This easy-to-miss sign marks one end of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Promenade in San Diego. A similar sign marks the other end. Most seem to rush by without noticing.

The MLK Promenade in San Diego Is the Path of Inspiration

Visiting the major tourist spots in San Diego costs money, sometimes hundreds of dollars for a family. Yet right across from the San Diego Convention Center, lining a walkway next to the trolley tracks, is the most inspirational area attraction. Cost is zero. For the serious walker, it taps into another dimension, the internal vision of our best selves.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Promenade stretches for a 30 minute easy stroll from the entrance to the Gaslamp Quarter to a small park across from Seaport Village. Dozens of plaques with MLK quotes line both sides of the path.

If you stop and read every quotation, you may find yourself roused, uplifted, and ready to keep struggling for what you believe in. My daughter Angela and I found that emotional charge today, in honor of MLK Day tomorrow.

His galvanizing quotes transform the English language into an instrument of change. Dr. King repeatedly centers on themes of nonviolence, justice, equality, tenacity, and a visionary future to be accomplished by courageous struggle. What would he have thought of the tensions ripping the nation today? Imagine his sadness over the shootings in Tucson.

As we absorbed Dr. King’s energy on the Promenade, Angela and I were disturbed at the neglect of what should be a must-see for all San Diego visitors and residents. Many of the plaques were covered with oily dirt, and several were cracked. This damage became a visible symbol for us of the neglect of Dr. King’s teachings. Let’s rejuvenate the Promenade and make sure everyone in San Diego knows it’s there. And let’s bring Dr. King’s ideals back to the tenor of our political life.

Whatever your cause, the important thing is to have a cause. Whether you are working to help other people, sustain the planet, or end the suffering of billions of animals through a plant-based diet, Dr. King’s legacy has words to keep you energized. His most basic message is never to give up. He embodies the lesson that struggling for an ideal is the surest path to a meaningful life.

Those who work for social causes, animal rights, and the environment are often called extremists. MLK's words make us rethink this.

MLK with a vision of what ought to be, and the tenacity to settle for no less

How hard are you willing to work for what you believe in?

Having a cause, an ideal, infuses life with meaning.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

Great leaders inspire great effort. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a profound and moving orator. His speeches inspired millions to rise above their own limited concerns and work for the greater good, for justice, liberty, and equality.

If you are seeking change for the better in your own life, think about Dr. King’s words, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

Another inspiring Dr. King quote is “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

The most fundamental justice is to ensure that all have the basic necessities. As long as some are not adequately fed, those who care must be committed to end this injustice.

Nourishing food for hungry people...or wasted as animal feed?

In October 2009, the United Nations estimated over a billion people were undernourished, with the number not having enough to eat rising every year. At least five million children a year die from the effects of too little food. The desperately poor cannot afford food when its price increases by an amount that would be insignificant to wealthier people.

You may be wishing you ate a healthier diet, but have not quite gotten around to consistently basing your meals on whole plant foods. Paradoxically, the best way to build commitment to your own well-being is to look to ethical concerns and purpose outside yourself.

When you eat animal foods, such as meat, milk, and eggs, there are two to sixteen pounds of plant foods hidden in every pound of the animal food. Most of the nutrients in these plants, including protein, vitamins, minerals, and calories, are lost when the plant is eaten. Animals use these nutrients for their own metabolism and survival. The meat is a pale remnant of the whole plant food the animal ate. All the phytochemicals – beneficial plant nutrients that strengthen and support your body – are lost when animals eat plants.

The price of food falls when there is less competition for it from farmed animals, and so the poor can better afford to eat. So every time you base a meal or snack on whole plant foods, you are freeing up nourishment for hungry children.

A whole foods, plant-based diet is also sustainable, using far fewer natural resources than raising animals does. This puts less pressure on the planet, helping ensure future generations can also be properly fed.

Here's an easy, tasty way to help yourself and others at the same time

What a wonderful way to honor Dr. King! Consider another of his great quotes, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” Simply by consistently improving your diet to boost your own health and lose weight, you show the “passionate concern” that Dr. King strove for. Use this knowledge to strengthen your commitment. Understand how your food choices affect so many others, now and in the future. Your meals leave a legacy.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

Walk into your doctor’s office and find a coupon for cigarettes. Or maybe even a sample pack to “ease your stress.” As foreign as it may seem, this could have happened not that long ago. Physicians, well-meaning and helpful, pushed tobacco on their patients because industry assured them this was the right thing to do.

Millions of addicted people and their doctors yearned to believe smoking was healthy, or at least harmless. Public relations dollars on an unprecedented scale fueled their fantasy. Government agencies dozed in the back room, educating and protecting no one.

The dragonfly is there whether you see it or not

The tobacco industry manufactured confusion right along with cigarettes. Yet, as the English author Aldous Huxley so wisely observed, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Nor do these facts cease to exist for choosing a healthy diet and spurning foods that can be as harmful as tobacco is. Billions of ad dollars paint a mass fantasy of what people should eat, but all the money in the universe can’t change the basic facts of human biology and nutritional needs.

You have a naturally perfect body. Learn the real facts to protect yourself and turn your health around with a whole foods, plant-based diet. When you find out, you will want to tell everyone you know the simple secrets to losing weight and reversing chronic disease.

As Aldous Huxley also said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

Leo Tolstoy's observation encapsulates the idea of Perfect Body in one sentence.

The Secret to Permanent Weight Loss Was No Secret to Tolstoy

You could spend hard-earned dollars on a coach, personal trainer, or nutritionist. You could subtract hours from your day driving to the gym or weight-loss organization meetings. Or – you could find your perfect weight loss partner in your own home.

Actually, your best weight loss partner is…your own Perfect Body. Centuries ago, a creative genius described how this works.

Leo Tolstoy, the brilliant author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, still

Partner with your naturally perfect body

lives on in his profound novels, short stories, and essays. In the 1800’s, Tolstoy penned the insight that sets the stage for The Perfect Formula Diet.

Tolstoy realized: “Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature.” Artificial foods and chemicals, invented long after Tolstoy left this life, are not the proper fuels for your living machine.

Your body wants to attain perfect weight and health. Your body knows how to get there. All you need to do is get out of your own way. Eat the nourishing foods that your body needs and chuck the toxins from your food, home, and personal care products.

Does this seem hard? You can do it, one step at a time. Just ponder another Tolstoy quote: “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.