birth control pills and it slowed the bleeding down in Summer 2009. She was then hit with extreme vertigo that put her in a wheelchair for 10 months. That ended in June 2010. Since that time she has been more stable.

There are ups and downs but you will never find the foods from her childhood in our home now. We eat fresh fruit, and veggies, brown rices, rice pasta, organic sauces rye breads ,and ocassionally we still eat poorly. But its not every day anymore, its not every meal. My daughter reads every label of every product we buy.  Its put back on the shelf if we find the additives or chemicals that hurt her liver on it.

If this could happen to my daughter so easily, could it happen to your kids? Please take the time to read labels, try to eat fresh and local fruits and veggies. Buy organic whenever you can. Avoid the processed yogurts, granola bars, fruit rollups, the aisles and aisles of tempation. Stick to the outer aisles and only travel inside aisles for spices, or organics.

I hope you never have to tell your child she has liver disease. My daughter will always have to be careful. Her liver was compromised as a child and every alcoholic beverage in her future will damage it further. Taking those chances as a teenager is normal…for her it will cause pain and have long term impacts. I do not know what the future holds in research or for her, but I do know what parents have to watch for and I will not stop until everyone knows about this disease!

Protect yourself and your kids, do not let companies compromise your liver with their addictive products!

Mothers Day and sadness it creates for me

I love being a mother, I always knew even as a child it was my destiny. I love knowing my children love and respect me and want to give me everything they can in gifts. I love knowing my friends see me as a good mother. Sadly its not something I ever feel sure of.

Thats due to growing up with a mother that called me names, manipulated my friends, alienated all family, tried to kill me and attempted suicide in front of me.

I had no role model in mothering

 I was never taught how to be empathetic, but I always tried to understand my mother.

I was never taught to be kind to others, but I always tried to make my mother happy

I was taught to swear, but hearing so much of it growing up makes me keenly aware of how much it hurts

I was never taught how to be protective of a child. but I always tried to protect my sister from the abuse around us.

I was never taught to appreciate gifts when my gifts were rejected as thoughtless and wrong, I always try to create moments and make gifts special so that you will not reject them.

In the end I was taught what NOT to do by my mother. So I find it a challenge to mother sometimes. Its not easy for me to start conversations with my teenage judgemental children as I was always attacked for my thoughts or ideas and was told I was stupid or an idiot. It is in their nature to reject my ideas and thoughts as silly or old fashioned since I am old and they are at the stage where they know everything.

I know Megan wishes I would generate more conversations with her so that will be my focus in improving my mothering skills this year. I have to get past that fear of rejection and remember that my children are teens and it is expected and not a true personal attack on me like it was with my mother.

I wish I had a mother sometimes, and mothers day always brings tears to my eyes. I have my aunt, I have my grandmother, I have my stepfather so I know I am  surrounded by love. But I do not have a picture of a mother to post on facebook with my friends, I cannot share sweet stories, or words of advice she provided. I can’t turn to her when I feel that I am not being a good enough mother for reassurance, I can’t turn to her for advice. Mental illness owns my mother and I do not have access to any part of her anymore.

So if you have a mother that guides you, that provided support and love to you, If you have a protective mother, If you have a mother you can turn to, or a mother who has passed away and has left wonderful memories I want you to appreciate that with all you have!

Happy Mothers Day all!

Why I am so proud of Megan

If you haven’t known me for more than 2 years you are not aware of the incredible challenges that my 14 year old daughter has been through.

She got sick in 2008 with pneumonia, that was followed up with mono, this essentially destroyed grade 6 for her

She got sick in 2009 with extreme menstrual bleeding and fatty liver disease essentially making grade 7 a right off.

She got sick in 2010 with extreme vertigo and spent 10 months in a wheelchair. She almost attended no days of school in grade 8.

Doctors, and family members did not hide that they thought this was all in her head and that she was just trying to avoid school .

Her self esteem was as low as it could be with people calling her a liar and thinking she wanted to be sick

She was put through to grade 9 without completing any real schooling in grade 8. Megan was certain they had given up on her too.

Megan got healthy in June 2010. A ton of work with my holistic coach Brandon Krieger , osteopath Jason B, and Megan hated the extreme healthy foods that she was forced to eat.

But in the end , nothing any doctor has done for her in 2 years made any difference. Osteopath and holistic eating did the trick.

She entered grade 9 and we ensured her first semester was light. She took applied french, academic math, drama and art. No one had any expectations and honestly I worried she would get sick again in September.

She insisted on getting help from my Aunt Pat all through the summer,she wanted to be prepared for grade 9 math and megan worked extremely hard. It helped that my aunt believed in her and slowly but surely Megan’s confidence was rebuilding.

Megan worked hard on homework, she asked to see my aunt whenever she felt insecure about a math concept. My aunt constantly told her she was doing well and that all Megan needed to do was to take the time to read the question properly before she started working on it. Mistakes she was making were small ones all related back to not reading the question correctly.

We had a scare in November when Megan had a fatty liver scare again. A cold over christmas too…Each little thing triggers a deep fear in me now. I need her to continue to be healthy.

In November Megan’s mid term report card came home and it was brilliant. She was flourishing in all classes. Drama 74% Art 96% French 93% and math 75%. She was so happy and I was so proud of her. Tears in my eyes with the clear effort by megan and the incredible efforts of my aunt pat in helping her get there.

Friday Megan brought home her final report card for Semester 1.

Her final grade are

Drama- 77%

Art 92%

French 87%

Math 74%

What an incredible accomplishment Megan. You are an incredibly smart girl with a great support system in my aunt pat and your brother and me! You will continue to shine you will continue to flourish and I am incredibly proud of my baby girl! You proved everyone wrong and you rock!