It's gotta be the food, money.

This blog continues its path, sharing the inside details of the follow up to the award-winning documentary, "Boys of Summer". For more details, to watch the film or contribute to the sequel, please click here.

Back in the late 1980's, Spike Lee unleashed Mars Blackmon on the world with the help of Nike and Michael Jordan. Those following Lee knew Mars from the cult classic, "She's Gotta Have It". But Mars never had it like this. With his signature catch phrase, "It's gotta be the shoes," Air Jordans flew off the shelf to the point of deep controversy, even, tragically, murder. The point here is not the shoes, but rather the catch phrase and the mania it helped drive. What if people thought this way about food?

Part of my dad's treatment with Dr. DeMartino has been to go gluten free, organic and eat no processed/refined sugar. Now this isn't all he's doing - not by a long shot. But it's clear the diet has had a profound impact on my dad in many ways. He's lost weight - which is important as he felt about 20 pounds over what he wanted to be - and his energy and general interest in social and personal activities is up. His pain level is lower - though still prevalent. And the biggest advocate of what he's doing is the woman who knows him best, my mom, his wife of nearly 48 years.

In talking about the importance of this today, my dad openly questioned: "Why haven't any of my other doctors suggested a diet like this?" The traditional answer is that doctors aren't taught much nutrition in med school. There are articles that seem to back that idea up. There are also doctors that take offense to that comment and have fired back. Whatever "the truth" is, a slippery idea at best, it's fair to say that, based on the food that is eaten the most, subsidized the most, is the cheapest, the most highly processed and designed to taste unfairly delicious to your mouth, nutrition is undervalued in our society as a whole.

"It's criminal," my dad continued.

We had an interesting conversation about what it's been like for him to lay off sweets, especially as that has been his nemesis for some time. We've had a few birthdays over the weekend so cake and ice cream have been aplenty, along with other such niceties as chips and fried foods. It all tastes great. No debate there. But the price one pays at a cellular level is not often considered. People will joke about getting or being fat and maybe can even get to a place of peace being that in their own lives. But as to how things happen on a cellular level, most of us don't have a clue. Should you feel like going there, here are a few articles to nosh on (one, two, three).

Tomorrow dad will have an x-ray and Dr. DeMartino will begin to see how he can affect the curvature of my dad's spine - his "tilt" as we call it.