Robert Paterson's Weblog

Watching this with interest #paleo

School and Pop - A Wellness Battleground

Sometime this summer PEI will announce its Wellness Strategy. What will it say? 

If we start at getting our sugar and HFCS consumption down it will be a great start. School is a battleground where there is room to act. 

We could ban Pop and all sugary drinks at School. This includes Low fat milk, nearly as much sugar as pop. Juice which has as much and all so called sports drinks. These kind of drinks are the mother-lode of sugar and HFCS delivered to our children. They are the #1 source of calories for boys.

By doing this we put the issue publicly on the table. The rock in that pond will ripple across the Island. This way we will get everyone talking which is surely what we need?

There is precedent in the US where schools are starting to ban Pop. (link to more NYT)

Although schools have been removing sodas and other sugary drinks from vending machines for the last few years, the Faulkton district is one of the first in the country to institute a ban, according to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which works to reduce childhood obesity.

Cold, bubbly, sweet soda, long the American Champagne, is becoming product non grata in more places these days. Schools are removing sugary soft drinks from vending machines at a faster pace, and local governments from San Antonio to Boston are stepping up efforts to take them out of public facilities as the nation’s concerns about obesity and its costs grow.

Last year, the average American drank slightly under two sodas a day, a drop in per capita consumption of about 16 percent since the peak in 1998, according to Beverage Digest, a trade publication.

And its not just health but brain fucntioning itself. You get stupid by consuming a lot of HFCS.  (link)

""Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We're not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants," explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA's Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center. "We're concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative."

Then we will all see the wider issue of sugar and HFCS in the health of the Province (link)

How many times do you ask (or get asked), “Why do some cultures eat carbs like rice and not get the same diseases we do?”  A quick glance at China, for example, sheds some light on this.  They may eat rice, but they sure aren’t producing (or eating) much sugar, on average.  Furthermore, the distribution of sugar consumption within the country is wide.  In other words, while the few wealthy people do eat amounts of sugar approaching Western amounts (along with other simple refined grains), the vast majority of non-wealthy inhabitants do not.  So while some have asserted that animal products and fats are the clear culprits explaining the different disease patterns in Asia, they’re missing this important point:  Given the absence of mechanistic and evolutionary reasons why animal products and fats are bad for us, is it more likely that sugar consumption is the single biggest factor differentiating the state of disease across these populations?

 

 

What eggs do you eat - and why should you care? Why Pasture is what I eat

Watch The Story of an Egg on PBS. See more from The Lexicon of Sustainability.

The Real Food Pyramid

Source: eugenia.queru.com via E on Pinterest

Does this grab you? I need your help - please

I need some help in starting my "book" with a chapter that will get you interested.

I have junked the idea of writing a big book on the shift from the machine model to the natural model. Instead I am writing maybe 15 mini books - each about 7,000 to 10,000 words - that I will publish using Kindle. Many of the titles start with the Phrase - "You don't need a...." Early titles include - A Banker, A Teacher, a Doctor, Supermarket, An Office, Moses as your leader - In each I show how the small connected in a human network can offer us a much better life than the indentured life we live today.

The first book is "You don't need a Job" It is a manual for how the small, the personal and the trustworthy connected by a network will replace the Machine. Here is my planned opening. Do you find your self here?

The Good News

 Millions of young people cannot get a job. Millions of middle aged people are losing their jobs. Are we all just losers? Are employers bad people? Why is this happening?

I think I can help you answer these questions.  The old industrial economy is dying and a new economy based on very different rules is emerging. I will do my best to show you a context for this: what the new rules are and how you can best prepare to make the shift yourself.

So here is the good news. New World 2.0 brings humanity back to work. You can be yourself again. 

Today if you are artistic or creative, it is hard to make a living. In the new economy, you will move from the edge of the economy to the centre. You will grow the food, write the books, make the films, write the news, make the machines, make the pots, the furniture and even the cars.  You will be the “Maker”. Millions of you will replace the factory for most of what we need can now be made by the small and the local. 

But of course we “Makers” cannot do any of this on our own. We need a Pragmatist to make what we do work and we need a Connector to link us into the platforms and markets that will give us the scale and power that the small need to be powerful.

Today if you are a Pragmatist, you are a replaceable cog in the machine. But in the new economy you are the critical partner to the Maker. She cannot be successful without you. 

You design the processes.You run the logistics. You manage the people. You manage the inventory. You make sure the bills and the taxes are paid on time. You follow up with customers. You are the essential partner in small and human organizations where you talents, once seen are fully recognized. 

But a small organization that has a great Maker and a great Pragmatist is still not designed to be successful. You both need to be connected to the larger economy and you need to be connected to other small operations.

As a Connector you have a special affinity for people. There is no place for you in the machine. There is no place for caring. You have a need to help others be successful. You make it safe for people to get together. You can help them see things anew. You can inspire Makers to design new platforms and Pragmatists to make them work

You are one of these three types of people. You cannot be a machine part anymore. You have to be a person. You know that you are an interactive part of the world around you. You know that there is a better way. You have no choice. You have to be part of this transition. 

You will be able to do this because, you will have access to super empowering tools that are as good as any that big business has now. You will use new innovative processes that big business will not be able to use. You will learn faster from each other than big business can. You will sell directly to other people. You will know the people who buy from you and they will know and care for you too. Your customers will work for you as marketers and funders. You will no longer have to move to find work. You will work from home or close to it. You will get time back. You will get your life back.

Today with the network, small and personal organizations can compete directly with huge institutions. 

So our first step is to stop worrying about that job. And we can do that because it is going away anyway.

Here are the planned list of titles:

You Don’t need a Banker Why a new credit system is emerging that can help you when the banks cannot.

You Don’t Need a Teacher Why you will find better and less expensive ways to learn outside of school and university.

You Don’t Need a Doctor Why medicine does not make us healthy and why your own actions will make you healthy.

You Don’t Need a Supermarket Why supporting a local food will boost your local economy and your health.

You Don’t Need an Office Why CoWorking offers the artisan the social support system and the network to help make the transition. 

You Don’t Need a Stock Broker Why Investing in yourself, your family, your community and your home will pay off better than stocks and bonds

You Don’t Need Moses as your Leader Why a leader that sets the cultural climate will get better results than one who wants to direct

You don’t need to be Efficient Here we see how by using the rules of networks we can have very EFFECTIVE organizations that will out compete EFFICIENT ones. 

You don’t need to own everything Why sharing and using networks will cut your costs and make you more free

Supporting these manuals will be a series of even more detailed manuals that will share my hard earned best practices and mistakes.

How to give up all the foods that you have loved To take charge of your health will demand that you give up sugar, breads and many foods you adore. Robin and I will share how we did this and all the mistakes we made too.

How to be natural parents and Leaders Here we go even deeper and see the optimal rules for parenting so that our children can develop to their optimal potential and how these rules apply to work too. Natural Leadership.

How do Human Networks Work and why they will destroy machine alternatives.

 

 

Local Food - It's war

 

Stand up for real food! Food grown in a safe and authentic way. Eat real food. Be healthy and prosper!

The Dogs we love and lose - The lesson?

This is my dear boy Jay - aged 3 in the prime of his life.

It has been a little over a year since I had to put him down. Every morning for a year, I would cry as I walked our traditional walks with Mildred. She did not miss him at all! I ached with the loss.

But in the last month, the ache has gone. Of course I miss him but not with pain.

Is this a lesson that dogs teach us? How to lose the ones we love the most?

PEI - Ready to Rock and Roll - #startuppei #startupcanada

PEI punches way above its weight - Why?

Few places in Canada could be further away from the main markets of North America. Few places have less resources than PEI.  But I found last week, as I travelled with StartUp Canada around PEI, that our entrepreneurs are doing very well. 

Many have operations, such as Marks Work Warehouse and Island Abby Foods, that are amongst the best in class. Many have businesses, such as BioVectra and DME, that have found a niche that makes them unrivaled in the continent. Many are astonishingly novel like Thinking Big and Screenscape.

Why should small businesses in a small place be so competitive?

It's in the Island DNA

PEI is too small and too far away to attract large mature businesses from away. So business on PEI is naturally always small and owner operated. And because PEI itself is small, PEI business has always had to find a place in the larger markets off Island.  It's been like this for 200 years. 

As Duncan Shaw told me about his family, “Few people ever had a job. We come from a long line of pioneers, farmers, fishers and small business owners."  

Potatoes were run to the Caribbean in exchange for the official cargo of molasses and the unofficial cargo of rum. Fish was run to Boston. Lumber to the UK. Fox fur and lobster to Upper Canada. 

So like their forefathers, Lorraine MacAulay had to start her Mosquito repellent business by breaking into the large national stores. Peter Toombs had to sell his brewing equipment all over the world. They had to begin by being very clever and persistent.  

So how did they get so smart?

It's not school - It's Family and Mentors

We think that having great schools are key to developing smart people. But most of the entrepreneurs I met last week told me that they did not fit into school culture. Some never finished school. Others had to force themselves to finish. Dico Reijers took 7 years to do his BA. 

All told me that culture of entrepreneurship was set at home. All told me that they grew up in a family where running your own business was the normal. The dinner table was their classroom. 

Some entrepreneurs went to business school. But for most, the best business lessons were taught by mentors. They learned the old fashioned way, like an apprentice, from advice given by a person who lived their life. Entrepreneurs helping Entrepreneurs. 

I asked all of them about whether school needed to be changed. None of them dismissed school. They acknowledged that not everyone should be or even could be an entrepreneur. But they hoped that the school system would see that it could help by identifying the characteristics of kids, like Matt below, who were destined to be entrepreneurs. Then the entrepreneurs could help. 

For entrepreneurship on PEI is a personal and individual thing.  All the older PEI entrepreneurs I spoke to want to reach out and offer more of their time as mentors to the young up and coming new class of rebels. What they want is a better way to connect.

If PEI stays true to its business DNA - we will do well

Large bureaucratic structures are dying. Youth unemployment in Canada and the US is over 20% and in Europe is close to 50%. Many middle aged workers are being made redundant. Pensions that many have relied are being diminished. For societies that have more embraced the job and the bureaucracy, the transition will be very hard. 

But here on PEI, I see now that we could adjust quite well. The modern PEI entrepreneur is already competing in the new networked global marketplace. They are hiring. They are growing. They are doing what Island business people have always done. 

All they need to do now that is different is to work together.

If the PEI entrepreneurs get together and work with each other to boost the local ecosystem.

If those in government do the same. Then this little Island could do very well. 

This insight is the great gift that the visit of StartUp Canada brought. They held up the mirror to who we really are. Now we must not waste this gift. Time to act . 

It’s up to us now.

PS Next week I will start a 2 week series on what I have learned from our wonderful entrepreneurs

The Awakening of the PEI Entrepreneur Community #startuppei #startupcanada

The Earthquake that is StartUp Canada (Victoria Lennox and Cyprian Szlalankiewicz) - has just left PEI. 

I will be starting a series on what happened next week when I get the videos of our interviews. But here is a summary of what I saw take place.

In short the Entrepreneur community has started to see itself. Until now most of its members had their heads down and fully focused on their own bit. Now they are starting to see the ecosystem and how they can help each other. Now the supporting people in government also has seen the full power of this sector and they too see that it is better to work together to support the system as a whole.

Silos = not good. Ecosystem = Good!

Trying to bring big mature business to PEI = sub optimal. Supporting local entrpeneurs - Optimal!

Looking to government for everything = sub optimal. Looking to the community - Best!

Here is a more detailed summary:

10^th, Startup Canada traveled across Prince Edward Island to connect with and bring together the province’s entrepreneurial community. With each meeting and event that was hosted, one message began to ring loud and clear: PEI’s entrepreneurial spirit is awakening and with the right tools, resources, and mentors in place, it has the potential to thrive.

Startup Canada is a grassroots, entrepreneur-led initiative to support and inspire entrepreneurship across the country. The Startup Canada team is on a six-month tour to celebrate entrepreneurship, identify key challenges facing Canadian startups, and ignite new community-led solutions to those challenges. In PEI, the Tour engaged more than 300 Islanders, and more than 200 entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors, including well-known Island entrepreneurs Ray Murphy, President of Murphy’s Pharmacies, John Rowe, President of Island Abbey Foods and Timeless Technologies and Regis Duffy, Founder of Diagnostic Chemicals Ltd. and Chairman of BioVectra.

“This week we met with artisans, farmers, and successful technology, real-estate and manufacturing entrepreneurs who are powering the Island by creating jobs and innovating new products,” said Victoria Lennox, Startup Canada Co-Founder. “The importance of getting entrepreneurship into schools, creating a education track for entrepreneurship, supporting the mentorship of students, and creating a one-stop service shop for entrepreneurs, were some of the salient ideas on how to create a more prosperous and sustainable PEI.”

The PEI leg of the Tour began with a Charlottetown Town Hall facilitated by Startup Canada Board Member and Founder of Relish Gourmet Burgers, Rivers Corbett. Together, more than 70 entrepreneurs began building the provincial vision for PEI’s entrepreneur community. Rob Paterson, an entrepreneur who has lived on the Island for more than 17 years, said he has never seen such a mixture of passion, vibrancy and forward-thinking in one room. 

“I saw a giant awakening where the local community of entrepreneurs and policy-makers can now see themselves as key to our economic future,” said Paterson. “Many entrepreneurs told me that, until now, they had been too busy to see that they were part of a large sector here – a sector that creates most of the real jobs for Islanders and a sector that offers our young people a real future. I think Startup Canada’s visit is inspiration for the leaders to start working together to help newcomers to the sector and a catalyst for the key policy makers to start seeing entrepreneurship as central in their plans to create a better economy for PEI.”

Another action item from this week is to develop a province-wide communications strategy to increase awareness of entrepreneurship as a viable career path. This strategy will include the training, education, and convening of the PEI education sector to equip Islanders with the knowledge, skills and networks required to create entrepreneurial schools, colleges and universities. 

Throughout the week, spotlight interviews were conducted with local entrepreneurs including, VITRak Systems Inc., Island Flow, ScreenScape, Prince Edward Distilleries and a number of others.

“I think the Startup Canada PEI Tour was a fantastic success,” said Duncan Shaw, Startup Canada’s PEI Patron and owner of the Summerside Storm. “We saw new energy in experienced entrepreneurs and great excitement in younger people focused on the future. It’s great to see so many people dreaming big and focused on making those dreams a reality.”

Alongside Startup Canada, the PEI BioAlliance co-hosted the PEI events.

“We’ve been able to celebrate the tremendous spirit of entrepreneurship that lives and breathes in PEI, and we have provided a window for the next generation of entrepreneurs to see what their future might look like in the exciting and rewarding world of running their own businesses,” said Rory Francis, Executive Director of the PEI BioAlliance 

Next week Startup Canada is moving to Ontario to visit Toronto, Waterloo, Windsor and York Region, before heading back to Atlantic Canada to round off the month of May in New Brunswick. 

Funding assistance for the PEI Startup Canada tour was provided by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Innovation PEI. The PEI Startup Canada Committee is made up of the PEI BioAlliance, ACOA, Innovation PEI, The Greater Charlottetown & Area Chamber of Commerce, PEI Newcomers Association, Resources West, ITAP, PEI Business Women’s Association, CDC, Mi’kmaq Confederacy, UPEI, and Junior Achievement.

Startup Canada is proudly sponsored by Microsoft, Gowlings, Ernst & Young, Best Western Hotels, Artik Promotions, KA Media, VideoBooth, PubliAir and OTTN.

 

You will probably get cancer - but you don't have to

PEI has the highest cancer mortality rates in Canada. As you will see from the stats below, you as an Islander will have a very good chance of getting cancer and dying from it. As the husband of a cancer person, I can also remind you that the treatment is as bad as dying.  As a citizen, I also worry as the costs of treatment are very high. 

But we give only lip service to prevention.

Nothing was said to my wife about how she might live her life so to reduce her chances of a recurrence  - other than to keep her porto cath (a device put in a vein in her chest to make it easy to give her more chemo) and to take a drup Tamoxifen that has brutal side effects. 

Lung Cancer rates are down nationally. No thanks to medicine. It's all due to the public health message getting through. It is fewer people smoking.

We will get all cancer rates down, if we do the same for the underlying causes. We have to get serious about the lifestyle issues that drive the other cancers.  We have to get the facts right about what we must stop doing to have a better chance.

It is not your genes and things that are outside of your control that give you cancer. It is food and other choices. When we come to grips with this, we will have to same success that we are seeing with smoking.

Lecture over - here is the data. You can choose to be a cancer patient or not. 

Overall, though, the picture still remains quite alarming. The province continues to have the highest incidence rate among men and the highest mortality rates among women compared to the rest of the country.

The Canadian Cancer Society estimates that there will be 186,400 new cases of cancer in the country this year with 75,700 deaths anticipated.

About 880 Islanders will be diagnosed with cancer and approximately 380 will die from the disease in 2012. Of these newly diagnosed cases, more than half will be prostate, lung, colorectal and breast cancer.

The Canadian Cancer Society reports that if this trend continues, 40 percent of women and 45 percent of men will be diagnosed with cancer sometime in their life and approximately one in four will die from the disease.

Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of death for Canadian men and women and Islanders are no exception. P.E.I. has the second highest mortality rate among men for lung cancer.

In 2012 an estimated 60 men and 45 women will die of lung cancer in this province and another 105 Islanders will be diagnosed with the disease.

Dr. Dagny Dryer, a medical oncologist at the P.E.I. Cancer Treatment Centre, is concerned by the overall high cancer rate in the province.

She notes a "significant problem'' exists with prostate cancer in P.E.I. and she is also struck by the number of new cases of breast cancer that are very advanced.