 I'm talking about, are you guys hungry? It's administration. I am source of our summer youth employment program. This summer, right, what are you choosing? And you all were choosing food industry, right? In our DOE schools, who was here work at DOE schools? It's the city. And you, along with your colleagues in summer youth employment this summer, also got financial literacy training. You were able to explore other things like the UN and get real exposure, mentors and other. I've gotten hundreds of emails from employers saying how lucky they were to have such brilliant, dedicated, creative, fun, young people for the summer. So give yourselves another round of applause. So what are we doing today? Today you have a very unique experience that your other summer youth employees, youth colleagues won't have. You get to experience the mayor of the city of New York. He is also a chef, so he's a celebrity chef because he is a celebrity and a cookbook author. Did you guys know that? Yes, some of you did, some of you didn't. So he's got rock stage. I said, do you really see? And also participate in this experience. Afterwards, you're gonna have to sample a delicious salad made by the amazing executive chef at Gracie Mansion, Andrea. Give a clap for Andrea. She keeps our mayor fed and healthy. She's very important and she's gonna be assisting him with this demonstration. And then lastly, you'll also hear from a group of renowned chefs because what you appreciated, I'm sure, about your summer experience is that this is a major industry. It is a big business and an important business and it's important for so many diverse leaders to be leaders in that industry. So you will hear from these chefs who will tell you about the business and all the other interests that you might have. You all should be extremely proud of the work that you did this summer. We are extremely proud of you and without further ado, I want to introduce celebrity chef, cookbook author and the mayor of the city of New York, Eric Adams. How are you? How's everyone? Can you hear me in the back? Tell me something. How many of you have a family member who is experiencing diabetes? How many of you who have a family member or friend that's dealing with some type of chronic disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol? Wow, wow. So I just want to come down before I start cooking. So a couple of years ago, I woke up in the morning and I couldn't see the alarm clock. I'm gonna get my nose pierced soon. Yes sir, yes sir. I couldn't see the alarm clock and I thought it was sleep in my eyes and I started to blink my eyes. You know how you wake up in the morning, you can't see right away? I started to blink my eyes and it didn't go away. And at the same time, I felt this pain in my stomach. It wasn't gas, it was sitting still and it was just uncomfortable. And so you know, men, you gotta drag us to the doctor. We don't want to go to the doctor. But I decided that you know what? Let me go to the doctor because this didn't feel right. So I went to the doctor and when I got to the doctor, he did, he checked my colon, he checked my stomach. And when I came from under sedation, he says, Eric, that vision you feel in your left eye and your right eye is that you're losing your sight. You're gonna be blind in a year. And he said to tingling, I was feeling tingling in my hands and feet. He said to tingling your feeling is that you have permanent nerve damage, you're gonna lose some fingers in your toes. He said the reason you have this loss is you're diabetic. I had no idea. He says your diabetes level is so high that I'm surprised that you're not in a coma right now. And the pain I was feeling in my stomach, it was an ulcer. He says that you have an ulcer. So I went in the doctor's office that day with no medicine. I walked out with medicine for my ulcer, three medicines for my diabetes included insulin. That's where you have to inject yourself. Medicine for my high blood pressure, medicine for everything. I went in with none. I walked out, I felt like I was Dwayne Reed. I had so many pills. And I said to myself, I'm not trying to go out like this because my mother was diabetic for 15 years at the time. Seven years taking insulin. I used to see mommy injecting herself all the time and she would grimace every time she had to inject herself with insulin in her stomach. And so I was at my computer. They gave me these books that says living with diabetes. And I sat at the computer that day. I remember like it was yesterday. This was about five, six years ago. And I did something scientific. I googled reversing diabetes. One word. They said living with diabetes, but what did I put in? Reversing diabetes. And all of this information came up about diabetes and reversing diabetes. And there was one doctor, Dr. Esselton from Ohio Cleveland Clinic. He treated Bill Clinton for his heart disease. I cold called him. I was like, you know, doctor, they told me I'd be blind in a year. I'm gonna lose some fingers and toes of my diabetes numbers are high. My A1C is high. Is there anything I can do? He said fly down to see me. I flew down to Ohio one early morning and I saw him. And he says, listen, you can change your diabetes. You have to change the food you're eating. And I remember Santa myself looking at him. What's wrong with this nut? I'm going blind and he's telling me to stop eating fried chicken. What's that to do with anything? But I was so desperate that I went home. He gave me a list of things to do. I went home and I looked on the back of the cart and the food I had in my refrigerant in my pantry. And everything that he said was right. Everything was over-processed. Everything was, it wasn't even food anymore. It was like food like stuff. And so I made up my mind. I said, you know what, I'm gonna try this because I'm not trying to lose my sight. And so the first week I tried, I couldn't cook. My number one meal I made was cheese toast and I burned that half the time. But I said, you know what, I'm gonna try. So the first week when I finished, after that first week, I said, God, I gotta eat this. I'm not trying to eat this junk all this time. And then I said to myself, why are you acting like a defeater? Why are you looking at all the food you shouldn't be eating anymore when I looked and discovered a new food you could eat? And so I started to have a different mindset. And I said, I'm gonna learn how to cook. And I'm going to discover food. I started looking at spices and spices are more powerful than the food you eat. Nutmeg, turmeric, cinnamon. All I knew when somebody said spices to me, all I knew was salt and pepper. That was my spice list. So I said, you know what? I'm going to start discovering East Indian spices, Caribbean spices. I'm going to start discovering African spices, Italian spices, and then I'm gonna look and read up each spice what it does. Every week I took a new spice and I read up on it to say, what is the purpose of garlic? What is the purpose of turmeric? What is the purpose of cinnamon and nutmeg? And I started learning the benefits of spices. But then I did something else. Every Sunday became my cooking day where I would try new meals and try to learn how to discover how to cook them. And so three weeks after going to a whole food plant based diet, what happened? My vision came back. Three months, my nerve damage went away in my hands and feet. My ulcer went away. My blood pressure normalized. My mother, remember I said she was diabetic for 15 years, seven years on insulin? My mother went on a whole food plant based diet and within two months, mommy was off on insulin. Think about that. Think about that. Think about what your family members are going through right now. And do you know how powerful that was for me to go to my mother? My mother had six children. She loved all of us, but she adored me. And so to go to a woman that I loved and says, mommy, there's a way to stop you from injecting yourself every day. And to be able to do that, I mean, what more can you ask for? And so this moment here that I'm gonna share one of my meals is only one of the few. I had no meals in my repertoire. Now I have about 75 different meals, fast meals, quick meals. When I go to restaurants, I look at the menu and say, I want you to put together my own meal for me. How I make my frozen desserts. How when I feel like having something sweet. How if I have to go on the move because I'm always on the move. I'm always going somewhere, you know, food is powerful. Food is more than what you put in your mouth. Food is how we define ourselves. When my dad, when I used to have a bad day playing sports, my dad would give me a chocolate cake or a chocolate donut. And when someone came to me and criticized my donut, you're criticizing my father. Man, what's wrong with you? Those are fighting roads. And so when we sit down and eat, that is our way of communicating. And particularly those of us who have different cultures. You know and I know, you go to your grandmother's house, your mother's house or what have you and you talk about you not eating, people look at you funny. And then when I stop eating meat, you wanna get people mad at you? Tell them you're not gonna eat that hamburger. Now nobody wanna hang out with you. Everybody's like, man, okay, you too boring. And as an African-American, when I started saying I wanted to eat plant-based, you know what my friends used to say? Oh, you wanna be white now. You know, you too good to eat this food that we all grew up on. No, no, so food is slave food. Our ancestors did not want to eat chitlins. They didn't want to eat cow tongue. They didn't want to eat pig feet. No, the slave masters said you're going to eat the scraps of our tables. And then we have to find ways to make it tasty and palatable. And our ancestors said, so we have to survive. So now we're going to give you the food to survive. But literally they know that now that we no longer on this plantation, that we're gonna still be intellectually and emotionally attached to the plantation and the food that we eat. Now here's the deadly part of this. Think about this for a moment. Our ancestors ate bad food to survive that the slave master forced them to eat. And we are continuing the legacy of the slave master every time we cook the bad food that's given our family members diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, all of these chronic diseases. We're handing it down to our family members. So we sit around the table on Thanksgiving, saying to our family, let's pray for grandma that's in the hospital because she's diabetic and she's about to lose her legs or she's about to lose her sight. And then after we pray, what do we do? We dig into the food and eat the food that caused grandma to be in the hospital in the first place. And go to South and Central America. Some of the best food is grown there. Yet it's not served on your plates. They're shipping out your food out of your country, somewhere else, and they give me you fast food. It's unbelievable what they're doing to us. That's why we're having a conversation with you. You're the liberation generation. You have to free us from this madness. There's a reason around nature you have junk food, but you go to the upper East side, you have whole food. It's not in your DNA. You didn't inherit diabetes. It's not your DNA, it's your dinner. It's not your lineage, it's just your lunch. It's not where you're born, it's your breakfast. So either we can continue this madness or we can free ourselves. We've been played. We've been played. I can see you right now because I didn't follow the direction of those who told me to go on medicine. First is mass farming, then it's insulin, then you lose your sight, then you lose your legs, then you lose your kidneys, then you go into a place where you no longer can take care of yourself. It's not who I am. It's not who I am. That's not who I want you to be. So I'm gonna share with you one of my meals, one of my meals that you can take part of it and you can use it. Where's my book? Do we have my book? So this is the book after my experience that I wrote. Every dollar goes to helping our faith-based leaders to learn about healthy eating. I don't take any money from this. This is my experience of changing my life. In the first three weeks, I lost 35 pounds from going to a plant-based diet. Never felt better in my life, never felt better in my life. And I want you to enjoy your life, not to live with pain, uncertainty, and then go home to our family members. My oldest brother is dealing with health issues. My brother under me is dealing with cancer. My sister just dealt with breast cancer. My other sister is dealing with diabetes and heart disease. Our entire family is dealing with crises that comes from food. And we're slowly turning it around. It's not easy because let me tell you something. Food is like a drug. That first week, when I stopped eating, I used to dream about hamburgers. I went through withdrawals like you'll never believe. You put someone hooked on drugs in one room and someone hooked on fast food in another. You take the drugs away and you take the fast food away. I ask you to say which one is hooked on what. That's what food does to you. And they know that. It plays on your psyche. It makes you believe that you need it over and over and over again. But we're gonna turn it around, we're gonna turn it around slowly. And so here is one of my mills. I have my shelf helper, the Vano White of cooking, you know? And so these are simple ingredients. Not only are they simple ingredients, they are cheap. Everyone says all the time, if you eat healthy, it's gonna cost a lot of money. That's all people say, it's gonna cost a lot of money. This costs $3.75, $3.75 per serving. And so a quick meal, a great summer meal, so you're not feeling, sometimes you eat and you feel tired and lethargic because that food, you're trying to process that food and it's just too much to consume and then it's not healthy and energetic food. So my hands are clean, I wash my hands, so you know that and I'm the only one to be eating. These are cucumbers. You mix your cucumbers in the bowl and then we have some other things, parsley, pepper, other spices. You put it in, I rarely cook with oil. I don't use a lot of oil when I cook. I try to use water, but if you wanna use oil and vinegar, balsamic vinegar is great also. Just put a little in. And if you want oil, you can put oil. I normally don't, but you can. And you know what's the best stirrer that you have? Your hands. You can mix it up with your hands. And if you're gonna mix it up with your hands, make sure you wash your hands. And one good test, particularly for the guys, the prerequisite for dating me, you gotta know how to cook. So you gotta get them in the kitchen. So guys, you gotta know how to cook also, guys. You know, just as you want your lady friends to know how to cook, you gotta know how to cook. Don't be like me. And then sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes, they have a way of bringing a nice taste to it. Now before you do it, I use water, but you could also do a little bit of oil. Put it in your pan. I'm a big water guy. So you put it in your pan and let it simmer a little. I have here, I have, this is cabbage. You ever notice that there are different colors in food, such as cabbage. Sometimes the cabbage is that light color cabbage. Then you have the red cabbage. You also have onions. There's some onions that are light color. Some are the red, the red color, cabbage, onions and other items. Those red colors are, they're really significant cause the more color it is, the more nutrients it has. So when you go shopping, always look for those different colors. So these are sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes. They're very healthy. They're different than white potatoes. If you are diabetic and your family member is diabetic, they should stay away from white potatoes, white rice, all that processed stuff they should stay away from. Okay, so we're gonna mix this up. Not with this one here, oh you don't know this one. Mix this up, this is sweet potatoes cause this gives it a nice little taste. I like to mix sweet potatoes or put a chopped up orange or chopped up apple in. These are chickpeas, extremely healthy for you. Throw that in there. I like to put a little water to sort of give it the moisteness that we're looking for. Onions, red onions, I chopped them up already. And I like to chop them up really fine when you do it. Of course you wanna take the peel off. When you chop your onion, you wanna take that off but you can do, you can really, they were chopped up already. I like my onions really, really fine when I do it. And I never, never liked onions before until I read up on the power of onions and what onions, how powerful they are and what they do for your body. Okay, and then you throw in cabbage. Cabbage is one of the most healthy things you can eat. Every morning when I do my green smoothies, I throw in cabbage and I throw in beets, another healthy item. Mix that up. Kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans. All of them are good in protein. They're extremely healthy for you. Then you throw in kale. Kale, I didn't even know what kale was. Only greens I knew was collard greens, you know? But now I know all of these different types of greens. I love kale. Kale goes into my smoothies every morning as well as spinach goes into my smoothies every morning as well. So you just really mix that up and you wanna get some good moistener in there. So you pour some water and you just get that really going. And then you wanna throw in your spices. These are some great spices. And remember what I said about spices. Spices are just as powerful as the food you eat. A little pepper, wait, wait, let me get some. Come here, I want you to smell this. What are you, come on up, come on up. Smell that fragrance. You know that? See that? So you get that a little more, just a pinch more oil and the sweet potatoes. You can chop up plantains, sweet potatoes, bananas, whatever you want and you just, you will be surprised how filling this is. The key is fiber is so important for your body. This is a high fiber rich diet right here. Men and women are supposed to get a predetermined amount of fiber in their system every day. And this, then you take the salad that I made earlier, put it inside there and all this stuff. This is $3.75 for serving. So before I do that, I want to, is that plugged up? Can't, plug up. This is one of my favorite, favorite appliances. This is called a ninja. And when I want something sweet after my meal, I'll grab some walnuts. Walnuts are extremely healthy for you. Out of all the nuts, these are one of the best nuts. So you throw that in there. If you like ice cream, freeze ripe bananas. You freeze the ripe bananas. This is not a old banana. This is not one, but if you want to do, you could do this with ice cream. One of my favorite ice creams is with frozen bananas and some blueberries, all that blueberry, some strawberries, throw it in there. This is if you want a dessert after you finish eating. And like I said, sweet potatoes, I love sweet potatoes. And the peel of the sweet potato is extremely healthy. That's where you get a lot of your nutrients inside your peels. No, I don't need any water, just mix that up a little. And you would get some non-dairy whipped cream. Move that there, just need a spoon. You get some non-dairy whipped cream, throw. That's good. Throw some berries in. And this is my light snack for today. That's good. Who's my sampler? You know? Oh. Enjoy, be healthy, live long, have a prosperous life, eat well, meditate, breathe in exercise. The stress you are under as young people is different from the stress that I was under. You have so much coming at you. You know, I didn't have Instagram, I didn't have Facebook, I didn't have Google, I didn't have Snapchat. Everything is coming at you. You have to find that equilibrium. And you do it by eating right, but you also wanna nourish your mental state as well. Cause we're never gonna be good to anyone if we're not good to ourselves. And so I wish you a prosperous life. I hope this experience in our summer youth employment program was more than just a job. We want you to leave this summer with financial literacy skills, communication skills, healthy skills, so you're ready to take on the world. You're not leaders of tomorrow, you're leaders of today. So let's leave. Thank you. Thank you.