Introducing Conference Speakers

WEforum Health and Wellness Conference

Eat For Life: How the Power of

Food Can Heal Your Body

Meet Kate Sherwood

Culinary Director , Teacher, Recipe Developer, World Traveler

Kate Sherwood’s approach to cooking is informed by her love of traveling. Living abroad over the years, she experienced firsthand how many cultures are shaped by food and the natural surroundings. In countries like Italy, Brazil, and Japan, people eat with the seasons and cook with a variety of flavorful ingredients and techniques. Natural movement is part of their daily life. Activities like cycling to work, walking to the grocery store and gardening making going to the gym unnecessary.

Kate seeks to help people find enjoyable and practical ways to incorporate healthy eating and natural movement into their own lives, rather than focusing on a specific diet or exercise.

What's in Kate Sherwood's Self-Care Pantry?

First, she mutes her devices when doing creative work like food styling or recipe development. This allows her to focus without interruptions, letting the work flow.

Second, when challenges arise, she let’s things percolate for a bit. When possible, she takes her dad’s advice to “sleep on it.”

Third, she enjoys walking meditation because nature is restorative and helps her restore focus.

Fourth, she likes immersive exercise like spinning because it allows her to get lost in the moment.

Meet D r. Ron Weiss M.D.

Lifestyle Medicine Physician , Professor, Botanist, and Farmer

Dr. Ron Weiss is convinced that conventional medicine still focuses too much on sustaining chronic disease than preventing and reversing it. He is a primary care doctor whose medical practice is located on a 342-acre, ecologically sustainable farm that boasts its own farmer’s market and even a herding dog named Maya. It’s his sacred place.

His mission at Ethos Farm is twofold: to offer an evidence-based, food-as-medicine approach to healing and preventing chronic illness; and, to grow nutrient-dense produce and nurture the bio-microbial life in its soil.

The regular produce we buy at the store comes from conventional farms that use chemical sprays. Ethos Farm uses chemical-free regenerative farming methods. This allows the good bacteria to thrive, which benefits the soil and the plants, and passes their protective benefits along to humans as well.

What's in Dr. Weiss' self-care pantry?

First, he cultivates the 4 pillars of health: Diet, movement, emotional health, and sleep.

Second, he reinforces gratitude and finds the beauty that is all around us with mindful practice every morning before he gets up and every night before bed.

Third, he tries to pull back and focus on the present and not devolve into thoughts of the past or speculation about the future, because many stressful situations are often beyond our control.

Eat For Life:

How The Power of Food Can Heal Your Body

WEforum presents:

Ron Finley, Gangsta Gardener, South Central LA "Change Your Food, Change Your Life"

Ron Finley is a fixer. He grew up in South Central L.A. where fresh produce was a 45 minute car ride away, but when he replaced an abandoned strip outside his house with an edible garden, the city fined him. He even faced a possible arrest warrant.

Ron thinks that children shouldn’t have to choose between consuming fried, fattening foods and unlawfully gardening for their own health and survival. “Funny thing is, drive-thrus are killing more people than drive-bys.” Ron’s creed is that food is both the problem and the solution, and today he is dedicated to cleaning up the mess.

In his TED Talk, viewed to-date by over three million people, Ron declared that “Growing your own food is like printing your own money.” He is an artist, a gangsta gardener and a community leader inspiring communities across America to become self-sufficient, grow their own food and replace food deserts with food forests.

Living in a landscape filled with beauty should be neither a privilege nor a luxury. People thrive when their senses are awakened and nourished by beauty.