It's All About Food - Chef AJ & Maya Gupta - 10/21/14

Part I: Chef AJ, Eat Unprocessed
Chef AJ has followed a plant-based diet for over 36 years. She is a chef, culinary instructor, professional speaker, and author. With her comedy background, she has made appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, David Letterman, and more.

In Los Angeles, Chef AJ teaches her popular Intro Class, which includes cooking instruction, nutritional advice, song parodies and flat-out fun. She discusses food addiction and addresses the emotional side of eating. Never content to leave her audience with mere just do it advice, she teaches:
• How to create meals to transform your health
• How to deal with cravings
• How to deal with food addiction

Chef AJ is author of the popular book Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight. The book is half confessional memoir, half delectable recipes. It chronicles her journey from junk-food vegan faced with a diagnosis of pre-cancerous polyps, to learning how to create foods that heal the body. Many of her recipes can be seen on her YouTube cooking show The Chef and the Dietitian.

She holds a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell University and is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

 
Part II: Maya Gupta, Animals and Society Institute 
Dr. Maya Gupta earned her BA from Columbia University and both her master’s degree and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Georgia, with a predoctoral internship at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta. Her research focused on applying data about the connections between animal cruelty and domestic violence to enhance batterer typologies and to improve the prediction and prevention of violence in all its forms. She has spoken and trained widely on the effects of witnessing animal abuse on the physical and emotional well-being of domestic violence victims, and on developing programmatic solutions such as “safe havens for pets” that assist victims in bringing their animals with them to safety.

Prior to joining ASI, Maya was Executive Director of Ahimsa House, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the human and animal victims of domestic violence across Georgia reach safety together. With a background in statistics and program evaluation, she also consulted for national animal-related organizations (including ASI) on evaluations of violence prevention/intervention programs. In addition to her work with ASI, Dr. Gupta serves on the Steering Committee of the National Link Coalition, focusing on the animal abuse/interpersonal violence link; on the Animal Cruelty Advisory Council of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys; and as Training Director and Past Chair of the Section on Human-Animal Interaction in the American Psychological Association.

Maya and her husband live north of Atlanta with six rescued cats and seven rescued chickens. – See more at: http://animalsandsociety.org/pages/staff#sthash.Fpuh8OXk.dpuf