This is a REALLY special post and I am beyond excited to be sharing it with you guys!!
I was fortunate enough to have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Gabrielle Francis, a holistic doctor who has been practicing for more than 30 years. She is a Naturopathic Doctor, Chiropractor, Acupuncturist, and Massage Therapist (that’s a pretty impressive list of credentials!) Dr. Francis remains true to the philosophy and principles of Naturopathic medicine, which are: the healing power of nature, identify and treat the causes, first do no harm, doctor as teacher, treat the whole person, and prevention.
Dr. Francis studied medicine at the National College of Chiropractic and at Bastyr University. After her formal medical training, she travelled to various parts of the world studying medicine with indigenous healers in countries such as China, India, Thailand, Bali, Brazil, Morocco, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Belize, Mexico, Egypt, and Mali. (<< how amazing is that???)
I was fortunate enough to have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Gabrielle Francis, a holistic doctor who has been practicing for more than 30 years. She is a Naturopathic Doctor, Chiropractor, Acupuncturist, and Massage Therapist (that’s a pretty impressive list of credentials!) Dr. Francis remains true to the philosophy and principles of Naturopathic medicine, which are: the healing power of nature, identify and treat the causes, first do no harm, doctor as teacher, treat the whole person, and prevention.
Dr. Francis studied medicine at the National College of Chiropractic and at Bastyr University. After her formal medical training, she travelled to various parts of the world studying medicine with indigenous healers in countries such as China, India, Thailand, Bali, Brazil, Morocco, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Belize, Mexico, Egypt, and Mali. (<< how amazing is that???)
Oh, and just in case you didn't think her life was cool enough, she used to go on tour with famous rock bands in order to help them maintain health and longevity. (I mean…sounds kinda like a dream come true?!) In fact, Dr. Francis recently wrote the book, The Rockstar Remedy, which discusses her holistic approaches for health and balance in your life.
She currently practices in New York City as The Herban Alchemist and operates Backstage Alternative, which provides natural medicine to Rock’n’Roll performing artists on tour.
READ THE INTERVIEW BELOW FOR A CHANCE TO GET GREAT INSIGHTS FROM DR. FRANCIS ALL ABOUT HEALTH, ROCKSTARS, AND THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET!!
She currently practices in New York City as The Herban Alchemist and operates Backstage Alternative, which provides natural medicine to Rock’n’Roll performing artists on tour.
READ THE INTERVIEW BELOW FOR A CHANCE TO GET GREAT INSIGHTS FROM DR. FRANCIS ALL ABOUT HEALTH, ROCKSTARS, AND THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET!!
1. Tell us a bit about yourself
My name is Dr. Gabrielle Francis. I am a Naturopathic Doctor, Chiropractor, and Acupuncturist. I have a practice in New York City called the Herban Alchemist. I integrate all forms of natural medicine into one practice and try to help people to transform their health in body, mind and spirit.
My special loves besides health and alternative medicine are travel, music, and dancing. I also find it extremely important to connect to family and friends on a regular basis. This is what grounds me in my life and provides so much joy.
2. How did you get into your field?
I was first introduced to Holistic Medicine at the age of 5. My parents took us to see chiropractors and homeopaths before they would take us to see western doctors. And I must say that this was highly unusual behavior for Lebanese immigrants living in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970’s. I remember driving with my father and listening to nutrition and herbal medicine tapes that he had of Dr. Christopher, the herbalist. I guess I knew then that I would be doing this one day too.
I studied massage immediately after I finished high school with the intention that I could do massage as I worked my way through chiropractic school. I worked my way through pre-med and chiropractic school doing massage. Then I moved to Seattle to go to Bastyr University. I studied both Naturopathic Medicine and Acupuncture there. I had a chiropractic practice during that time.
I had 17 years of medical school. But you could say that I have been in holistic medicine for 33 years as I am 50 now. 17 years of medical school gives you the license to learn. Because the real learning has come from the actual practice!
I began working with musicians when I was 19 years old. I was the massage/chiropractor for all the bands that would come to whatever town that I was living in. After my 17 years of medical school, some of the bands that I used to work on asked me to tour with them. So I spent the next few years touring with Rock bands all over the world as their doctor. That experience gave me the practice style that I use with “normal” people. I realized that people could be healthy despite extreme lifestyles. They just need to be met where they are at and make changes from there.
During this time I also did some of my own world travel and studied medical systems in countries such as China, India, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, Guatemala, Belize and so many more. The world travel supplemented my medical training by teaching me the essence of how the medicine that I was learning in school was really practiced and taught in the places of origin.
I also learned forms of healing and medicine from Indigenous healers, shaman, curanderas, and granny healers in many countries around the world. It reinforced my knowledge of the spiritual and emotional components of healing. These adventures in medicine helped me see that healing was a type of transformation that was not so different than making a holy pilgrimage. Even if we were doing it in our local hometown.
3. Tell us about your book “The Rockstar Remedy” and the inspiration behind it
I was asked to write a book by a literary agent, the Godfather of Celebrity doctors. He said I needed to write a book that would appeal to the “health book reader” target audience that was primarily women between the ages of 25 and 55… and they were interested in beauty, weight loss and depression. I found this kind of sad and boring. After all, there are 1000s of books out there like that and most are so boring that I don’t even read them and I am in the business. Then one day I was having an adventure in NYC, just walking through the city and enjoying the people watching. I had one of those “I have a great idea moments” that I should write my story about working in the music business and how all these rock stars are getting healthy. I could use the Rock stars as the ambassadors for my health message and take the message to a new audience. I wanted to inspire people that were not so interested in health to “Join the church” not just “preach to the choir”. I was elated with my wonderful idea. But this agent thought it was a terrible idea. So I sat on it for a while until another agent serendipitously came to my practice and ate it all up!
Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll can take their toll, but in reality, most rock musicians work at staying healthy and staving off age—it is the only way they can survive their grueling tour schedules. In THE ROCKSTAR REMEDY, I share my unique plan for boosting your energy and looking and feeling your best, even when the realities of a busy life seem to stand between you and your health goals.
I began to realize that the issues of ‘normal’ people were very much the same as the issues and circumstances faced by my celebrity clients. As I treated more and more patients with crazy work schedules, demanding parental duties, and an array of social obligations, I realized that just about everyone is living extreme lifestyles these days. That’s why it’s so important to take advantage of opportunities to improve our health wherever they appear. I found myself using the same ‘harm reduction’ techniques and negotiations with my patients as I had used on tour to keep musicians functioning when they were under the stress of grueling schedules. I learned to teach patients that they could improve the quality of their lives without changing the essence of who they are and what they love to do. This philosophy is the Rock Star Remedy: Improve the quality of your life and health so that you can keep doing what you love to do.
My program doesn’t promise ‘perfect health,’ an elusive ideal that is impractical and unattainable for most of us, including celebrities. My plan is simply designed to take your dreams and stretch them a little further. What small, but life-changing, shifts can you make in how you live to move you toward greater vitality, happiness, and longevity?”
There are five stages to the “RxStar Transformation”:
The book also has dozens of sidebars featuring advice and testimonials drawn from exclusive interviews with such artists as Steven Tyler, Dave Navarro, Tommy Lee, Eve, and members of Megadeth, Def Leppard, Anthrax, and many more.
The ultimate mission of The Rockstar Remedy is to engage people who were never interested in “health books” and inspire them to make the transformation of body, mind and spirit a fun adventure. The payoff for good health is having more energy, being more productive and freeing up time to celebrate life.
4. What do you think is the key to leading a healthy lifestyle?
I believe my My 90/10 Rule is the key to leading a healthy lifestyle long term. You don’t have to miss the party! 90% of the time you eat well, exercise and follow my healthy guidelines. 10% of the time you break the rules. But you must promise me that when you are breaking the rules in the 10% of the time you are not going to be plagued with guilt; you must enjoy it! Most likely, you will like how you feel during the 90% of the time much better and will end up moving more and more towards that goal. “You can have your shake and eat cake too! “
Life is meant to be celebrated and enjoyed. In order for people to stick to health plans they must feel they can enjoy life too. Otherwise, they are healthy for a while and then they sabotage all the good habits once they make an imperfect choice. In the long run we need more balance and a more forgiving and celebratory approach to life and health.
5. Favorite health tip/trick?
My Harm Reduction Strategies: Being healthy doesn’t require you to be boring! You can use my harm reduction techniques to pick and choose where and when you want to indulge, and when and where you want to be healthy. You can still eat out, but it’s about making the right choices. You can still have a drink, but know what supplements will help protect your liver when you do so. These are fun little tricks that help to make our vices and not-so-healthy habits a little less damaging. They are useful when you are partaking in the 10% part of the 90/10 rule.
My favorite Harm Reduction Trick is for my drug of choice…coffee. Coffee is high in antioxidants and bioflavonoids, which enhance health on many levels. But coffee can also be acidic and leach minerals out of our body and wreak havoc on the stomach lining too. So, how to make coffee healthy?
Pick organic fair trade coffee. Add some spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, or vanilla to neutralize the acids. You can top it off with some organic creamer. Yum!
6. Simple way for someone to increase his or her energy levels?
I believe most westerners are deficient in 3 simple things that are taking their energy away. If we do these simple things we can have the energy to change our diets, exercise, and do all the other elaborate things that we need to do to stay healthy. But start with these 3:
1. Sleep 7-9 hours per night. Most westerners are severely sleep deprived. You can’t fill up the gas tank if you never shut off the engine. Sleep is very underrated.
2. Drink 8-10 glasses of water per day. Our body is 70-80% water and water is one of the biggest nutritional deficiencies in our diet and one of the most valuable resources to our planet. Water a wilted flower and see what happens and then imagine what the water is doing for you.
3. Gratitude. If we start to approach each day as a gift and look for the small things in life that we are grateful for then we will start to shift our minds into prosperity and positive thinking. This opens up the energy to make the next level of lifestyle changes that transform our health.
7. Since we live in Italy, what do you believe are the best benefits of the Mediterranean diet?
How wonderful it is that you live in Italy! There is a reason that Italy is a destination and pilgrimage place for “foodies” all over the world. Italy is one of the only countries left that has completely regional cuisine. The food in that region is grown in that region. So it is fresh and the nutrients are well preserved.
I am Lebanese, so I grew up on the Mediterranean diet, just across the sea from Italy. I believe the greatest thing about all the Mediterranean countries is that the entire life and culture revolves around eating with family and friends. They eat slowly and they are usually sharing the meal with people they love. This increases so many “feel good” chemicals and the affect of this cannot be denied.
The Mediterranean diet is also very rich in anti-oxidants coming from wine, fruits, fresh vegetables. The olive oil is excellent for heart and brain health and keeps the skin and hair youthful. The dairy is often from sheep and goat and this is especially good for our immune systems and very compatible with the human body. The fresh seafood is rich in omega 3 fatty acids which support anti-aging, heart health, nervous system function and balances the blood sugar. The meats are usually from local animals and come from small villages and farms so the animals are eating grass instead of corn as they do in mass-produced commercial farms.
All of the various Mediterranean countries have their own special spices, which have numerous medicinal benefits and add unique flavors to the food.
I think that heaven on earth would be a sailboat that floats from one Mediterranean country to another eating all the wonderful food and connecting to the warm and friendly locals. Need I say more?
8. How important do you believe food is to ones complete wellbeing – not just physical health?
There are some new paradigm shifts in the way we look at food. I think that food is medicine, information and a source of celebration and connection that binds people to each other.
Food Is Medicine
The old way of thinking saw food only as a source of energy. Diets revolved entirely around calories—if you wanted to lose weight, you were given a calorie allotment. Fat, carbohydrates, and protein could be measured in energy, so it didn’t matter what you ate, only the number of calories the food contained. Today we understand that our food is composed of a variety of macronutrients and micronutrients, all of which our body needs in different quantities—what we eat matters vitally. Diet can treat, manage, or reverse some of the chronic disease conditions in which pharmacological interventions were used in the past. For example, blueberries contain antioxidants called anthocyanins that lower blood sugar, which makes them a favorable food for people with diabetes. This idea works both ways: some food components have the power to stave off or heal disease, while others can exacerbate the development of disease. This way of thinking further bolstered the organic food movement, because consumers believe that food grown without harmful poisons has fewer toxins for the body to clean and more nutritional value.
Food Is Information
The Human Genome Project spurred the development of a new science, called nutrigenomics, based on the concept that nutrition also affects our genes. The idea is that nutrients and phytochemicals in foods provide different information to our genes that affects our bodies in both good and bad ways. This information can change the way our genes and cells express themselves. Healthier foods lead to healthier cells and gene expression, while toxic foods cause degeneration and disease. This means that, rather than being stuck with the DNA blueprint we’re born with, we can improve our genetic outcome by choosing the right foods, like fresh organic produce rather than processed, prepackaged items.
This once-alternative concept, now mainstream, has spurred the growth of health food markets, organic and vegetarian restaurants, and menus filled with local, seasonal, and organic ingredients.
The Slow Food Movement
A new way of looking at food that developed out of France and Italy, the Slow Food movement began in 1989 as a rebellion against fast-food culture. The “Slow Food” way of thinking challenges us all to take into account the culture and customs of what we eat, where it’s sourced, and how it’s harvested. The idea is that food should be celebrated, not packaged or heavily preserved so it stays on shelves for years without going bad, then gulped down while in the car. When people take the time to experience healthy food and what it really tastes like, they enjoy it. The cultural celebration of food and its cultivation is at the forefront of the Slow Food. This is just as important as the other two concepts. When people bond together over a wonderful meal and share stories and love with friends and family…this is what life is about.
My name is Dr. Gabrielle Francis. I am a Naturopathic Doctor, Chiropractor, and Acupuncturist. I have a practice in New York City called the Herban Alchemist. I integrate all forms of natural medicine into one practice and try to help people to transform their health in body, mind and spirit.
My special loves besides health and alternative medicine are travel, music, and dancing. I also find it extremely important to connect to family and friends on a regular basis. This is what grounds me in my life and provides so much joy.
2. How did you get into your field?
I was first introduced to Holistic Medicine at the age of 5. My parents took us to see chiropractors and homeopaths before they would take us to see western doctors. And I must say that this was highly unusual behavior for Lebanese immigrants living in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970’s. I remember driving with my father and listening to nutrition and herbal medicine tapes that he had of Dr. Christopher, the herbalist. I guess I knew then that I would be doing this one day too.
I studied massage immediately after I finished high school with the intention that I could do massage as I worked my way through chiropractic school. I worked my way through pre-med and chiropractic school doing massage. Then I moved to Seattle to go to Bastyr University. I studied both Naturopathic Medicine and Acupuncture there. I had a chiropractic practice during that time.
I had 17 years of medical school. But you could say that I have been in holistic medicine for 33 years as I am 50 now. 17 years of medical school gives you the license to learn. Because the real learning has come from the actual practice!
I began working with musicians when I was 19 years old. I was the massage/chiropractor for all the bands that would come to whatever town that I was living in. After my 17 years of medical school, some of the bands that I used to work on asked me to tour with them. So I spent the next few years touring with Rock bands all over the world as their doctor. That experience gave me the practice style that I use with “normal” people. I realized that people could be healthy despite extreme lifestyles. They just need to be met where they are at and make changes from there.
During this time I also did some of my own world travel and studied medical systems in countries such as China, India, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, Guatemala, Belize and so many more. The world travel supplemented my medical training by teaching me the essence of how the medicine that I was learning in school was really practiced and taught in the places of origin.
I also learned forms of healing and medicine from Indigenous healers, shaman, curanderas, and granny healers in many countries around the world. It reinforced my knowledge of the spiritual and emotional components of healing. These adventures in medicine helped me see that healing was a type of transformation that was not so different than making a holy pilgrimage. Even if we were doing it in our local hometown.
3. Tell us about your book “The Rockstar Remedy” and the inspiration behind it
I was asked to write a book by a literary agent, the Godfather of Celebrity doctors. He said I needed to write a book that would appeal to the “health book reader” target audience that was primarily women between the ages of 25 and 55… and they were interested in beauty, weight loss and depression. I found this kind of sad and boring. After all, there are 1000s of books out there like that and most are so boring that I don’t even read them and I am in the business. Then one day I was having an adventure in NYC, just walking through the city and enjoying the people watching. I had one of those “I have a great idea moments” that I should write my story about working in the music business and how all these rock stars are getting healthy. I could use the Rock stars as the ambassadors for my health message and take the message to a new audience. I wanted to inspire people that were not so interested in health to “Join the church” not just “preach to the choir”. I was elated with my wonderful idea. But this agent thought it was a terrible idea. So I sat on it for a while until another agent serendipitously came to my practice and ate it all up!
Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll can take their toll, but in reality, most rock musicians work at staying healthy and staving off age—it is the only way they can survive their grueling tour schedules. In THE ROCKSTAR REMEDY, I share my unique plan for boosting your energy and looking and feeling your best, even when the realities of a busy life seem to stand between you and your health goals.
I began to realize that the issues of ‘normal’ people were very much the same as the issues and circumstances faced by my celebrity clients. As I treated more and more patients with crazy work schedules, demanding parental duties, and an array of social obligations, I realized that just about everyone is living extreme lifestyles these days. That’s why it’s so important to take advantage of opportunities to improve our health wherever they appear. I found myself using the same ‘harm reduction’ techniques and negotiations with my patients as I had used on tour to keep musicians functioning when they were under the stress of grueling schedules. I learned to teach patients that they could improve the quality of their lives without changing the essence of who they are and what they love to do. This philosophy is the Rock Star Remedy: Improve the quality of your life and health so that you can keep doing what you love to do.
My program doesn’t promise ‘perfect health,’ an elusive ideal that is impractical and unattainable for most of us, including celebrities. My plan is simply designed to take your dreams and stretch them a little further. What small, but life-changing, shifts can you make in how you live to move you toward greater vitality, happiness, and longevity?”
There are five stages to the “RxStar Transformation”:
- Detox: Let go of things that don’t serve you physically, mentally, or emotionally.
- Food: Learn what foods fuel your performance and how to indulge in balance.
- Body: Exercise, like diet, can improve beauty, performance and longevity.
- Mind & Spirit: How your thoughts, beliefs, and emotional affect every cell in your body.
- Socialize: Balancing indulgence so you can enjoy life without harming your health.
The book also has dozens of sidebars featuring advice and testimonials drawn from exclusive interviews with such artists as Steven Tyler, Dave Navarro, Tommy Lee, Eve, and members of Megadeth, Def Leppard, Anthrax, and many more.
The ultimate mission of The Rockstar Remedy is to engage people who were never interested in “health books” and inspire them to make the transformation of body, mind and spirit a fun adventure. The payoff for good health is having more energy, being more productive and freeing up time to celebrate life.
4. What do you think is the key to leading a healthy lifestyle?
I believe my My 90/10 Rule is the key to leading a healthy lifestyle long term. You don’t have to miss the party! 90% of the time you eat well, exercise and follow my healthy guidelines. 10% of the time you break the rules. But you must promise me that when you are breaking the rules in the 10% of the time you are not going to be plagued with guilt; you must enjoy it! Most likely, you will like how you feel during the 90% of the time much better and will end up moving more and more towards that goal. “You can have your shake and eat cake too! “
Life is meant to be celebrated and enjoyed. In order for people to stick to health plans they must feel they can enjoy life too. Otherwise, they are healthy for a while and then they sabotage all the good habits once they make an imperfect choice. In the long run we need more balance and a more forgiving and celebratory approach to life and health.
5. Favorite health tip/trick?
My Harm Reduction Strategies: Being healthy doesn’t require you to be boring! You can use my harm reduction techniques to pick and choose where and when you want to indulge, and when and where you want to be healthy. You can still eat out, but it’s about making the right choices. You can still have a drink, but know what supplements will help protect your liver when you do so. These are fun little tricks that help to make our vices and not-so-healthy habits a little less damaging. They are useful when you are partaking in the 10% part of the 90/10 rule.
My favorite Harm Reduction Trick is for my drug of choice…coffee. Coffee is high in antioxidants and bioflavonoids, which enhance health on many levels. But coffee can also be acidic and leach minerals out of our body and wreak havoc on the stomach lining too. So, how to make coffee healthy?
Pick organic fair trade coffee. Add some spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, or vanilla to neutralize the acids. You can top it off with some organic creamer. Yum!
6. Simple way for someone to increase his or her energy levels?
I believe most westerners are deficient in 3 simple things that are taking their energy away. If we do these simple things we can have the energy to change our diets, exercise, and do all the other elaborate things that we need to do to stay healthy. But start with these 3:
1. Sleep 7-9 hours per night. Most westerners are severely sleep deprived. You can’t fill up the gas tank if you never shut off the engine. Sleep is very underrated.
2. Drink 8-10 glasses of water per day. Our body is 70-80% water and water is one of the biggest nutritional deficiencies in our diet and one of the most valuable resources to our planet. Water a wilted flower and see what happens and then imagine what the water is doing for you.
3. Gratitude. If we start to approach each day as a gift and look for the small things in life that we are grateful for then we will start to shift our minds into prosperity and positive thinking. This opens up the energy to make the next level of lifestyle changes that transform our health.
7. Since we live in Italy, what do you believe are the best benefits of the Mediterranean diet?
How wonderful it is that you live in Italy! There is a reason that Italy is a destination and pilgrimage place for “foodies” all over the world. Italy is one of the only countries left that has completely regional cuisine. The food in that region is grown in that region. So it is fresh and the nutrients are well preserved.
I am Lebanese, so I grew up on the Mediterranean diet, just across the sea from Italy. I believe the greatest thing about all the Mediterranean countries is that the entire life and culture revolves around eating with family and friends. They eat slowly and they are usually sharing the meal with people they love. This increases so many “feel good” chemicals and the affect of this cannot be denied.
The Mediterranean diet is also very rich in anti-oxidants coming from wine, fruits, fresh vegetables. The olive oil is excellent for heart and brain health and keeps the skin and hair youthful. The dairy is often from sheep and goat and this is especially good for our immune systems and very compatible with the human body. The fresh seafood is rich in omega 3 fatty acids which support anti-aging, heart health, nervous system function and balances the blood sugar. The meats are usually from local animals and come from small villages and farms so the animals are eating grass instead of corn as they do in mass-produced commercial farms.
All of the various Mediterranean countries have their own special spices, which have numerous medicinal benefits and add unique flavors to the food.
I think that heaven on earth would be a sailboat that floats from one Mediterranean country to another eating all the wonderful food and connecting to the warm and friendly locals. Need I say more?
8. How important do you believe food is to ones complete wellbeing – not just physical health?
There are some new paradigm shifts in the way we look at food. I think that food is medicine, information and a source of celebration and connection that binds people to each other.
Food Is Medicine
The old way of thinking saw food only as a source of energy. Diets revolved entirely around calories—if you wanted to lose weight, you were given a calorie allotment. Fat, carbohydrates, and protein could be measured in energy, so it didn’t matter what you ate, only the number of calories the food contained. Today we understand that our food is composed of a variety of macronutrients and micronutrients, all of which our body needs in different quantities—what we eat matters vitally. Diet can treat, manage, or reverse some of the chronic disease conditions in which pharmacological interventions were used in the past. For example, blueberries contain antioxidants called anthocyanins that lower blood sugar, which makes them a favorable food for people with diabetes. This idea works both ways: some food components have the power to stave off or heal disease, while others can exacerbate the development of disease. This way of thinking further bolstered the organic food movement, because consumers believe that food grown without harmful poisons has fewer toxins for the body to clean and more nutritional value.
Food Is Information
The Human Genome Project spurred the development of a new science, called nutrigenomics, based on the concept that nutrition also affects our genes. The idea is that nutrients and phytochemicals in foods provide different information to our genes that affects our bodies in both good and bad ways. This information can change the way our genes and cells express themselves. Healthier foods lead to healthier cells and gene expression, while toxic foods cause degeneration and disease. This means that, rather than being stuck with the DNA blueprint we’re born with, we can improve our genetic outcome by choosing the right foods, like fresh organic produce rather than processed, prepackaged items.
This once-alternative concept, now mainstream, has spurred the growth of health food markets, organic and vegetarian restaurants, and menus filled with local, seasonal, and organic ingredients.
The Slow Food Movement
A new way of looking at food that developed out of France and Italy, the Slow Food movement began in 1989 as a rebellion against fast-food culture. The “Slow Food” way of thinking challenges us all to take into account the culture and customs of what we eat, where it’s sourced, and how it’s harvested. The idea is that food should be celebrated, not packaged or heavily preserved so it stays on shelves for years without going bad, then gulped down while in the car. When people take the time to experience healthy food and what it really tastes like, they enjoy it. The cultural celebration of food and its cultivation is at the forefront of the Slow Food. This is just as important as the other two concepts. When people bond together over a wonderful meal and share stories and love with friends and family…this is what life is about.