2008 Blog Entries

Although we do our best to control what our kids eat, the reality is that as soon as they’re about 4 years old, we start to lose that control. My daughter in Pre-K has lunch at school once a week, and my kindergartener weekly. My girls eat what is offered since bringing a lunch from home is not an option at their school. The school tries to offer healthy alternatives and is continually working to make improvements, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are some things that are offered that I would only rarely let my kids eat, if at all. For example, if given the choice, I’d eliminate processed meats from my children’s school because I know they’re not good for you.

What I didn’t know until recently is, how bad for you processed meats really are. The World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research’s “Second Expert Report” concludes that “processed meat is a convincing cause of colorectal cancer.”

The National School Lunch program, a federally funded program that often provides the best meal a child may get in a day, currently distributes and subsidizes processed meats like hot dogs to 30+ million children. Given the link between cancer and processed meats, it’s time to eliminate these meats from the National School Lunch program.

As a concerned parent who wants to make a difference, I’ve signed the petition to the Secretary of Agriculture requesting that the government halt the distribution and subsidization of processed meats like hot dogs through the National School Lunch program. Whether you have children or not, if you’re reading this blog you’re concerned about nutrition and health, please take a moment and click on the following link to sign the petition too. Thank you.
http://support.cancerproject.org/site/PageServer?pagename=usda_national_school_lunch_program_petition

Can you measure the value of a college education from the financial perspective of Return on Investment (ROI)? James Altucher, in his new book The Forever Portfolio, concludes that you cannot get a positive ROI on a $200,000 college education.

Altucher makes an analogy to the value of a college education to one strategy for winning the game of Scrabble.

“You have two choices. You can read every book you can find, build an enormous vocabulary, look up the definitions of words you don’t know (that will help you remember them better) and use your advanced knowledge, painstakingly constructed over years, to defeat all opponents.

Or you can remember the following five words: “xi,” “xu,” “za,” “qi,” and “qat.” “Ka” and “ki” are not so bad either. And every now and then “aa,” “ae,” and “ai” can prove incredibly useful. These are all legal words in the last edition of the official Scrabble dictionary. What do they mean? I have no idea. You don’t need to know… Once you are OK with the fact that “xu” is a legal word, then that means you can essentially slap that “X” down on a triple-letter score with much greater ease than any of your opponents really thought possible. While they are all stuck with their Qs and Zs, you’re racking up 50-point two-letter words and winning the game.”

Altucher states that college is too expensive, there is no value in a balanced education, and “there are far better uses of time”. Instead of college, he advocates working, getting good at one thing, taking ½ the fee of a semester to start a business, and getting involved with a charity.

All college students should do what he advocates while in college! A diverse college education will give young adults the skills and confidence they need to succeed in all of these endeavors. What’s the point of learning your multiplication tables if you don’t truly understand what 2×3=6 really means. Rote memorization and shortcuts are exactly the problem with our culture. There are no instant solutions. In order to make our world a better place to live, we need to think, feel, and understand why. We need to learn to question.

A college education provides motivated students the opportunity to live on their own without their parents’ constantly looking over their shoulder, develop their own group of friends from a larger community without family to pave the way, negotiate their own social relationships, not compete with their siblings on a daily basis, take responsibility for their successes and mistakes, take care of their own meals, home(dorm room), transportation, etc., try a variety of things to discover what they’re passionate about and what they’re not, learn to think on their own and to communicate, grow up and stand on their own two feet.

If our children can learn these skills while discovering what they’re passionate about, they will be happy in whatever they choose to do – and that, is priceless.

No one would argue that this is a difficult economy in which to grow a business. It gets to all of us, but the real challenge in many ways isn’t how to grow your business in this economy, but rather, how to keep your motivation level high despite the discouraging economy.

I discussed my personal values with my Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) Forum last night (a small group of 9 Boston entrepreneurs who meet monthly to share experiences and learn from each other – part of a worldwide organization of 9,000 members). From this I realized that if I make sure that my actions are consistent with my values, I’m happy.

Sounds simple, but this is how it works (for me). One of my values is to “make a difference”. When asked last night what this means, I replied that it’s simple. As long as I feel like I’m making a difference in someone’s life, I’m happy. It could be as simple as opening the door for someone who has too much to carry, letting someone who is obviously in a rush cut ahead of me when driving, etc.

Given the economy, I decided to apply my values to my work at Zoe Foods. This lead me to rereading emails that Zoe Foods and I have received from its customers (i.e. you!). When I read emails from people who tell me that they love Zoe’s new crunchy granolas because they taste good and have great nutrition, I can’t help but think “Score!”. There’s another person I helped make a difference for today. So… if it makes you happy to make someone else happy, please keep the emails coming and commenting on the blog.  I promise that I will pay it forward!

Parents at my children’s school want to see the nutrition of snacks and lunches improved: hormone-free milk, no nitrates in the lunch meats, no deep fried food, no white bread or empty calories. No one would disagree with these goals as my husband and I work hard to teach our children to eat a variety of foods and make healthy choices. But teaching children to eat healthfully and providing them with healthy choices is only a small piece of a much larger puzzle that is important not to lose sight of.

We not only need to provide our children with healthy choices, but we need to teach them how and why we combine these healthy choices. Yet, the puzzle is still larger.

I believe we also need to teach our children to appreciate the wonderful choices that they have and the importance of not wasting food since it is a precious gift. When I was a child, my mom used to tell us that children were starving in Ethiopia and that we needed to finish the food that we had taken. As a child I don’t think I fully understood the implications of what she was saying, but it clearly made an impact on me since I recall her words 30 years later.

I am torn on this issue because I have been asked to participate in a group of concerned parents who want to improve the nutrition at my kids’ school. I would love to see my children have healthier choices with no fast or fried food. And yet spending my limited free time to help my children’s school is like tutoring a child who scored 90% on a test so that they can get 100% the next time. There are so many children who need much more help since they’ve only scored a 30%.

The National School Lunch Program provides $2.57 per lunch for over 30.5 million children, and for many of those children, that’s the best meal that they get. If I am to help my children’s school improve its nutrition, then at least I can make sure that my children learn that there are others less fortunate than themselves and that we all need to make an effort to help others less fortunate than ourselves in any way we can.

Although I didn’t want to make my blog political, I can’t help but say that I’m excited that our country has looked past color and race and elected someone who has vision, smarts, and the people skills necessary to move our country forward.

In order to make a positive change in our world, I think that the singer and songwriter Jack Johnson says it best:

With My Own Two Hands by Jack Johnson, featuring Ben Harper ?(repetitive refrains are edited out for brevity’s sake)

I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make it a better place
With my own two hands
Make it a kinder place
With my own two hands
I can make peace on earth
With my own two hands
I can clean up the earth
With my own two hands
I can reach out to you
With my own two hands
I’m going to make it a brighter place
With my own two hands
I’m going to make it a safer place
With my own two hands
I’m going to help the human race
With my own two hands
I can hold you
With my own two hands
I can comfort you
With my own two hands
But you’ve got to use
Use your own two hands
With our own two hands
With my own two hands

Is there such a thing as a sick day if you’re a mom? Oh, and why don’t you add to that, entrepreneur. I know there is such a thing as a “sick daze” – I’ve been in once since Saturday. Guess trick or treating was too much for me this year.

As a mom, your kids cannot just give you the day off. Even if your husband or helper has agreed to let you rest so that you can take care of yourself to get better – did you tell your kids that this was the plan? When they’re little, they just don’t get it. If you’re in the middle of a nap and you hear the stampede of feet followed by “mommmmyyyyyy” – so much for the nap.

Not to mention, in my house I’m the grand coordinator of everyone’s schedules and plans. Because I wasn’t feeling great, my husband took the kids when they woke up Sunday morning to have brunch with friends and then to the playground. By the time they got back it was well past noon. Since my head was feeling fuzzy, I didn’t even realize until dinner-time that one of my daughters missed a birthday party.

As for work, as a business owner, there really are no sick days either, just somewhat less productive ones. There’s only so much you can get done when your head feels like it’s filled with custard. And, if you decide to work from home because you don’t want to infect the rest of your team, your kids are thrilled. You then have the challenge of telling them that they need to let you work even though you should be in bed resting to get better. Now if that doesn’t send a confusing message! So… it’s now 4:45pm and I have not seen my kids since 1:30pm. Guess they got it after all.

Not really sure how that makes me feel, but it does let me get my work done. Now all I need to do is feel better so that I can get back to work and to my family!

Just getting ready to finish up my work to head home for Halloween! For the last two weeks, my girls both told me that they wanted to be fairies - all the rage with Pre-K and Kindergarteners. Last night as my older daughter was getting ready to go to bed, she told me that she had changed her mind and she really had to be a cat. Hmmm… She had a halloween parade at school first thing the next morning. Nothing like changing her mind at the last minute!

Although I still had some work to get done and was exhausted, I brainstormed with my husband the best way to make a cat’s tail (try taping some crumpled up newspaper around a coat hanger and covering it with a piece of material or play scarf ) and some kitty ears (cutout from a cardboard cereal box with colored construction paper glued on and attached to a headband) given the late hour. I interspersed my late night art project with finishing up some work (easy to do while the glue was drying) and this morning - my daughter was thrilled.

Entirely worth it despite the last minute effort. Now it’s time to get ready to go trick or treating. And later tonight I expect a visit from the Halloween Fairy who I hear, will be leaving the next series of Rainbow Magic Fairy books by Daisy Meadows. Does she write anything about cats?

For more on the Halloween Fairy, see http://www.zoefoods.com/blog/hello-halloween-fairy/

Well, there is some truth here.  One of my goals is to make a difference in nutrition education across the country – see my blog (http://www.zoefoods.com/blog/mommy-will-you-talk-to-the-chef-at-school/) Okay – I stated it publicly – the next day another mom in the class approached me about getting together a small group of parents’ whose goal is just that!

So, if it’s just that easy, here’s another goal… I’d like Zoe Foods to make a difference in people’s lives with great tasting natural products that are packed with nutrition. Zoe’s Granolas and Bars are distributed across the country and is a major player in the food industry!

The Secret is out - we’re working toward this goal and appreciate your helping to spread the word about Zoe’s so that we can make it happen.

Married seven years as of yesterday and together for almost 10! Just another milestone to make me realize how quickly time passes. I had never heard of the seven year itch until a friend of mine told me about it. Why seven? Do we suddenly tire of our partners after seven years? Do people tend to enter their mid-life crisis at about the same time as seven years of marriage, so that they start to pine for their younger days?

Perhaps it’s akin to the seventh awning stretch in a baseball game. Maybe it’s not really an itch at all, but rather a time to stretch and reflect upon all the wonderful things that have happened, and a time to come up with a game plan for all of the exciting things we have to look forward to.

Did you know that many of the mainstream kid’s cereals – ones that have been around from when we were little – can be likened to white bread with sugar and vitamins? This point was driven home by an article from Consumer Reports called “Some Cereals – More Than Half Sugar.”

“A serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, carries as much sugar as a glazed doughnut, the consumer group found. Post Golden Crisp made by Kraft Foods Inc and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks are more than 50 percent sugar by weight, the group said, while nine brands are at least 40 percent sugar.” Hmmm, makes you think.

The article stated that Kellogg’s is in the process of “making its foods more nutritious.”

Unfortunately, it cannot happen too soon because Consumer Reports found that “91 children aged 6 to 16 poured their cereal and found they served themselves about 50 to 65 percent more on average than the suggested serving size for three of the four tested cereals.”

So what does all this really mean? It means that you must read the suggested serving size, nutrition facts, and ingredient label. Many of the cereals targeting children are what I’d call empty calories – calories that provide little to no nutrition because they consist primarily of sugar, white flower, food coloring, and some vitamins which are typically sprayed on right before the cereal goes into the colorful box.

Don’t lose hope because there is a lot of research that states that cereal can be really good for you (and delicious). Next time you’re at the market, consider these tips when reading the serving size, nutrition facts and ingredient list:

1. Total calories per serving only gives you a clue as to whether a product is good or not. Beware of small serving sizes! If you would typically eat twice as much as the recommended serving, remember that all the nutrition facts need to be doubled.

2. Look at the fat and make sure that there are zero trans fats. These are the really bad fats that most manufacturers have tried to eliminate from their foods. There is fat in food, and that’s not necessarily bad because we need certain types of fats in our diet. For example, your body needs Omega-3s which is an essential fatty acids that your body cannot produce but needs to be healthy. More on this topic next time.

3. Sodium – try to select a product that has relatively low sodium versus your alternatives. However, if there is something you love where the sodium is higher, try to pick other foods that are low in sodium and then don’t add salt to your food. It’s all about balance and moderation over the course of a day, week, and lifetime.

4. With the Atkins diet, people thought all carbohydrates were bad. However, our bodies need carbohydrates because they give us energy. However, look for complex carbohydrates because they contain fiber. Fiber helps promote healthy digestion and can help reduce the risk of heart disease. From less technical perspective, fiber keeps our digestive system moving which helps with weight management as part of an active lifestyle. Drink lots of water to keep from getting constipated, especially as you increase the fiber in your diet and your body adjusts.

5. Try to select products with a lower sugar content. Sugar, although also a carbohydrate, is one of those empty calories because it provides no nutritional value. If you have more sugar in one meal, make an effort to have less in the next. Remember, sugar turns to fat. So even if a product is low in fat, it may have a higher sugar content, so you’re not necessarily better off.

6. Protein is important for all ages. Although you don’t need to be consuming 20g per serving if you’re not trying to build some serious muscle mass, look for products with 4-8g protein per serving.

In summary, it is better to have your calories come from fiber, protein, and even the good fats, rather than sugar or foods with little nutritional value. If you cannot pronounce something on the label, think again before consuming it. As the founder of a natural foods company, of course I am biased, but these are some solid guidelines that can help you and your family to eat more healthfully.

To see original article: http://health.yahoo.com/news/reuters/us_cereal_sugar.html

Nutrition in your child’s school – is there any? My kindergartener started eating lunch at school this year. She was so excited. At barely 6 years old, she is beginning to enjoy the freedom of making her own decisions. With this responsibility, she has quickly learned that it’s not always so easy to make a good choice.

I realize that my daughter’s awareness about what is healthy and what is not, is not the norm. With a mom in the natural foods business and a dad who knows just as much, our girls cannot help but learn about nutrition. Although they have never been to McDonald’s and don’t really know what it is, they do know that it’s not healthy for them. Awareness and education is a crucial component, yet is only half the battle. The other half consists of the options in your child’s school cafeteria.

With the increasing rate of obesity and Type II diabetes among young children, we not only need to teach our children what is good for them, but we also need to make sure that there are healthy options that taste good in our children’s school cafeterias.

One of my dreams is to make a difference in nutrition education across the country, but now that I have a child eating lunch at school every day, I realize that we also need to influence what options our children have to choose from.

I have not, at least not for the last 20 years. After 25 years, I gathered up my courage, my husband, and my kids, and returned. Courage? Why would anyone need courage to go to a high school reunion?

Let me tell you why. Twelve years in one place is a very long time. Everyone in the school knows you, your siblings, and your parents. They’ve known you since you were little. Over the years, cliques of kids form, break apart, and reform. And by the 7th-8th grades, the cliques start to stick. Kids get mean, really mean. They do it because it makes them feel better than their peers. They’re just trying to figure out who they are too. But before you realize what’s going on, you’re just like a duck stuck in the muck (to quote one of my childrens’ books). And, I had a positive school experience!

At 12 and13 years old, you’re just beginning the journey of figuring out who you are. Over the rest of our lives, most of us will still be trying to figure out who we want to be and what we want to accomplish in our lives.

Flashback to Spring 1983… playing team sports, going out with friends, homework, boys, best friends, parties, prom, independence from our parents, the stress of applying to colleges, leaving home, and spreading our wings. No longer a duck stuck in the muck. We have the chance to fly.

Fast Forward to Fall 2008… after 25 years, I admit that I was brought to tears in the warm greetings I received and gave to all of my classmates. Everyone had come into their own. For the most part, the cliques were gone. My class had soared and we had grown up with families of our own. There were still a couple ducks, but since everyone else was flying, it no longer mattered.

I wish I could say that I’ve figured out how to slow down my life – but I haven’t made much progress since my June entry (http://www.zoefoods.com/blog/slowing-down-the-course-of-time-do-less-not-more/). In fact, since being on vacation, I think I’ve tried to cram in everything that I missed doing while I was gone into the last several weeks.

The result of being crazy, busy means that I am not eating as healthfully as I would like. And, the first places that I’ll steal some time from are breakfast and lunch. The result is less portion control and too many carbohydrates.

Here are some tips that I’m following to lead to healthier breakfasts and lunches:

Night Time Prep
1)    Take some salad from the Tupperware where we keep a washed head of mixed greens for the week, and put some in a single serve container for lunch for the next day. Take some other healthy leftovers like chicken, broccoli, squash, and put them in a container for lunch. Watch my portion sizes! Go heavy on the vegetables.

2)    Get to bed no later than 11pm, and ideally earlier. Goal is to wake up well-rested so that I can wake up at 6:30am and exercise!

Morning – Rise & Shine
3)    Exercise as soon as I get out of bed for 20-30 minutes. Do my Prana Power yoga video with Taylor Wells, or my Jackie Warner video, or get on the elliptical trainer!

4)    Take 10 minutes to eat breakfast with my children. Pour Zoe’s Granola into a bowl to manage the portion size and add skim milk.

5)    Grab the lunch I put together from the night before from the fridge. Remember to add oil and vinegar to my salad.

6)    Take a break for lunch and don’t eat while on the computer – it’s no better than eating in front of the television. Enjoy my meal for 10-15 minutes, it will be more satisfying and fill me up, as well as taste better. I know I think that we can multi-task, but if I focus my senses on eating, it will be far more enjoyable. Pundits claim that if we actually take breaks, we will be more productive!

I am starting today, will you?

As a working mom with more limited time with my girls, I struggle with the fact that children need boundaries and discipline and that I cannot give in to their every whim. I’ve discovered one way to make this a little easier – try to avoid certain situations in which I know they will constantly be asking for something that I don’t want to regularly have to deny. By the way, my girls are very persistent.

Halloween candy is one of these situations. Last year my girls realized that the more candy they can collect, the more they’ll have to eat. On the night of Halloween, we pretty much let them have what they want. What I try to avoid is their asking for candy after dinner every single night until it all disappears.

Several years ago a parent told me a secret that solved the problem of too much Halloween candy.

Hello, Halloween Fairy!

When we get home from trick or treating, my girls spill all of their candy out on the counter and they each get to pick 10 pieces that they would like to keep in a bag with their name on it. Then they put the rest of their candy back into their trick or treating bags. We write a note to leave for the Halloween Fairy along with the candy they decided not to keep. They put the note and their candy outside the back door and get ready for bed. The next morning, they gather their trick or treating bags from outside the back door to discover a present that the Halloween Fairy left in exchange for their Halloween candy.

Thank you Halloween Fairy for leaving something that my children will enjoy for a lot longer than the candy bars, and just as importantly, thank you for eliminating the battle over their wanting to eat their Halloween candy daily for the next month.

About a week ago I wrote about the benefits of pro-biotics – supplements that contain the good bacteria that are normally found in your body. After a round of anti-biotics and two weeks of eating vegetables while traveling in China and Central Asia – it sounded like a battle was waging in my stomach.

I have now been taking pro-biotics for a week and not only do I feel better, but I felt better within two days! What a lovely thought… I’ve introduced a new army of bacteria to my gut, but this time, they’re on my side!

Have you ever told someone a real story and the reply was “It’s too good to be true?” Come to think of it, I haven’t with a sole recent exception. Recently I went to a meeting for Boston entrepreneurs/founders of companies. In discussing my company with one of the venture capital people at the meeting I was told that a deal that I had negotiated for Zoe Foods was too good to be true.

For some reason, this comment keeps coming back to me along with all of its philosophical and dire implications… the deal really isn’t real, there’s some sinister legal language that even after crafting the document hand-in-hand with my attorney for three months that I missed, or maybe even that I signed a deal with the devil and just don’t know it yet.

Since I don’t believe that any of these three scenarios are true, I’m going to stick with my story - we got a good deal because we’re actually a good company since Zoe Foods mission is to make a difference in people’s lives with great-tasting, good-for-you foods.

Have you ever found something too good to be true? After 43 years, I am happy to say that my life is too good to be true, and it truly is.

Rule No. 1: Do no harm.
Rule No. 2: Do not violate Rule No. 1 unless you have no alternative.

According to the Barack Obama / Joe Biden campaign, as well as the John McCain / Sarah Palin campaign, these are the generally accepted criteria in selecting the U.S. Vice Presidential candidate.

These have got to be the craziest rules I’ve ever heard! Can you imagine choosing a spouse or partner because you thought they would do no harm and were the best option you had? Frankly, I’d rather not be married.

Can you imagine choosing a childcare provider because you thought that at least they wouldn’t harm your children. Boy, your children are bound to get a lot of nurturing and learning from someone like that!

Can you imagine only buying food for your family because you thought that at least it would do no harm? Boring! Nutritious? Unlikely.

Can you imagine running your life so that you would always be safe from harm? If so…
Don’t go out in the rain for fear of catching a cold
Don’t cross the street because you could be hit by a car
Don’t go out in a lighting storm because you could be electrocuted
Don’t be friendly with your neighbors because you could be bitten by their dog
Don’t live in San Francisco because you could be hurt in an earthquake
Don’t learn to swim because you risk drowning

If we lived like this, we wouldn’t leave the safety of our homes and we wouldn’t teach our children to try new things because they risk failing or getting hurt. No one chooses to run their life this way; do you want our country to be run this way?

We have alternatives, let’s choose them.

Avoiding Nanny Nightmares (again)

A couple of days upon returning from our “big trip” to China, our current nanny who has been wonderful for the last 10 months told me that she would like to keep working for us but “live-out.” Ugh! This is about the last thing I need to handle right now – I still feel like I’m catching up on my work from being away and cannot afford any outside distractions, especially because Zoe Foods is just at the brink of taking off if we can meet consumer demand and build our distribution quickly enough.

So… childcare… I welcome your suggestions. I have made every effort in the last year to keep our current nanny happy. I’ve taken vacation time to cover for her vacation. When we’ve had vacation and she didn’t want to take hers, I paid her anyway. I’ve tried to make her feel welcome in our home – we’re easy-going and flexible and it’s been fine with nannies in the past, but she wants her own apartment. If she were to “live-out” that means a higher cost for me. Alternatively, she offered working for me in the afternoons only and receiving the same compensation. There’s no value to me in that other than I don’t have to go through the search process again and that my children can have consistency beyond the last year. Ugh. That’s what comes to mind, a big, fat, ugly, UGH!

I hear that getting some type of stomach bug is par for the course when traveling in the Far East. I was no exception. No more details, enough said. Antibiotics are an amazing thing, but in addition to killing off the harmful bacteria, they also get rid of the good bacteria. Did you know that your body contains literally billions of bacteria and other microorganisms?

 
Probiotics is not a medical term, but rather a commercial one used to refer to dietary supplements or foods that contain the beneficial or good bacteria that are normally found in your body. According to the Mayo Clinic, you don’t need to take a supplement of probiotics  to be healthy, but consuming these probiotics in addition to what already exists in your body may provide a healthful boost to digestion and help to protect your body against harmful bacteria (that antibiotics kill off). According to the Mayo Clinic, additional research needs to be done, but “probiotics may help:

• Treat diarrhea, especially following treatment with certain antibiotics
• Prevent and treat vaginal yeast infections and urinary tract infections
• Treat irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Reduce bladder cancer recurrence
• Shorten the duration of intestinal infections
• Prevent and treat inflammation following colon surgery (pouchitis)
• Prevent eczema in children.”

So, after my time in China and Central Asia, and two different bouts with harmful microorganisms that wreaked havoc on my stomach, I’ve decided to try a supplement of probiotics. I’ll get back to you in a week and let you know if I feel a difference. In the meantime, I’ll continue to eat my yogurt with Zoe’s Granola for breakfast or lunch because it’s a much yummier way to get some of those good probiotics as well as the fiber and protein I need to energize me throughout the day. Have you tried probiotics? What have you found?

After a phenomenal trip with my husband and my parents traveling the “Silk Road” from China to Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan, I am happy to be home. It was fascinating to visit a part of the world where I could barely form the sounds that make up Mandarin, much less begin to read the characters. By following the old trade route known as the Silk Road, we spent time in both China and two former Soviet block countries. Of course while we were away, we had access to CNN and the BBC and so received the horrible economic news that was taking place at home. With all this turmoil in our home economy, my perspectives on our travels took an economic view point as well.

The contrasts in industrialization, modernization, and culture among these three countries are immense. It was phenomenal to see how most of the cities we visited in China were modernized, so much so that you really had to look for the signs of the China I had once read about. The work ethic in China is immense, and the economic results omnipresent.

Kazakhstan is overflowing with money from oil and banking its natural gas resources for the future. We had never seen so many Mercedes, BMS, Lexus, and Cayennes in one small area before.

Uzbekistan was entirely different from China and Kazakhstan in that the country could not seem to get out of its own way. It had neither China’s work ethic, nor Kazakhstan’s easy oil. Its economy seemed to be based on agriculture, a cottage industry of handicrafts, and the stirrings of tourism. Although its population is educated through the high school level, there don’t appear to be the jobs inside the country to keep its educated population employed, and so many young people leave to work elsewhere.

Throughout our trip, I was able to call my children every single day with my AT&T cell phone, and had better service than I get in my hometown suburb of Boston! Internet access was limited and access to the Zoe Foods server was blocked when I was in China. I’m sure it was due to all of the crazy political views we espouse on this website! All in all, it was an amazing trip and I look forward to going back to China again. And of course I brought back a piece of China for my youngest daughter in the form of a tea set. She and her sister store it in the kitchen and have had several tea parties already.

So I just read that there are reports of a Swiss restaurant owner who is going to substitute 75% of the cow’s milk he uses, with BREAST MILK.

In response to this, PETA wrote a letter to Ben & Jerry’s, asking them to switch from cow’s milk to breast milk in all their ice cream production.

Don’t believe me?  See it here.

In a nutshell, PETA’s arguments against using cow’s milk include linking its consumption to human health ailments, and linking its production to harsh treatment of cows and the veal industry in general.

This is fine.

The question is - why replace the cow’s milk with breast milk?  Why not suggest something less controversial, like soy or almond milk?  I know soy ice cream doesn’t have the same texture as cow’s milk ice cream, but do they think that breast milk ice cream will?

It seems like the simple answer to this is to either just be a vegetarian, and know you are not supporting the cow industry at all, or enjoy your cow treats in peace.  But breast milk??

I can picture it already.  A new cottage industry!  Entrepreneurs will flock to build huge factories with sterile stainless-steel equipment and set the place up to look like a living room.  Women will lounge on couches and eat anything they please, breast pumps attached, chatting and watching Oprah.

To save money, maybe we’ll outsource internationally by building ‘plants’ in less-industrialized nations.  Who needs sterile breast pumps when you have eager villagers aplenty, all with years of experience milking now-obsolete cows and goats?

Me, I’d rather go get a pint of Chunky Monkey on the way home, while the getting’s good.

I love fish.  Fish is delish!

But it’s even better when you know where it was caught.

During the last six months or so, I’ve noticed a wonderful change at my local supermarkets: all of the prewrapped fish in the cooler case was labeled with its country of origin.  Things like that really get me excited, which is why I am rushing to share with you what I saw come over the newswire today.

As part of the Farm Bill of 2008, starting September 30, all meat and produce as well as some kinds of nuts must be labeled with their country of origin.  This includes all supermarkets and major mass retailers, but your local butcher shop and restaurant are exempt from this requirement.  Also, some processed foods (like chicken nuggets) are exempt from this.

Overall, this is great news!  Now, we’ll know whether our steak and chicken (or cabbage, for that matter) are grown in the USA or shipped from a foreign land.  Score one for the consumer!

Nowadays, you can’t swing a dead cat without bumping into something about Sarah Palin.

She is absolutely EVERYWHERE, and while the media frenzy is starting to die down a little, we’re about to enter the toughest part of the campaign.  I’ve seen a lot of reports focusing on her very generic answers about foreign policy, on her freezer full of wild game, and on whether she had the volume turned up or down while watching Tina Fey’s skit on SNL.  This is only the beginning…

Yet, I can’t say I know a single thing about her as a candidate.

Everything that the mass media is printing is purely circumstantial!  And it isn’t limited to just this candidate, or just this election.

Mass media frequently releases select information about issues, without printing the whole story.  I know Palin flip-flopped on the Bridge to Nowhere, but I don’t know *why*.  Was it special interest groups?  Party pressure?  Or was there actually logic behind her decision?

Same goes for Obama. He has been hammered for flip-flopping on issues whenever it suits him.  The real question is, if he flip-flopped in his voting record, what prompted the change?  That “why” is almost never reported on, and that’s where we’d really learn something about the character and intent of our candidates.

Every election season, the media becomes tinged slightly yellow, and instead of getting whole pictures of each candidate we get mere caricatures.  This year, it truly is a landmark election: let’s hope that, in the end, it’s not the media who wins.

Codliver oil.

I still vividly remember those mornings back in grade school, wolfing down my breakfast hoping that if I ate fast enough, Grandma would forget to take that little bottle out of the fridge.

Most mornings, Grandma outsmarted me.  When I had my guard down, she’d press my little body up against the fridge, force a spoonful into my mouth, and hold me there until I demonstrated I’d swallowed it.  Blech!

It took 20 years to recover from the trauma, but now I genuinely thank her for it.  This thoroughly old-fashioned habit (while always popular with Norwegian grandmas) is making a comeback, even here in the states.   Today’s New York Times presents some very compelling results here tying fish oil (or more specifically, Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids) to improvements in childhood behavioral health. According to the article, some health practitioners are even prescribing fish oil before trying medications.  It concludes by advising everyone to “take fish oil only under the supervision of a health care provider”.

Hm, what?  What was that?  I need to ask my doctor before me or my child (if I had one) takes fish oil?

I grew up on this stuff!  My family didn’t ask anyone before they fed it to me.  And I turned out fine…

I thought about this a little, and came up with the following possible reasons.

1.  Mercury and other ocean contaminants.  So, before you take any fish oils, do be careful that the are cleaned of any such impurities.

2.  Doctors think parents might begin to self-treat all misbehaving children with massive doses of fish oil in place of medications for ADHD et al.  Well - don’t do that.  Just increase you (or your child’s) intake of fish oils or omega-3s in a reasonable fashion, with either a single daily supplement or by increasing your intake of fatty fish, walnuts and flaxseeds (ground, of course!).

3.  NYT is afraid of being sued.  I’m putting my money on this one.

The bottom line is, it’s exciting to see that once again, good nutrition and a healthy diet can directly contribute to your well-being and may even positively impact behavioral conditions.  So be good to yourself and eat your Omegas!  After all, the most significant drug we take is the food we eat everyday.

I love the simplicity with which children look at life. My four-year-old daughter knows she lives in a town located in the state of Massachusetts and that these places are located on a planet called Earth which looks like the blow-up ball that her grandmother gave her. She also knows that mommy and daddy are going somewhere on Earth called China.

Last year at school, my daughter went on walks in the woods with her class. On these walks the children would find “treasures” that they would bring home. One of the treasures my daughter found and kept in her coat pocket for a month was a worn, broken piece of china with a little bit of a flower pattern on it. Just to be really clear, we’re talking a piece of a broken plate!

As we were getting ready to leave for our trip to China with a capital C, my youngest said very sincerely, “Mommy, please bring me back a piece of China when you go. I only found one of these treasures on my walks at school.” As I fly over the North pole to the other side of the world to the land of China, I wonder how I can bring some of the simplicity in perspective that our children have, back into my hectic life.

Is My Daughter Turning Into Me? My mother tells a story that when I was about four years old I snuck into the kitchen, moved a chair, climbed onto the counter, and snuck some Mallowmar cookies (a graham cracker with a marshmallow on top – all covered in chocolate). According to my mother, she only discovered this because when she went to give me a bath, my tummy was covered in chocolate. Guess I thought hiding them in the elastic waistband of my pants was a good idea instead of risking getting caught eating them at the scene of the crime.

Today I learned that my youngest daughter who is four years old pulled a similar trick. My daughter’s nanny relayed a story where my youngest snuck some candy hearts (left over from last February’s Valentine’s day) and tucked them into the waistband of her shorts and was caught red-bellied!

I couldn’t help but laugh, at least my daughter had the common sense to choose something that wouldn’t make quite as much of a mess on her tummy and clothes! When I told my story to my daughter, she replied “I want to be just like Mommy.”

When I think about what shapes who we are, we cannot help but be influenced by our parents. The only thing that gives me hope is that we learn to emulate the traits and behaviors that we admire in our parents, and learn from those we don’t. (Mom – if you’re reading this, there are very few that don’t fall into the former category – so not to worry!)

Okay, so how can there be any negatives associated with a vacation? Easy, try running a small, growing company where if you take time off, there isn’t a large enough staff to spread your work around so as not to overload any one person. What has this meant for me? It means that for the past eight years my very understanding husband has had to be satisfied with what I fondly refer to as our mini-moon (a 3-day weekend about two hours from our home for our honeymoon), cancelled vacations, a five-week maternity leave where I took calls for work at the hospital, and finally a real two-week honeymoon after we had been married for five years and had had two kids. Better late than never I told him with a smile

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining. If I had to do it all over, I still would have chosen the entrepreneurial path. I don’t believe in having regrets, it’s a waste of energy on things we cannot change. All it really means is that going on vacation stresses me out! Ironic? Yes. Worth it? I’ll let you know in two weeks when I get back from China!

When I have an internet connection, I will post a blog; meanwhile, Kim, our marketing intern turned full-time employee (yippee!) will be my guest blogger writing about health, nutrition, and a healthy lifestyle. And… Tim, my trusted operations director will start his own blog. Tim will provide a fun contrast to my perspective because he is a single male who also happens to be a stand-up comedian, and who has made some very dramatic changes in his lifestyle these last three years since he has been working with me at Zoe Foods. So stay tuned, we’re going to spice it up with some useful information and interesting perspectives on entrepreneurship, health, nutrition, and work-life balance.

My college housemate and now cousin by marriage welcomed her fourth child into the world last week with Zoe’s Granola in hand. Nothing like giving birth to work up a healthy appetite. Congratulations Sarah and welcome little one!

Okay, so maybe you do not believe in any of this new age stuff (which really isn’t new at all because the concept of believing in something and making it happen has been around for a very long time). So, let me tell you a short story…

I have believed in Zoe Foods and our mission of making great tasting product that is actually good for you for eight years. It hasn’t been easy, and not necessarily fun. But, I still believed in what I was trying to do.
We are now running a promotional sale on Amazon for our new Zoe’s Granola (our new recipe is crunchy. People who have tried it for the first time, taste it and then ask me if it is really is good for them. I’m truly delighted to tell them that it is!)

This morning I received an email from John, our VP of sales saying that Zoe’s Cinnamon Raisin Granola has just moved up in its rankings out of all grocery items sold via Amazon from #13,982 to #369. Of course this means that there is now a waiting list for our granola because Amazon had been stocking a very low inventory. No problem – we’ll ship them more. So, if you signed up to buy our granola on Amazon, you should be able to get delivery really soon! Thank you for your patience, and your support of Zoe Foods.

This may sound crazy, but one of my goals (see yesterday’s entry) is to take better care of myself which means that I need to drink more water. This may sound silly or easy – but it’s not for me.

Water makes up an average of 60% of your body weight, and every system in your body depends upon it. It carries nutrients throughout your body, flushes out toxins, and provides a moist environment for ear, nose and throat tissues.

The rule of thumb is to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day. According to the Mayo Clinic, women should drink 2.2 liters of water, and 3 liters for men. Now all of this depends upon your climate, daily activity level, and general health.

Still sounds like an easy thing to do, but I’ve found that I just don’t make multiple trips to our office’s water cooler throughout the day. I get absorbed in my work, and before I know it, it’s lunch time. The end of day arrives soon after and I’m lucky if I have refilled my first glass of water.

I’ve come up with a solution that seems to be working for me… First, I bought a new water bottle because all of ours were those old plastic ones that you fit into the water bottle holder on a bicycle that smell like plastic, and make the water taste the same. Camelbak makes a great water bottle that is BPA free (no chemicals leeching into my water) and I’m convinced that the water actually tastes better. I fill the bottle up at home with ice and cold water and then refill it once during the day. That covers my 2 liters. As for the 0.2 liters, from doing some research on the internet, I’ve learned that I can eat my fluids! Did you know that tomatoes and watermelon are about 90% water by weight? Food actually supplies about 20% of the fluids we need, which means that the last .02 litres is more than covered!

Now the real challenge will be when my husband and I are in China for two weeks. From the accounts that I have read, travel writers describe people filling water bottles from local streams in which waste is also dumped. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and travels. During my two week hiatus, Zoe Foods marketing manager, Kim, will write some posts for my blog, and when and if I have an internet connection, I will post some news as well.

I recently created a list of 100 goals that I’d like to accomplish over the next 15 to 20 years. It took me a couple of weeks to come up with this list, and my goals included everything from making Zoe Foods into a major player in the natural foods industry, to having a special activity that I do with each of my children every week, to drinking more water on a daily basis, date night with my husband, and lots of travel.

However, the most interesting part of this exercise was the process itself. In coming up with 100 goals, I started to reflect upon my life, my family, and how I spend my time now. I have made a commitment to myself to revisit my goals each quarter to make sure that I keep them in my focus, because I realize that will be the only way I can attain them.

I am very much an optimist and can find the bright side when things look bad, but not so much that I lose perspective. In contrast, there are people out there who always think that the glass is half empty.

It comes down to choice. How would you describe this glass?

Half Full, or Half Empty? You Decide.

The milk takes up 50% of the space. If it’s my choice, I will always describe this glass as half-full.

It is our choice to be happy, to learn, to love, to live, and to make things happen. It is our choice to choose not to be the victim. Luckily, we don’t have to be born with the knowledge that everything is our choice, we can choose to learn it. What do you choose?

In response to my hypothesis about drinking diet soda and gaining weight, a dietician (who just happens to be a high school classmate who I haven’t heard from in 25 years who contacted me via Facebook recently) let me know that consuming colas in particular, is also associated with increased risk of bone fracture and osteoporosis.

The study was done at Tufts University and I have reprinted the findings below.

So in addition to catching up with a prior high school classmate, I’ve just learned that my 2 Cokes per week splurge is not only bad for me because of the high fructose corn syrup, but it also can increase the risk of my getting osteoporosis. Hmm, maybe it really is time to just get more sleep.

Tufts University study’s findings:

“Colas, but not other carbonated beverages, are associated with low bone mineral density in older women: The Framingham Osteoporosis Study1,2,3″

by Katherine L Tucker, Kyoko Morita, Ning Qiao, Marian T Hannan, L Adrienne Cupples and Douglas P Kiel. Received for publication September 23, 2005. Accepted for publication June 12, 2006.

“Osteoporosis and related fractures represent major public health problems. With the aging of the population, the health care burden from fractures is expected to increase dramatically during the next few decades. The lifetime risk of fracture exceeds 40% for women and 13% for men, and hip fractures have been associated with an excess mortality of up to 20% (1, 2). Most survivors require costly long-term nursing home care (2). It is, therefore, of great importance to identify modifiable risk factors for osteoporosis. Increasingly, numerous dietary behaviors and components have been identified as important contributors to the risk of loss of bone mineral density (BMD) with aging (3). Soft drink consumption has increased rapidly in the general population in recent years. This behavior has been found to be associated with low BMD and fractures in adolescent girls (4-6), although some suggest that such associations may be due to displacement of milk consumption more than to any direct effect of soft drink components (7). Few studies have examined these associations in adults.

In addition to the displacement of more nutrient-dense beverages, there are several reasons to hypothesize that carbonated soft drinks, and colas in particular, may be associated with lower BMD. Caffeine is an ingredient in most colas and has been identified as a risk factor for osteoporosis (8-10). Furthermore, colas contain phosphoric acid, which was shown to interfere with calcium absorption and to contribute to imbalances that lead to additional loss of calcium (11). It has also been suggested that the high fructose corn syrup used to sweeten carbonated beverages may negatively affect bone (12).”

Thank you to the 50,000 people who signed up for the Zoe Foods Consumer Advisory
Panel to try the new Zoe’s Crunchy Granola last month. We really appreciate your interest in Zoe Foods and are working hard in getting our new crunchy granola out to you. As we mentioned in our original email, we do have a limited supply, but we’re working on getting back to all of you. We thought that perhaps we’d have a response of 5,000 people at the most, and lo and behold, we got a response that is ten times greater!

The more you request our products at your local retail store (okay, demand them if you must!), the more granola we’ll be able to send out. As a small, but growing company, we really appreciate your support and helping us to grow.

Zoe’s Bars are hit by a car and the company gains a new customer! Several weeks ago we received a voicemail from a gentleman who explained that he hit a box of Zoe’s Bars that were lying in the middle of the road. (For the full story, see the original blog entry: http://www.zoefoods.com/blog/zoe-bars-hit-by-a-car-in-bellingham-ma/ ). He called again recently to thank us for sending him fresh samples of Zoe’s Bars and to tell us that he likes them so much that he has started buying them from Shaw’s (Wild Harvest section).

Who would have thought that this story would have such a happy ending for all? Perhaps we should just start leaving cases of product in the middle of the road and see if we can gain some other new customers!

As I was putting my youngest daughter to bed last night she said to me, “Mommy, you’re not going to go away again?” I asked her what she meant and she explained “Like when you and Daddy went to the wedding and Grammy and Grandpa had to stay with us.”

I explained that although we don’t have anymore weddings coming up, I do have to travel for my work and would be away this coming week for one night. How do you get your children to understand that even when you’re away, your heart will always be with them?

Sitting here watching the Olympics with my husband and the commentators were discussing the Americans chances for winning the women’s gymnastics event. They were debating which of the two Americans had the best shot of winning. Then one of them said that the Chinese were there to ruin the Americans’ chances. Since when do competitors ruin your chances of winning? Without a competitor, there is no race or competition. No wonder Americans aren’t particularly liked outside of our own country. I understand that the American commentators may be rooting for the Americans, but really, let’s try to be a little more sensitive about how we say things.

Is it just me? How do people have time to stay involved in virtual communities? Facebook is a good example. No matter how much I read about Facebook or explore the site, I just don’t really get how I’m supposed to really utilize it. Clearly I’m missing something here since I have trouble keeping in touch with my full-bodied friends. When someone figures out how to create virtual time, then I can have a virtual life.

Last Spring I heard Brian Scudamore, the founder and CEO of 1-800-Got-Junk, speak at an Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) conference. To say that he was inspiring would be an under statement. I can see why Brian was able to turn everyone else’s junk into a $400 million + business and have fun while doing it. I took home some interesting “best practices” that I swore I would implement right away. Hmm, didn’t happen.

As fate would have it, looks like I needed a reminder. Several months ago the former COO of 1-800-Got-Junk spoke at a local EO event and was just as inspirational as Brian was. It was high time start implementing these best practices at Zoe Foods. Well, I didn’t start right away, but swore I’d get started as soon as our granolas had been reformulated and that I had some new hires up and running.
I now have a terrific team and we have just finished reformulating Zoe’s Granola to taste better than ever, and with even better nutrition. We’ve also revamped our website, and I have faithfully been writing my blog for a couple of months. I think that day has arrived and it’s high time to start to implement what I learned from 1-800-Got-Junk. Besides, if Scudamore could create a $400 million business from other people’s junk, I should be able to create a successful company by creating foods that taste great and are good for you. Sounds easy!
The two best practices that I learned from Scudamore that Zoe Foods will be implementing are: Daily Huddles, and “The Painted Picture”. Daily huddles start this week at Zoe Foods. Simply put, they are an all company meeting for seven minutes in which “wins” and “stucks” are brought up. The goal is to facilitate communication and hold each other accountable. The discussion and decision making takes place after the huddle. I admit that I’m a little dubious about these daily huddles, but it seems to be a common practice among successful, fellow EO members in Boston, so worth a try! Scudamore’s “Painted Picture” took me a little over a day to create. It is a two-page document describing Zoe Foods looking three years forward.
As I started to write the Painted Picture I used the future tense. Suddenly I remembered the book, The Secret. I threw out what I wrote, started over and wrote in the present tense. So this is what a vision is all about! I needed to be experiencing what it was like to have already grown Zoe Foods now, not talk about what I’d like it to be three years hence.
Athletes always talk about envisioning their performance before they actually compete. I realize that writing a vision for a company is no different, just more complex because so many more people are necessary to make it happen.
On that note, I think it’s time to go watch some more of the Olympics to see what Best Practices I can glean from these most incredible athletes.

My husband and I recently went out to dinner with good friends of ours who were visiting from Nebraska. At dinner I discovered that both Betz and I write blogs. She about life in Nebraska and missing Boston, and me about work, family, and a healthy lifestyle.

The funny thing is that Betz and I both learned that neither of our husbands have ever read our blogs. Hmm, what does that say about our husbands? Or really, what does that say about our marriages? The ironic part about this is that the most public of forums, a blog, is where I could keep secrets from my husband. Betz, are you out there? My dear husband, are you?

About 20 years ago, one of my good friends, who is a doctor, told me that when you drink diet soda with aspartame (often called NutraSweet), it goes into your body and doesn’t come out. Since I couldn’t just Google “aspartame” on the Internet back then, I decided to just stop drinking the 3-5 cans of diet soda I consumed weekly. If I really wanted a soda, I drank the real thing with all the sugar.

Now the funny thing was that I started drinking diet soda because I was concerned about keeping my weight down and wanted to satisfy my craving for something sweet. Guess what happened, I lost about 5 pounds from never drinking diet soda again, and I never put those 5 pounds back on!

After so many years, an article in O Magazine spurred me to finally find out the real deal about aspartame. There are lots of websites that will tell you that your body converts aspartame into aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol, and that your body processes these the same way that it does as if they came from whole foods. Whether or not that ‘s true or not, I don’t know. To get an independent opinion, I took a look at the Mayo Clinic’s site. According to the Mayo Clinic, aspartame is only dangerous for people with the rare hereditary disease phenylketonuria.

However, the Mayo Clinic does state that drinking soda is consuming empty calories. You may enjoy the taste, but you’re not putting anything in your body that will help fuel it. So drink soda as an occasional treat. From my personal experience, if you don’t have diabetes, eliminate the diet soda and for the occasional treat, have a real soda with all of the sugar and corn syrup (none of which is good for you), and I’ll bet you find that you’ll lose a couple of pounds permanently with this small change to your diet.

I’ve taken a week long hiatus from writing my blog; I didn’t intend to. Last weekend my family gathered from across the country to spend four days together. It was fun and certainly wonderful to see my parents, sisters, their families, and my cousins. However, the word “relaxing” doesn’t come to mind.

Whenever we have this time together in Maine, it involves a 5+ hour drive from where we live outside of Boston. 5 hours is a long time to sit in the car, and certainly long for my 4 and 5 year old girls. We let them watch one movie, so that leaves about 225 minutes of being strapped into a car seat. The rest of the time we made up stories, read books, played I Spy, and for the first time, played 20 Questions.

I couldn’t believe how quickly our girls caught on. When it was my youngest daughter’s turn to think of something we had to guess, she’d very quickly announce “Okay, I’m all done thinking!”. She never once tried to stump us with a Disney princess (phew - they really do think about other things)! When it was my 5-year old’s turn, she blew us away with what she came up with. Through our questioning, we learned that it was a thing, it was alive, and it was real (not make-believe). Hmmm…

Can you guess it? We finally did. It was the planet Earth.

I’ve learned that my children and employees (not to infer that they’re childish in any way) do have similar qualities. When given a goal, they can surprise you with their initiative and the solutions they can create if you would only get out of their way. Hmmm, maybe I should take more time off. Thank you to the Zoe Foods team!

Before I started to get ready to go to work the other day, my youngest daughter, age 4, came into my room and wanted to play a quick game of Connect 4. Before we started playing, she looked me directly in the eye and with a very serious expression (which is unusual for this giggle monster), said “Mommy, if I win, you have to have another baby. And, I want a baby brother!”

How did my four-year old learn how to make a bet on the outcome of a game? It certainly isn’t the standard practice in our household.

I hesitated for a moment in my reply, “How about if Ozzie [our 85lb. dog] is your baby brother?” Weak answer, I know. How do you tell your child that your work is essentially one of your babies? I guess when she’s old enough to read, she’ll find this blog archived somewhere and by then, hopefully, she’ll understand.