Eating Healthy at Donna Karan's Urban Zen

The Urban Zen Foundation hosts a series called Food Solutions to help people eat with inner peace.

Donna Karan's (Karan sits on Tonic's Board of Creators) brainchild organization The Urban Zen Foundation began as a way to reach out to people. "I have spent decades dressing people. Now I want to address them," says Karan on the website. The gorgeous Stephen Weiss space in the West Village, formerly Karan's late husband's art gallery, has become a haven for a kind of soul-care; a sage-filled destination for learning and finding peace. Their mission is to "raise awareness and inspire change in the areas of well-being, preserving cultures and empowering children." What better place to start than food?

Urban Zen's dedication to well-being makes it a perfect home for its new series of workshops, Food Solutions, intended to "offer practical tools for each of us to address specific problems, nurture and nourish the ones we love, and lead healthier lives," in the words of Joanne Heyman, Urban Zen's executive director. With the support of the Stephen Weiss Studio and the Palette Fund, as well as sponsors including Whole Foods and Solgar Vitamins, the series began on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 with "Rightsizing Your Waist and Your Plate."

The 8-hour day of learning, talking, eating and even cooking began at 9 a.m., and we were immediately impressed by the attendance. Many attendees were also guests of UZ's sold-out nutrition forum last year — the very forum which inspired the series. "It's basically edible education," said culinary nutritionist Stefanie Bryn Sacks in her opening remarks. Attendees included nutritionists, chefs and all kinds of people interested in solving our national, yet powerfully personal problems with food.

Amanda Archibald of Field to Plate, an innovative food education company, also hosted. "If we can't translate food and nutrition information to the plate, we fail," she said in her self-proclaimed British New York accent. "You will leave inspired. You will leave with something to talk about, and tell somebody else."

The first guest speaker of the day was NYU professor and celebrity nutritionist Lisa R. Young. Young addressed a number of misconceptions about food, and why our portion perceptions are so skewed. "If you eat out a lot, you are probably eating twice as much as you would have 20 years ago, and you don't even know it," she said. She went on to cite interesting studies on human eating behavior and shocking examples of ways in which we're being overfed and lied to by the food industry. For instance, if there's less than half a gram of trans fat in a serving of a product, the manufacturers are permitted to "round down" and say it's "trans fat free!" in huge letters on the label. Naturally, they got smart and realized that if they made the somewhat arbitrary serving size small enough, they could pack in a lot of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil while still staying under that half gram per serving. The only way to make sure you're not eating trans fats, molecules so dangerous that they're banned in New York City restaurants, is to read the ingredients.

A short Q&A following Young's presentation started to bring the room together. Guests, seated at six-person dining tables, raised their hands and asked questions. Then there was a short break, and everyone flocked to smoothie stands and an almond butter tasting table, talking about and enjoying the food. We noticed a number of European accents. One came from a not-overweight French woman who had decided to come because since her marriage to an American man and move to the United States, her eating had "gone crazy." She had been looking for some way to reconnect to a sense of mindful eating. A Russian woman we met said she "had never heard of 'food allergy'" before coming to the USA, which, when you think about it, is rather chilling.

Next was, in our opinion, the most fascinating portion of the long day, a presentation by Amanda Archibald called Flights of Flavor. "We taste wines by comparing them side by side. Why don't we do that with food?" said Archibald. Guests were furnished with four flights of chopped up fruits and vegetables, some of them unrecognizable. In each three-piece flight, we were asked to truly taste and compare the flavors. Nearly everyone at our table thought the sweet potato was a carrot, and some who thought she hated radishes and turnips, was surprised. We opened our workbooks to fruit and vegetable charts, where foods were arranged in categories like Sweet, Spicy, Anise, Smooth, Tart, Neutral, Bitter, Earthy and Grassy. Some vegetables occurred in more than one bubble.

Archibald encouraged us to consider what our flavor group preferences say about our palates. Perhaps we like a number of the Sweet vegetables, like beets; if so, we should consider exploring Earthy vegetables, a category in which beets also lie. Grouping vegetables into basic tasting notes helped us look at them in a new way (especially the scary looking ones, and ones we're used to preparing in a way that changes their flavor).

As noon rolled around, everyone was starting to look pretty hungry. Fortunately, the next program was shopping and cooking. True to Archibald's word about translating food and nutrition information to the plate, we were going to shop for and prepare good food in a responsible, healthy way. Whole Foods Market donated an entire wall of shelves and stocked it with fresh produce, spices and other tasty wares. Each table was given a bag and a shopping list, and recipes to make large dishes that we would all eventually share. We have to say, we felt a little sheepish walking over to the shelf area and pretending to shop. It seemed silly at first, but when we looked at our list, we realized the point: "Which herb is that?" and "Is this a shallot?" were among the questions we heard. After successfully completing the faux-shopping, guests returned to their tables where individual chefs were present to instruct and aid in the preparation of the foods. People let their guard down and really talked, helped each other, and created beautiful, healthy dishes we all couldn't wait to eat.

Then, we ate. Some dishes were tastier than others, but by and large, we'd created delicious food with very simple recipes. We stuffed ourselves merrily with the entirely vegan foods, and a woman's hand went up. "What does this have to do with the morning part of the workshop? I mean ... I have no idea how much I just ate." Archibald and Bryn Sacks responded that because it was all vegetables, she could eat as much as she wanted. An open discussion between the hosts and several guests about how to know how much you really want, or how to know when you're full, followed.

As the day continued, Archibald gave a lecture on Creating a Food Style You Can Follow and led another Q&A. What we took away from the experience was that while no one has a solution that will work for everyone, talking about it helps. By equipping yourself (and each other) with true information about food and nutrition, you can make better decisions and improve your health, both physically and emotionally. "Everyone has a different relationship with food. It's very emotional," commented Bryn Sacks. Perhaps getting together with interested people to talk about and eat food can heal the broken ways in which we experience it.

If you are interested in attending The Urban Zen Foundation's Food Solutions series (there are still five more workshops) in New York City, visit the website. Upcoming sessions ($80 per 8-hour day) include:

• Managing Autism, ADHD, Asthma and Allergies
• Navigating Cancer
• Managing Chronic Pain
• Being a Role Model for your Kids
• Navigating a Pathway to a Gluten-free Life

Photos by Annie Scott.