Phytonutrients – the missing medicine in our food.
Jo Robinson: Author of recent bestseller Eating on the Wild Side
Tuesday, March 10
1:30-3:00pm
Anderson Hall, Forest Club Room- Second Floor
A reception and poster session will follow
This event is FREE, no RSVP necessary.
MEET JO ROBINSON
Jo Robinson is a bestselling, investigative journalist who has spent the past 20 years scouring scientific articles for insights on how to restore vital nutrients to the American diet. Looking beyond the nutrient loss that has taken place over the past 75 years, she traces the beginning of our unhealthy diet to the very first gardens created 12,000 years ago.
"Michael Pollan urges us to eat food similar to the food our grandparents and great-grandparents ate," Jo says. "Now we know that some heirloom varieties are actually low in key nutrients. For optimum health, we should be eating food that is similar to the diets of people who lived hundreds or even thousands of years ago."
Her most recent work has concentrated on the loss of nutrients in our fruits and vegetables. New research shows that we have, over the millennia, unwittingly selected and bred varieties of produce that are low in phytochemicals—compounds that plants produce to protect themselves from external threats such as insects, browsers, and diseases. She has collected hundreds of studies from peer-reviewed journals showing that eating phytochemical-rich foods can lower the risk of human disease and increase our odds of living longer and healthier lives. In essence, a plant's' self-protection becomes our protection.
Just as important, she has identified more than 400 present-day varieties of phytochemical-rich fruits and vegetables that can be purchased at supermarkets and farmers markets, or planted in home and community gardens. These varieties have a phytochemical content similar to the highly nutritious wild plants that we abandoned thousands of years ago.
Jo presents this important information in her eye-opening new book, Eating on the Wild Side, which became a New York Times bestseller shortly after its publication in June 2012.
Jo has been interviewed about her work on "CNN with Sanjay Gupta," "CBS This Morning," "Huffpost Live," and more than 30 radio shows, including NPR's "Fresh Air," "The Splendid Table" and "Science Friday." In addition, she has been featured in Nature Magazine, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Seattle Times, USA TODAY, Prevention, Oprah's O, Epicurious, Reader's Digest, Men's Health, Cooking Light, Wine Spectator, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. She is a sought-after speaker who has given presentations around the country to laypeople and health professionals.
Jo lives on Vashon Island in Washington State where she grows exceptionally nutritious and delicious varieties of produce in her Eatwild Demonstration Garden. More than one thousand people toured the garden in June 2014.
In 2015, Jo is spearheading the creation of a "Garden of Well-Being" for seniors at the Vashon Community Care Center in Vashon, Washington. The garden will feature specific varieties of fruits and vegetables that have been proven to address health problems common to older people, such as diabetes, dementia, fatigue, cancer, chronic inflammation, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. It will be the first garden of its kind in the United States.
About the UW Society of Ethnobiology: We are open to people from any discipline who are interested in learning more about ethnobiology past and present, including broad topics such as food sovereignty, biocultural diversity, and traditional ways of using plants as food and medicine. We meet twice a month and will hold speaker events and field trips both on and off campus.