Jack Lalanne The Pioneering Food Rebel

Jack LaLanne's Cook Book (photo from http://www.jacklalanne.com/blog/)

This week I will be doing some biographies on notable people who died in 2011 through the lens of food. Jack Lalanne died last January at the age 96! Correctly most people associate Lalanne with exercise and fitness (grew up watching him do his thing in his body suit on TV in the 1970s) but he was also what I call a food rebel. Like Dr. Alvenia Fulton http://www.foodasalens.com/2011/02/black-history-month-for-foodies-series_21.html, Lalanne was one of the early pioneers in the good food movement. Born in 1914 in San Fransico, Lalanne converted to healthy eating after hearing nutrition guru. Lalanne’s conversion happened at age 15 while attending Paul C. Bragg lecturer at a women’s club that his mother attended in San Fransico. At the time Lalanne had a regular diet of junk food and he had recently dropped out of high school. Bragg inspired Lalanne to go cold turkey and beat his junk food addiction. Lalanne insisted that he made himself both start exercising and eating hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, soy milk, and fresh fruit for breakfast and for lunch and dinner foods such as raw vegetable salads, egg whites, fish high in omega 3s like salmon and drinking a glass of red wine. Overtime he transformed his body from skinny and out of shape to a rock hard physique. In 1936 at the age of eighteen, in Oakland, California he opened a first of its kind modern gym with equipment he designed, a juice bar that sold raw fruit and vegetable juices, and nutritious baked goods that his mother made. His facility also included and a health food store. As his business grew he turned to television to market his message about the power of exercise and good food first starting on local stations in the Bay area in 1951 and then on national day time television in 1959. With his increased popularity he went on to market his own juicer and warned against the evils of sugar, tobacco, caffeine asking, “You like your dog? Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a doughnut?” Another memorable Lalanne saying is Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together, and you’ve got a kingdom.” Here are some magnificent videos including one of the old Jack Lalanne show and an interview of Lalanne and his wife when he was 92.

The Jack Lalanne show: http://www.jacklalanne.com/watch-jack/

Jack Lalanne Washington Post video interview: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/05/18/VI2007051800916.html?sid=ST2011012401518