Jo Robinson: Eating on the Wild Side

Jo Robinson is a bestselling author and investigative journalist who has spent the past 15 years scouring research journals for information on how we can restore vital nutrients to our fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy products. The nutritional losses to our diet did not begin 50 or 100 years ago, she has learned, but thousands of years earlier when our long-ago ancestors abandoned our native diet of wild plants and game and began to domesticate animals and grow their own food. Unwittingly, the choices they made about how to feed their livestock and what to plant in their gardens reduced the amount of vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, healthy fats, and antioxidants in the human diet. The losses have continued up to the present, which has compromised our ability to fight disease and enjoy optimum health. With the publication of her new book, Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health, she shows us how to restore the lost nutrients to our fruits and vegetables. Jo has talked about her New York Times-bestselling book on CBS This Morning, Sanjay Gupta on CNN, Huffington Post Live, 60 Minutes, and NPR's Fresh Air and The Splendid Table. Excerpts or articles about Eating on the Wild Side have been featured in more than ten magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Prevention Magazine, Oprah's “O” magazine, Redbook, Mother Earth News, and more. In addition to researching the health benefits of wild-like fruits and vegetables, Jo has been growing the exceptional varieties she recommends in her demonstration garden on Vashon Island, Washington State. She maintains that growing the most nutritious fruits and vegetables in backyard gardens and small-scale market farms is the wave of the future.

Jo Robinson is the author of the new bestselling book Eating on the Wild Side, currently on the New York Times bestseller list. This is the first book to reveal the nutritional history of our fruits and vegetables. Starting with the wild plants that were central to our original diet, she describes how 400 generations of farmers have unwittingly squandered a host of essential fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. New research shows that these losses have made us more vulnerable to our most troubling conditions and diseases — obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation and dementia. Jo Robinson is an investigative journalism and the author or co-author of 14 books of nonfiction, including international bestseller The Omega Diet. Her research on pastured animals has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Mother Jones, USA Today, Men's Health, the San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications. Her book, Pasture Perfect, explored the many benefits of raising animals on pasture. She lives and works on Vashon Island, a rural island close to Seattle, Washington.

Recorded Friday, December, 14, 2013