Walking in Manayunk

The Manayunk Arts Festival has to be one of the finest walking craft shows around. If you love to people watch, being at the festival is like having front row seats at a Broadway show. Today, I paid attention to two things...the food available to eat...and people my age. If food is thy medicine, some of the people I saw were under medicated with food, because what I saw was pretty amazing. People wheezing from their perception of a long walk.

I live in a bubble. I work at Whole Foods Market where I always see people buying the best of foods. And I go to the gym where everyone has the same goal. If I am out on a trail, I am woven between cyclists and racewalkers. So, what I am trying to say is that my life vista is pretty healthy. Take me out of my environment, and the real world looks really different.

I counted eleven people walking with lifestyle canes...not the post-op kind in aluminum. The canes I saw had personality...they matched one lady's outfit, some were engraved with initials. They were fancy and a few were even hand carved. I think that their lives were touched by a neuro-muscular disease. And what struck me most, is that most people were about my age.

The food out on the festival trail did not match a healthy profile of any kind. Blocks away, you could smell the aroma (if that is what you want to call it) of grease being fried. You could smell beer. No smoothie trucks. No vegan stands, just lots of fattening street food. And lots of morbidly obese people eating foods and sitting on benches because I heard someone say, "I need to rest every block." I wanted to say, "Lady, put down the funnel cake and no one gets hurt."

Here it is...my preachy moment. It took be almost sixty years to figure this out. Food is your medicine. And, I suggest a plant-strong, oil free, sugar free, salt free way of life will make you feel like one million euros. So easy to do. Easiest thing I have ever done. It might just fall into the miraculous category.

Street festivals need to add a vegan component. They need to get food vendors who haven't come back from the state fair in Texas. I have a friend with MS, a friend my age. We've been friends for many years. Her MS is monitored with diet--gluten free and vegan. She has surprised everyone with the stability of her disease. Hippocrates was right.

Before I left for the festival, I treated myself to this great smoothie, which is a mainstay of what I have everyday. Hope you enjoy. No one ever gets hurt eating good and nutritious foods.

Spinach Smoothie

1 cup of green grapes
2 cups of fresh leaf spinach
1/4 organic lime, leave peel on
2 cups of ice
2 dates

Throw into the Vitamix, use the tamper to get all of the ice chopped. This will be the consistency of a water ice. Drink with a straw.

Power to the plants!