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French Meadow Bakery Review

"A Walk Through the Meadow"
By Lean Beret Kevin Rail

So here’s how it went down...I woke up this morning-side by side with the sun, rolled out of bed, and then scooted on down the road en route to a training session with a long time Saturday morning client and good friend who goes by the name of Dave. After I got done kicking his butt, I then kicked my own with one hour and fifty minutes of power packing, glycogen depleting, blood pumping, high intensity hysteria culminating with a series of sprint intervals on a steep incline. After I got done with this normal Saturday morning ritual, I felt compelled to stop by Whole Foods to buy myself a loaf of French Meadow Healthy Hemp Bread. If you can’t see me right now, I have a big smile on my face; mainly because that sounded like a big, cheap, cheesy plug on a late night infomercial, but that’s not the case at all. First of all, Whole Foods is right on my way home from the gym, and secondly, I had an incredibly engaging and energized conversation the other day with Lynn Gordon, founder of French Meadow Bakery. Can you blame me? The least I could do was buy one lonely little loaf of sprouted bread staring at me from the second to top shelf down, and I would like all of you to follow suit! And I WILL come to your house and inspect your freezers! Not only is sprouted bread the only bread I’ll eat, but I feel French Meadow Bakery is the best of the best. After talking to Lynn yesterday, she definitely finalized my choice and assured me that my thought processing was right on point. I’ll get to why in a minute...

French Meadow Bakery founder Lynn Gordon is an incredible woman. She is one of us, one of the “good guys,” or to be gender specific, “good gals.” She is a freedom fighter and is very passionate about what she believes in. Currently residing in Minnesota , Lynn has a background in macrobiotics. As a matter of fact, she teaches classes on it regularly and I can hear in her voice how genuine she is and the whole time I spoke to her, I felt like I was talking to a friend I had known forever. Not only was she super nice, but she was very well read and very determined. I kept getting chills up my spine the whole time we volleyed information back and forth and I still am right now just thinking about it. As she ran me through the ups, the downs, the struggles and the sacrifices she had been through, I just kept thinking to myself, I will do my part and do whatever it takes to get their word out and keep it out!

French Meadow Bakery opened its doors in 1985 and to this day is the longest running organic bakery in the United States. I was just a little squirt when they started with less than a thimble-full of concern with what kind of bread I was shoveling in my mouth. As long as there was peanut butter and jelly in between the slices, it could have been made out of play dough. But just like great wine, as I aged, I got better. Realizations started to hit me and tragedies started to take family members away from me; as was the case with Lynn. We both lost a parent to cancer. That is never cool and never easy to prepare for.

One way you can better prevent yourself from getting cancer is through proper dieting. Although not completely substantiated, the macrobiotic diet can be one such way. As I mentioned earlier, Lynn teaches this concept on a regular basis. This diet plan is based on a high fiber low fat approach with an emphasis on a high phytoestrogen content. It mainly consists of whole grains, vegetables, and beans. It has been known to reduce estrogen related cancers. That sounds like a good game plan to me. But here’s where things got a little interesting. We got on the topic of fruit. All the “experts” out there are always running their word cannons a mile a minute saying how you should get so much fruit into your diet. Lynn sees things a little different. She agrees that it is good for you and it has a lot of benefits, but too much of it will cause fermentation, yeast, candida, and a battery of other unpleasant circumstances in the body. How bout that for a twist of Westernized thinking? I have known people that eat ten or more pieces of fruit a day. That’s some risky business there. I’m not going to take a stand and say that fruit is over rated, but it is definitely over consumed in some cases. But this is only to the extremist. The average mouth doesn’t even come close to tasting a daily requirement of fruit in a year’s time let alone in a day. If you DO fit into the 8 to 10 pieces of fruit a day category, you might want to wean back a pinch.

So I said to Lynn , “What separates French Meadow Bakery from the rest of the pack? I know there are a few other companies specializing in sprouted products as well. I want some facts.” She proudly went on to say that their products are made wholly from organic and all natural ingredients and also the thing that caught my ear the most is the fact that they are all diabetic safe. Some of the other companies try to make this claim, but French Meadow Bakery is actually certified through the Glycemic Research Institute. I personally like to do what’s best for my body and for the bodies of all those people that I talk to on a daily basis. For that reason, I want the bread with the highest fiber, the highest protein, and the most nutrients. I’m not saying that the other companies are bad; I’m just saying that I want the best and French Meadow Bakery is definitely leaps and bounds better than anybody else.

Do yourself, Lynn, and The Lean Berets a favor…Support French Meadow Bakery! Go to your local health food store, walk in there with your head held high, and proudly buy some bread, bagels, pizza crusts, and any other product with the French Meadow label on it. If you don’t have access to a health food store and your local grocery store doesn’t carry their brand, then ask them to pick it up. Beg them, plead with them, get petitions signed, call your local radio stations, and write letters to your local newspapers. Tell them you want sprouted bread on the shelves in the freezers immediately! You will be joining "The Lean Berets Jones’n-Railvolution" and you will also be supporting a great company that is doing great things to better our society’s health one person at a time. Together, we can make it ten million people at a time!

For further information, please visit French Meadow Bakery.

Remember, it’s not “You are what you eat.” It’s more like, “You are what you absorb.”