The Truman Charities Podcast
Join Jamie Truman on a transformative journey as she connects to individuals making a difference in their communities. From New York Times bestselling authors to compassionate doctors and visionary farmers, our podcast unveils untold narratives shaping our communities. Whether it's a doctor revolutionizing healthcare or a farmer transforming food systems, our guests are trailblazers, influencers, and innovators driving positive change.
Truman Charities, a charitable organization with a mission, donates $250 toward their causes for every powerful story shared on the podcast.
The Truman Charities Podcast
What Really Is In Your Kids' School Lunch? Plus What Is Leaky Gut And The GAPS Diet? | Founder of School of Lunch Hilary Boynton Ep. 133
The school lunch system is broken, but one mom is trying to fix it. Hilary Boynton founded School of Lunch to bring real, nutrient-dense food to kids, proving that healthy meals can be both accessible and life-changing.
She’s on the show today to discuss how poor nutrition affects children’s learning and behavior, why processed school lunches are failing them, and the difference whole, locally sourced foods can make in our lives.
This episode covers seasonal eating, gut health and the GAPS diet, and simple steps parents can take to make impactful changes to their family’s diet without feeling overwhelmed. We also dive into Hilary’s transformative work in her community through the School of Lunch Academy and Documenting Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to reversing chronic childhood illnesses.
Tune in to learn more about the power of REAL food!
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This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
Welcome to the Truman Charities podcast. I am Jamie Truman, your host. Have you ever taken a close look at what our children are served for lunch at school? Have you considered the potential impact of school food on their learning and their behavior? I recently spoke with Hilary Boynton, a mother of five who began investigating the effects of food on children when she discovered an unconventional way to cure her son's severe eczema. Appalled by the garbage served in her children's school lunches, hillary founded School of Lunch and embarked on a mission to provide nutrient-dense meals made with locally sourced ingredients. The results have been remarkable and during our conversation we discussed the positive effects on the children. Hillary has demonstrated that real food can be both easy and affordable. She now hosts a School of Lunch Academy and has written the Heal your Gut Cookbook, which I purchased just before our interview, and my family and I are really enjoying the recipes. They are very easy for a busy mom.
Speaker 1:Before we get into this interview, please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. Pause for just a second, scroll down, hit those five stars and rate or review about why you enjoy listening to this podcast. Five stars and write a review about why you enjoy listening to this podcast as a volunteer-based organization. The reviews really do mean so much to us and I read each and every one of them. All right, so let's get into this interview with Hilary. Thank you, hilary, so much for coming on. I know you're very busy being a mother of five. You've accomplished so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Of course. So I wanted to start out with a little bit of your experience growing up. What was your relationship like with food?
Speaker 2:You know, for the early part of my life it was I didn't think about it.
Speaker 2:And then in the nineties, I guess, or late eighties, early 90s, the fat free era came in and that really hijacked me completely and my mom and my sister, we all kind of fell for it. You know, like fat was going to make us fat or clog our arteries and I was really the one that went full on into developing a real like eating disorder around it and kind of avoided fat for like a good 10 years, I would say I was just like afraid of it. So that was unfortunately like a twist of my life and my health and I had many health challenges, including infertility and stuff when I was young and miscarriages and stress fractures in my femur bones and my tibias as an athlete and different things that now, looking back, I think like gosh, I just wasn't properly nourished, so yeah, so I had an interesting relationship with food and I was an athlete. So I was, like you know, really muscular and strong and I just I wanted to be, like you know, super skinny, skinny and all kinds of body dysmorphia and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Right, I feel like a lot of young girls and even women. They all go through that of like. You think that instead of looking at your body as strong as being what you want to obtain, as you think thin and thin is the best, like very skinny instead of thinking strong.
Speaker 1:What I thought was interesting, which I loved on your website you have the video where you're talking about your son's eczema and that's when, kind of really, you started to focus a lot on food and what he was eating and what you were eating, and I found that fascinating because, being a mom myself and being around a lot of moms, you know, I know several moms have had the same issue with one of their children with severe eczema as well. So can you tell me a little bit about?
Speaker 2:that, yeah, I mean I ended up having five kids under the age of four. So I had triplets that were through in vitro because I had gone through lots of miscarriages and had to do fertility treatments and then had the triplets. And then, three years later I thought maybe we'll have to go back, let's see what it's like to have one baby. And then, boom, I got pregnant on my own and then he was six months old and I was pregnant again with my fifth baby. So it was like insanity. But my fourth baby had this like severe eczema head to toe at like two months old. So I was you can imagine like barely staying afloat myself and he was scratching. You know I had pinned him to my body for like two hours every night just to keep him from scratching and I tried everything. I was just like going to doctor after doctor. And then I really didn't want to put them on the steroid cream. But I had a pediatrician friend say you know, you've got to put this poor child on the steroid cream. He's suffering. And so I did. I put them on Zyrtec twice a day and steroid cream and sure enough, the eczema quelled and I was like, oh gosh, you know he's sleeping through the night and this is great. But then if I didn't put the steroid cream on, his eczema would flare. So that kind of instinct in me was like this is like a bandaid, it's not really getting to the root cause.
Speaker 2:And ironically at that time I had been trying to change school lunches in my kid's school back in Massachusetts and this woman that was helping me had a son who had asthma and she told me to put my child on raw milk. She's like you've got to put them on raw milk. It totally healed my son of asthma. I had never even heard of raw milk. You know I was drinking fat-free skim milk for the last decade and a half or so but I was so desperate I was like I'll try anything.
Speaker 2:And she and her family we were. They were part of different co-ops and they picked up raw dairy and cod liver oil and he was healed in like a matter of a couple months. So that like flipped the switch for me, like just like what just happened, like real food just healed my baby, when every other doctor was kind of like well, you know, asthma, eczema, allergies, they'll run hand in hand. He might outgrow it, he might not. I mean this was my experience that you know those healthy fats and and the beneficial bacteria, all of that just helped to rebalance him. And then I just went deep dive into like food is medicine and never looked back. Yeah, Wow.
Speaker 1:So you know, I think that's interesting because I live right outside of DC and you can't get raw milk here at all. You have to go to you have to go down to a local farmer and then they have to sell it to you as pet milk. Right, yeah, so then they can legally give it to you, which I think is interesting. Why do you think it is that it's so like taboo for people to be drinking raw milk?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I was scared, I didn't know. In Massachusetts it was the same thing you could go to a farm and buy it directly, but you couldn't get it at the grocery store. So I ended up running an Amish co-op for six years after this happened, because I went to a conference and met the Amish and talked to them about my experience and they were like we need someone to run a co-op and I was like I will do it. So I wanted people to have access to this nutrient dense healing, these foods that were so healing. I think it's been really across the last hundred plus years or so, right that this.
Speaker 2:You know, when pasteurization came in, there was a real necessity that people were getting sick in the cities where they were, you know, bringing the cows in from the countryside and all of a sudden they're in the cities and it's dirty conditions and they're drinking the swill from the distilleries and the cows are sick and not producing good milk, and then babies are getting sick and there was this what are we going to do? But we've kind of forgotten that out on pasture, like on you know, when cows were out getting the sunset and eating the grass, that that milk was still really beautiful and healthy. But we kind of with marketing and propaganda, whatever. Just you know all the marketing and all the whatever pushing that direction. People just kind of took off with that.
Speaker 2:Pasteurization is the safest way and I think you know people need to get back to speaking directly to their farmers, going to the farm, understanding the power of raw dairy and how when you have beautiful raw dairy, that you know, you don't have to be afraid. But I would say that's the number one concern from most parents that I've talked to when I taught cooking classes was just so afraid it was going to hurt their children. And now you know we've been drinking at five kids for over almost 17 years, sometimes 10 gallons a week. So I really feel like obviously you want to know your farmer and make sure that they have good conditions, feel like obviously you want to know your farmer and make sure that they have good conditions. But I think, yeah, I think it's just really what's happened across time. Is that that narrative?
Speaker 1:has kind of taken off and people are in fear. Oh yeah, cause I have been really nervous about it for years, up until recently, just because growing up, that's what you hear like oh gosh it has to be pasteurized, but I'm interested to hear so has your son had any issues since you put them on the raw milk he's been doing Wow?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had never had any asthma, or he's a great athlete no asthma and he doesn't have any eczema. So that never flared again, but again I think like kids heal so quickly too. So, and then we also went on to do like even deeper healing with the GAPS diet and, you know, just went full on into like real food, and so their foundation became really a nutrient dense, nourishing foundation that my kids, you know, were lucky enough to have.
Speaker 1:So I want to get into the GAPS diet. But before that, when we were just talking about, like how your son and you figured out the raw milk and the eczema, and you mentioned that, that, like right before then, is when you started to really look into the school lunches. So tell me what it was about the school lunches that got you thinking like the nutrients that they are serving the children.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, my kids weren't even in school yet Back in Massachusetts when I came across the work of Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters and I was just like oh, wow, like kids need real food at schools and I just became this champion for trying to change the school, the public school lunches where I lived, because I knew my kids were going to be entering the school system and that was like a long process and I didn't get too too far. Actually, we ended up getting an amazing chef and then his wife had a baby and they moved out of town. So we were all like, oh no, it was like kind of like back to ground zero and start over again and we're all like so burned out. And then, after our family healing journey kind of took us to California and, after going through so much to try and heal my family and just all that I knew about food as medicine and the importance of children being fed good food, when we moved to California we stumbled upon this great little nature-based school that there were only like 30 kids and the chef there had like the kids that caught their own fish and cooked it that day and she said she really wanted to roast a whole goat and I was just like this is our place, we have to go here.
Speaker 2:And then, as the school grew, they outsourced the food.
Speaker 2:And that's when I was just like, oh shoot, like this isn't what I was signing up for and this isn't aligned with nature how I want my kids to be fed.
Speaker 2:And so I stepped in as a snack coordinator and then kind of just went to town and then halfway through the year I got the keys to the kitchen to become the lunch lady which you know, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would become a lunch lady and I had never still have never been to culinary school, never worked a day of my life in a commercial kitchen. But I was just like I knew how kids needed to be fed and I was like I'm going to figure this out and show what's possible. And now we're like nine years in and we believe we have the most nutrient, dense school lunch program in the country. So just really, it's a small private school and so I have you know I don't have the handcuffs of the USDA dietary guidelines and all of those government kind of restrictions or boundaries, but I thought you know if I can get my foot in the door and show what's possible. Then we can scale this thing and all kids will have access to healthier foods.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I find it a little bit frustrating.
Speaker 1:So my kids go to a local Catholic school and they brought in this new program for the school lunches and it sounds really good on paper for like what they're eating, and then he would come home and I would look at it and I'd be like this is garbage, Like it's just processed garbage. So, and I think it's frustrating too, because if you're going to a regular school, I don't know how you felt when you were growing up and I don't know what type of school that you went to, but I felt like you would have a donut day, like every once in a blue moon, or you would have some sort of treat on like someone's birthday, but that was it. But now I feel like it's Friday pizza days, it's donut day every Friday, it's baked goods. On Wednesdays it's candy, all of the time. So I feel like for a lot of moms it's really overwhelming. So what was your advice be to a mom like myself who's like really frustrated about what's going on in the schools, but it seems kind of an overwhelming task to take on. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's where the awareness and more of us kind of rising up and banding together to like hold the line for our children. Because, as you know, it's usually when your kid goes off to kindergarten for the first time and you're just like, oh my gosh, like around every corner someone's trying to feed them junk you know whether it's soccer practice or a birthday party or a ballet performance and then the little siblings are coming and they're like here, have a donut. And you're like, you're like, ah, like it's just like madness, right, and if you know, you know so. Then you become that mom that's the crazy one, that's like you know this is not okay. So the more of us that can understand this value system and kind of hold the line and have just start to do better. But I understand, with the schools it's really become sort of this check the boxes and you're like so many moms were like on paper it looks good, or on the website it looks beautiful, and then but what they're really being served is not not okay. So it's a little deceiving in that sense and I think that people are really just in a. It's like a well oiled machine and it's just like we're just going to check the boxes and that's what I found in Massachusetts was like to create a change for someone to have to do more work. I mean, a lot of them are already doing a lot of work or felt overwhelmed in their job as the food service director and whatnot, and they just don't know the information right, if you think about how registered dieticians, like people, are trained with the food pyramid right. So they think that they're checking all the right boxes, but really we're. You know, we're like overfeeding our kids and undernourishing them in so many ways. So it's very frustrating.
Speaker 2:But I think just continuing to raise the level of awareness and like what we're doing at the schools, I feel like it's this bottom-up approach where you get to the kids as young as five and they start going home and saying, hey, mom, like we had sourdough bread at school or can you make fermented ginger carrots, like Miss Hillary, and the parents kind of have their eyes open like what's happening at this school and what are they doing?
Speaker 2:That's like you know my kids eating foods that they won't even eat at home and they're eating them at school. Or they're saying the school lunch is better than you know the way the mom cooks and I'm like. So we invite the parents in and educate the parents and introduce them to farmers and connect them to their local food systems, and then it becomes more of this like lifestyle, where you're getting it at school and at home and these values are reinforced across the board. And then that's to me how we kind of raise that level of consciousness. But it's going to take that education and more and more people. And now I'm excited, I hope that from you know, the top down, we can have a different value system, that's, you know, kind of implemented into the schools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like I've been talking to a lot of people, probably over the past 10 years, about this, like just whole foods based, and it seems like, oh, it doesn't matter. But I do feel I don't know how you feel, but recently there has been sort of a real shift. I know a lot of my girlfriends are like, oh my gosh, what is in the food that we're giving our kids and maybe for like soccer games, we should go back to like orange slices and water and not Gatorade and Doritos afterwards? You know, but I want to know from your personal experience what changes do you see in a child when they transition from just the traditional school lunches that they typically have to a more nutrient, dense lunch?
Speaker 2:I feel like they're. The biggest shift, I think, is that they're truly satiated. We had a child the first year we were doing a program, so now of course we've grown so much. But he was in sixth grade and he said unprompted. He said I used to feel like this all day long, just up and down, up and down, and now I feel like this, steady, and I was just like boom, that's our like 30 second commercial right there, like that's what I want every kid to feel. And so we're.
Speaker 2:We're really giving them those that nutrition that they need and the proteins and the fats that will sustain their energy. So they seem joyful and happy and focused. You know they're not these big behavioral problems. I don't see kids like moping through the line and you know they're excited for lunch and I just think, on every level, like even the staff will say like we feel the difference. Right, they're excited for the food and they know that it's like completely. You know I'm like we've done our due diligence and I just want the kids to come and not have to worry about where everything's from and is it organic or is it this or that, and just be able to enjoy a beautiful meal with their peers and sit down and you know, like literally break bread together and just relax.
Speaker 2:And so it's like the experience and the culture that we've built around food is really, like my son's lacrosse coach said a couple of weeks ago, culture precedes success. And that because they have this amazing culture in their love with their lacrosse team. And I was like God, that's it. I said, like that's why we're successful there, because we've created a food culture at the school and we've created a kitchen culture within our kitchen.
Speaker 2:Like we say to our chefs like check your ego at the door, mission is the boss. Like we're feeding these kids, you know, to grow their brains and grow their bodies and keep them out of the medical system and thriving and pursuing their dreams. And that's our focus every day is to engage with them and make this experience the best for them so that they have a healthy relationship with food. So I hope these kids will have that in them forever, right? I mean it's like I've watched my own kids go off to college and out in the real world and it's so painful because there aren't enough of us out there to hold that line or to offer a different option. It still seems very ultra processed and nutrient deficient in the real world.
Speaker 1:So it's they're going to have to advocate for themselves, yeah, so that's where I hope we can give them that toolkit and I think with with your kids, since they've had this experience with you at home that when they do kind of go off and they go off to college and they start eating a bunch of junk, they're gonna feel the difference. Yeah, so I feel like they're in that phase right now.
Speaker 2:I'm like driving you crazy. Very, very painful for me. I'm like, really like, why would you eat that like, like, why are you drinking that Like? You know, just, but. And then, like my son said to me last week, he's like mom, I know you've told me I'm like, but do you like? But? So why would you chew? He's like, I know it's in me. I'm like, okay, but you know, as somebody said to me actually Dr Natasha Campbell McBride, who wrote the Gaps Diet she said to me last year she said you've given them a roadmap.
Speaker 2:Like most kids don't have a roadmap. So if they get off track they know where to go back to. So you know, I hope, with all these kids at the school, that at least they have that roadmap Right. They'll be like oh, I remember I felt so good. Like most kids don't know what it feels like to feel good. Most adults don't know what it feels like to feel good. So if they have that really positive experience and feeling where they're digesting and absorbing their food properly, then they'll be like oh, I was eating X, y and Z and I felt really good. It was all fresh from my farmer's market and you know. So we educate all the time on the line about where the food comes from.
Speaker 1:I think that there's a lot of complaints about behavioral issues and it's just impossible for you to be able to focus. Like you mentioned, if you're never getting satisfied, you're never getting the nutrients that you need. So I want to talk a little bit about the GAPS diet for people that don't know what is that.
Speaker 2:The GAPS diet. It stands for gut and psychology syndrome and gut and physiology syndrome. So the gut brain connection and the gut body connection, so the health of your gut, which is basically like the headquarters of your immune system, really affects everything and how it works. So when you rebalance the gut and you heal and seal the gut, then you'll be functioning on a higher level. Right, you won't have all the issues, but if people have leaky gut, which a lot of people have heard and which can happen across, you know. Basically, if you think about you know my microbiome and your microbiome, compared to our great grandmothers it's not nearly as rich and diverse. So when I wrote my cookbook back in 2014, the average baby had 287 toxins in their core blood. So they're starting out a little compromised. When they go through the birth canal, they swallow a big gulp of this is in layman's terms, but of bacteria. That is their first inoculation of their microbiomes. So they're inheriting poor gut flora or compromised gut flora. They're getting a vaccine day one of life. They're often not breastfed, they're in there, put on you know formulas and then processed foods, and then they get an ear infection and they get a round of antibiotics and they get more shots and then they get another ear infection. I mean. So then it's just like this, really hard for this young, little, premature immune system to develop properly and to be strong and robust.
Speaker 2:And so you know, if we can just like hold back and really think about, you know, people take like a year to plan their wedding, but how much time do we plan to have a baby and to properly prepare for that experience and that nourishment, to build another human right? We don't think about it and the body's miraculous and somehow it does it, but we have a generation of really sick kids. You know, almost 60% of our kids have a chronic illness. So there are so many also so many toxins in the world and in our clothes and all these things that we can't necessarily control. So the food part of things is super important because we do have some control over that. So if we can at least get that foundational piece in place, then we have a better chance at our immune systems being able to handle the toxins that are just part of being a human in this day, in this time in humanity, right.
Speaker 2:So the GAPS diet is a very healing protocol that we went on as a family. It can be up to a two-year protocol of really an elimination diet and going back to real like meat stocks and soups and stews and healthy fats and kind of introducing things bit by bit and healing and sealing that, that gut lining. And then the idea is that it's not a lifetime thing, although my cookbook, I feel like, is a good foundation of how you can eat for life. I mean, it's the basis of how I cook for the kids at school and for my family at home and so you know I set out to write that to really show that there's that you can eat beautiful, delicious, amazing foods and still heal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I I got the book and it just came the other day, so and I was just looking through it and you know what I really liked about this is that your recipes weren't overly complicated either. And I was looking, and because sometimes the frustration comes as you'll open it up and it's a million ingredients, it just seems overwhelming, so you just kind of close it.
Speaker 2:That's what I do. That's why I was like it's simple.
Speaker 1:It's definitely you can tell like a very, very busy mom wrote this cookbook for people that are, you know, very busy. We have busy lives, but this is the most important thing, because if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. So I want to hear a little bit about so. I heard you mentioned leaky gut and a lot of people don't know exactly what that is. So what exactly is that? Because most people, as you mentioned like, suffer from this, Right.
Speaker 2:So when you, you know you're supposed to eat something and it goes in one end and out the other, it's kind of like goes through the tube and out the other end and what happens? We have inside of our intestinal lining these like villi, like finger-like structures that are lining our gut. And when we have things that come into the body that you know the body doesn't recognize or that are causing harm to our intestinal lining, can wear down those villi like kind of mow it down like grass and create cracks in the lining. So what's supposed to go in one end and out the other can seep out into the bloodstream and then the body can see it as a foreign invader and cause an autoimmune response. Or things can cross the blood brain barrier and cause neurological issues. So the onslaught into our body, the things that are going in that are really like pouring gasoline on the flames.
Speaker 2:You know, with the ultra processed foods and a lot of antibiotics, obviously those are lifesaving, but they really do. You know, we should save them for those moments when we need them to be lifesaving and and I think they're giving like I took my kid to a dermatologist and the woman was like, oh, we give out antibiotics like candy, like she literally said that to me and I was just like we got to go. So you know it's really they don't think about the ramifications of obviously, if you need one, you need one. But we have to be more sensible about you know what we're doing to our insides and how, how we rebuild after something like that as well, too right, so it's a sugar and ultra processed foods and all the toxins there.
Speaker 2:All these things you know play a role. Birth control pills, all these things like there's just so many things. And so if we just really try to fragrances, skincare, all the things that go on the body. So if we can start to eliminate those things and then rebuild the gut, rebalance it and seal it, then immune system strong.
Speaker 1:So tell me what your advice would be for someone that is realizing I feel tired, I'm getting sick all the time, like I really need to change my lifestyle for myself and my kids, but don't even know where to start. So what would your advice be for them?
Speaker 2:Well for me. When I found out about the raw milk, my friend who introduced me to that told me about the Weston A Price Foundation. Have you heard of that foundation?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they really changed my life. I mean, it's based on the work of a dentist, dr Price, in the 20s and 30s who noticed narrowing of the jaw and crooked teeth and cavities that you know didn't used to be like that for his patients, and he went on an excursion across the globe, a decade long excursion, to find perfect health. And he found all these non-industrials, little pockets of tribal people or villages of people thriving, free of disease, with beautiful broad bone structure and perfectly straight teeth and no cavities, no heart disease, no cancer, and he studied their diets. And so I ended up going and hearing Sally Fallon, who started the Western Prize Foundation. I heard her speak and literally was sitting there, you know, with my latte from wherever, just listening to her, with my jaw dropped, like seeing all these pictures of these people just with these beautiful broad bone structures and beautiful teeth, and it just all made sense to me, like it totally clicked.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my God, I've been duped my whole life. You know, just thinking about my fat free days and really like I hadn't thought about what I like true nourishment, like organ meats and broths and soups, all the things you know, and the fermented foods, raw dairy. I just it wasn't even in my world at all or my wheelhouse, and so I went down that rabbit hole and the Weston Price Foundation has chapter leaders all around the world. Weston Price Foundation has chapter leaders all around the world. So my first advice for people really is to like find a local chapter leader, if you can, who will? Their job is to connect you to your local food system so they have like a list of resources that you can find your raw milk or find your good eggs or find your meats. And it's a community too, so you can ask questions if you're struggling with you know where to find the best doctor or anything really. So that provides support. So, because it can be kind of this lonely road of like where do I turn and what do I do, Certainly, if you have farmer's markets, I would say go to your local farmer's market and start talking to your farmers and meet them, shake their hands, hear their stories and start weeding things out and bringing things in.
Speaker 2:And just I always say, like, start with one thing. You know it can be super daunting when you're thinking, oh my gosh, we need to change everything and I don't know where to start and what I'm going to do, just start with like introducing good eggs or switching out your dairy, or finding a friend who's interested in it with you, who will dive down these rabbit holes with you, and making it kind of more of a fun experience as opposed to being just super daunting and overwhelming. Cause we've all kind of been there. You know, a lot of us who are talking about it now have had our own. We've all been there, right, where we're just have, we have this wake up where it's like, oh my gosh, like I want to change and where do I start? And so it's like finding your people and just bit by bit. It's like, once you know, you can't unknow it too. So you kind of like just going forward, right.
Speaker 1:What is your advice for people? Because this is what I find the hardest is the sugar cravings.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, I think honestly, if you can cut the sugar, it's not too long before you really don't crave it anymore. It's a couple of weeks, I would say. But you have to retrain the taste buds. But with sugar you don't have a shut off, like if you're eating proteins and fats, like you can't eat those, like keep going, you get fully satiated where you're like I can't eat anymore. But with sugar there's no, literally no shut off. So it's very easy to just keep overeating literally no shut off. So it's very easy to just keep overeating and literally that sugar is hijacking the bugs in your gut and causing the you know, the bad bugs to proliferate and they run the show. So your microbes, like we're like more microbial than we are human cells, so they're really running the show.
Speaker 2:So you know, I've had friends who say, like I wake up in the middle of the night and I like eat a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies and a sleeve of Ritz crackers. Like there's just like this uncontrollable and other friends, that her husband like drives in the middle of the night to get ice cream, like it's. I'm like really Like that seems so crazy. But it's like you're not running the show yourself. It's like the microbes are really like get me more sugar. So sugar, I'd say, is really one of those things, and that's why at school we really have no sugar. We say savory over sweet. The most we'll have is like a smoothie with maybe a little bit of raw honey in it, but that's it, because we figured these kids are going to get sugar everywhere else they go. And then you know, so it's like if we can keep it super clean and then try to retrain those taste buds, because that is so important, because it's really highly addictive. It's like a drug.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, so you would say that maybe the first couple of weeks kind of grin and bear, but then after that taste buds change, they honestly do and if you've conditioned yourself like we've gone through this, we're like, oh, a little piece of chocolate after dinner.
Speaker 2:And then it's like, but if you get out of that habit, it's just kind of like, oh, I don't really need that, you know, but it's kind of like some of it is habitual and food is really emotional. I mean, I remember when I was really before kids, I used to like eat dinner, watch TV with my husband or fiance I don't even know where, we were probably young twenties and then I would like fall asleep, wake up, have ice cream and then like, fall asleep again, like it was just like this habit of like, oh, we gotta have that ice cream after dinner. And now I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, my poor body was probably just like this huge insulin spike, right. And then you crash and and we, we actually wore. We did a citizen science project where we wore blood glucose monitors at the school. We put them on. Yeah, this was like oh that's right.
Speaker 1:It's on your website.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we did like some chefs and parents and staff and kids wore the glucose monitors just as an empowerment tool and we tracked it. And it was just so interesting to see the moms thinking like, oh, those like two or three glasses of wine that I have at the end of the day and how that disrupts my sleep. And then one of the kids who was in high school said, gosh, ms Hillary, like I had a beautiful BLT for lunch on the sourdough bread and it was even pretty much. And then I went home and I had six gummy worms and it just spiked right up and then they crashed. So it was just like fascinating to him, right, not like he's maybe never going to eat another gummy worm.
Speaker 2:But I said, yeah, imagine like a little five-year-old, if you're giving them candy all the time or all day, they're getting all these things that spike for all of us. And then, as chefs and parents, there's an accountability, right. If you know the food that you're feeding your children or the children at school and you're causing these blood glucose spikes and you're kind of directly driving them towards the medical system, how can you in good conscience like, do that every day and lay your head on the pillow at night. But if you know, you're feeding them these really nutrient dense foods that are keeping them headed, keeping them out of the medical system. We say every day we get to feed a kid is a day that we keep them out of the medical system. We say every day we get to feed a kid is a day that we keep them out of the medical system. We have their stomachs for six hours a day, so it's a huge opportunity to change the trajectory of their health.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so right. Gosh, I could talk to you forever. I know we have to kind of close up soon, but there's a couple of things that I wanted to still talk about. First was your training academy. I saw videos on this. This looks absolutely amazing. Kind of walk me through, because I think did you just have?
Speaker 2:one Last summer. We usually do two in the summer, and this year we're going to do four.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you have one coming up in April?
Speaker 2:Yeah, In February, february, april.
Speaker 1:February, april Okay, june and August Okay.
Speaker 2:Tell me about that. So the training academy really, as I took over the lunch program, I was like, oh my gosh, everyone needs this information, not just school chefs like. Parents need it, kids need it, anyone. So I just really wanted anyone and everyone who wants this information. I want them to come, I'll give you everything I know and then go back into your communities and be the ripple. Basically, either take control of your own health, your family's health, step into a church or a school or just whatever you want to do with it. Just be the ripple. And so we really go through. We drop people into nature in Topanga Canyon, which is super beautiful, where they can just let go of their day-to-day and then be surrounded with really like-minded people that are all looking to create change and do better with their health. And then we basically give them kind of like a diet and lifestyle makeover and empower them with information.
Speaker 2:So we go through our systems that we've developed at school and at home so making 100% whole grain, locally grown, freshly milled sourdough breads to soaking and sprouting your nuts and seeds and grains and legumes. And then we go through fermented vegetables, raw dairy, fermented raw dairy. Roasting meats, slow roasting meats, turning roasted chicken into bone broths, doing meat stocks, organ meats. The power of organ meats is so huge, demystifying, that we take everybody to the farmer's markets. They can engage with their farmers and learn how to ask the right questions and see how simple it is when you have just real beautiful, fresh foods, how you can throw together really amazing lunch, dinner, breakfast with just you know what's right within your local food system. And then we have experts come in from Janine Farzan, hopefully Good Cooking, who talks all about organ meats. She's like super brilliant and amazing.
Speaker 2:Hilda Labrador comes in from the Wise Traditions podcast and Holistic Hilda and she does like her six secrets of ancestral wisdom and so sunrise walks and the importance of sleep. She gives the whole talk about that and everybody gets up in the morning and sees the sunrise. And then we have Bam Lionheart from Primal Movement. So kind of like we're like going back to the way our ancestors ate. He's taking people back to the way our ancestors moved and so how do we sit and stand and what shoes do we wear and how we can kind of shift the way we think about movement so that we have vitality and flexibility as we age. So he's incredible. And then Bob Sulear comes from Breathe your Power. He's the North American Wim Hof director and he teaches people about the power of breath and we all have this tool in our toolkits. It's with us all the time. So, getting out of fight or flight, we jump in cold plunges and challenge ourselves mentally, which is so great. So it's really.
Speaker 2:Mark McAfee comes from Raw Farms, which is the largest raw dairy in the world, and demystifies raw dairy and gives a talk about that. So it's really just like everyone's, you know, from 16 years old to 75 year old, to professional chefs to total newbies like everyone just shares their story and is really vulnerable and they're what they're going through and then how they hope to move forward and there's so much love and support. It's like you become part of the soul fam. We say once you're in the soul fam the school of lunch fam you're in soul fam for life. So then you have this community to go out and you're not no longer alone and you can draw off one another and collaborate or ask questions and because you're not going to learn it all in a week, but you get that foundation and that value system and that like can do.
Speaker 2:This is like how moving forward and then you just go and you have to earn your street cred, unfortunately, right, like you can't not get in your kitchen and expect meals to just show up. Like you have to get back in our kitchens and like, bring the joy back and sing and dance and, you know, just really be in the work together. Right, we've just become so disconnected from cooking and nourishing ourselves and one another, so it's really beautiful. So it's like really, I say like money back, guarantee of your life's not changed forever. Because, just like I know we've done this now for seven years and like everyone who leaves, it's just like this is incredible, because people are just craving that information, right, and we just make it joyful. Like we say we're joyfully disrupting the trend of chronic illness in this next generation of kids. So it's all about bringing the joy, because if it's not joyful, you're not going to want to do it. Right?
Speaker 1:So right, you're right. Yeah, I was talking to my husband. I Right, you're right. Yeah, I was talking to my husband. I was looking on your website and I was like, okay, I can't make the April one, but I think I want to make the summer one because it's just a wealth full of knowledge. I would tell everyone to go on your website, watch the video. And you're like, oh my gosh, I have to get on air. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about the nonprofit that you donated, that we had the donation go to.
Speaker 1:Right before that, I have one more question for you that I want you to answer about seasonal. How do you feel about people eating the same thing Now? It may be nutritious and nutrient dense, but the same thing year round or seasonally eating?
Speaker 2:I think seasonal eating is really important. I mean, at the school we have our proteins in place all the time and then we are able to diversify with what's in season. You know, I don't think strawberries like I'm from New Hampshire. It's like you know we don't need to be eating strawberries year round. And if you just think about and also teaching the kids like, oh, they love the tomato soup, but it's like, oh well, tomatoes are out of season, now We'll have it again, and sometimes we freeze roasted tomatoes and freeze it so, like in February we'll be like tomato soup. You know, surprise them, but it's good for us to understand seasonality and that we don't have access to everything all the time. And then you appreciate what's in season and you try different things and I think it's so important to support our local farmers who are doing things right, because you know if they go away then we're gonna be beholden to more industrial farming and we really wanna have that local relationship. So I'm a big believer in seasonality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the best things I did with my kids is we get all of our meats and eggs from a local farmer and I brought them down to meet them and they're always more than happy for you to have a visit. And now my kids know where their food comes from and they talk about Farmer Nick and I'm actually going to have them on the podcast soon.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah to talk about and I was like that's such a great family activity too for you to do with your kids so they get more involved and they I mean they have the best time.
Speaker 2:So that's a thing Just don't talk too much at the farmer's markets, Cause my kids are like mom, I gotta go. Well, yeah, yeah, I was like I could talk for hours.
Speaker 1:I know, I know All right, so how can people find you? I got your book right on Amazon, so that was very easy.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to get into cause you were saying about like organ meats. That's the one thing I haven't touched yet and I'm nervous, but I'm excited to try some of these.
Speaker 2:Make the pate. Make the pate and add bacon. Add bacon. It's like so good, it's so good, it's like the gate it's the gateway.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll try it this weekend with my kids.
Speaker 2:And you can make like several ramekins and just like throw some in the freezer so you can pull one out each week or whatever, like you can kind of, but my daughter loves it. My boys would rather have organ meats, like made into a bolognese sauce or something they're like we don't need to know, just like put it in there. My daughter's like you made pate, like it's like the best day of her life when we make pate. So so, yeah, so dive into that for sure.
Speaker 2:The heal your gut cookbook at school of lunch on instagram and school of lunchcom is our website and people can dm me, you can email me, people can set up a call to learn more about the training academy. We'll get on like a half hour call and just like I want. We always interview people who want to come just to make sure we can know their story and what they're looking to get out of it so we can maximize you know their experience, because if they're coming to try and change their kids school that we have our chefs from the manzanita school who come, but we also have a chef in texas and a chef down in southern california that are doing different. You one's feeding 600 kids and one started two new schools, so that you know it's like we want to maximize the experience for everybody and we just like love to get people really excited about it. So if people have questions, they can email us to set up a call and then DM me on Instagram Happy to answer questions.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, that's perfect. That's such a great idea. So every thought leader that's really making a huge difference in the community. We love to donate to a charity that is meaningful to them, so you decided for Documenting Hope as your organization. Tell me a little bit about why you chose that nonprofit.
Speaker 2:So Beth Lambert is someone who actually we grew up in the same hometown, which we didn't know when we first met, but she has pioneered this whole organization and from I don't know. She's been in this as long as I have and it's really about showing alternative methods of healing for kids who are compromised, so like if there's an autistic kid or kids struggling with all sorts of things. She's got doctors and all sorts of different healing modalities that showing, by rebalancing the body through these natural ways, that there is healing, like the kids can fully recover. I mean, I'm not probably doing the best job of explaining all of it. It's so complex and amazing, but she's they've documented kids and families and their transition through this healing journey and how you know's they've documented kids and families and their transition through this healing journey and how you know just giving that hope right that this is possible and there are other ways and you're not stuck with a diagnosis for your life.
Speaker 2:Just because you get an autism diagnosis doesn't mean that's your label for life. When the body can rebalance and be properly supported, there's so much healing that can take place. And you know the body is amazing. That's one of the main things we teach as well is that, like your body wants to be in homeostasis. We are mother nature's miracle. We're just like everything in nature. We're designed to work right. So it's just through all these things that have happened and the onslaught of toxins and whatnot, that you know we just have to bless where we are. But Beth gives incredible hope and healing and documents it all. So I just, every time someone asks where to donate, I'm like donate to Beth. They're just amazing work.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. I love that the thought of like not one size fits all. You know everybody's so different and everybody should be treated differently in the way that you're handling whatever that they're going through.
Speaker 2:So much research, so many people doing good work, and so she's connected to all sorts of amazing doctors and people doing great things.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. All right, so we're going to make sure to put that. I'll have your book in the show notes and then a link to the training academy and your website and to learn more about all the wonderful things you're doing. I love that you are called the lunch lady. I love it.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:I love it, and we'll have a link to documenting hope as well, so people can donate there. So thank you so much for everything that you're doing. Hillary, it was fantastic to have you on. I'm so glad you were a bill of card all the time. I know you're so busy.
Speaker 2:Oh well, of course, I'm so happy to be here and just spread the message and hope to empower a lot of people and hope to meet some of your audience in person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm hoping to see you in the summer, that's my plan.
Speaker 2:Yes, awesome, that'd be so great.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thank you so much for coming on and I want to thank everybody for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities Podcast. Wasn't such an incredible conversation with Hillary? I mean talking to her. I felt like I was talking to one of my great friends. She has so much knowledge about food and the GAPS diet. I just learned so much by speaking with her. So if you liked this podcast, again, please rate and review it. It really does mean so much. It's the best way for new people to learn about our podcast. And while you're at it, please check the subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to follow us, you can follow me on Facebook at Truman Charities. Instagram Jamie underscore Truman Charities. You can follow me on LinkedIn, jamie Truman, and then. So you can keep up with Truman Charities and our three major events. We have our three big events we have per year, plus our Bethesda's Best Happy Hours. Go into trumancharitiescom and sign up for our newsletter. And, if you don't know already, I did write a book, vanishing Fathers the Ripple Effect on Tomorrow's Generation that debuted in March. 100% of the proceeds from that book go to charities that help support at-risk youth. So far, we have raised a little over $80,000 since our debut, so we're very excited about that. You can find Vanishing Fathers on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles any online bookstore. Again, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities Podcast. Until next time.
