“Surrounding yourself with people that encourage and support the things that make you happy and keep you healthy and excited about life—I think that’s so important. The more we distance ourselves, and close ourselves off, the harder it is to get through all those challenges.”

Today finds us mired in an unprecedented health and environmental crisis of cataclysmic proportions. Heart disease, America’s #1 killer, currently claims one out of every three lives. 70% of Americans are obese or overweight. By 2030, experts indicate that 30% of Americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic.

The heartbreaking culprit? SAD.

But the Standard American Diet isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating the planet. In fact, our system of industrialized animal agriculture is the #1 culprit when it comes to almost every single man made environmental ill on the planet. From mass species extinction to disappearing rainforests to giant algal ocean blooms, it’s an indefensible and unsustainable modality wrecking unrivaled havoc on our oceans, rivers, streams, soil and animals.

Meet Alexis Fox and Micah Risk — two entrepreneurs leveraging cutting edge technology to turn our epidemic of SAD into an outbreak of happy, healthy and sustainable for people and the planet alike.

Their solution has a name. It’s called Lighter.

A powerful new online platform fueled by the latest in modern machine learning, Lighter aims to help the world eat better by leveraging the collective wisdom and experience of leading health gurus, athletes, super parents, and awe-inspiring world changers to provide everyday consumers across the globe with customized, convenient and insanely useful grocery lists, flexible weekly menus and soon even grocery delivery.

It’s an ambitious goal. But not only are Alexis and Micah are up to the task, they just might be badass enough to pull it off.

An accomplished athlete and mom rocking some pretty awesome tattoos, Micah is a graduate of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts with a background working with the World Health Organization. When she isn’t training with The November Project in Boston, kicking ass in marathons and ultras, or gracing the cover of Runners World magazine (she actually appeared on the RW cover an unprecedented two times in one year), she’s helping everyday people adopt sustainable healthy lifestyle solutions.

Alexis is the yin to Micah’s yang. A former debate champion, improv comedian, attorney and college professor, Alexis is the former Massachusetts state director for the Humane Society. After losing 45 pounds incident to adopting a plant-based diet, she was inspired to start Lighter by her life partner Josh Balk, the co-founder of Hampton Creek — the company behind Just Mayo that is taking healthy plant-based foods to the masses.

The history between this dynamic duo is fascinating. Although both of them have dedicated their entire lives to helping fix our broken food system, neither of them ever imagined that they would be running a tech company.

And yet here they are — two powerful women leaders kicking ass and taking names.

This is an enlightening and informative conversation about food policy and politics.

It’s a comprehensive redress of our broken food system and a positive, solution-based discourse on how we can fix it.

It’s a conversation about what commonly holds people back. And the vital importance of building consensus with a focus on fostering community-based support systems in the interest of helping people eat and live better.

It’s conversation about female empowerment.

And it’s a master class on how to ignite a social movement.

But underneath it all, this is a powerful manifesto on the indelible power of every single individual to create, foster and galvanize tangible, sustainable and significant positive personal and planetary change.

Specific topics covered include:

food as medicine

transitioning from dominant culture

the genesis of Lighter

building a social movement with technology

leveraging machine learning for health

the importance of community building

the power of women’s leadership

Micah’s daily routine

diet and the impact on the environment

common struggles transitioning to a plant-based lifestyle

uniting a social movement to create real change

the recent Gov’t “cheese bailout”

Micah and Alexis are two of my favorite people and I absolutely love this conversation. I sincerely hope it infuses you with the inspiration and information required to take your health, life and global responsibility to the next level.

Peace + Plants,