It’s the height of our winter season, and we’ve got a supercharged March issue to prove it! Staying powered up is one of the reasons you see me pictured here with an armful of celery, the sole ingredient in my sun-kissed morning juice that jump-starts my day and keeps me humming. 

If you’ve tried to grab some organic celery at the store recently and they were sold out, you can likely blame healing authority Anthony William for creating a global celery juice movement that has reached the masses. He’s written a whole book just on this topic: Celery Juice: The Most Powerful Medicine of Our Time Healing Millions Worldwide; but save some celery for me!

Sometimes I wonder what the state of my health might be today if I hadn’t made a decision in my early 20s to explore a natural foods lifestyle. It wasn’t that I was experiencing health challenges—I was just fascinated with some of the great info coming out in the ‘70s that challenged the standard American diet I grew up on. 

I remember Jack LaLanne on TV touting the benefits of the fruit and veggie concoctions in his blender. His robust workout routines and mostly vegan diet supported his active lifestyle for 96 years. He once said, “I can’t die—it’d ruin my image.” 

Discovering Viktoras Kulvinskas’ book in 1976, Survival into the 21st Century, was life-changing for me. Survival offered a new paradigm in nutrition that inspired and guided my own personal experiments in eating fresh, whole foods as close to their natural states as possible. I discovered the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of eating a raw food diet and fasting. I was so impressed with the studies proving the increased nutritional value of sprouting seeds that I grew a successful business serving up sprouts in SW Florida for several years. 

Today I’m not a strict raw foodist, and my diet and lifestyle aren’t perfect; I often call myself a flexitarian. What I have discovered is that it takes a lot of discipline to do everything we know we could to enjoy optimal health and well-being. 

Wellness may begin with what we put on our plate, but that’s just first base. True health is far more comprehensive, extending beyond our personal physical well-being to the collective, sustainable health of all living beings and the places they call home. There are lots of important reasons to eat a more plant-based diet, and in this special Plant-Based Nutrition edition, you’ll find plenty of fodder to chew on. 

I like to think of the choices we make in life as a great adventure story. We are writing it and we determine the outcome. Here’s to making it a good story, with lots of laughter sprinkled in and plenty of sun-kissed meals enjoyed with good friends.

Spread the Sunshine, 

Sharon Bruckman