It will be exactly 10 years since the death of Steve Jobs on October 5, 2011. Today, I’m remembering someone who I was fascinated with. Steve Jobs was an iconic tech leader and businessman. Some would’ve described his approaches and beliefs as unorthodox while others would commend him for them. When pondering the question, “What is Apple?” in an interview with Time, Jobs stated:
“Apple is about people who think outside the box, people who want to use computers to change the world, to help them create things that make a difference." He encouraged others to refrain from adhering to dogma and “living with the results of other people’s thinking.”
During his Stanford commencement speech he exclaimed, “Don’t let the noise of other people’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.” He was a firm believer in following one’s own heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs was very particular about the way that he ran his company and this characteristic influenced his views about other domains such as health and nutrition. This could be a result of him following his own heart and intuition. After receiving his unfortunate and rare cancer diagnosis in 2003, he chose the field of alternative medicine to help him through his grave and rare condition. He was a participant of methods such as hydrotherapy and acupuncture but he also never neglected traditional medicine and had a number of surgeries and transplants, which ultimately did not remove his cancer. People forget that the onset of cancer involves factors such as genetics and environmental and lifestyle conditions. However, research has proven that the cancer rate among vegans and vegetarians is significantly less than those who eat meat.
Steve Jobs maintained a vegetarian diet for most of his life and at certain times was a strict vegan. After discovering a book entitled, “Diet for a Small Planet” during college, he swore off eating meat altogether. This shows that his choice of becoming a vegetarian was a conscious, well thought out one. Now he could be very selective in some of the foods he ate. For instance, sometimes he would eat foods made with a particular fruit or vegetable for weeks and when he was juicing, he’d make a carrot juice and have an eye catching carrot salad to go along with it. His love of fruit led him to name his company after one. Jobs worked at the two hundred and twenty acre All One Apple Farm in McMinnville, Oregon during the 1970s. One day, while on his way back from the farm, he experienced a jolt of inspiration and decided to name his company Apple.
He would immerse himself in gatherings with monks on certain occasions at the All One Farm. The apple farm was a treasured space and frequented by hippies, psychadelics, the waywards and the drifters. He enjoyed the company of the monks and visited the huge vegetarian feasts that they would host.
Later in life, Steve found someone that he could enjoy the vegan journey with together. He ate natural, vegan and organic foods with his wife Laurene when they met and ultimately married.
Laurene was once so passionate about the lifestyle that she established an organic natural foods company called Terravera which delivered food to grocery stores around California.
Steve Jobs had his shortcomings but he was a genius who completed his mission of changing and revolutionizing the world. He wouldn’t have been able to do what he did if it weren’t for his intelligence, creativity, and what some would describe as a special weirdness. He may have had a strange way that led him to eat certain colors of food for weeks on end but it contributed to his genius streak. Vegetarianism and veganism helped Steve Jobs tremendously and I know that if he were still here, he would not have changed his conscious choice of maintaining a vegetarian or vegan diet. The food that we eat can be likened to batteries for the human body. Steve’s consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and healthy grains were the batteries that kept him powered and going. They were the batteries that helped him to create and run one of the most notable tech companies in the world. It brings to mind a saying that one of my physics professors from college used to repeatedly ingrain into the class. He would say in his thick, deep German accent: “Garbage in = Garbage out.” We can apply this idea to the human body. If you eat a large amount of garbage food on a daily basis, it can lead to unhealthy outcomes. Eat garbage food, out comes the garbage (health problems, heart conditions, diseases, etc).
When Steve received the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2003, his providers told him that he only had a few months to live. His life was extended an additional eight years because of complementary and alternative medicine methods. Had he been eating an unhealthy, meat-centered diet-- it’s possible that he would have succumbed to the disease within the timeframe that his provider originally gave him which was a few months. Jobs never regretted opting for alternative medicine to help treat his cancer. In his last dying letter to the world, he encouraged others to “eat your food as medicine otherwise you have to eat medicine as your food.”
Any time you reach for your Apple phone, think about the creator behind it as well as the actual delicious fruit. When you look at that little apple icon on the back of your device, imagine Steve asking, “Hey you, have you had an apple today?” You know what they say…an apple a day keeps the doctor away!
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Mechelle Eleene
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