Ocean Robbins: How Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Empire Became a Food Revolution!

About Ocean Robbins: Grandson to Irvine Robbins, the founder of Baskin-Robbins (31 flavours) ice cream company. His father John walked away from the Baskin-Robbins empire. He had money, prestige, and security, along with an ice cream shaped swimming pool in the back yard. He simply didn't want to devote his life to selling ice cream after realizing it makes people unhealthy.

Inspired by his family events and his own upbringing, Ocean has spoken in person to more than 200,000 people in schools, conferences and events, and he has organized 100+ seminars and gatherings for leaders from 65+ nations. Ocean's work has taken him all over the world, where he has seen first-hand the powerful impact of the food we eat - not just on our health, but on people and economies everywhere.

Questions we ask in this episode:

• Please share how your families journey fuels your work today.
• Why do we need a food revolution?
• How necessary is organic food?
• What simple steps can we take to make a longterm difference with a global crisis
• What are your thoughts on GMO’s?
• And much much more...

Video Version & Transcript Here --> http://goo.gl/RjK6JR

Transcript

 

Hi this Guy at 180 Nutrition and welcome today’s health sessions where we are cutting through the confusion by connecting with leading global health and wellness experts to share the best of the latest science and thinking empowering people to turn their health and lives around. This week we’re doing it with Ocean Robbins. He was fantastic today and he is a ball of energy. Now, if you’re not familiar with who Ocean is, his grandfather was Irvine Robbins who was the founder of Baskin and Robbins ice cream company in America. Yes, a little ice cream company you might have heard of. His father ended up walking away from the whole empire in his 20′s and felt like he wanted to do more good in the world and ended up writing a best selling book called The Food Revolution. Now Ocean then, has come along and co-founded The Food Revolution Network which I think he said started in 2012. Where they’re looking at pretty much what the hell is going on in our food chain and food supply globally. Looking at the politics from the side view as well. 

Amazing topic today, Ocean shares so much of his wisdom. We talk about obviously the food revolution. What is it? What’s going on? We discuss GMOs, organics. What’s happening to our food supply. Corporate interests. What I loved about Ocean today, he really broke it down and kept it onto a level that will relate to us all. I don’t know about you, but for me personally we can feel so disconnected from the bigger political things that are going on in the world. Ocean really gets it across fantastic today, so I have no doubt you’re going to get a lot out of this podcast. 

Now, I always ask for a review every week, and I’m going to do so again. There’s been some fantastic reviews coming in on the show of lately on iTunes. If you could take two minutes to leave us a review. Let us know how these podcasts are helping you. Where you listen to them too? Obviously give us some honest feedback as well. We greatly appreciate every single one. We read them all. Yeah, it’s just going to help us get this word out there, and continue to empower people to make their own decisions with their lives moving forward and make better health choices. Awesome. Let’s go over Ocean Robbins. Enjoy. Okay cool. Hi this is Guy Lawrence. I’m joined with Stuart Cook as always. Hi Stuart.

Stu:Hello mate.

Guy:Our awesome guest today is Ocean Robbins. Ocean, welcome to the show.

Ocean:Well thanks so much. My pleasure to be with you.

Guy:Yeah this is fantastic. What I thought Ocean, I’d start with a small detail first. If someone stopped you on the street, a complete stranger, and asked you, “What do you do?” what would you say?

Ocean:Oh my goodness. I would say that I have the best job in the world, which is, I get to help people be healthy. I get to help people say goodbye to some of their aches and pains, and excess pounds. To step into a healthier life. A life where our food choices become an expansion of our values and what really want for our lives and our future. I get to help people break free from suffering and a toxic food culture and step into the life that they want and deserve. I do that through running the Food Revolution Network, which is an online community of 250,000 members working globally for a real food revolution in our own personal lives and on our planet.

Guy:Yeah, amazing, amazing. That’s such a community Ocean. For our listeners, we always kick off the show about the discussing the journey, the background a little bit. I would love to hear a little bit about your own personal journey, your family story, and everything that’s kind of fueling this revolution that you’re doing today. Would you mind sort of taking us through it all?

Ocean:Absolutely. My grandfather founded an ice cream company. It was called Baskin-Robbins, 31 flavors. My dad grew up with an ice cream cone shaped swimming pool in the back yard, and 31 flavors of ice cream in the freezer. He was being groomed to one day join and running the family company, but when he was offered that chance in his early 20s he said, no. He walked away from huge amounts of fame and fortune, because he wanted to follow his own rocky road. He actually ended up becoming a best selling author on food and health issues. He ended up speaking out, the media called him the rebel without a cone. Low and behold, his books became best sellers. 

My own grandfather, his dad, ended up kind of on death’s door being handed a copy of my dad’s books by his doctors. Told, “Mr. Robbins if you want to live, I recommend you read this.” He did, turned his life around, lost 30 pounds, got off all of 7his high blood pressure and diabetes medications, golf game improved seven strokes, added another 20 more healthy years to his life. We’ve seen in our own family the incredible power that food choices can have to harm and to heal. My dad continued as a best selling author, speaking, organizing for a food revolution for decades. I, when I was 16 inspired by his example, founded a non-profit organization and worked with young leaders all over the planet for peace and justice and human rights, and sustainability. 

I work with leaders in over 65 countries. As I traveled the globe and work with people for 20 years directing the non profit, I saw that everybody eats, and that what we eat is having this huge impact. That the American sort of diet, the KFC’s and McDonald’s, and Coca Cola’s. The ways of growing food with all the pesticides and GMOs, all this is being exported around the world. As people give up their traditional ways of life, and their traditional ways of eating, their waistlines are expanding, their medical bills are going up, they’re getting more sick, they’re getting, quite frankly, more [inaudible 00:05:32]. I love being an American but an industry guard. I want to send out a warning to the world. Like we know where this path goes, right? We spend 19% of our gross domestic product on disease treatment in my country. A third of our kids expect to get diabetes and two-thirds of our population is overweight or obese.

Guy:That’s huge.