Quest for the nutritional revolution
By John Erickson

While working Costco I had become friends with a regular customer, a deli-owner-turned-entrepreneur who would eventually become recognized by Forbes magazine as an up-and-coming rich person. This man invented the first-ever 40/30/30 diet meals-on-wheels delivery service –the concept of preparing freshly made diet meals and delivering them to his customer’s doorstep every morning in an insulated cooler bag packed with ice.

“A 40/30/30 diet?” I was intrigued because I’ve read every diet book on the market and I’ve never heard of such a thing. He went on to say “a 40/30/30 diet is a way of eating that portions each meal based on the precise ratio of 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 30% fat. Whenever I saw my new 40/30/30 diet guru I would take my lunch break and follow him around the store to I could find out more about this 40/30/30 way of eating.

After only two weeks of following a 40/30/30 balanced diet, I had lost so much weight I had to tie a shoelace around my waist to hold my pants up. Best of all I realized that my state of mind mirrored the quality of the previous meal. I established a new relationship with food. For the first time I was controlling my emotions instead of having them control me. The cobwebs cleared from my brain and I was now able to focus on one thing at a time. I became more patient, slow drivers no longer bothered me and I felt a deeper connection with the present moment. It felt like I achieved enlightenment without having to meditate in a cave for two weeks! Fat loss was no longer my reason for dieting; it became a pleasant side effect. Overall, I lost 30 pounds and nothing can replace the way I feel moment by moment.

For the first time in my life I was in complete control. I no longer craved sweets and I developed the attention span to start reading books. I wondered why everybody didn’t eat this way, and most importantly, why did it take me 24 years to learn how to eat properly? I always thought healthy eating should become standard with our upbringing, not dominated by commercials cunningly designed to introduce toddlers to the processed food companies of America.

My next big realization came when I scratched my legs and noticed something drastically different. My leg muscles were hard as a rock - and I was not even working out!! The only thing I changed was my eating habits. So much for bad genetics. This did not make sense -I had to find out more.

I quickly enrolled in a 40/30/30 training course that took place in Canada and was taught radical American doctors who openly stated a 40/30/30 balanced diet could absolutely reverse many of the common ailments like type II diabetes, heart disease and erectile dysfunction...just to name a few. They carefully explained the US government would shut you down if such claims were made on their soil. I particularly remember the story of a medical doctor who said the Dieticians who worked on his hospital floor gawked at him when he wrote "no orange juice" on the prescription pad when treating someone for type II diabetes. We are living in tremendously unsettling times, never before has the dietary advice of the American medical establishment been so divided.

I became further obsessed by the 40/30/30 philosophy knowing it was part of an underground movement but I strongly desired a real degree in nutrition. To provide substantial dietary advice in America you must be a Registered Dietician (RD). My next step was to enroll in a college program to pursue a career as a dietician.

On the first day of class the professor told each student to stand up and introduce themselves. I was proud to announce “my name is John Erickson, a 40/30/30 Nutritionist...” During a lecture a day later, the professor crossed eyes with me and told the class a 40/30/30 diet was “just another fad diet.” I felt as if someone was mocking my religious beliefs. My professor also went on to say all other “nutritionists” are insubstantial unless they were a Registered Dietician.

The war was on! I became the teacher’s pest by challenging the mainstream view.
The college program I was enrolled in was part of the US government appointed group responsible for operating the food service departments found inside public schools, nursing homes and hospitals. A dietetic degree from a state-accredited college is required to hold a managerial position in any one of these food service facilities, a situation that creates a government-lock on the system the same way the government controls daily mail delivery.

Top students of the graduating class are pressured to obtain jobs supervising high school cafeterias because they pay well, come with good health care benefits and include a 401K retirement plan. I thought it was strange to enter college to become a dietician and then urged to become a fast food restaurant manager. The only difference was this fast food restaurant has no logo and is located inside every public school, nursing home and hospital across America.

College students majoring in dietetics visited public schools to observe the children eating in the cafeteria, a scene I found inconceivably bizarre, yet considered perfectly normal by the American dietetic establishment. This was an unpleasant reminder of how I was fed in high school. I had a flashback of myself on the lunch line ordering the same thing every day: a “Chicken patty sandwich with fries,” a combination of food that contains over 11 grams of partially hydrogenated (trans) fats, a gooey man-made substance that stays in your body for more than 51 days after you have them. Serving trans fats in school is as appropriate as serving vodka in church. The carbohydrate portion of my school lunch consisted of one item from the vegetable group (the French fries), a fruit (the grape flavored drink) and an item from the grain group (the sandwich roll).

I had no idea these foods were causing my blood sugar levels to plummet prior to starting my next period class. Low blood sugar causes poor mental concentration, a short attention span and will cause a child not to retain anything from the lessons taught in the classroom. Kids might as well stay home if they are not fed correctly. This is not a proactive way to treat the children who represent the spirit of America’s future.

As the top student of the graduating class I was able to obtain a job supervising the dietary department at Central Suffolk Hospital, Long Island N.Y. To further my disgust with the system I was instructed to serve macaroni and cheese out of a can, schedule lunch breaks, make sure everyone was wearing a hair net and to count the cash drawer at the end of the night. There was no way for me to influence the quality of the food being served because the whole operation was based on an outdated system of procedures and budgets. Amid great inner conflict, I had to continue my employment at the hospital because I still had another year before I completed my training as a dietician. During this time I was thrown into a tight situation. Students were required to practice their counseling skills by meeting with actual hospital patients. They gave me a Holy white jacket along with a menu plan that truly violated my core beliefs as a 40/30/30 Nutritionist.

I was expected to take my very own physical body into a hospital room and tell a fellow human being to eat high glycemic fruit juices, crackers, jelly and trans fats (in the form of "fortified margarine" -all at one sitting). In other words I was supposed to tell someone with diabetes and heart disease to eat the same foods that caused their diabetes and heart disease in the first place!

I felt like I had come from another planet. Calling margarine (trans fats) “fortified” is like sprinkling vitamins onto a pile of trash and calling it “fortified garbage.” To top things off there is no excuse for serving food items like crackers, jelly and fruit drinks. I took the professor aside and asked if I could teach the patients a different way to eat: a way that would “control” their blood sugar. I was told I must advocate “whatever is on the paper.”

While on the Dean’s list for my academic performance and only a semester away from a degree I decided to withdraw from college and I resigned from my position at the hospital. I preferred to take the risky course rather than stay within the traditional framework and pay lip service to an orthodox in which I didn’t believe. To me becoming a Dietician would be the same as joining the weakest karate school on the block.

I went searching for my original 40/30/30 diet guru I had met in the supermarket that introduced me to 40/30/30 nutrition. I found him outside his food facility located in Smithtown, Long Island. His 40/30/30 food delivery company had grown exponentially. He went from owning one deli to renting three adjacent stores in a strip mall because he was now feeding over 200 people 40/30/30 diet meals each day. I was immediately hired as his 40/30/30 nutritionist and I was put in charge of the kitchen operations.

At this time there were a few 40/30/30 diet companies on the market who manufactured 40/30/30 Nutrition bars, for example the Zone Diet Company, Balance Bar® and PR® Bar. We started serving Zone Diet bars as an everyday snack. Eventually we merged with the zone diet company and we became known as the “Zone Diet Fresh Food Delivery Service.”

The Zone Diet company grew exponentially. I witness credit card machines charging hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day. My boss had become a multi-millionaire, he was featured in Forbes Magazine and his Zone Diet Delivery service became the highest grossing restaurant in N.Y. Over a 3 year period operations were set up in New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut, Los Angeles and Chicago. My boss was after Oprah because getting her on the Zone Diet would mean worldwide recognition, but be didn’t make it that far.

At this time in history the federal government was busting the fly-by-night "pump and dump" brokerage firms that made Long Island famous in the year 2000, leading to the movie “Boiler Room” starring Ben Affleck. The next move for the mafia was to get involved with the Zone Diet. It turned out our top Zone Diet Salesman was an associate of the largest NY mafia family that was planted to secretly steal customer lists and trade secrets.

One day this man was gone and there was another Zone Diet Company called “Zone Chefs”. It turned out the word "zone diet" by itself is too generic and can not be trademarked...this created the perfect breeding grounds for cynical interests, manipulative people and massive public relations operations.

The NY mafia had ruthless business tactics. Within two months they stole half of the original Zone Diet customers because they had good connections, literally -to the New York Yankees and famous people like Danny Devito, Kevin Kosner, Liza Minelli, etc. The public no longer had a clue as to who the real Zone Diet was. They were all eating fake Zone Diet food cooked by the NY mafia! The NY mafia are not nutritionists -they were feeding everyone food that was not completely balanced and also contained contained partially hydrogenated fat, a major 40/30/30 diet no-no!

This was a comedic, yet tragic ending for a diet that could prevent and reverse the major disorders that plague America like type II diabetes, erectile dysfunction and heart disease. Today there are over a dozen different "zone" diet companies and therefore the word no longer requires capitalization for the same reason you do not capitalize the word "karate" -there are many different forms of karate. In time the true value of the 40/30/30 concepts became watered down, adulterated and ultimately lost.

I was at a major turning point in my life. My dad had just passed away from Multiple Sclerosis a month prior to the Zone Diet going out of business and I was still compelled to spread the 40/30/30 nutritional philosophy because it can have such a positive impact on people’s lives. Turning around heart disease, type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, hair loss, and a host of other ailments can have a significant impact on people’s quality of life, if not suppressed by the government institutions, or the mafia. The 40/30/30 dietary concept can also cure America’s health care crisis and put the money back into everyone’s pocket.

My experience with the diet industry yielded as much benefit one can get from a prestigious college degree mainly because my schooling was so diverse, similar to a martial artist who obtains a Black Belt in a few different styles of fighting. As a dietician-in-training and a hospital employee I was fully trained in the Food Guide Pyramid (60% carbohydrates), I’m an expert in 40/30/30 nutrition (40% carbohydrates) and I was also appointed to develop the kitchen operations for the Atkins Diet Delivery Service (which has virtually no carbohydrates!).

I took my knowledge to local gyms and started my own 40/30/30 consulting service. Spending time inside fitness centers I would overhear personal trainers giving advice to gym members. The trainers explained “since a pound of fat has 3,500 calories, you have to burn 3,500 calories a week (700 calories per day x 5 days a week) to lose 1 pound of fat.” This simple equation neglects many basic nutritional concepts because you can not deny which hormones are crossing through your veins. Muscles can burn carbohydrates or fat, and what they burn is a consequence of the chemical (hormonal) state of your body. I can stand next to someone running on a treadmill who just drank Gatorade and I will burn more fat standing still. This is because my blood sugar levels are stablized from my dietary balance protein, carbohydrate and fat. Hormonal eating states that nothing can be generalized unless you know what a person just ate. I pulled one personal trainer aside one day and told him “I didn’t quite understand this whole ‘calories in vs. calories out’ concept”. After a pause, he told me “why can’t you just go with it?” I thought perhaps this was the exact problem in America: People just go with everything in life without questioning the mainstream way of thinking...

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