How the Revolution Began
By John Erickson, 40/30/30 Nutritionist

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I always dream of a better life if I’d known about hormonal eating concepts as a child. Would I have scored better grades on my report card? Excelled at sports? Obtained a scholarship to some fancy college?

I never wanted to be anybody special in life, my last career was pushing wagons at Costco® wholesale, and that’s how I got involved in this mess. I became friends with a regular customer named Ed, a deli-owner-turned-entrepreneur who would eventually become recognized by Forbes magazine as an up-and-coming rich person. Ed was freshly preparing 40/30/30 diet meals from his deli and delivering them to his client’s front door every morning, for $20 a day.

One day while helping Ed load groceries into his car, we got on the diet topic. Ed told me he was following a 40/30/30 balanced diet to get ripped for a bodybuilding show. “A 40/30/30 diet?” I was intrigued because I’ve read every diet book on the market and I’ve never heard of such a thing. Ed explained a 40/30/30 diet is a concept that portions each meal based on the precise ratio of 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 30% fat. Every time Ed came into shop I would take my lunch break and follow him around the store to learn more about this 40/30/30 diet.

After only two weeks of following a 40/30/30 diet, I began tying a shoelace around my waist to hold my pants up and I suddenly realized that my state of mind mirrored the quality of my previous meal. For the first time I was controlling my emotions instead of having them control me. The cobwebs cleared from my brain and I was now able to focus on one thing at a time. I became more patient, slow drivers no longer bothered me and I felt a deeper connection with the present moment. It felt like I achieved enlightenment without having to meditate in a cave for two weeks! Fat loss was no longer my reason for dieting; it became a pleasant side effect. Overall, I lost 30 pounds and nothing can replace the way I feel moment by moment.

I established a new relationship with food. I no longer craved sweets and I developed the attention span to start reading books. I wondered why everybody didn’t eat this way, and why did it take me 24 years to learn how to eat properly? I always thought healthy eating should become standard with our upbringing, not dominated by commercials cunningly designed to introduce toddlers to the processed food companies of America.

I quickly enrolled in a 40/30/30 training course that took place in Canada and was taught by radical American doctors who openly stated a 40/30/30 balanced diet could absolutely reverse many of the common ailments like type II diabetes, heart disease and erectile dysfunction, just to name a few. They carefully explained such terminology was outlawed in the states. God forbid find a cure for something in America and you will be locked up and denounced as a heretic! I particularly remember the story of a medical doctor who said the Dieticians in his hospital ridiculed him when he ordered a diabetic not drink orange juice. We are living in tremendously unsettling times, never before has the dietary advice of the American medical establishment been so divided.

I became further obsessed by the 40/30/30 philosophy knowing it was part of an underground movement but I strongly desired a “real degree” in nutrition. To give substantial dietary advice in America, and to accept insurance payments, you must be a Registered Dietician (RD), so I enrolled in a college program to pursue a career as a dietician.

As a devotee of the 40/30/30 food philosophy I quickly discovered I was considered an outcast by the traditional dietetic establishment. On the first day of class each student stood up to say their name and introduce themselves. I was proud to announce I was a 40/30/30 Nutritionist. During a lecture a few days later, the professor locked eyes with me and told the class a 40/30/30 diet was “just another fad diet.” I felt as if someone was mocking my religious beliefs. Preaching the 40/30/30 philosophy was not a game I played for fun. If I wanted to play games I would have returned to being a cart boy. Reversing disease can have a significant impact in society if not repressed by people with rigid belief systems.

My professor also went on to say all other “nutritionists” are insubstantial unless they were a Registered Dietician. I frequently found myself arguing with the teacher over nutritional theory well after the bell had rang, while the rest of the class was itching to get up to go home. I thought most dietetic students would love to witness an argument between a 40/30/30 Nutritionist and a dietician fundamentalist but they could care less. I found it strange there was no true dedication between the dietetic students or the professor. There were 18 year old kids straight out of high school sitting next to me eating Skittles, M&M’s and drinking Snapple iced tea. To top things off, the college professor (with a Master’s Degree in Nutrition) brought in fat-fee muffins for the class to pick at like a bunch of pigeons. A group of people gathering to study 40/30/30 nutritional concepts would never partake in such freakish rituals.

The college program I was enrolled in was part of the government appointed group responsible for operating the food service departments found inside public schools, nursing homes and hospitals. A dietetic degree from a state-accredited college is required to hold a managerial position in any one of these food service facilities, a situation that creates a government-lock on the system. Top students of the graduating class are pressured to obtain these types of jobs because they pay well, come with good health care benefits and include a 401K retirement plan. I thought it was strange to enter college to become a dietician and then urged to become a fast food restaurant manager. The only difference was this fast food restaurant has no logo, and is located within every public school, nursing home and hospital across America.



College students majoring in dietetics visited public schools to observe the children eating in the cafeteria, a scene I found inconceivably bizarre, yet considered perfectly normal by the traditional dietetic establishment. This was an unpleasant reminder of how I was fed in high school. I had a flashback of myself on the lunch line ordering the same thing every day: “Chicken patty sandwich with fries,” a combination of food that contains over 11 grams of partially hydrogenated (trans) fats, a gooey man-made substance that stays in your body for more than 51 days after you have them. Serving trans fats in school is as appropriate as serving vodka in church.

The carbohydrate portion of my school lunch consisted of one item from the vegetable group (the French fries), a fruit (the grape flavored drink) and an item from the grain group (the sandwich roll). This is not a prank: this is how dieticians are programmed to categorize food. I had no idea these foods were causing my blood sugar levels to plummet prior to starting my next period class. Low blood sugar causes poor mental concentration, a short attention span and will cause a child not to retain anything from the lessons taught in the classroom. Kids might as well stay home if they are not fed correctly. This is not a proactive way to treat the children who represent the spirit of America’s future. I realized the same "professionals" who fed and gave me processed food and attention deficit in high school were the same people about to give me a degree in nutrition.

As the top student of the graduating class I was able to obtain a job supervising the dietary department at Central Suffolk Hospital, Riverhead, N.Y. To further my disgust with the system I was instructed to serve macaroni and cheese out of a can, schedule lunch breaks, make sure everyone was wearing a hair net and to count the cash drawer at the end of the night. There was no way for me to influence the quality of the food being served because the whole operation was based on an outdated system of procedures and budgets. Amid great inner conflict, I had to continue my employment at the hospital because I still had another year before I completed my college program. During this time I was thrown into a tight situation. Students were required to practice their counseling skills by meeting with actual hospital patients. I was given a menu plan to use as an outline that truly violated my core beliefs as a 40/30/30 Nutritionist, or as a fellow human being.

The entire menu plan disobeyed many fundamental 40/30/30 scientific principles. I was expected to take my very own physical body into a hospital room and tell a fellow human being to eat high glycemic fruit juices, crackers, jelly and trans fats, all at one sitting. In other words I was supposed to tell someone with diabetes and heart disease to eat the same foods that caused their diabetes and heart disease in the first place.

On the following page is the actual menu plan handed to me by my professor (year 2001) which is from the Dietetic Association, the organization that represents the gold standard for dietary advice in America!

I felt like I had come from another planet. Calling margarine (trans fats) “fortified” is like sprinkling vitamins onto a pile of trash and calling it “fortified garbage.” To top things off there is no excuse for serving food items like crackers, jelly and fruit drinks. I took the professor aside and asked if I could teach the patients a different way to eat: a way that would “control” their blood sugar. I was told I must advocate “whatever is on the paper.” While on the Dean’s list for my academic performance and only a semester away from a degree I decided to withdraw from college and I resigned from my position at the hospital. I preferred to take the risky course rather than stay within the traditional framework and pay lip service to an orthodox in which I didn’t believe. To me becoming a Dietician would be the same as joining the weakest karate school on the block.

I went searching for my original 40/30/30 guru who I had met at Costco® and found him outside his 40/30/30 meal service facility located in Smithtown, Long Island. Ed’s company had grown exponentially. Ed went from owning one deli to renting three adjacent stores in a shopping center because he was now feeding over 200 people 40/30/30 diet meals, each day. It was quite an operation cooking 200 breakfasts, 200 lunches and 200 snacks every day. Ed was happy to see me and immediately hired me as his 40/30/30 nutritional consultant. I was able to combine my 40/30/30 expertise with my experience preparing diet-food at the hospital.

At this time there were only a few 40/30/30 diet companies on the market who specialized in making nutrition bars (Balance Bar®, Zone Perfect® and PR Bar®). We began serving Zone Perfect® nutrition bars to our clients as a daytime snack and eventually our company became known as the “Zone Diet delivery service.” Public awareness of the Zone Diet exploded after the tabloids caught wind of the fact we were catering to many celebrities and professional athletes.

As Ed’s company grew so did his ego. Ed started bragging about becoming friends with a mafia boss and he became solely focused on money and fame. Ed began acting like he was part of a Sopranos episode. By this time Ed had turned into a full-fledged mafia wannabe by dressing in velour sweat suits and using fear to control the people around him. The president of one of our top sales offices happened to be part of his own mafia family and he defected to start his own "zone" diet company. At this point the two largest zone diet companies were owned by two different mafia families in New York.

Since I started working with the Zone Diet I have watched the Zone Diet devolve over time. As is too often the case, the fad aspect of the Zone Diet brought with it a flush fund and the accompanying greed. The fact the word “Zone Diet” itself is too generic and was denied a trademark created the perfect breeding grounds for cynical interests, manipulative people and massive public relations operations. Dozens of “zone” diet companies formed: Zone Gourmet, Zone Nation, Zone Chefs, Zone Florida, Zone Seattle, Zone Canada, etc.

I witnessed the Zone Diet industry turn into a huge money pit, similar to the fly-by-night brokerage firms that made Long Island famous in the year 2000, leading to the movie “Boiler Room” starring Ben Affleck. This was a comedic, yet tragic ending for a diet that could prevent and reverse the major disorders that plague America like type II diabetes and heart disease.

Eventually Ed’s Zone Diet company couldn’t support the bills and we were forced to close our doors. Ed went out of business owing the mafia $200,000, not a fun place to be! On the last day of business a scary looking mafia bill collector showed up yelling and screaming looking for Ed who was hiding out in California. While on his rampage, the mafia man punched our head chef and he tried to do the same to me. My last experience working in the Zone Diet industry was punching out a mafia bill collector: What a classy scene for a diet that can supposedly cure type II diabetes, heart disease and erectile dysfunction. I always hope I did enough damage to knock out his memory of what I looked like! Shout out to Sensei Erwin for teaching me 9+ years of sound jiu jitsu.

I was at a major turning point in my life. My dad had just passed away from Multiple Sclerosis and I was still compelled to spread the 40/30/30 nutritional philosophy throughout society because it can have such a positive impact on people’s lives. Curing heart disease, type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, hair loss, and a host of other ailments can have a significant impact on people’s quality of life, if not suppressed by the government or the mob. The 40/30/30 dietary concept can also cure America’s health care crisis and put the money back into everyone’s pocket.

My experience with the diet industry yielded as much benefit one can get from a prestigious college degree mainly because my schooling was so diverse, similar to a martial artist who obtains a Black Belt in a few different styles of fighting. As a dietician-in-training and a hospital employee I was fully trained in the Food Guide Pyramid (60% carbohydrates), I’m an expert in 40/30/30 nutrition (40% carbohydrates) and I was also appointed to develop the kitchen operations for the Atkins Diet Delivery Service (which has virtually no carbohydrates).

I took my knowledge to local gyms and started my own 40/30/30 consulting service. Spending time inside fitness centers I would overhear personal trainers giving advice to gym members. The trainers explained “since a pound of fat has 3,500 calories, you have to burn 3,500 calories a week (700 calories per day x 5 days a week) to lose 1 pound of fat.” This simple equation neglects many basic nutritional concepts because you can not deny which hormones are crossing through your veins. Muscles can burn carbohydrates or fat, and what they burn is a consequence of the chemical (hormonal) state of your body. I can stand next to someone running on a treadmill who just drank Gatorade and I will burn more fat standing still. This is because my blood sugar levels are stablized from my dietary balance protein, carbohydrate and fat. Hormonal eating states that nothing can be generalized unless you know what a person just ate. I pulled one personal trainer aside one day and told him “I didn’t quite understand this whole ‘calories in vs. calories out’ concept”. After a pause, he told me “why can’t you just go with it?” I thought perhaps this was the exact problem in America: People just go with everything in life without questioning the mainstream way of thinking.

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