Hi, this is Randy Rolfe from the Institute for Creative Solutions. I have a passion for sharing foundational concepts about vibrant health through natural living. People have been asking me how I got started with my interest in nutrition. So I’ll tell you in a couple of quick minutes.
I traveled all over the world. I was very lucky. My family loved to travel and my parents, a doctor and a sociologist took us kids with them abroad every summer for six weeks. I visited 29 countries before I was 20, and saw all different kinds of diets and cuisine, and all different kinds of people. And I was fascinated.
Meanwhile, at home we were doing a typical American Diet. My dad tried to make sure we got a little bit of everything and took our daily vitamins. But it was pretty much sweetened cereal in the morning, an egg sandwich in my school lunchbox, bananas for snack, a steak in the evening with corn or peas, a green salad my mom loved, and maybe a dessert. Just one soda a day in the summer. It was what they called “balanced” in those days.
But when I was married, I thought I really should learn what it takes to keep people healthy and happy for a hundred years. My problem was I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t even know how to boil water. I was always studying when my parents were cooking.
It happened that my first job after our wedding was at a TV station while I was waiting to be admitted to law school. The station director said I looked too young in front of the camera to be believed as a reporter. So I became the assignment editor, choosing and assigning the reporters to the local stories worthy of coverage.
But one day the director said, “Why don’t you go out and cover this scientific meeting? No one really wants to cover it, so you can take some notes and see if there’s anything interesting.”
So I’m like, oh, this will be great. Just all kinds of scientists presenting their papers. Right away, I began talking to a shy Hungarian professor with a very thick accent. I asked him, what is your newest research showing? And his answer changed my life.
He said his research had shown that the Hungarians got less cancer because they ate so much paprika and other peppers in their regular ancestral diet.
I was like, wow, isn’t that a wonderful, wonderful way to learn how to eat! Just eat the way people have been eating in populations that don’t get the kinds of degenerative conditions that are affecting the developed countries in such a big way. It made so much sense.
That started me on my lifelong path to learn how different traditional peoples eat and what kinds of health problems they have, or don’t have.
Soon it became quite clear to me that the cultures that are still eating what their grandparents and great grandparents ate don’t have diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, chronic inflammation, or mental degeneration before their time. None of these things affect traditional cultures prematurely, where the people are eating whole, natural foods that are free of man-made chemicals from the farm or the factory. So that was a no-brainer for me. I made a decision, let’s do it.
So it was in 1971, I told my husband, let’s throw out everything in our pantry and start over, because it just doesn’t fit with what I’m learning. And he said, go ahead. He wanted to stay healthy for a hundred years along with me!
So that’s how it all started. I did become a lawyer to try to help the world through diplomacy, but soon I discovered I had a gift helping individuals directly and explaining how to be healthy and happy. I founded the Institute for Creative Solutions, LLC, and have been helping people through books, courses, seminars, TV, radio, online and in private counseling ever since. Follow my Facebook page at @VibrantHealthThroughNaturalLiving.
