The School of Greatness - 102 How We Learned to Think and Eat Is Killing Us (and THIS is the Solution) with Tim Ryan

Episode Date: October 30, 2014

"It's people on the outside that move the political process." - Rep. Tim Ryan If you enjoyed this episode, find show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/102.

This is episode number 102 with Congressman Tim Ryan. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, everyone?

Thank you so much for joining me today on the School of Greatness podcast. We've got a fellow Ohioan on today. His name is Mr. Tim Ryan. He is a congressman, and he's the author of a new book that just came out called The Real Food Revolution, Healthy Eating, Green Groceries, and the Return of the American Family Farm. Now, this is an interesting conversation because one, he's from Ohio, so we've got some good connections there. We have also a lot of mutual friends. And this is the first time I've connected with Tim. So I was able to connect with a fellow Ohioan and talk about two topics that I'm actually

extremely passionate about. One, which is mindfulness and bringing mindfulness into school system for kids to really practice and learn and be available to, but also eating healthier and understanding why as a nation, as a country, and specifically in the U.S., we are not living as long as our parents and grandparents did. parents did and why we're the first generation to actually live shorter lives than our parents and grandparents. It's kind of crazy and it's because of the food that we're eating and the medication we have to take to supplement our health. So we dive into those topics. I'm very excited about this. Let's go ahead and dive in now with the real food revolution with Congressman Tim Ryan.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Super pumped about this one. We've got Congressman Tim Ryan on. What's going on, Tim? Not too much. Very excited to be with you. Very excited. We were just connecting a little bit before,

and we have many mutual friends, and i'm glad we're able to finally connect and nick uh ordner told me about you and told me about your book and said i've got to have you on the show and so i said well let's get the book first and see if it's if it's worthy and i didn't know anything about you then i realized you're from ohio and i said, I've got to have him on the show. So very excited to see what you're up to. And the more I learn about you, the more I'm fascinated that you're actually a congressman and what you're up to. Because you're focusing on, I guess, the last few years of your life, you've been focusing on, based on these kind of the programs that you've been implementing in Ohio specifically is all about mindfulness and really like emotional intelligence in the schools and eating healthier. Two things that I've been focusing on in my life over the last four years as I saw myself gain about 35 pounds

and kind of have like this like, you know, gut after playing football and, and then really diving into mindfulness and meditation and emotional intelligence myself and understanding the value of that practice and what it's done for my life and my relationships to see that a congressman is doing this. I'm proud to know that you're from Ohio, my friend. Hey, man. Well, it's good to meet up. I mean, the most exciting part about doing this. I'm proud to know that you're from Ohio, my friend. Hey, man. Well, it's good to meet up. I mean, the most exciting part about doing this, and I've had a lot of people say, are you sure you're a congressman? Because there's a lot of people involved in this, but not a lot of people in the political process involved in it. And really, the most exciting thing for me has been meeting people like you, people like Nick Ortner, Chris Carr,

for me has been meeting people like you, people like Nick Ortner, Chris Carr, you know, the whole team, uh, and figuring out how we can build this movement out because really it's people on the outside that move the political process. You know, it's the pressure from the outside that moved the needle in one direction or the other. And we've seen it happen in our country a lot. And I think the things that you're talking about and that we'll talk about in this podcast are the things that I think really need to happen to improve the lives of people in our country. And it's not necessarily a Democrat or Republican thing, but it's kind of a common sense way to try to solve some of the challenges that we have. Yeah, definitely. And before we dive into kind of like the healthy eating, you know, you wrote this book called The Real Food Revolution. It's all about healthy eating, green groceries, and the return of the American family farm.

Before we get into that, because I think that's a huge topic that I cover a lot on this show. We bring on a lot of health experts. You wrote a book before called A Mindful Nation, and it was really about reducing stress and improving performance. And I think I read somewhere that you've applied this in schools, in elementary schools or high schools. Is that correct? Or you're trying to do some type of programs or testing this? What have you done with that? Yeah. Well, there are schools around the country that do different forms of meditation practice. Some do mindfulness-based. Some do transcendental meditation. Some do other things.

But we were able in 2009 to get a grant for Youngstown City Schools and Warren City Schools in Ohio where they teach mindfulness and social and emotional learning. Wow. And to me, this is very fundamental. You know, you'll go and Warren and Youngstown are both older industrial towns, you know, poor, you know, a lot of cultural diversity, tough neighborhoods, high crime rates. And I just to say, hey, do this, you know, let's do it, you know, where these real challenges are. And it's really been amazing. I just talked to the superintendent of Warren City Schools a few days ago, and he said, really, the program's taken off the rocket ship.

He said, actually, two principals were in an argument because the one principal hasn't reported any discipline incidents yet this year. No way. And the other principal thought that she was trying to cook the books. And she said, I swear to God, I mean, we haven't had any problems. And he said, that's the best SEL mindfulness school that we have in the district. He said, it's taken off like a rocket ship. And because of the success that they're having in this school, you know, the other schools are taking it a lot more seriously and really ramping it up. And so, you know, it goes to the philosophy

that, you know, if we want kids to learn, we need to base how we teach them and what we teach them on the latest brain science. And there's much science coming online now with how the brain reacts to meditation and it allows you to move out of fight or flight, you know, and if you think of some of these kids in tough neighborhoods with domestic violence issues in their families, you know, they basically have post-traumatic stress, you know, and they have it at a very, very young age where their brain's still developing. And so what I learned through the Mindful Nation process of writing that book was we've got two parts of our brain. We got the fight or flight part, which is in our amygdala.

So, you know, there's a bear around the corner. Boom, we go in the fight or flight. Our amygdala gets really cranked up and it takes over our brain and signaling to our body how best we can survive. The problem with that is that it takes away our ability to use our prefrontal cortex up by our forehead. That's where we have our decision making, our attention span, our memory. It's the CEO of the brain. So you can imagine these young kids who live in these violent neighborhoods and have all these issues that they have to deal with. Their amygdala is in a constant state of being activated and they're in almost a constant state of fight or flight. We see kids like this all the time. So we sit here and wonder why they can't learn. And the reason is

their brain's been hijacked by their fight or flight response. And these techniques are being shown to teach kids how to self-regulate. What a life skill for them, right? How to calm their amygdala down, re-engage their prefrontal cortex, and then we start seeing test scores go up and everything else and behavior goes down, as I said earlier. And so to me, like, you know, we're banging our head against the wall saying, how are we going to be a competitive country? Why can't some of these kids learn? Why are we spending so much in some of these tough districts and the districts we spend most on come away with the worst test scores? Well, they're also the districts with the highest crime rates, the highest poverty rates. And these kids, their brains are hijacked.

So if we're going to transform education, to me, this is like the basic building block that we need to send these kids out into a very chaotic world. But to be able to learn and have a skill and be a functioning, uh, civilized human being, I think mindfulness and these other practices and meditation practices are really fundamental. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's shocks me now today, looking back at my childhood and, you know, the school schooling that I had, uh, you know, super grateful for my teachers and everything and what I learned, but at the same time, the most, probably the most valuable things that we could have learned as students and children growing up is how to understand ourselves and understand our emotions and how to react to certain situations or not react or letting our ego take

over or not take over. And, um, you know, those are the things that makes us competitive and compelling in business, in life and relationships, you know, as a country, whatever it may be. It's not like how smart we are, you know, or how much, you know, although it's important to have this information that we learn in math and science and everything, but to be innovative. really, if we can't understand other human beings and understand ourselves, how we work under certain stressful situations, then what is the value in knowing the other information? I think it's just as equally important, if not more important, in my opinion, based on what I've learned in my experience and getting to the next level in my life. Understanding mindfulness has been powerful. I think most people would agree with you. You know, most, if we, if we sat down in a room full of parents and we talked about, okay, what are the

essential skills you have that allowed you to be a success? And most people would say, you know, my ability to connect to other people, the fact that I listen, the fact, you know, I care, I'm empathetic. Um, the fact that I don't say everything that I want to say, you know, the fact that I'm able to get mad and then kind of calm down and then deal with the situation. And the question really is, if those are the, if that's the 80 or 90% of the things in our daily life that we need to be successful, you know, why in hell aren't we teaching that in our schools? You know, cause like you said, the, the skillset, whether you're going to learn a skill with the building trades to be a plumber or an electrician, or you're going to go on to be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer, um, those skills can be learned, but the essential things that make us a civilization really are these other skills

and i think there's been a fraying of that and we've gotten so driven into test scores and and it's just kind of odd that the more we focus on math and science and test scores the further we drop in the international rankings what i mean i don't understand this though. How come we never have a class on this, at least I never did, until after I graduated college when I started to, really until my late 20s, really now I'm 31, until I started to realize what's not working for me as a human. There's a lot working, but what is making me angry still? Why is my ego getting in the way? Why am I resentful to people or to situations? And why have I not let go of certain things that aren't serving me?

And it was frustrating when I had to seek out the information and start doing my own research, as it looks like you did as well, in the whole Mindful Nation process. the whole mindful nation process. How come, you know, it took me 30 years until I was able to then seek it out because it was just so frustrating as opposed to it's something that we learn in school. Why hasn't schools developed this and brought it on as at least being one class, you know, that people can take or something? Yeah, I just, I think there's a lot of inertia in the current system. And, you know, it's, it's a lot of times it's blaming, blame the parents, blame the teachers. There's a lot of, you know, whose fault it is. These kids aren't working hard enough. So give them more homework that you say, you know, you turn 30 or whatever, and then you start kind of figuring things out for yourself in a mindful nature. And I talk about I went on a five-day meditation retreat and more and more silence throughout the retreat. And then at the end of the retreat, there was a 36-hour period of silence. And I remember, you know, doing a walking meditation at the end. And I really, you know, my mind and my body were synchronized.

It very much resembled being in the zone as an athlete. Not that I was, you know, enough. If I was in a lot, I probably would be talking to you right now. But I did have that experience. And the minute that happened and I really had that experience, I thought, why didn't anyone teach me this? Why, why did that happen? And, um, and so my mission at that point in my life really was, you know, we've got to learn how to teach this in our schools and it's got to be fundamental. Amazing. Yeah. Uh, this is exciting. I'm like so in shock that you're still a congressman and that you've like talked about these topics and it's like part of your daily practice.

So it's, again, really proud you're from Ohio, Tim. So, okay, let's transition. I mean, I need your help. I need your help. I mean, we've got to figure out how to do this, you know, right. And how to do it together and really build this movement out. Sure. Yeah. Well, hopefully we can support with this, uh, you know, as a, as a piece of the puzzle with this podcast and this interview. So again, thank you for sharing with that.

And I want to, you know, I could talk about that for hours and hours. Cause I'm a, I'm still an athlete myself today. I'm competing on an international level with the USA national team, with Team Handball, trying to go to the Olympics in the next couple of years. So I'm all about mindfulness, meditation, tapping into being in the zone as often as possible when I compete. So I could talk about that forever. But I want to talk about as well, the real food revolution. And a few years ago, I live in Los

Angeles. Now I moved from Columbus, Ohio to New York about four and a half years ago, early 2010. And when I moved there, it was about three or four years after about three years after I'd done playing, I used to play arena football when I got injured. And I played with the Columbus Destroyers for a little bit. And I kept eating the crap that I was eating from college football and playing arena football, just eating whatever to get enough calories in. I kept eating that for about three years after I was done. And it got to the point where I've mentioned this on the podcast before, for those who've listened a lot before that I, I got over 250 pounds and I'm six, four, and I could never get to that weight when I was playing

football. So I finally got to two 50 and, uh, and my underwear started rolling over my, like, it started rolling over itself, like folding over. And my siblings started calling me fluous for fat Lewis. Cause I was just like getting this gut and chubby cheeks. And my siblings started calling me fluous for fat Lewis, because I was just like getting this gut and chubby cheeks. And they were like, you're getting fat, you need to start eating better. And I realized once my underwear started folding over, I was like, okay, this is unacceptable. I can't, I can't keep doing this myself. So I started to really assess what is it I'm doing? What am I eating? And I realized that I was addicted to sugar. And the thing that I like about you and your book is you mentioned how you love ice cream and chicken wings. And you know, you're not perfect. You're not like

only eating leafy greens and organic beef every day that you love. You have your your vices as well as food. But I realized that I was addicted to sugar and I need to at least cut it back a lot. So I went off sugar for 30 days and I lost 30 pounds in 30 days just getting off sugar and was amazed at the way my body responded. And you talk a lot about foods and the food system. Can you just tell me why you decided to write this book and why this is such an important topic for you about healthy eating? And, you know, there's lots of different things you cover here, but what's the main reason you got into this in the first place? Well, I, as a member of Congress and I sit on the House Appropriations Committee and we fund the

government, you know, and just started over time. I've been in now 12 years and over time, you know, pay more and more attention and learn more and more. And and over time, you know, pay more and more attention and learn more and more. And I started really, you know, looking at the data, looking at the trajectory of what's going to happen to our healthcare system and the health of our country over the next decade or so, and realized that, you know, about half of the country in the next few years is going to have either diabetes or prediabetes. And you try to, you try to fathom a healthcare system where half the country is sick and that's sick. I mean, that's sick. Um, in addition to obesity and heart disease and high blood pressure and all the rest that cost us a lot of money, you know, we need to fix it. And, you know, as I was writing a mindful nation too, I was learning a lot about stress response and how bad

that is for, um, for our bodies. But there was always this other element floating around out there and that was diet. And, and so once I, I, it just kind of clicked, I was like, Oh my God, this is like, this is so fundamental. I mean, these kids in the school, you know, they're, they're eating a fruit roll up and a bag of Doritos and a pizza square. Yeah. And that's breakfast or that's lunch. And then we send them to the classroom and we say, Hey, can you sit down and learn algebra now? You know, and it's really setting them up to fail. You know, and it's really setting them up to fail. And so, you know, kind of seeing the policy side, I really wanted to help people connect the dots. And so basically what happens is we subsidize with taxpayer money. We subsidize the current food system that helps support growing really big crops that end up in cheap, highly processed food. And there's a reason it's cheap. It's cheap because it's subsidized by the taxpayer.

So that makes it, you know, more cheap and more readily available. And then the real kicker is then we subsidize health care for our citizens with the Medicaid program, Medicare, and then also private insurance now with the Affordable Care Act to help middle class people afford health insurance. The public subsidizes that. So we subsidize the crops that go to highly processed food that got the country ready to have diabetes or prediabetes. country ready to have half the country to have diabetes or pre-diabetes. And then we subsidize the health care in which we're going to need to take care of the people who have diabetes or pre-diabetes. So to me, it's like, shoot me, you know, like, are we really doing this? And I want American people to see the connection of why these so cheap and how we can, with just a minor shift in these subsidies, start to encourage farmers to grow fruits and vegetables that are going to make us healthy.

And it can be a team effort with the farmers, with the consumers, with ag people, with the schools of agriculture, together with the integrative health folks and the health care community to say, all right, this is the direction we need to go in. And this is ultimately how we're going to drive down healthcare costs so that we can reinvest into innovation and education and, you know, the kind of things we need in our schools to really be competitive. The, you know, mindfulness programs, the social and emotional learning programs, those things that we know work. So if we save money on healthcare, you know, those are investments we could make in

the things that are really going to make us competitive. And then the real food revolution kind of lays that all out to the average person and kind of pull the curtain back on what's happening in DC and see how this is all going down. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. It just seems like if we ate healthy and meditated once a day, we would solve a lot more problems and have a lot better lives. It seems simple, right? Yeah. You talk about, you talk about early in the book about- Our brains. Go ahead. When you think about it, you know, our brains, our bodies, our nervous systems, we're not meant to deal with fake food and the high, high levels of information that are coming down on us day in and day out. The high levels of stress that we're all under. Our nervous systems aren't ready for this. You know, I mean, this this food that we're eating now, you know, our species is 60,000 years old or so.

We just started eating fake food in the last, you know, three or four decades. So it's taken that time for us to go, oh, my God, this is what happens when, you know, we we eat fake food for a while. We all get sick. We all get diabetes. Our body was meant real food that kept us around for 60,000 years. But here today, eating fake food, and it's a real experiment on seeing what goes wrong. And what goes wrong is you get diabetes, you get high blood pressure, you get heart disease, you get ulcers, you get all these other issues. And the same with the technology and the information. get ulcers, you get all these other issues. And the same with the technology and the information.

Our nervous system is not meant to handle these high levels of, you know, the information, the constant bombardment of what's on our phone and wake from the first time we wake up in the morning till we go to bed. We're on this and we're looking at this lit screen and there's all this data coming at us and we're not sure what to even do with it. So the mindfulness in these other places really with good food are an opportunity for us to just say, okay, we're going to take control back of our environment and we're going to control it. Yeah. You're talking about this fake food. Are you talking about genetically engineered seeds as part of that? Well, part of it. You know, the science really isn't in on GMO, but my big thing is you label it and let people have a shot at knowing that they don't want to eat it. Right.

And right now that's the big fight is to at least label it. But the highly processed stuff, you know, that goes from corn to corn syrup, you syrup, and it goes from soy to soy oil. And then you look on the back of a box of some of this stuff, and there's how many names are on there that you have no clue even what's in there. And it's like, well, what's in a tomato? Well, a tomato. There's sugar in there, but it's natural, and it's got fiber and other things that help you digest the sugar. So it's just, it's crazy. I mean, it really is.

And my thing is, you know, people in Youngstown, Ohio, they're going paycheck to paycheck, you know, and it's hard for them to go shopping three times a week and get fresh fruits and vegetables. So they're almost forced to buy the things that are, couldn't stay in the cupboard. And so there's a lot of challenges here economically as well. At the very least, I'd say, why wouldn't we make it easier for them to buy fresh fruits and vegetables? Why are those priced so much differently than all the subsidized garbage that we're eating? So what are some ways to make it easier for people and low-income families that live in places that don't have fresh produce readily, easily nearby? What are some things that you talk about in the book that we can do to solve this or solutions that we can do ourselves? I think first you shift the subsidies and you try to create some markets for the farmers. So

you're from Delaware County, you're from Columbus, Ohio. So imagine if we took the Ohio State University and we said, okay, the next year, Ohio State is going to spend 2% of their food budget for all 60,000 kids that are there in their entire campus to buy fresh local whole foods from central Ohio farmers. The following year, it's going to be 4%. The following year, it's going to be 6%. The following year, it's going to be 8%. All of a sudden, the farmers in that region are going to say, wow, I got a real market developing here. Instead of growing corn that's going to end up feeding some hog halfway around the world, I can make the same money because we shift the subsidies and we help them convert their farm over to a more sustainable farm. And we can drive the truck five or 10 miles and make a profit and make a living feeding people at Ohio

State, that will build the market out. And Ohio State's not going to go anywhere. And if you do the same with prisons in central Ohio and schools in central Ohio and military bases in central Ohio, you take all this public money and you start rewarding the farmers for growing the kind of food that's going to keep us healthy. And I think that's one way to do it by building the market out. And then those foods would be more accessible. And then in our urban areas, I think we need a total urban agricultural, urban farming initiative in the country where we take down dilapidated homes. Take Youngstown, Ohio, for example, we used to be 160,000 people.

You know, now we're 60 or 70,000. So we're starting to take down a lot of those homes, but we need to do it a lot quicker and we could build out a huge urban ag support system in the middle of food deserts. And foods are with or where you know families live outside of a mile or two from a grocery store and they don't have any transportation so grow the food in the city and so instead of having neighborhoods that are neighborhoods of consumption you start putting people to work in the cities to grow fresh fruits and vegetables and food for their own communities and make them neighborhoods of production. So you get investment in the city, you put people to work. Most of the folks in these urban areas are on Medicaid and driving up Medicaid costs because

of the unhealthy eating. So you're going to help the Medicaid program by bending the cost curve and making sure that people are healthier. And then you get rid of the food desert issue and accessibility. So all of these things can really help build out an urban farming system. And I think you do the same thing with the schools. I think you should have a garden in every school, a kitchen in every schoolhouse where you're actually teaching kids how to plant, grow, and cook food like a Home Ec 2.0. And then you have a salad bar in every school cafeteria. And so you start to teach young people exactly how you're supposed to be eating, tie it to the healthcare curriculum, tie it to your math curriculum and teach fractions when you're cutting up the vegetables and fruit and those kinds of

things. But that's, this is why I think it's a revolution because you build out the entire system. You build out the rural piece by helping the farmers transition. You redirect this public money to reward and incentivize healthy food and whole food. You build out the urban ag piece so that you take care of these food deserts and you get people in our inner cities healthy and eating properly. And then you do it with the school. So you get kids that are in school. What are you there for? They're there to learn how to live, right? How to live a successful life. So part of that needs to be, here's how you eat. Right. Wow. Yeah. What are, what are some ways that, you know, if we're, let's say you live in the city, you're in New York City, what are some ways to develop your own, you know, I guess, urban farming in your apartment, in an apartment or

an apartment building? Are there some tips or some good systems to apply that you know of? Well, you can start growing, you know, herbs in your window seal and those kinds of things. I think when you're in those kinds of urban areas, you know, really you want to support those people in your neighborhoods that are bringing the fresh fruits and vegetables in, the farmer's markets and the different co-ops that bring food into those areas and will bring you bags of fresh fruits and vegetables, you know, a few times a week. So it's not necessarily doing it yourself, but it's more supporting the local farmers to bring it in to the urban areas is what you're saying. Gotcha. Right. Okay. Interesting, man. This is

such a powerful concept and I'm so appreciative that you're again, writing about this and, and pushing for it all. Um, are there other, sorry, are you, are you able to apply some of these, um, food initiatives in Ohio right now? Or have you already started doing that along with the mindful practices or is it something you're working towards next? Um, we're doing a little bit in Akron. There are, uh, some gardens in the schools. There's a great program with the American Heart Association. Um, and the American Heart Association, and the American Heart Association is really starting to take the lead on this, which is fantastic, of putting these gardens in the schools. There's a couple of those out in Akron. We have in Youngstown, Youngstown

Neighborhood Development Corporation, where they're in the city of Youngstown building out with hoop houses, and they're planting root vegetables and they're making a profit off it. And that's what's cool too, is when you see these folks that really can start making a profit. And so it's not always funded by government or funded by foundations where they can, you know, get some seed money early, get people up and running, but then start making money off the thing, you know, that they can reinvest back into their urban farm or into their neighborhoods and figure out ways. I think there's a huge public good in that this is a, these are good public investments, but you know, if you can supplement that with people who start making profits, so they're doing that right in Youngstown. And you'd be surprised. I write about Will Allen in Milwaukee. He started a great program of building out urban farms and it's called Growing Power. And he's a former athlete, too. And he played basketball at the University of Miami and came back and started doing this in Milwaukee and it's really transforming neighborhoods and teaching inner

city kids how to, you know, grow food and, and he gets all into the whole process of doing it. It's really super cool. So, you know, Milwaukee and Chicago and Cleveland and Youngstown and Akron, I mean, this is happening in some of these older cities and it's exactly what needs to happen, but we better get on the stick because like I said, we're not moving the needle yet. And these are cool to have out there and it's cool for me to write about. But the reality is if we don't have people voting for or against their members of Congress based on where they're, where they stand on food, then we're not going to move the needle. And if we don't have people running for school board and, you know, school districts all over the country saying, Hey, we got to get, start with getting this crap out of our schools that we're feeding to our kids, we're poisoning them. And how do we get good food

in there so that they can be at the highest level of performance that we need them to be, to be successful. That's ultimately what the, what the real goal is, is to, you know, move the needle here politically. I mean, how do we move the needle when it seems like it's goal is, is to move the needle here politically. I mean, how do we move the needle when it seems like it's such a big needle to move? It's a system that's so big all around the country. How long will it actually take until we start to see any movement at all that is meaningful or that makes a difference? is meaningful or that makes a difference? Well, it depends, you know, on how good of a job I do and you do by, you know, uh, you know, coaching everybody up and, and really, you know, uh, teaching them what we need to do and that they can't ignore the political process. I think that's,

you know, I used to have fun with all the meditators and yogis when I went on my book tour with the mindful nation is like, you guys sit on your cushion or you get on your mat. You want to become one with the universe, except for the Washington, D.C. You know, it's like you got to engage everything, even the dark side sometimes, you know, because it's all life. You know, this is all part of the process and you've got to engage it. of the process and you've got to engage it. And so, you know, I think about you and all the people that listen to your podcasts, you know, all the people that Nick Ortner and Jessica Ortner are in contact with two New York times bestsellers. I think a Chris Carr, I think a Mark Hyman, who's Dr. Mark Hyman, who has like eight New York times bestsellers. You know, I think Wayne Dyer's big

on this and all the millions of books that he sold over his career and the years of people that he is interested in and Deepak Chopra and all these folks. We all have networks, you know, and if we all say in unison, this is how we do it. We've got to be involved in the process. You guys got to somebody got to run for school board in Delaware County. Yeah. You know, and say, this is the future. Here's the science. I mean, I look at a place like

Delaware County and you know it much, much better than I do. But this concept to people in Delaware County, I don't think would be that foreign. You know, I mean, it's like, if you go and you explain to the folks down there, like, here's why, here's how the brain works. Here's, here's diabetes. Here's this, here's that. Lay it out for them. They're intelligent people. They're going to say, yeah, this is what we need. This is the kind of shift that we need. You just got to talk to people like they're adults and not try to run political campaigns based on a bumper sticker and scare the crap out of somebody. So they vote for you and not the other guy. So I think the more we activate people,

the quicker it's going to happen. And are there grants out there that, you know, communities can receive for their schools or how does this actually work? Yeah, there are some grants with the Department of Agriculture has some grants and Tom Vilsack, who's the Secretary of Agriculture, has really been doing a good job of trying to build this thing out. You know, it's not at the level, obviously, that we need it to be. But, you know, we were able to get a grant for Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation for them to continue to build out their process. You know, I know the Department of Health and Human Services, they have grants that are able to help schools build out these things.

There's some great foundations like the Whole Foods Foundation for kids. They do a lot of work in schools where they teach teachers how to, you know, learn about health themselves. So they do like a two hour seminar for teachers and then they do salad bars in the schools and they do gardens in the schools as well. And so that's a great program. The American Heart Association too, they try to coordinate with corporate sponsors. So that would be a great place to start as well. There's just so many places out there. If you just want to get started, you can. And in the Real Food Revolution, we provide a resource section where we suggest other groups that you can and in the real food revolution we provide a resource section where we suggest other groups that you can partner up with nice okay cool yeah you know the sad thing is

that the i i think this is the the first generation that we will live shorter than our parents is that correct statistic or like hear that from you and yeah yeah so this book first generation you have to live to live not as not as long as their parents and live an unhealthier life than their parents i mean as sad as it sounds it may take more people getting sick and dying younger for the shift to happen which is really unfortunate uh or may until, you know, a certain time of that happening. But it's, it's just really sad that, you know, people, you know, I had to do this. And when I was 29, 30 years old, I had to like go and look for information because I was never taught it, you know, and my parents didn't know the specific information, you know, they taught me, you know, we were eating, you know, grilled cheese and pizza, and I thought I was healthy.

It's like because we weren't educated. So I'm not blaming my parents or family. It's ultimately my responsibility to live a healthy lifestyle. But when we're taught certain things every day or we're not provided information for us to make choices based on information, it's a lot more challenging. So some of these, you know, some of these may be obvious, obviously, but can you give listeners some nutrition related recommendations, you know, already that you have? Yeah, I, I, um, as I start the book out

with my fetish for chicken wings and ice cream, I love that how you start that too. Well, I mean, you know, I just, I don't want to, I'm not a vegan. I'm not a vegetarian. I love that, how you start that too. Well, I mean, you know, I just, I don't want to, I'm not a vegan, I'm not a vegetarian, I'm not, you know, and those are fine and, you know, whatever, whatever works for you. But I don't, I'm not trying to tell people what to eat. I just want to say, hey, here's kind of like why we're having these problems and the direction we need to move in and everybody can do a little bit better in order to help us build this system out. I just, I think you try to eat real food, you know, you try to eat fruits and vegetables and you try to, you know, limit the, I try to limit the carbs. And I grew up Italian. So, you know, that is super, super hard, you know, when you smell,

you know, home cooked bread and, and, um, and, you know, try to eat lean meats and really, you know, that kind of thing. You know, we do a shake in the morning, uh, that Dr. Hyman recommends in some of his books with, you know, frozen berries and, uh, chia seeds and flax seeds and stuff that, you know, keep you moving and almond milk and just try to limit that stuff. But, you know, my stepson last night, we, we went around town looking for ice cream, you know, he's doing a good job in school and he wanted a little ice cream. So, you know, we didn't find it. Fortunately, everything was closed, but, but, you know, you, you, you know, it's, it's hard to just completely cut it off, but I think it's important that, you know, everything done in moderation.

And I like, you know, kind of what Michael Pollan says about, you know, eating plants and eating real food. And then the thing I cite in the book is if you are getting your dinner through your car window, it's probably not real food. Interesting. Very interesting. I have a note here that I wanted to ask you about. I might be backtracking a little bit, but is it true we are developing robo bees? And I saw this in your book. And I love, I'd love to learn more about what is a robo bee and why are they being created and is it true that it's actually happening? Well, one of the problems with plowing of land to farm more and more is we are eliminating the plants.

I think it's like milkweed, plants that are essential for bees. weed, plants that are essential for bees. And the pesticides that we're putting on our crops are killing a lot of bee colonies. And so we are seeing a huge reduction in bee colonies. There's always some reduction in winter times, but there's significantly more the last few years. But there's significantly more the last few years, and they're really starting to kind of come to the understanding that it might be all of the pesticides that we're using. And so instead of stopping the current system of getting rid of our bee colonies, you know, Harvard's researching robo bees that could maybe be set to do the cross pollination that bees do. Now, so, you know, I'd make a joke in the book it's like we're we're ruining the dirt too you know what are we going to come up with robo dirt you know it's like let's fix the problem that's causing this you know and and not go try to figure out robo bees let's figure out how to stop plowing the plants and spraying the bees with with poison that's killing the colonies so you know you gotta you gotta stay semi light-hearted on this or you

get depressed yeah that's so funny well what's your vision for this over the next you know five ten years what would you love to see happen obviously it's one year at a time one school at a time one family at a time, one school at a time, one family at a time type of mentality. But what's your vision for 10 years? You've been in Congress for how long now? 12 years. 12 years. And what do you want to see in the next 10 years? Well, I think a growing awareness, first and foremost, of this being an issue and people really starting to understand. You know, I saw John Oliver, a clip of him making this huge seven minute joke about sugar and Halloween. And it was so educational about like how much sugar we eat, about 75 pounds a year.

And I think when you start seeing it, you know, we saw McDonald's was down about 30% in the last quarter for profits. So that kind of growing awareness really is what I'm looking at, because once people become more and more aware, once soccer moms in Delaware County become more and more aware, that's when you really start shifting the needle on being able to make the change. And then I think we need a national initiative. Like we built national highways. We need to say, okay, you know, we've got all of these cities like Youngstown. We're very, very big and now have a lot of dilapidated homes. Let's put people to work and take down these homes and build out an urban egg program

in the government and, you know, in all of these cities. I mean, how great would that be if we took all of these cities that are having crime infested and everything else and just knock down the crappy houses and put up guards, you know, and got kids at a very young age involved in growing things instead of killing things. And I think that, to me, is really what's going to be transformational. But ultimately, in the next few years, we've got to raise awareness and connect the dots for people that it's going to be very hard to change the system if these products are subsidized by the government and then get those people out and involved in the process. And in 10 years, I hope that, you know, we're driving through downtowns where, you know,

these old buildings are filled with gardens. You know, they're 10, 20, 30 stories high and they're filled with, you know, solar panels and water irrigation systems and they're growing food right in the heart of our downtowns and distributing to, you know, people and putting people to work in our downtowns and get people moving back into the downtowns centers of art and culture. And I think this is what people want, you know, and that's the other thing in Ohio, we have 88 counties.

And in every county, there's a beautiful downtown square. There's a courthouse, you know, there's an old movie theater. I think people are ready for that kind of connection again. And it's going to take, you know, the government can't do everything and I don't want it to do everything, but it should catalyze some of these things and bring private investment and help us build the system out. Yeah, I love it. I've got two final questions for you that I want to ask, but I just want to let people know to make sure to go check out this book, The Real Food Revolution, Healthy Eating, Green Groceries, and the Return of the American Family Farm. Lots of great resources in here, stories, statistics, ways you can take action.

At the end of each chapter. There's actionable items and what you can do to take action. So it's a great book, a lot of great endorsements in here. So make sure everyone goes and checks this out, The Real Food Revolution by Congressman Tim Ryan. And we'll make sure to have everything linked up in the show notes where people can get the book and check out your website as well. And you're on Twitter also, Twitter and Facebook and all out your website as well. And you're on Twitter also, right? Twitter and Facebook and all the places online? Yep.

Cool. So we'll link everything up there. A couple final questions. One is what are you most grateful for in your life recently? That's easy, man. I just had a baby. Wow. We just had a baby.

Yeah, so I've got a four-month- um, Brady and, uh, he's just rocked my world, man. He's just been, uh, he's been phenomenal and I have two great stepkids and I didn't really know them until they were five or six. So I've got a baby, you know, that looks up at me and, you know, then spits it up on me, you know, and it's been, I'm just super, super grateful for, for him. So this is your first child. Yeah. My wife and I together. Yeah. It's our first one. So it's been great. I've got a guy, I got a great wife. Thank you. I've got a beautiful wife who's super supportive and, you know, she's doing just a great job with the kids. And, you know, I get, I run around and talk about this stuff and I come home and she's, you know, putting together, you know, uh, healthy

food and healthy dinners and trying to really, you know, help us live this kind of life that we want to give to our kids. So I'm just super appreciative for my entire family, really. That's awesome. Final question. And before I ask you the final question, which is a question I ask everyone, I just want to acknowledge you, Tim, for all of the incredible work you're doing. Again, it's kind of shocking to know you're a congressman. And I'm proud to know that you're from Ohio, even though you're not from Delaware County, where I grew up.

It's all good because you're from the same state, the heart of it all. And I want to acknowledge you for what you're doing to your efforts and your energy to educate all of us and to educate school systems, families, children on mindfulness, which again, I'm like shocked that you wrote a book about this, but it's so awesome that you did because it's something that's been so powerful in my life recently. And also healthy eating, two very important topics and distinctions in life for living a great life in my mind. If we're not aware of our feelings and able to understand ourselves in certain situations and be able to react in situations that connect with people and understand their feelings, then we're missing a big part of

life. And if we're not eating healthy and educating the ones we love on how to live a healthy lifestyle with the foods we put in our body, then we're breaking down our bodies and we're going to be very uncomfortable and unhappy with what we're creating inside of ourselves from both things, our emotions and our physical bodies. So, so proud to know you're from Ohio and that you're doing all that you can to make this more prominent information and public to the world. So thank you for that. And I want to ask you the final question.

It's what is your definition of greatness? Oh, that's a good one. I would say increasing love in the world. Perfect. If you've increased love in the world, you are great. And I think that's why you think of your grandparents and or parents or someone that you know who wasn't on TV and didn't have podcasts and didn't write books. And why were they so special to you? And they taught you about love, you know. And so if you've increased love in the world, you're great.

I love it. Well, thank you for that definition, Tim. And thank you for, again, all that you're up to and all that you're doing. And hopefully we'll get to meet someday in Ohio. That'd be awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it.

Go Buckeyes. Go Bucs. All right. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did enjoy it, make sure to go back to lewishouse.com slash 102 for episode 102. And leave me a comment on what you thought about this interview, this episode. Also, make sure to check out The Real Food Revolution.

We're going to have that book linked up at the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 102 and how you can connect with Tim and all the resources that he talked about in this interview. So make sure to check it out. Share it with your friends. Spread this message because it's important for us to live healthy lives. We've had a lot of episodes on here with health coaches and nutritionists and elite athletes who live healthy lifestyles. And it's important for us to serve our bodies and our minds with good foods. If we're not doing that, we're setting ourselves up to fail in our lives and our relationships and the careers we want and

creating great things. So you've really got to work on fine tuning your body and your mind so that you have optimal levels of performance running when you want to create something in the world. So again, make sure to check this out. Give a shout out to Tim. Let him know that you liked it as well. And I appreciate you guys so much for being here, so much for listening, for subscribing. If you have yet to be a subscriber, please go to iTunes.com slash School of Greatness and click on the little subscribe button so you can get updated each week. We're posting twice a week right now on the School of Greatness podcast.

And I'm going to continue to have some mega, huge, awesome, inspiring guests on. So again, subscribe. Leave us a review over there on iTunes as well. Subscribe on SoundCloud and over at my website, lewishouse.com, so you can get notified each week with the latest freebies, goodies, insights, and tips. Again, thank you guys so much for being here on the School of Greatness podcast. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. ស្រូវនប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប�ាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Thank you. you