This was the title of my presentation last night for the Scarsdale Middle School community. The conversation around food is changing and fast. While the food industry has pledged to cut 1 trillion calories by 2015 in response to the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, I explained to my audience last night that those calories don’t really count!  Changing portion sizes and creating “better for you” packaged processed foods is simply a ponzi scheme that keeps everyone from realizing the big picture.  Calorie cuts won’t solve the obesity crisis, but it will continue to create profit for the  food industry.

Fortunately, the health teacher in the Scarsdale Middle School teaches systems thinking. This perspective helps students look at the big picture of food. Where it comes from, how many resources are used to produce those “low calorie” edible foodlike substances, what the real costs are to our health, our wallets and our environment. When you look beyond the fat grams and the calorie counts, you see a food system that is broken beyond repair.

Right now, 10 calories of fossil fuel are required to make every 1 calorie of industrialized food. Considering we now consume 6 barrels of oil for every 1 we discover, we need to understand that we’ve got to create ways to produce food using less oil. The underwater oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is a grim reminder that the era of easy oil is over.

I left the parents with 3 books to read and 3 movies to see. If you read these books and watch these movies, you too can learn to see beyond the fat and calories. Here’s the list:

Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Food Rules by Michael Pollan

Eaarth by Bill McKibben

Food Inc

King Corn

No Impact Man

Read them, watch them, let me know what you think!

The Rubin Rodeo car saga continues. 21 days have now passed since we took “The Beast”, our Honda Pilot SUV, off the road. Its been a smooth transition, I’m sure we’ve saved some money by keeping the gas guzzling beast off the road for 3 weeks.

Today, the beast gets to go back on the road and Pepe, the Prius gets a 21 day rest. My hubby took the plates off of Pepe early this morning and headed down to the DMV to surrender them for 21 days.

This 3 week stint might just get a little dicey. Melanie, the oldest of the Rubin girls, comes home from college in a week.  That means we’ll have 4 drivers and only 2 vehicles. While this is nothing even close to what the No Impact Man did in his movie, this is a small start for my family. My kids and husband are way too comfortable with their way of life, most of the time never considering the impact of their purchases or travels.  Like so many Americans, they are comfortably asleep.

I’m betting that someday, when my kids have kids of their own, they’ll tell them stories about the wild times in the early 2000′s when just about everyone in suburbia drove here there and everywhere without a thought of depleting fossil fuels and increasing CO2 levels.  Just like I tell my kids crazy stories about my dad warning me about the Limits of Growth.

Years ago, I bought a red car. Never had one before, I didn’t think there that many red cars on the road. Until I got one of my own. It seemed like there were red cars everywhere once I was driving one.

So why does that happen? Its a simple little law of the universe. Whatever you focus on expands.

The problem is, most of the day we are focusing on things that don’t always make our lives or the world better.  Our minds are often churning with unimportant, uninspiring, nonessential negative junk!

Like a TV, what we must do to change things is to change the channel. One way to do this is keeping a gratitude list.  Its like putting good programming on your TV, so you don’t watch/ think junk all the time.

Spending a few minutes each day focusing on what you’re grateful for is a good use of your time and can even help to improve your health.  I’m posting my daily gratitude list on Twitter . My Twitter name is DrSuRu, feel free to follow along and join me in creating your own Twitter gratitude list. Simply type #GratitudeList  in the Twitter search engine and you’ll see loads of people doing the same. I was inspired to start my list because Colin Beavan, The No Impact Man wrote about how he is using the gratitude list to focus on other ways to be happy besides buying stuff we don’t really need..

Another way to practice gratitude is to go to bed and wake up with Louise Hay every day. Sounds crazy, right? Louise Hay is known worldwide for her work with positive affirmations. She has a great Morning and Evening Meditations CD. I listen to this one last thing at night and first thing in the morning.  It helps keep me focused on the positive. Think of this as good food for your spirit.

This week is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. I remember as a kid watching an earth day TV special entitled “1985″, it went into grave detail about issues such as air and water pollution. This was a relatively new word in the 1970′s, I remember reacting with fear about the future. But 1985 seemed so far away to my little 10 year old mind, I’d be the ripe old age of 25 when 1985 rolled around, hopefully our advanced technology would take care of all of this air and water  “pollution” I was learning about!

Fast forward to today. I am now the ripe old age of  50. Technology didn’t fix very much. In some cases, it made things worse.  Its not just air and water pollution we are facing, we’re living on a fundamentally different planet now. We’ve got to deal with depletion of natural resources such as water and fossil fuels, climate change, a broken food system. Its a wonder I can sleep at night!

Although things seem pretty bleak, I’m doing my best to remain idealistic and optimistic. Part of the reason I feel this way is that there are a number of interesting and informative movies out there that will help get the message across that we need to get to work on these issues, now.

DIRT! Is one of those movies. Your local PBS station is screening this movie sometime this week. Check your local listings.

The Oscar nominated film, Food Inc makes it’s TV premiere this week on PBS. If you haven’t seen it, this is another very necessary film. We have to seriously consider the impact of our food system on the environment.

Last but not least is the No Impact Man.  This movie, which is part of a bigger “No Impact Project, is holding Earth Day screenings across the country in partnership with Slow Food USA and  1Sky. Bringing people together to watch, discuss and act is a powerful first step. Click here to find a No Impact event near you!

This week, I had the good fortune to see 3 great movies that told the tale of climate change and sustainability. I hope you get a chance to see at least one of them. If you do, your life will never be the same.

After reading Bill Mc Kibben’s Deep Economy a year ago, there’s been no turning back for me. I can no longer stay asleep and pretend that climate change isn’t happening and that our food system is OK. It’s not just that kids are getting fat, there are bigger problems happening that need bold fixes.

These three films put a smile on my face. More importantly, movies like these give me hope that perhaps other people are waking up too.

The Yes Men Fix the World was funny and thought provoking. These guys have more chutzpah than anyone. Their stunt with the “Hallaburton Survivaballs” was nothing short of awesome. Their pranks continue. This week, they chased Senator Arlen Specter in their Survivaball costumes. These guys are missing out on a big opportunity this Halloween, these suits could be big sellers!

Next on my list was No Impact Man This movie started as a blog, turned into a project in which many environmental groups are collaborating. I dragged my teenage daughter to see this one. She could relate to the Starbucks sipping, Prada wearing wife who had to make some big changes for the sake of the project. Lowering our environmental impact takes us out of our comfort zones but has some unexpected benefits.

Last but not least, I saw Food Inc. again last night. The movie was screened for a full house of students at SUNY Purchase. This movie was even better the second time around. So many important points were made about the food we eat. Changing our conversation around food is, in my opinion, the most important move that each of us can make to decrease our carbon dioxide emissions. You’ll never look at your dinner or the supermarket the same way after watching Food Inc.

These films need to be seen by high school and college students. This is the audience who won’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. It’s going to be their world in a couple of years, I’m counting on them to make some noise!

Movies like these build movements beyond the theater. The Yes Men’s pranks continue, along great resources online, including curricula for teachers. The No Impact Projects continue to make ripples along with Food Inc’s petitions and online resources.

Maybe the world is gonna be OK after all.

Saturday’s world wide day of action got alot of people thinking about the number 350.

What’s the big deal about 350?
To paraphrase from the 350.org site:
The science is clear: global warming is happening faster than ever and humans are responsible. Global warming is caused by releasing what are called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.

In addition to calling for bold and meaningful climate change legislation nationally and world wide, there are LOTS of things that each one of us can do right in our own yards.

• Fire your lawn guys and buy a battery powered Neuton Mower and cut your own lawn.
• Got leaves? This magical little mower also does a great job of mulching those autumn leaves so you’ll have no need for noisy, CO2 spewing leaf blowers. Think of the cleaner air and the trimmer waistline you’ll have by doing your lawn yourself.
• While you’re outside in the yard, find a great spot to start a compost pile. I’ve got one corner of my yard where we toss leaf mulch along with branches that drop out of our trees from time to time.
• Hanging your clothes outside to dry will save loads of CO2 and will reduce your utility bill. Visit the Laundry List Project for more details.
• For more inspiration on what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, go see No Impact Man, a movie that tells the story of one family in NYC and what they did to reduce their CO2 emissions.