I was privileged to speak to 400+ women recently on the Sunshine Coast and they were for the most part, women who did not know me or know my message. I talked about getting back to real foods.  Getting rid of breakfast cereals, modified milks, additive laced bread, additive laden margarine, Vegemite, plastic cheese sandwiches, lean cuisine, preservative based sweets and healthy choice prepared meals. You could say my usual talk and my mantra for the last 30 years.

They were a Christian group who had many ‘Aha!’ moments as I talked about natural foods vs food that has been made by man in a laboratory.  Stuff that looks like food, may at times smell like food, taste like food, but isn’t food.   These foods or chemicals are not what our bodies have eaten for thousands of years. I told them about my daughter Casie who at the age of 7 said, “Mummy I figured your book out, God makes all the healthy stuff and everything else is junk”.

That very wise young girl is now 23 and lives by that mantra. Such words of wisdom from the mouth of babes.  Whether you say God or nature, this is the essence of my message and that of Changing Habits.

It was interesting that after my talk, I was swamped by people wanting to tell me their story.  The stories to me were horror stories of very sick children and very sick adults.  I wanted to cry every time I heard the next story.  I was floored by the physical and mental problems that seem to besiege each family, but the main problems were that of the immune system including allergies, asthma, eczema, food intolerances, autoimmunity, ADD, ADHD, Aspergers and Autism.  They hadn’t heard my message and told me that it made so much sense and wanted to know where to start.  Where you begin all depends on where you are in your journey.  If you are just beginning on the journey, it’s a leap of faith to trust someone who goes against the norm as we do at Changing Habits.

You see, I think we walk around totally unaware of anything but rather in a daze following the crowd thinking what is normal is right, when in fact it has been a slow change that no one has questioned.  Niccolo Macheiavelli said, “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things”.

I have been doing this for 30 years and in the last five years, a new order has started. There is a ground swell of people questioning the status quo in health care and dietary advice.  People are coming to the understanding that they can no longer give away their power and the responsibility of their health to someone. If you want to be well, you have to take the steps to educate yourself and in order to do this, it must become a priority in your life to not only educate but act on that knowledge.

This week, I was asked to do an interview with 4BC on the obesity problem now facing our children.  Firstly, I spoke to the producer who asked me if I would be comfortable in answering questions about what food portions and foods should we serve our children for breakfast and lunch.  I told her my take and she then told me that no one would do what I suggested.  At that point, she told me she had four children and was too busy.  I told her that it all depends on your priorities, then I became quite passionate and said that her children and the children of Brisbane and the world were the future leaders of our planet and if we didn’t think that feeding them the best of food so that they could make the best choices for the planet was not a priority, then I don’t know what is.

This generation coming up the ranks is expected to not outlive their parents. They are mentally and physically becoming incapacitated and it will be the parents who change to a new order of health care and eating that will have the future leaders of the world.  This is my belief.  If you want a child that will adapt, lead, think, create and change accordingly to the environment, the work has to be done long before the birth of the child.

I was talking to my beautiful internist doctor friend and she had an ‘Aha’ moment that I’d like to share with you.  She told me that she had been doing some thinking and realised that a pregnant woman has the fate of three generations.  She has her own, her child’s and her grandchild, because the unborn child will develop all the eggs for its offspring.  We know what our grandparents did affected us and perhaps further generations.  We did the best then that we knew what to do, but we definitely know better now and it’s time to stop the wilful blindness, step up to the plate and change what is happening.

This message has to reach more people. The ground swell is there but it’s a very small percentage of the population – perhaps 2% and in some pockets around Australia, it is reaching 15% but they are few and far between.  In order to do this, if everyone on my database introduced one person to this article, then perhaps we can hurry this process up.  I may not be the answer to their problem or suit their thinking, but there are a plethora of people this article may lead them to that they can follow, learn, change and spread the word.

The most important thing we must do is lead by example and then perhaps we may just influence our family and friends. With their love and support, we may influence and even change a community which then ripples around the country and hopefully the world.

I didn’t think I would see what I am seeing now in my lifetime, but it’s happening and it’s so good to be part of this new order of things.  When I was doing nutrition 30 years ago, I had a few mentors – Dorothy Hall and Bernard Jensen.  Now I have so many mentors I can’t keep up with their amazing breadth of knowledge.  We live in exciting times, especially for those who have figured out how to be healthy both mentally and physically.  Let’s spread the word, make it your mission to be the example where people look at you and say “I want what she/he has got”.