In the Black community, grandmothers are the heart and soul of the family. They keep the family unit close and oftentimes step in to be guardians for their grandchildren.
For Chris Goode, his grandmother, Ruby Jean, was just that. With a largely absent father and a mother who was busy working multiple jobs, the matriarch stepped in to support Goode and his three siblings.
The family was close until she passed away at 61 after a battle with diabetes, kidney disease, and high blood pressure.
While in the waiting room of the hospital where Ruby Jean was set to transition, Goode's great-grandmother suffered a massive heart attack just two days before Ruby Jean was taken off of life support.
At just 14 years old, Goode had faced two of the biggest losses of his life, which he later realized could have been prevented.
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“I watched the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead when I was in LA with some friends who are finishing up with a juice cleanse,” the Kansas City, MO native says. I’m from the land of comfort food and BBQ so I’m thinking, oh, you all are weird. Let’s go to the beach. I didn’t come to be educated about juicing. But by the middle of it, I started to really pay attention to what the doc was conveying and I recognized a lot of what happened in my family.”
The film follows an overweight man suffering from an autoimmune disease on the journey of changing his life by shifting his diet through a 60-day fruit and vegetable juice cleanse.
The documentary also discusses how the lack of access to healthy food can impact health outcomes and life expectancy in underserved communities.
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After watching the documentary, Goode had a whole new outlook. He even tried a juice cleanse of his own, which lasted 10 days. After the cleanse, he felt better and began to think of his late grandmother, wishing that she had the knowledge and understanding of how important healthy eating and drinking truly are.
Ruby Jean raised her family the same way she was raised. Her diet centered heavily on “soul” food that included fried food and foods that were heavy on butter and seasoning salt.
Because of this, Goode was more determined than ever to change the minds of his entire family, and eventually his entire community.
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Goode did just that in 2015 when he founded Ruby Jean’s Juicery, a health store that makes and sells fresh juice, detox cleanses and smoothies.
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