On January 23 at about 9:45, my dear sweet kitty, Kieffer Andrew Smith, went to be in peace. He was almost sixteen years old, a grey tabby with beautiful green eyes and funky thumbs that he actually used, leading me to say that he was the evolution of the cat.

I found Kieffer the evening of October 13, 1997, on my first weekend in my first single girl apartment. I had just taken a job with HPAE in New Jersey after a year and a half of living on the road doing housevisits for the Laborers, Teamsters, AFT and UNITE (which was just UNITE back then.) I meant to get a cat, but did not know I would find one so quickly! I was on my way to buy a phone at the K-Mart just walking distance from my little one bedroom apartment when I heard a pathetic little cry that seemed to be saying, “Mom!” A tabby kitten jumped over a low fence and straight into my arms, and I took him home. He was starving and looked like nothing but ears and paws. I ran back to K-Mart, purchased a box and liter and food, and ran home to feed m new baby. He ate ravenously, used the box like a pro, and went to lie down in my palate of covers (I didn’t even have a real bed yet!) and looked at me like, “Mom, I’m ready for bed now.”

I named him after David Kieffer, legendary organizer and my first boss ever in the labor movement. The human Kieffer taught me a lot as we drove around South Florida doing house visits, including the fact that I will never be one of those organizers who can read a map, talk on the phone, eat a taco and drive at the same time. I felt that naming my little tiger after him was a fitting tribute.

Kieffer cat took care of me during my young and single years, putting up with organizer hours, feeding at weird times, and the occasional male visitor. He especially loved my long term boyfriend Gregg, an RN and fellow cat person. He also enjoyed briefly being roommates with my friend Emma, an organizer who went on before me to public health school. And he always loved his Aunt Lisa, my long time best friend and partner in organizing, Lisa Riccardelli.

When he was about a year old he clearly wanted companionship, so I went to the shelter and got him a wife. Katherine was a beautiful tuxedo cat. She and her litter mates were found in a dumpster outside the Taco Bell at Oxford Valley in Langhorne, PA. Kieffer and Katherine adored each other and were frequently seen cuddling in a chair or just companionably sitting in the window. She died in 2004 at age 7, very abruptly of feline diabetes. Kieffer and I grieved, but shortly thereafter the most wonderful development came into his life.

In July of 2005, my partner MR moved in. After an initial adjustment time (involving Kieffer peeing repeatedly on MR’s backpack) Kieffer adopted MR as his head cat, worshiping him ever since. MR works from home, and as such he provided the stability that had been missing in this organizer’s cat’s life. MR fed him right on time four times a day, predictably came downstairs at the same time every day to have tea or check the mail, and basically lived that routine lifestyle that cats crave. Kieffer was only unhappy when MR left town for a conference, looking at me like, “Mommy, where the heck is Daddy?”

Kieffer began to go downhill this past summer, spending some time in the hospital with a bad dental infection. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, but he was losing weight. His appetite gradually disappeared, and he shrunk from a one time 18 pounds down to 5 on the day he died. We tempted him with every treat he ever wanted, but in the end he just wouldn’t eat.

I knew we were near the end on Friday, but I got to spend the weekend with him grieving. Gradually he retreated to his favorite comfortable spot, behind the futon, wrapped in the curtains and warm against the baseboard heater. He stayed there for much of the weekend, and I put a dish of water there so he could easily drink.

This morning my mother and I took him to the Chestnut Hill Cat Clinic, where he has gotten excellent care for years. It was clear that he was ready to go. The vet and vet tech were both incredibly kind and made him comfortable. We held him as he passed on to the next world.

I’m not sure I believe in heaven for people: like the machines in the Matrix, I’m not sure humans could handle a perfect world. But I do believe in a heaven for cats. And I know that Kieffer is there, reunited with his wife Katherine, and with many of our beloved furry family members who have gone on before us.

This is a hard time, a time of transition. My mother’s cat Amber, who had been like my little brother, passed on at the age of twenty just a week and a half ago. There has been a lot of loss.

But as Carly Simon said in “Coming Around Again,” “There’s more room in a broken heart.” I mourn the loss of my dear sweet Kieffer, but I know that he would want me to make space in my heart for new passion and new dedication.

We will not be getting another cat or a pet of any sort. Poor MR really has been pressed into service as a live in cat sitter, and with the hours I work it’s just not fair.

Thank you all for your love and support. If you have a moment and a bit of change, please give a small donation to Big Cat Rescue in honor of Kieffer, my little tiger.

Love and Peace,

Kieffer’s mommy
April

It's been a month of soul searching, with a lot of soul-finding.

I've discovered that my passion for preventing chronic disease is matched by my new-found passion for health policy. My health policy class was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. I met people from all over health care: pharmacists, nurses, physicians, a quality and safety officer, and people with years of experience in health care administration. They opened my eyes to possibilities that I had never dreamed of, and to ways that my ideal of stopping chronic disease before it starts can be implemented. I feel terrified for our current health care system, but hopeful for the future.

My Masters in Public Health program at Jefferson has been the most important educational experience of my life. I have been transformed. No longer do I see things purely through the lens of class warfare, though I will always be on the side of the workers, when there is a dispute. I see the crisis in our health care system as one where all the parties must join together to fight disease. The enemy is disease and disability. We do a good job at treating disease, but are much less adept at prevention. If I could go back in time forty years and find out what exactly caused my step-mother's breast cancer and fix it, or my mother's stroke, I would. But I can't. As an epidemiologist, I can't help but look at people as cases and controls. Why do some get sick and others don't? I look at my niece Madeline, who is seven, and has breast cancer on both sides of her family, both her mother and her aunt. The urgency to find a way to prevent disease reaches a fever pitch when I think of her. "Never Madeline!" is my current battle cry.

And not just my well-insured, well-nourished Madeline whose wonderful parents are raising her with every advantage to help her be healthy later in life. They model healthy eating and exercise and they involve the children in activities that build their strength and balance. Their current favorite is kid-karate, which they call Ninja School. What about all the other Madelines, who don't have so many advantages? Who is going to call their parents to remind them to get their kids in for vaccines when they don't show up because they don't have transportation? Who is going to figure out how to end the childhood obesity problem that will bankrupt our nation's healthcare system as these kids grow up?

The key to prevention is a long term strategy that looks at patients as long term investments, not as risks to be unloaded when they become ill. We learned in my health policy class how Patient Centered Medical Homes, Accountable Care Organizations and Integrated Delivery Systems can do this. I've learned from epidemiology just how important prevention is. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even cancer are largely preventable: if we begin prevention early enough. Yet our current system focuses too much on sickness rather than wellness, rewarding over-testing and over-treating while starving simpler, cheaper preventive measures. The incentives in our health care system are broken and I want to fix them.

My health policy professor, Dr. Lynne Matthews, has been a fairy godmother to me. She encouraged this union organizer to think big, apply my knowledge and skills to the problems of health policy, but also open my mind to new perspectives. Her unfailing support has been a large part of what got me through a sad time, and I look forward to being colleagues forever.

I am moving in new directions, and have decided that keeping up this blog no longer makes sense. I continue to practice moderate CR with lots of yoga and exercise for my own health, and I encourage those who are interested to do so, but I do not wish to be a spokeperson for CR. As a public health advocate, I do not want my personal practice of CR to be confused with any public health recommendation I might make.

I'm so grateful to all of you, for your love and support and comments and questions. For sharing your journeys with me. This has been an incredible 7 year experiment.

I'm giving you some notice so you can download your favorite back entries. But soon, I'll be taking the blog down.

You've given me the courage to follow my dreams. Now I'm going off to follow them, wherever they may lead.

I'll let Bruce Hornsby, in a song he wrote but Huey Lewis made popular, "Jacob's Ladder," have the last word for now. It's how I feel for our health care system, and what I wish for all of us.

"All I want from tomorrow is to get it better than today!"

Today and tomorrow are the vote days. Say a prayer for the brave nurses who are standing up to the lies, threats and intimidation and trying to win a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

I took it to a local repair shop and they assured me that I had come to the right place. "This is the vacuum hospital," said the repairman.

I called on Friday to see what the diagnosis was.

"My vacuum, Animal, is one of your patients," I said.

That did get a good laugh.

"What is it with you about things medical?" said MR.

Well, it was bound to happen.

Correction: I had it. MR prefers his nearly calorie-free shirataki noodles. I know I spelled that wrong and I don't care.

I made him a spaghetti sauce with 1 cup diced no salt organic tomatoes, a teaspoon mashed garlic, a tablespoon balsamic vinegar, and a liberal shake of Mrs. Dash Italian Blend, plus 250 g diced white mushrooms. I made myself a sauce of 1 can no-salt added generic tomato sauce, 1/2 cup no salt added tomatoes, a teaspoon garlic, tablespoon balsamic, and liberal shakes of Italian blend.

As a side dish I made him asparagus steamed in lemon juice, red wine vinegar, and Mrs. Dash onion and herb blend. I heart Madame Dash.

The dinner was delicious and fast, which was especially good considering that I am three days out from a very difficult election at work and have no time to do anything. I am barely holding up my end of the conversation. Luckily MR has been through this with me before and knows the drill. I am nothing but an organizer before the vote: you get your partner back a few days after.

I'm exhausted and miles to go before I sleep. Night blog...

My other favorite person at our local Giant store is Meg, who is usually working early checkout duty on Saturdays round 7 am when I check out. She works nights at a nursing home as an aide, days in the grocery store, and cares for her grandchildren. She is a really nice woman who also loves veggies. We talk about how we like to prepare eggplant, sprouts, tomatoes, cabbage etc. as she rings up my veggies.

Then at the end of the trip, after I have paid the bill, the cash register spits out my receipt and also some coupons. The coupons are supposed to be tailored to my likes and preferences, based on the data recorded from swiping my store card about what I like to buy.

Sometimes the coupons are helpful, like the time we kept getting $1 store brand cottage cheese. Rode that one out for awhile. Or the coupons on cat treats for the furry one. But sometimes the coupons don't quite hit it right.

For example, a few weeks back we got coupons for Morningstar Farms fake sausage products. Well, I like those well enough, but we don't really eat soy much so we gave them to my mom who loves those things. Close, though, I can see why you'd think that the people who buy a lot of organic veggies and milk and Quorn would want Morningstar Farms fake meat.

Sometimes they just plain hit it wrong. This week they gave me a coupon for the newest Slim Fast shake. Okay, I get it. We occasionally buy South Beach Diet Bars to handle the on the road with no food crisis situation. But Slim Fast shakes: thanks but not thanks.

I got to thinking about dietary profiling and how they're reinforcing what they perceive to be our habits by giving us coupon incentives to purchase similar items. Never once has an offer spit out for more veggies. "$1 off asparagus!" would be a very welcome sight at the cash register, especially considering that we were on AR (Asparagus Restriction) almost all summer because I refuse to spend $3.99 a pound for it. Granted they do really only offer discounts on processed foods, at least to us, they still hit it close enough with something we can use most of the time.

But what about those people whose existing dietary habits aren't that good. Are all those people filling their carts with chips and cookies getting more coupons for more of the same? "You enjoyed Lays ripple chips... try Herrs ripple chips!" More Hostess cupcakes? There is an entire aisle of our grocery store dedicated to ice cream and frozen desserts. If you buy one, do you get encouragement and financial incentive to just keep buying more, week after week? In these economic times, any sort of financial incentive is powerful.

The food environment doesn't so much upset me as it disgusts me. The more I learn about the health care system and about epidemiology the more it becomes clear to me that a) our health care system is about to collapse under the weight of preventable chronic disease b) chronic disease is almost entirely preventable. Yet we continue, in our capitalist madness, to allow the incentives (and the candy bars) to be put in all the wrong places.

Somebody needs to do something about this.

Breakfast: low carb pancakes, Sunday treat, from Big Train. MR is the great pancake chef and we always have special breakfast together on Sundays.

Lunch: half of the stew I made, a big pot filled with:

veggie broth
3 uncured organic turkey dogs, 40 cals each, chopped up
1 bag frozen Oriental blend veggies
1 can unsalted crushed tomatoes
lots of Texas Pete, garlic, curry powder and pepper

50 g avocado

Dinner:
1 string cheese
The other half of the veggie stew with 1 tsp flax oil

What I ate today and why:

Busy day at work. Breakfast: 1 cup cottage cheese with 1 tsp flax oil
Lunch: 1 crepe at the most amazing crape shop in Philly, the Red Cup Cafe at 4th and Fairmount where I had a meeting with a nurse. My crepe contained bacon, goat cheese, spinach and eggs. What's not to love?

I probably won't eat dinner because that's enough food for today!

Work is busy with an election in two weeks. It's a good thing I gave up a social life long ago...

Responding to you both...

TGIF TGIF TGIF I heart Katy Perry.

Onward... to David's question.

41 is nowhere near too late! You want to look 41 when you're 63, right? Start now and you will. People seem to freeze in time when they start CR. It's amazing. You are just the right age to start. You can dramatically reduce your risk of all age related diseases. Go for it!

What I ate today and why:

Morning: spinach feta wrap at Starbucks while doing an hour of work before heading to my hair appt in Jersey. Yes, I still get my hair done in Jersey every 12 weeks. Once a Jersey girl, always a Jersey girl. I've been with the same stylist for 12 years.

Snack: string cheese.

Lunch: cup cottage cheese, lowfat, with 1 tsp flax oil.

Dinner: 300 g MR's heavenly mashed cauliflower with 200 g tomato chopped in and 2 Laughing Cow Light cheeses, plus 1 tsp flax.

Wine. 2 glasses.

Time for sleep... catching up from super busy week and super busy week to come.

Hey. April. I've been trying to CR for several weeks and failing. The problem I have is Friday night. I have always used the weekend as a time to eat and drink whatever I like. Do you have any strategies that have helped you when you socialize or when you are not working?

I'm pretty dialed in during the busy work week, but the weekends and holidays are a problem. Thanks!

First, I'd have to say that the holidays are not the greatest time to start CR.

Second, what do you mean by failing? Are you losing weight slowly but steadily? You don't have to eat the same thing every day or the same number of calories every day to do CR. For years I was very successful keeping very low calories on most days then having about one day a week when I'd go out for a big meal and not worry about it. I maintained a low weight and felt great.

I'd say that is you want to maintain that fun socializing when you don't worry too much about calories, just cut your calories on regular days back a little to make up for it. It's easier to be a bit hungry on weekdays when as you say, you're busy. You don't have to maintain an average every day, shoot for a weekly average.

As long as your slowly losing weight until you get to the point where you're happy, you're doing fine.

Some people find it stressful to bounce up and down. If you are one of those people, then you need to come up with strategies to not eat so much when out. I find that eating a bit before hand really does help. It's amazing how social pressure seems to disappear if you've had twenty grams of almonds just before going out. Also minimized liver damage if you drink on something other than an empty stomach.

Sure enough, they have really healthy options!

Breakfast:
eggwhite omelette with spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers and Swiss cheese: 350 cals plus fruit cup on the side.

Lunch:
I grabbed 2 sticks of string cheese between office and yoga class

Lunch/dinner, again at IHOP:
Their tilapia plate, covered with a mushroom tomato balsamic sauce and with a huge side of broccoli. Delicious! 490 total.

It was an 13 hour work day by the end with a one hour break for yoga, but I still managed to sit down with MR for half an hour and chat, and work on my school work for relaxation after all is said and done. Time for bed...

"I won't go as a passenger no, waiting for the road to be laid," says Sara Barailles over my iPod. I think that's why I'm in graduate school. I don't want to be just a passenger on this train wreck that is our health care system. I want to understand it better so that I can better lead the nurses and other health care workers who have entrusted me with the responsibility to know about these things. I'm an excellent organizer, but I want to be more than that. I actually want to be a leader in the discussion of what health care should look like in the rest of this century. It's funny how the union busters like to talk about organizers as though we're salespeople, when we all know we could make a lot more money with a lot less stress by actually going into sales. Teaching people that by joining together they can empower themselves, protect their families, and more effectively advocate for their patients: that's not easy, glamourous, fun or well-paid. But some days it works and when it works, it's the best thing ever.

I miss my epidemiology class with its tables and numbers and odds ratios. I had come to depend on the numbers as my escape from my "real" life of human emotion. Yet I love health policy, and am finding it so fulfilling to learn more about this health care system with which I have interacted for my entire adult life. My health policy class is amazing, and I learn more every day.

This was a terrible eating week. I think sometimes that self-discipline really is a zero-sum game. I ate meeting pizza, a bagel that a co-worker brought to a staff meeting, etc. etc. etc. Didn't gain weight but didn't eat healthy. Still hitting yoga most days but not doing enough cardio now that it's too cold out (note the snow!) to go for long walks. Must join office gym and treadmill. I know better than most how important healthy habits are at crunch time and at least I've made time for yoga classes, but it's hard to do it all when I could work 18 hours a day every day.

Off to bed soon... more soon...

-- The Pretenders, "Talk of the Town"

Maybe it's finally here. The moment I've spent nine, no sixteen, no thirty-seven years waiting for. "The revolution is upon us," I wrote to my co-workers as I reported on my meetings with nurses. Finally, people are waking up from recession-fatigue and realizing that we don't have to take whatever punishment our employers hand us. Together, we can be strong. We have rights. It was 2001, just November of 2001, when one of my nurse activists said, "Ladies, this is not Afghanistan." We have rights, but only if we are wiling to enforce them.

It's been such a long time coming. A long dry spell... nobody would even give their name when they called me to say they wanted the union. "I'm sorry but the union fairy can't land on your rooftop," I wanted to say.

Now things are different. Within a month we have been contacted by multiple hospitals with smart, brave, motivated nurses ready to do what it takes to take back the power.

It's exciting times. Times when I am so busy that I can barely hold my eyes open now. Getting home at 11 and out the door again by 6. But I'm happy... it's about time. Nurses talk about being able to give the care they were trained to deliver. I am ready to do the organizing I was trained, bred, born to do.

Of course holding onto healthy habits is hard when we're busy, but it's even more important. Making sure I keep up with my healthy eating and exercise when things are busy is more essential than ever because I have to be in top form.

So what did I eat today?

Out the door at six to meet nurses. Brought my two hard boiled eggs, lovingly boiled and bagged by MR, as well as my 30 g almonds. Drank two cups of coffee at morning meeting and then ate the breakfast while doing a million things in the office.

Caught a noon to 12:50 yoga class before my 1:30 meeting. Worked out hard. Working out is essential to my health and sanity (not like those two can be separated!)

At Starbucks for 1:30 meeting. Ate the tuna salad box (380 cals) and fruit cup (80) plus green tea. Delicious! More carbs than usual but am losing weight a bit faster than necessarily would want to these days so didn't worry about it.

Excellent meeting with one of my favorite nurses ever, then got home close to six, put together MR's dinner (eggplant stuffed with broccoli and cilantro with Mrs. Dash's Fiesta Lime, lime juice and chipotle Tabasco) and a side of mustard green stems, broccoli and cabbage. It was my first night having dinner at home since Sunday, and it was nice to have Kieffer purring in my lap and MR enjoying his food at his place at table while we caught up.

I had 300 g of MR's excellent mashed cauliflower (95 cals total) with 2 laughing cow lights melted in topped with 1 tsp flax oil and two glasses of red wine. Finishing the second now and about to fall very asleep!

Tomorrow is grocery shopping, yoga, house cleaning, school work,and work calls. These days I find everything balances each other out: I love doing the big meetings where I can help nurses get the power they deserve, and I love withdrawing on the weekends or late at night or early in the morning into the world of cancer research, burying myself in the letters of Lasker and Farber and letting the epidemiologist take over for a few hours.

"People are scared now," I said last night in a meeting. "But over time, as more and more of you come to meetings, you will acquire herd immunity. You will protect the weaker ones through your own strength."

That's a slightly more elegant paraphrase of what I actually said, but it's true. Social epidemiology is a field because it is real: you are what you think your peer group thinks you are. As your peer group becomes less afraid (or thinner, or more health conscious, or less likely to smoke, or you name it) you become more likely to become so.

"Find out what you are and be that," was a quote from the old movie, "Dead Again."

I am an organizer epidemiologist and an epidemiologist organizer. I see health care as a house of mirrors with each aspect reflecting back on each other one. My nurses face short staffing crises and can't give the care they were trained to deliver; in my classes I learn how the system is stretched to its financial limits.

Coordination, education, and prevention are the cornerstones of solving the problem. When I work with nurse leaders I am ecstatic to realize that I am meeting the next generation of problem solvers.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday
You've changed your place in this world

sing the Pretenders over my iPod.

I do believe the moment is here. It will come in fits and starts, but the groundwork is laid. The Revolution is here, and it will be a peaceful revolution of nurses gaining the power they deserve, to stand up for their patients and the profession of caring for others, of being the advocate for those who can not speak for themselves.

It's about time.

Or so I thought.

Packed my things, walked to the train. Waited.

And waited.

It was raining. We were cold. There were about fifteen of us standing there and as always happens in trench warfare, we rapidly became a band of brothers (or sisters) as we waited for the train that never came.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes of this (while there were no announcements and the website said nothing informative) someone called SEPTA and they said no, there would be no train. A tractor trailer somehow impaled itself on the tracks somewhere along the line.

Some people had cars and decided to drive, but several of my would-be train-mates were stranded. One woman was trying to catch an Amtrak train to Florida, from whence she would leave on a cruise with her son, daughter-in-law and two grandkids. If she didn't catch her train, she's miss her cruise.

"Okay guys," I said, "I'll go home and get my car and be back to pick you up in fifteen minutes."

Sandy had the train to catch. Diane worked out near me but lived in West Philly. Dave was an independent contractor who lived in Manyunk but was doing some contract work in Conshy. All were cold, wet and stranded.

I didn't tell MR that I was taking three strangers into town because he would have been worried, but I figured that random people waiting for a train weren't likely to be serial killers. I mean, serial killers have cars, right?

We also picked up Claire who had taken the train to work and would have been stuck. So we all piled into my tiny Geo Prizm, and off we went.

Dave passed out granola bars as in-ride snacks. Sandy told us about her upcoming cruise. Diane just made sure we didn't take Kelly Drive, which to her credit is notoriously dangerous.

Dave was dropped in Manyunk, the traffic gods smiled upon us, and Sandy made her train in plenty of time. Diane got out to help Sandy with her luggage and make sure she boarded safely before hopping a subway for the thirteen blocks home. Claire hopped a seven minute train ride to her usual stop.

They tried to give me some cash but I refused, and just asked them to send me good thoughts for my upcoming union election. Karma beats cash any day.

Earlier that day I had loaned a pair of yoga pants to a fellow yogini who had forgotten hers. If that's not good karma, I don't know what is.

I had enough time before class to treat myself to a salad at my favorite salad spot, the Marathon Grill. My Control Freak salad (yes, that's what they really call it): romaine, free range turkey, oven roasted tomatoes, grilled onions, kalamata olives, goat cheese, blue cheese dressing on the side (I just use a few dabs) and red wine vinegar on the side.

Class was awesome, as always, and then I worked for two hours with my group mates on a group project, thinking the entire time that none of them had to get up at 5 am to meet a nurse at 6:45 to get flyers into the hospital. Well, the ER resident in the group could definitely give me some competition in the busy-ness arena.

It was a good karma day, all around.

What I ate yesterday:

2 hard boiled eggs
1 Chicken Parmesean Lean Cuisine
1 giant Marathon Grill salad
2 pieces of string cheese
1 glass of wine when I got home from class

Happy Karma to all!

Not sure on the calories though it was 440 before the salad,

Meanwhile, I've made an excellent lunch-on-the-go discovery! There's a Chipotle Grill right next to a location where I meet with many of my nurses, and so yesterday I ducked in for a super fast lunch between a quick noon 50 minutes Pilates class and a series of afternoon meetings. I had literally fifteen minutes to eat but they are fast and fresh as promised. I had the burrito bowl, which is a burrito without the high carb tortilla, and it was delicious! I also told them to hold the rice, so I just had pinto beans (you can also have black beans) chicken, two kinds of salsa with fresh tomatoes, and lettuce plus just a dash of cheese. They also have steak, barbeque pork and some kind of other chicken but I just had grilled. Their guacamole is good too but I skipped it this time. Doing the math of subtracting the rice, I am fairly confident that my burrito bowl added up to no more than 500 calories... more than I would usually eat for lunch but at 1:15 pm and after a serious Pilates class, I was really, really hungry, and I had a light dinner of cauliflower mash with two Laughing Cow Lites mashed in and flax oil, pretty much my standard these days.

I love it when fast food restaurants give low carb options. The bowl without the rice is great, and you could even skip the beans if you were that adamant though I hope they'd make it up to you in meat. The only regret is that they don't have enough veggies. But nobody's perfect. They also use free range, antibiotic free meats, another big plus.