As we gear up for the CHEW-A-THON starting September 8th, I want to give us all some inspiration.  I’ll be posting stuff on the physiology of chewing, the benefits, the technique… even giving a little instructional video.  But let’s start right now with some history:

This guywas King of the Hardcore Chewers.  Named Horace Fletcher, he was known as
"The Great Masticator".  Ahem.   Born in 1849, Fletcher was one the early American food faddists and he believed that chewing was the absolute bomb.  By chewing, or "fletcherizing" your food (32 times a mouthful or about 100 times a minute) he claimed that one could get more energy from the food, while eating less of it.  It seemed to work for him; at 58 years old, Fletcher challenged student athletes at Yale to physical endurance tests and he outperformed them all. 

Horace counted among his fletcherizing friends Henry James, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair and John D. Rockefeller.  Fletcherizing was actually quite popular for a while until its spotlight was stolen by the next big thing: calorie-counting. 

Practice Fletcherizing today.  It’s your patriotic duty.  Go for 50 to 100 chews per mouthful.  Start with grains and vegetables; they’re the easiest to chew.  Get your friends, macro and un-macro, to join the CHEW-A-THON starting September 8th.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Blog, Chewing, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

In 1998, I took a trip to Peru.   In preparation for this trip, my boyfriend and cooking partner at the time, Howard, prepared intelligently; he took Spanish lessons and read guide books about the country.  Me, I just freaked out; having been macrobiotic in a pretty clean way for 7 years, I was terrified that I would not be able to get the right foods.  And it wasn’t just a control thing–I was afraid of feeling unwell with a radical change of gasoline and that seemed to defeat the whole purpose of travelling.  I knew that Peru was the home to quinoa and choclo (corn) but I also knew I could easily find myself diving headfirst into a picarone (donut) cart.  I was stuck between my desire to stay  healthy and an equally healthy desire to experience the world freely. 

I fretted and freaked until I struck a remarkable deal with myself.  This simple contract cast a blinding light on a chaotic, fearful situation: I could eat anything and everything I wanted in Peru, but I had to chew every single bite of it thoroughly.  Like, one hundred times.  EVERY single bite.

Now that might sound insane, and maybe it was, but it was also one of the best decisions I have ever made.  Upon arriving in Peru, my mission began.  At first, it was embarrassing and a pain in the butt.  I explained myself by saying I had to chew really well because of some problem with my teeth.  Ahh, white lies–So helpful!  My body, used to having food-bricks launched into it, had to re-train itself to absorb liquid food, and my mouth–the lazy bastard–had to go to the gym.  I sat out entire conversations, or just participated between bites… but I tell ya, I really, really tasted that food.  And it was a smart decision because it took us a couple of days in Lima to get our bearings and find the one vegetarian restaurant in our guidebooks.  It quickly became clear that we weren’t gonna find brown rice, let alone seaweed anytime soon.  In fact, I found the picarone cart on the second day and chewed the heck out of an amazing Peruvian donut!

We even took a trip to a tributary of the Amazon.  It required two days on a bus negotiating fatally skinny switchbacks, and then four days in canoe-ish type things, camping in the jungle.  I had NO control over the food… white pasta, Oreo cookies and tuna fish were staples.  I chewed and I chewed and I chewed.  Instead of experiencing headaches and depression and fatigue, I chuckled as the monkeys threw things at us from the tree tops.  I lay in my tent, eyes closed and listening to a mind-blowing symphony of buzzing insects in the jungle.  At night, I saw the phosphoresent glow of weird Amazonian bugs and plants on the river.  I may have been eating Oreos but I was totally awake and experiencing every single mind-blowing moment of my life. 

More benefits of chewing; sparkly eyes, great physical energy and co-ordination, a total in-the-moment absorbtion and enjoyment of people, places and things.  An overall good mood.  I started losing weight and my skin looked gorgeous.  Meanwhile, Howard–who was speaking great Spanish but wasn’t chewing quite as religiously–would experience dips in energy, moodswings and all the infamous South American digestion problems.  I had none.  Honest to God, because I kept my contract with myself, it was one of the most seamless, enjoyable, and conscious experiences of my life.  All six weeks of it.  Chewing is amazing. 

So I’d like to start a week-long CHEW-A-THON  with all the readers of this blog.  I’d like to suggest that we chew each bite 50 to 100 times each.  Every bite.  For one week.  I think we will all be amazed.  You can post your experiences on my blog and I will write and tweet every day that week, supporting us all to experience what our lives are like, thoroughly chewed.  I will talk about the bio-mechanics of it, the spiritual dimension of it, and give practical tips, including a chewing video!!!!

The CHEW-A-THON begins on the Tuesday after Labor Day, September 8th and goes through September 14th.  And remember: You don’t have to be macro to do this, so invite your friends of all culinary paths to try chewing on for size…

You might want to practice a little before then, sitting down, focusing and really masticating.  Keep the back of your mouth closed and DON’T SWALLOW until you’ve reached your 50, or your 100.  That’s the key.  You can do it!  YAHOO!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Blog, Chewing, Living Your Dream, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I love saying stuff like "so I was in Vegas the other day…".  Sounds so Rat Pack, so Entourage, so The Hangover.  And I was actually in Vegas the other day, after a couple of friends of mine, plus one dog, piled into my car and decided to drive to Joshua Tree, which looks like this:

After taking in all the natural wonders for about, oh, 20 minutes, out came the iphones, and it was determined–thanks to Google maps–that the scenic view to The City of Sin would require a breezy four hour detour.  What the heck!  It was a holiday weekend!  One of my friends was visiting from the East Coast for God’s sake!! MICHAEL JACKSON HAD JUST DIED!!!  The whole moment reeked of "if not now, WHEN?"  Frankly I was quite impressed with us, considering you don’t always get three people over 35, plus one Husky mix, in 100 degree weather,  brimming with such spontaneity and joie de vivre.

And why not? Vegas is a very spiritual place.  You heard me.  I mean, if we stretch the definition of "spiritual" to "containing human faith".  Vegas is full of faith.  Faith in the next hand.  The next hooker.  The next roll of the die.  Just watching a woman sitting, hypnotized, at a slot machine is a portrait in faith: pulling, pulling… hoping… pulling, pulling… trusting… pulling, pulling… knowing that the magical religion of numbers will smile on her because she has been patient and waited.  She has faith in God of The Odds.  Maybe she will finally be granted a purse like this: or stay in a hotel with a ceiling like this:

There’s so much faith in Vegas that, if we were to harness it and use it for good… who knows what we could do!  We are just humans, and every day we commit our energy in certain directions.  We can build things or destroy things.  We can love people or hate them.  We can eat a Twinkie or some kickass miso soup.  Don’t get me wrong: I make less-than-stellar choices all the time… but maybe it’s time to consider how we leave our personal Las Vegas. 

Eat whole grains.  Chew them well.  Get stupid happy.  Hip Chick Audiobook available here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Blog, My Life, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

As kids, my sister and I would spend every other weekend with our Dad.  Not the greatest cook, he would take us to various diners and other eateries for Saturday breakfast.  Invariably, Dad would order half a  grapefruit, and I remember being hypnotized by his precise slicing around the rim of the fruit and down the sides of each triangular wedge.  Finally, with a spoon, he would scoop out his bounty, and pop the grapefruit chunks–perfectly bite-sized by nature–into his big Daddy mouth. 

It’s only been recently that I developed a taste for grapefruit.  As a little girl, it just seemed bitter.  And even though the bitterness came with some serious sweetness, my young tongue couldn’t appreciate that dance of taste.  And the fact that the bitterness and sweetness sat on either side of sour…? Well, that just seemed like God doing drugs or something. 

But I appreciate the miracle of it now.  The grapefruit wins the Triple Crown of fruit by somehow combining sour (Springtime energy), bitter (Summer energy) and sweet (late summer energy).  And in so doing, it produces the most fantastic range of taste and satisfaction.  Biting into a wedge of grapefruit on a hot, summer day is like letting my head be blown off by fireworks.  When I close my eyes and just let my tongue and my brain receive it, the grapefruit delivers a punch perfectly reflective of the sexy, out-of-control, sun-drenched excitement of summer.  And I don’t need a lot.  Just a few bites does the trick. 

Yes, I live in Southern California now, so grapefruits have become local to me.  For those of you reading this in a more temperate climate, pick a fruit that’s at its peak right now and let it be that lovely exclamation mark to your day.  Close your eyes and hear it speak to you.  And if you’re in good health, and the thermometer creeps up into the "holy crap it’s hot" zone, blow your head off with some grapefruit!

FYI: Here’s a radio interview I did recently on Breaking Through with Georgiann

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Blog, My Life, Photo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.