Pepper Pep Talk

M: I've got more energy now that I'm taking a potassium supplement.

P: You might want to look after your B's too: Vitamin B-12, and the rest. A lot of time, those slip as well, and their absence is expressed as muscle fatigue.

Like I tell people, you shouldn't have to take vitamins and other supplements to be in good health. Everything we need for healthy bodies and lives is right here on the Earth. But we let our lives get complicated, so instead of reaching out and taking what we need from the environment, we have to go through the complicated machine of the economy. For example, it never occurred to the Indians to sell water - water is everywhere! - but we go out and buy bottled water, like this bottle I'm holding right here, and pay for the privilege. Pretty soon, people will be buying air, because they believe that's what they need to do.

We don't need caffeine and nicotine to wake us up in the morning. We don't need junk food. I mean, sure, we function OK even with these things, because the changes of the body with time are so slow. But time catches up. And if you've made your investment in living right when you are younger, then you get a payoff when you are older.

I ask people, why do you go to Starbucks? You don't need to go to Starbucks. And they tell me, well Pepper, it's the great advertising. And I tell them the people who create the great advertising are paid good incomes by you, and they send their children to Ivy League schools, to become great doctors, whom you will also pay when you get sick from your lifestyle when you are older.

People admire me for eating healthy and working out hard, but all I'm doing is what anyone can and should do.