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What if Peanut Butter Cups Had Never Been Invented?

When I was a kid, there was this incredibly annoying TV commercial for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

This cute (for the early 1980s) young guy is walking down the street, Walkman headphones on, eating a bar of chocolate clearly meant for a family of 8. His contribution to the plot is a hip swagger and the immortal dialogue, “Mmm, chocolate.”

A vivacious and attractive young woman walks in the opposite direction, also oblivious to her surroundings courtesy of headphones, while eating peanut butter out of a carton with her fingers. She intones the parallelism, “Mmm, mmm, peanut butter.”

According to the structure of theatrical spectacle developed by Aristotle, this comprises Act One: Setup.

It raises the provocative question, “What will happen next?” (Spoiler alert: I'm about to tell you.)

Act Two (Conflict) explodes dramatically as these two witless paragons of 1980s pop culture bump into each other, his chocolate bar plunging into her open carton of peanut butter. (Innuendo, anyone?)

The dramatis personae engage in the following memorable lines:

Both: (simultaneously) “Hey!” “Oh!”

She: “Hey, you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter.”

He: (interrupting) ” – got your peanut butter in my chocolate.”

Both: (smiling, removing headphones) “What?”

And now for Act Three: Resolution.

Both: (Taking a bite, and saying reverentially and in unison) “Delicious!”

At which point a creepy older dude peers very closely over their shoulders and waves a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup two-pack at them while they gaze into each other's chocolate bars. The scene ends with them gently bouncing up and down, possibly doing some sort of “boogie” as they consume the rest of the chocolate and peanut butter.

A Thought Experiment

Have you ever considered how tenuous the invention of the peanut butter cup was, if this commercial is an accurate historical portrayal?

I mean, what if they had been paying attention as they sashayed down the busy urban street, and so managed to completely avoid one another?

What if he had been holding a packet of Mint Milanos, and she a jar of anchovy paste?

What if, instead of rudely eating the other person's food without asking, they simply apologized and slunk away, ashamed of their lack of situational awareness and very strange public eating behaviors?

The peanut butter cup as we know it might never have existed!

And Now For Something Completely Different

I don't want to talk about the invention of the peanut butter cup. That would be a completely waste of time.

Instead, I want to talk about two worlds that haven't yet collided:

Value-based healthcare, and lifestyle medicine.

Value-based healthcare is a group of very smart, very good people who believe that the healthcare system is a complete mess largely because of misaligned and opaque incentives. Some examples:

  • That doctors are paid to see patients for just a few minutes at a time.
  • That patients with high deductible plans are discouraged from getting early treatment that is inexpensive and effective, and instead encouraged to wait until they have a serious condition that requires expensive interventions.
  • That health benefits brokers typically get paid by the health insurers as a percentage of the total cost to customers, and so make less money if they negotiate a good deal for an employer or individual.

Lifestyle medicine folks believe that most chronic diseases do not need to exist in the first place. They assert:

  • That pharmaceuticals should be a last resort after diet and lifestyle interventions, rather than the first and only thing we do for sick patients.
  • That a diet rich in whole foods of plant origin is a more powerful therapeutic in the fight against heart disease than any statin, ACE inhibitor, or beta blocker.
  • That physical activity is the world's most useful intervention for just about every condition, from autoimmune disorders to depression.

Can you see how these two groups are pulling in the same direction, toward a more rational and cost-effective healthcare system?

Yet they live, by and large, in two completely separate worlds, never bumping into each other, and never inventing a delicious and synergistic approach.

Introducing Today's Podcast Interview

On today's podcast, I talk with Olivia Kelly, CEO and co-founder of WellStart Health.

She's the first person I've met who lives in both worlds.

Now, as co-founders of WellStart Health, we're shipping them hard. (Forgive me if this is unfamiliar usage of the word “shipping,” which the Urban Dictionary defines as “the act of shoving two fictional characters' heads together and yelling, ‘NOW KISS!'”)

What if the 6-sigma system improvement wonks understood the profound power of lifestyle to affect health destinies?

What if the plant-based clinicians grokked the systemic disincentives to rational policy and care?

It would be far more delicious and life-changing than a freaking peanut butter cup.

Here's our conversation

Enjoy!

PS If you'd like to experience the WellStart Health Improvement Program for yourself, there's new cohort starting this coming Monday, June 3. Sign up by Friday and get a free bluetooth scale and blood pressure cuff (almost $100 value). Learn more and register here.

Dr Howie Jacobson

This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).

My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.

Here are three gigs that I do:

1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation

I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high  performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.

At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.

My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.

2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance

I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.

We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.

The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.

3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams

I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.

So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.

You CAN Change Other People!

Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.

What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.

Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.

 

Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

Gratitudes

Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.

Disclosure

This post may contain amazon affiliate links. I may receive compensation from your actions on such links. It don't cost you a dime, tho.

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Hi, I’m Howard Jacobson, host of the Plant Yourself Podcast, co-author of You Can Change Other People and Sick to Fit, and co-founder of WellStart Health Coach Academy.

Click here to get in touch.