Seth's Blog

This short article about Edward Skyler, Deputy Mayor of New York, mentions four times (headline, led, body, final quote) that he tackled a mugger. I have a similar story. Had I known it was so interesting . . .
I was in Paris — same trip that inspired the Shangri-La Diet. It had been raining, the streets were wet. I heard a shout: Stop that man! A man came running toward me. I tried to stop him but I slipped on the cobblestones and fell in front of him. Perfect tackle. Lying on the ground, he asked: Why did you do that? Nobody came. He got up and ran off.

As I walked away a woman came up to me. “Are you okay?’ she asked. A man said to me,”That was unusual what you did.” I felt really good for an hour or so.

I was stunned how good I felt. I had accomplished nothing — the thief wasn’t caught. Nor was there any obvious reason I should care what two bystanders thought of me.

The lesson I drew was this. Praise alone won’t make you happy. Accomplishment alone won’t make you happy. But their combination — praise for a genuine accomplishment, however small –is enormously potent. If I’m right, a teacher has enormous power to help his students by praising them for what they do right.

I sampled four brands of kombucha available in Berkeley; my favorite was from Rejuvenation Company. They are in Emeryville, which is close to where I live. “Can I visit your manufacturing facility?” I asked. The answer was no, but they were happy to be interviewed. So I interviewed Chris Campagna and Jerry Campagna, who are the company’s two employees. Before the interview I discovered they also made the rejuvelac I’d bought after a reader of this blog recommended it (“When I was a database administrator at Whole Foods, I used to drink it daily and never felt better”). Those are their two products: kombucha and rejuvelac.

How did your company begin?

It was started in 1983 in San Francisco by Dennis Campagna [Jerry's brother, Chris's uncle]. He was a health-food fanatic, a die-hard vegetarian, and a hippie. Now retired. He is ten years older than Jerry, but , Jerry says, looks younger.] At the beginning, he sold several health-food juices, such as carrot juice and wheat grass juice, but he also sold Rejuvelac. That was the part of the product line that’s lasted. He made them in a shared kitchen. Back then, there were dozens of small health food stores in San Francisco. It was a one-man show. Dennis drove around to them.

What’s rejuvelac?

A fermented grain drink. We use wheat. You sprout wheat berries with water,  ferment them for a while, then strain out the wheat berries. We’re the only company we know of that sells it.

Why do your products say “Keep Refrigerated”?

The Health Department wanted it. For years and years, they sat store shelves, not refrigerated.

When did you start making kombucha?

Five years ago. Dennis added it to his product line. It took a few years to catch on. He’d been making it for himself for years — making it, drinking it, giving it to friends. We’re tiny players in the kombucha market. Synergy is the big player. Maybe there are 10-15 manufacturers around the country, it’s hard to know the exact number. There’s no Kombucha Manufacturers Association.  Some commercial kombuchas are pasteurized; look on their websites to find out which ones. [Kombucha Wonder Drink is pasteurized.] Our kombucha isn’t pasteurized.

How has the business changed?

It used to be lots of mom-and-pop stores. The people who owned the store ran it. They recommended stuff to their customers. The customer would come in with a health problem, the owner would say, “Why don’t you try this?” Now Whole Food dominates. The emphasis has changed. The buyers want to know: Will it sell? As opposed to true quality. Nowadays, the main way we spread is that someone buys our products on a trip to San Francisco and goes home and sends us email: Where can we get it? We say: If you really want it, go to your store manager and tell him. You have a tremendous amount of clout. They listen to you. It often works out that we get a store out of that deal. We don’t do internet sales.

Over the last five years, our sales have grown a lot. Five years ago, we were mostly in San Francisco, mostly in small stores. Around 20-30 small stores. Now we’re in roughly 100-120 stores. It’s hard to have a store locator on our website because distributors don’t want to tell us who they deal with. [Their store locator page.] In the Bay Area, we’re sold at Whole Foods, Berkeley Bowl, Rainbow Grocery, plus smaller stores. In Santa Cruz, at Staff of Life. We’re moving into Whole Foods in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland. Pretty soon you should be able to get it in any Whole Foods on the West Coast.

What do your customers say?

A year ago, we got a phone call from a woman in San Francisco. I’m moving to Utah, where can I buy your product? Eight years earlier, she’d been sick. [Digestive problems, apparently.] Her doctor had given her antibiotics. She didn’t get better. She was given more antibiotics. Still didn’t get better. This went on for several months. She couldn’t eat anything. Even baby food would make her gaseous. She was turning ashen, suffering from malnutrition. Then she got a small bottle of rejuvelac. Just 30 minutes after drinking it, she felt a little better. She’d been drinking it regularly for eight years, didn’t want to be without it.

Children are notoriously picky eaters. Could they be trying to tell us (adults) something? Such as how bad our diet is?

Alex Combs, a stay-at-home dad and equity trader who lives near Philadelphia, has a five-year-old son whom Alex describes as “a picky eater.”

His son will not eat rice, potatoes, and pasta. He will eat small amounts of meat.

Yet his son will eat pickles, balsamic vinegar, and old/stinky cheese (but not regular cheese).

This is a fair description of what I eat! No simple carbs, some meat, plenty of fermented foods. While lots of people advocate low-carb diets, only a few, including me, advocate large amounts of fermented food. His son’s counter-intuitive liking for such gourmet “adult” foods as pickles, balsamic vinegar, and old cheeses, all high in bacteria, puts the picky eating of children in a whole new light. They’re not picky — they’re smart.

According to Deedee:

Once you experience AS [appetite suppression], it’s almost like a drug.  You’re not craving foods.  Food is in the background – your other life is in the forefront.

I’m off tomorrow for a conference in Vancouver, BC and the first thing I packed is my coconut oil.

That is so well put.

In this NY Times Op-Ed, Jessica Snyder, author of Good Germs, Bad Germs, agrees with my comments about the hygiene hypothesis:

In 1989, an epidemiologist in Britain, David Strachan, observed that babies born into households with lots of siblings were less likely than other babies to develop allergies and asthma. The same proved true of babies who spent significant time in day care. Dr. Strachan hypothesized that the protection came from experiencing an abundance of childhood illnesses.

Dr. Strachan’s original hygiene hypothesis got a lot of press. . . Less publicized was the decade-long string of follow-up studies that disproved a link between illnesses and protection from inflammatory disorders like allergies and asthma. If anything, studies showed, early illness made matters worse. . .
Still, Dr. Strachan’s original observation was confirmed — as a group, babies in large families and day care are less likely to develop allergies and asthma than are children born into smaller families and kept at home. The same protective effect can be seen in children born on farms and in areas without public sanitation.

But the link isn’t disease-causing germs. It’s early and ample exposure to harmless bacteria — especially the kinds encountered living close to the land and around livestock and other young children. In other words, dirt, dung and diapers. Just as disease-causing microbes clearly bring on inflammation, harmless microorganisms appear to exert a calming effect on the immune system.

No mention of fermented food.

Thanks to Michael Bowerman.