Introducing Conference Speakers

WEforum Health and Wellness Conference

Eat For Life: How the Power of

Food Can Heal Your Body

Over 25 Speakers, 100 Vendors, Luncheon & Vendor Fair

WEforum Health and Wellness Conference

November 14, 2018

Bell Works

101 Crawfords Corner, Holmdel, New Jersey

WEforumGroup.org Info@WEforumGroup.org

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Meet Diane Larson

Home Horticulturist

Diane Larson is the County Extension Horticulturist for the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Monmouth County, which partners with governmental agencies to improve the public understanding of the relationship between agriculture and open space, as well as the general and environmental vitality of the county.

After earning her Bachelor of Science degree in Plant Science and Landscape Planning from Rutgers, Cook College, she transitioned into the university’s Cooperative Extension, where she has been helping gardeners for over 20 years. Diane works daily to train master gardeners for the help-line, a volunteer-run call center that helps both commercial and public gardeners with their horticultural questions.

Diane also promotes the idea of eating fresh, local food and sticking to what is in season, reminding us that, “you are what you eat.” She maintains a healthy lifestyle by getting outside almost every day, especially to get her hands in the dirt! Although gardening is her passion, living on a lagoon has inspired her love for the water. She enjoys boating, as well as observing aquatic flora and wildlife in her free time.

Diane encourages everyone, including those of us with a busy lifestyle, to find the time to volunteer. Her big message reflects the many accomplishments of those she trains: “Through helping others, we are also helping ourselves in the long run.”

Meet Tom Matulewicz

Master Gardener

“Say hello to someone you pass on the street, even if they don’t want to hear it,” is sage advice from Rutgers Master Gardener, Tom Matulewicz of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Monmouth County. Tom is a 1999 graduate of the first Master Gardener class given in Monmouth County.

Since then he has also become credentialed as a Master Composter, Rain Garden Specialist, Rain Garden Specialist Trainer and Rain Barrel Workshop Instructor. Tom’s affable nature contributes to his success in training both commercial and residential gardeners and assisting his pupils in the design and layout of the rain gardens. You can also find Tom giving local talks within Monmouth County.

Tom stresses the importance of regular garden maintenance for keeping them thriving. He also says that the key to maintaining a healthy personal lifestyle is to “have a spouse that cooks healthy meals!” Although Tom eats mostly vegetarian and walks “everywhere” these days, this is in stark contrast to his former ways, prior to discovering an artery blockage a few years back. Eating fresh, light meals that are heavy on the veggies keeps Tom feeling energetic, while promoting his heart health. “Don’t slow yourself down with heavy meals,” Tom stresses. “After a vegetarian meal, the microbes in your body are doing their magic!”

When Tom and his wife Sue aren’t getting their hands dirty, they enjoy giving back to the community by volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Tom has been volunteering for the organization for many years and doesn’t plan to slow down any time soon.

Meet Our Conference Keynote Speakers

Give Yourself the Haute Treatment:

The chef and the doctor are teaming up to discuss

" The Food-Immune Connection"

Join Celebrity Chef and Restaurateur,

David Bouley and Dr. Susan Blum

for lunch and add a whole-body

perspective to nutritional sustenance,

disease prevention and wellness!

David Bouley is the Owner and Executive Chef of Bouley Test Kitchen and Bouley at Home, an interactive health- and flavor-driven cultural culinary center in Manhattan, as well as the living events space Bouley Botanical.

He is an award-winning, American-born chef, whose signature culinary style is as devoted to healthy, high-quality ingredients as it is to his classical training. Multiple Bouley restaurants have been awarded Michelin stars, and he is a winner of the James Beard Foundation Awards, for Outstanding Restaurant, Outstanding Chef, Best Chefs in America, and Who’s Who of Food & Beverage. His flagship restaurant, Bouley, is one of only a handful of restaurants to ever be awarded 4-stars by the New York Times.

Chef David Bouley

Internationally renowned chef and restaurateur, Bouley at Home and Test Kitchen

Luncheon Keynote:

"The Chef and the Doctor Series: The Food-Immune Connection"

Dr. Susan Blum

Author and Preventative Medicine and Chronic Disease Specialist

Luncheon Keynote:

"The Chef and the Doctor Series: The Food-Immune Connection"

Lecture:

"Using Food as Medicine to Fight Inflammation"

Dr. Susan Blum is the Founder and Director of the Blum Center for Health in Rye Brook, NY. She is also a member of the Medical Advisory Board for The Dr. Oz Show and The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She is a Preventive Medicine and Chronic Disease Specialist and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

In her first best-selling book, The Immune System Recovery Plan (Scribner, 2013), Dr. Blum’s four-step program has helped thousands of patients recover from autoimmune and immune-related conditions without medication. Dr. Blum’s second book, Healing Arthritis (Scribner, 2017) has helped patients reverse and even heal their arthritis.

Ron Finley, the Gangsta Gardener, is an L.A.-based artist and community leader inspiring communities across America to become self-sufficient, grow their own food and replace food deserts with food forests. He is also the Founder of The Ron Finley Project, a hands-on, self-sufficient gardening and education enterprise in South Central L.A.

Ron Finley 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. He wants kids to grow up with access to healthy food, and he wants to sweep up and transform his street, his community and communities everywhere so they can leave the house and enter a landscape that is just as alive as they are.

“Beauty is not a luxury, not something owned by the wealthy or the elite, but something available to us all. Beauty returns us to our highest selves.”

Ron Finley

The Gangsta Gardener, South Central LA

The Ron Finley Project

Lecture :

"Change Your Food, Change Your Life"

Joel Salatin

The Lunatic Farmer

Polyface Farms, VA

Lectures:

"Folks, This Ain't Normal" and

"Cows, Carbon and Climate"

Joel Salatin, the Lunatic Farmer, is a third-generation farmer and the Owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He is a speaker, mentor and the author of 12 books on local, regenerative food and farming systems.

If you saw the movie Food Inc. , you will remember Joel Salatin. Joel has been called the most famous farmer in the world and the “high priest of the pasture.” He’s even been compared to Thomas Jefferson, but he prefers to call himself The Lunatic Farmer. And he walks the walk, usually alongside his own pigs, stewing hens and cattle, all raised on land that he calls their salad bar.

Salatin emphasizes that we’ve trusted big food companies so long that “we’ve inversely swapped food costs for health care costs.”