 Food is supposed to nourish and not kill you. We are killing ourselves with all the junk and processed foods that we're eating and consuming. Teaching young people about the importance of eating healthy is my life's calling. I can't think of anything that's more important. Kids continue consuming processed and junk food the way they are. They would be the first generation that would not outlive their parents. So their health and wellness is at stake. Two out of every three adults are obese and our children one out of every three. So that's a major problem. If we don't make change now, things are just going to get worse. We're damaging our bodies and not even being conscious of it. My favorite kind of junk food is chips. Potato chips. I think chips. Candy. At least 300,000 people die annually from obesity related deaths. Night of my scene, never heard of that. Ferroa sulfate, never heard of that. So this isn't food, this is just something that was created in the lab. It's highly addictive, has no nutritional content or value. You read this stuff and you kind of do just a little bit of research. You understand that a lot of this stuff is either some kind of derivative of salt, sugar, or some unhealthy fat. My godbrother, he's nine years old and he has diabetes. My grandma, she's experienced diabetes and also my mom. A lot of kids are starting off their mornings with this because there's nothing in here but sugar. They've crashed and they can't focus and concentrate. Not to mention all the damage, you may not see it immediately, but over the years it's causing all these preventable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity. What goes wrong is when we take in too much fat, it will find its way into our blood vessels and it will clog up our arteries. So it's very important what we eat. So here is what we're going to do today. We're going to use and remember, no one can say, I don't like that because they have to try first. We're going to replace the chicken for mushrooms. Mushrooms is one of my favorite vegetables. I am a chef and instructor for American Heart Association. So I actually go into schools and teach kids all the way from third to 12th grade not only basic cooking skills but also nutritional education. They can actually improve their lives health-wise through food. I've got plenty of stories of kids that come up to me that are saying, hey, I want to make a change, I just don't know how to. From a holistic standpoint as a country, if we're going to change the landscape of health, then we've got to start doing some things differently. We need to stop people in their tracks and help them to think about, what are you eating? If you go somewhere where the income levels are a little bit lower, they don't have access to healthier food and, you know, that's just wrong. There needs to be more of a balance, right? If every few feet you're surrounded by junk and fast food, you cannot tell me that when you get hungry, you're going to drive five to six miles to go get a salad. That's just not realistic. There's definitely a tie between economics and obesity. Those who come from a lower socioeconomic group oftentimes don't have the resources. People will automatically say, you know, I can't afford farmers' markets, I can't afford organic, and I'm just like, okay, I understand that, but let's start wherever you are. You can go to a 99-cent dollar store and you can get some green peppers, you can get tomatoes. They may not be organic, but they're a lot healthier than going to Burger King. And let's say that you're eating fast food five days a week. If you cut that down to two, that's progress. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress. A lot of people can't afford to actually be sick. There's about $147 billion spent on an annual basis for medical care related to obesity. I tell kids, like, your health is your wealth. So anything that you think about or dream about doing, you won't be able to do that if you are in a hospital suffering from diabetes or if you have a heart attack. You know, people in my family have strokes, heart attacks, grandmother who had two strokes. I have a father who just had a kidney transplant. Being young, I thought that that was normal, but now I know that it isn't, and I can have a hand in changing that. So I said, this is what I need to do. I have to be a part of the solution. This is a game about listening, and it's also I want to see if you've been studying up on your fruits and vegetables. A jalapeno. Pineapple. Pineapple. Apple. Apple. Great. Chili. Chili. Your culture and your family and your tradition can have a huge influence on what you consume, so what I try to do is just bring a consciousness to the classroom that will hopefully balance some of that out. My favorite thing to learn in this class was cutting vegetables, using the blender to do as Moody and the tacos. Chef Bryce's program exposes kids to a whole other world. There's this discovery of health and wellness through food. I wish we could kind of take his program and plug it into all the schools. That's just pretty. Well, you see how color pops. It has. And then I was pretty ambitious to do mass potatoes. Once you tap into what you're supposed to do, it just comes naturally. Generally, he's been able to figure out and find his space and what he was born to do, and it just keeps him going. When kids understand how to make their own food and they taste something that's fresh and whole, how excited they are to go back home and share that with their family, how excited they're actually to make it their self so they have ownership in it so they're more apt to want to do it and they're more apt to want to bring that as a part of their lifestyle. Success doesn't come overnight from working in the community. When I look at what I want my legacy to be, I hope that in 10 to 20 years that I have played a part in changing the landscape of health.