Sherry Strong Interview
KAMAHL BARHOUSH:Welcome back everybody. I'm Kamahl Barhoush from the Executive Success Institute and PT Business Edge. Today, it's my great pleasure to be chatting with Sherry Strong, who is a food philosopher and nutritional strategist through And just to let you know, before I introduce Sherry to you, if you hear any strange noises or any weird sounds in the background, I'm actually at a wonderful property just north of Melbourne at Sherry’s house. It's just fantastic to be here. So welcome Sherry and such a great pleasure to have you.
SHERRY STRONG:My absolute pleasure to be here.
KAMAHL:Sherry, I already know about all the amazing things that you do through looking at your website at But for the sake of the listeners, could you tell us a little bit more about what you do and what it offers.
SHERRY:Okay. My core business of what I do on my own is really around the education, speaking, training; I run retreats, wellness retreats. So that can be a public program that the public can come along to. But I also offer it for businesses. If they have their executives and they're wanting their executives to go through their business programs that they do on retreats. I can then come in and create a wellness retreat around all the business that they're getting done. So they essentially get two conferences in one. I also do one-on-one coaching. I have programs that I put people through that help them understand the concepts and live the concepts that will bring them amazing energy and health and in many cases reverse disease.
KAMAHL:Oh fantastic! How did you get involved in the business of food philosophy?
SHERRY:Well, as I say to people, there's not an association of food philosophers. But what I did was when I first started studying nutrition, I realised that there were several things going on. One – it's a business and it's full of agendas and there are very few people actually teaching the truth based on science and nature. Two – I really felt that people were completely drowning in information. At that time, I was the Victorian Chair of Nutrition Australia. I was studying nutrition and health and behavioural sciences at Deakin. I was involved in another community called Body, Image and Health. Later on became the Melbourne Head of Slow Food. With all this kind of information, I realised that people were drowning in so much information and it's conflicting. It's conflicting because people have agendas. Often in order to make a living in a profession, you have to sell something. Selling carrots, you know something that truly heals people, there's not a great mark-up on it. There's not margins on it.
What we found in the industry of food and supplements is the things that we can patent or value add so no one else was doing them were you could market those things. Then they created a lot of science. They found science to support it. I found that there was a lot of confusion. So one day people would hear that soy was this wonder food that’s going to solve all their nutritional problems, world peace, relationship problems and everything. It's amazing, right? You got to eat soy. And then the next day, you'd see a report on 60 Minutes where they're saying oh don’t eat soy, it's bad for you, it’s going to damage your children and all that kind of thing.
So I spent a lot of time in nature actually and a lot of time walking and contemplating. How do we actually sort through this? I came up with this concept. I try and remove the ego from that in saying I downloaded the concept. I was gifted this concept which I call Nature’s Principle. From that, I developed a bunch of other theories, philosophies, that really succinctly tell us and elegantly tell us how it's all meant to be working. It doesn't actually have to be that confusing. So that's how I call myself a food philosopher. As a nutritionist, I then moved away from prescriptive programs and actually developed strategies for people to find what works for them.
KAMAHL:Within those strategies, it’s very interesting, I know that . . . at the heart of it, you're still a scientist as well and I come from a science background. There is so much more information. One thing I really found is through working within the scientific community. The more we find the more we realise we don’t know. So we go on a search to find those that we don’t know and then we discover some more new things. As we discover new things, we realise there's even more we don’t know. Talking to someone else in the scientific community, we understand this concept, how do people at home who just have no exposure to sciences in their purest form like this, how are they supposed to get this message?
SHERRY:Such a great question. In the four hours we're going to be talking here, I'd like to explain it to you. But it just brings up this beautiful kind of analogy that I make. It's that there's so much information and when you drill down into the microscopic minutia of it. So when you think about a lawyer cross examining someone on the witness stand. When you go into microscopic detail, instead of looking at an overview or macro, you can actually make a lie look like the truth and you can make the truth look like a lie. The human body is infinitely more complex and we even have the capacity to actually totally understand how it works right now. As you say, the more we discover the more we learn. I remember about 10 or 15 years ago, reading something where they had realised that inner space is as expansive as outer space. So we're still exploring in a sense these galaxies on a micro level.
[00:05:40]
The thing that I find that is so amazing, that is so beautiful about nature is that even though the body and how it works and it’s relationship with what we eat is infinitely complex, the user manual, how we're actually meant to use it and function is incredibly simple. See nature actually tells us, I believe in what I've observed, what to eat and the quantities to eat it and by how and when and how easily it’s obtained in nature. So that’s which is most abundant we're meant to have the most of. Harder to obtain in nature, we're meant to have less of it. If you cannot get it in nature, not only is it harmful to the body and the planet, you don’t need it.
KAMAHL:Just a second, if I can just pause you there for a minute, are you telling me that you've actually been able to grasp the complexity of the scientific world and all of the things that we're discovering and create a food and nutrition for dummies manual in its simplest form?
SHERRY:Well, I think the dummies of course is the new word for it.
KAMAHL:Of course I'm coining a term off a very popular series of books.
SHERRY:Yes, I completely understand it. Really what it does, what you're saying fits in with this arrogance that we've had within the scientific community of actually believing that we're so much more intelligent and superior to primitive cultures. We actually call them primitive, as in primal is something not as good as we the advanced. It's actually what we condescendingly refer to as the dummies, you know the primitives, the child in the most basic, primitive culture that has a history of longevity and well being to a long age. Yet has a greater understanding than most people, I would say with degrees, in the western world. It comes to the factors that nature actually communicates to us and when we can actually have the humility to work within nature and listen to it. That’s why a child in one of those cultures has no idea what it’s recommended daily intake of vitamin C is. They have no idea what protein to carb ratio they need. And yet, they don’t have the same kind of diseases like ADHD and diabetes or childhood obesity or now we're saying children as young as six having the heart and arteries of a 50-year-old. It’s because these children that we refer to in primitive cultures are eating close to nature, in context with nature, seasonally, locally, whole food, slow food, long before they were kind of buzzwords. It's just how we did life. That's how we did food. Whereas now, we've got all the science and we're manipulating our food and we're contorting it and we're extracting macro and micro nutrients, out of balance to what they were in the full and intact state, processing the heck out of it, putting toxic chemicals into it. Not to mention after the processing, but while we're growing it. And we're wondering why we're so disconnected to nature and have no idea what we're meant to be eating.
KAMAHL:The simplicity with which you're comprehending what's going on and being able to discuss it is truly remarkable. I, certainly, and my other work colleagues that have experienced you through your public talks certainly consider you the expert in this field. I was going through some of your achievements and some of your accomplishments and I just did a quick search online and there you are onstage in Japan and North America and you're writing books and there are DVDs. What would be the combination of knowledge and experience do you consider that has led you to become the expert in this field?
SHERRY:Oh, that just sounds really grand. I kind of giggle when you're saying that.
KAMAHL:And I say that. But just to explain, I totally saw you blush. But the experience that I have with your message is that one person in one seminar picked up one thing that you said and this has happened directly in my life. And that person, who happens to be my fiancée, took that one message into her workplace and has transformed her entire workplace. So the humility is lovely. But there is a reality in that, in that what you're saying has a powerful truth that resonates right at the core. There's a combination of things that you have studied and done and believed and philosophised yourself that has led you to this point. So how would you describe that?
[00:10:00]
SHERRY:Okay, there are a few quotes that come to mind. One is because the concept that I teach, these philosophies, people have used beautiful words that I try and keep in perspective. They’ve said it's brilliant, they said it's genius and that’s why I always give attribution to downloading it. There's a great TED talk that Elizabeth Gilbert speaks on about downloading genius. With that kind of point of view, what I talk about is based on truth, science and nature. And science in its purest form is all about the pursuit of truth. Schopenhauer 10.41 had a great quote. He said 'All truth passes through three phases. First, it's ridiculed. Second, it's violently opposed. Third, it's declared self-evident'.
Another quote is Einstein. People said that he was a genius and his take on it was he just stayed on problems much longer than other people did. So I believe there's genius in all of us. When we're so possessed by a thought or something we want to find out and if we just persist and we persist and we explore it and refine it, everyone has the capacity to do that. I think in my walks, I downloaded nature’s principle and I just stuck with it because I knew there's this some kind of great truth in it. If I can just give people a little snapshot of how it works is if you think about . . . okay, so nature tells us what to eat and the quantities to it and by how easily and when it’s obtained in nature. So that which is most abundant we're meant to have the most of. Harder to obtain, we need less of. Cannot get it, we don’t need it. So here we go. So what is our most primary nutrient, we're completely life dependent on, if we don’t get it within seconds we die, seconds?
KAMAHL:Obviously, the air that we breathe.
SHERRY:Absolutely. Where do you find air?
KAMAHL:I'm glad I got that right by the way.
SHERRY:You'd be amazed how many people say water.
KAMAHL:Oh really?
SHERRY:Yes. So where do we find air?
KAMAHL:Well, it's all around us, isn't it? In the atmosphere.
SHERRY:Everywhere. Our primary nutrient, we're most life dependent on, isn't it convenient that it's everywhere? Second most primary nutrient that we can't survive days without?
KAMAHL:Is water.
SHERRY:Yeah. In fact, most people don’t even think of air and water as nutrients. Try and live without them though had you'll find out how quickly we need these nourishments. It provides nourishment. We know that the quality of the breath that we have and the air that we breathe makes a difference to our vitality. We know the difference between the quality of the water we drink makes a difference to our vitality. And then the third most abundant nutrient is vegetation. But even within vegetation, there's a hierarchy and nature actually has a way of communicating what we're meant to be eating. If you think about it just from very simple terms, we've been told by nutritionists and dieticians for years that we need to have more vegetables and fruit. Nature actually tells us that because there are more species of vegetables than fruit. Not only that, vegetables, you can pick them straight up off the ground. When they're young they're the most nutritious. They're actually at their tastiest. They have the most delicious kind of flavour to them. They're at their most vital. You can eat them raw straightaway.
As they start to age and mature, they become a little bit more bitter and not as palatable and we find out they're not as nourishing as when they're young. Whereas fruit, you usually have to climb a tree to get it. So nature even says let's extend and make you work harder. But even if it's in the form of a berry, we have to pick lots of them. It still has to grow to maturity and then ripen before it’s palatable. Interestingly enough, in the ripening process, that's where most of the nutrients are infused into that fruit that you eat so you get more nourishment from it. Nature actually indicates to your tastebuds. If you just wait a little bit longer, not only will it taste sweeter and more developed, but it's going to make you feel better as you eat it. And then I go through the whole kind of hierarchy of foods and things like that. But really what happens is when people start to eat out of context of nature, they start to become unbalanced.
KAMAHL:It really is so simple and everything you were just saying then just rings true. I was certainly picturing mankind, even one generation ago, walking through the forests and finding their . . . may be just a bit more than one generation ago, but walking through the forests, finding their vegetables and their winter crops as well in the ground, and springtime comes and we like for the fruits to ripen. It really is so simple. In saying that, with your experience in mind, what would you consider the top three things that people should know about how to look after their body?
[00:15:00]
SHERRY:The first thing that I always get people to understand is that you're a composite being, you are mind, body and spirit and that they work together to make you healthy. If you just pay attention to the physical body and you don’t pay attention to your mind or your spirit, it becomes a one-dimensional kind of health experience. I see a lot of people who are so kind of in their head about it and they're not experienced in the richness of life. They're exercising with the point to just create a certain body fat percentage and there's no joy in it. As my dear colleague Charles Eisenstein, he wrote the yoga vidhi and transformational weight losses, they’ll work out in a gym and they’ll spend two hours lifting weight and they haven't accomplished anything. So they’ll run for two hours on a treadmill and they’ve got nowhere, you see.
They’ve forgotten about the beauty of actually moving earth in a garden and that you can work up beautiful muscle in a garden doing that. They forgot about the beauty of walking in nature and how it actually becomes a transformational process in itself of walking, connecting with nature, being completely present in the actual moment instead of listening to music and going elsewhere. So there's a disconnect between you're moving your body and what you're doing. So health really is a mind-body-spirit experience. If I was to categorise probably in the hierarchy of when you're taking care of the health is you need to, I would actually say, focus on your spirit, then your body and then your mind. Because what happens is your spirit will tell you, give you the intuition to say when something is right or not right with you. If you listen to that, the process of actually taking care of your health becomes much more joyful. I don’t know if you've ever had the experience where there's an exercise that just jars against you and you've done it because your head tells you it’s a great thing to do.
KAMAHL:Oh many times. Many times.
SHERRY:Yeah. And then you find the thing that you absolutely love doing and it no longer becomes effort. It no longer becomes work. It becomes something that you just look forward and you become so present in. Your spirit will actually tell you the difference between those things.