Actors Entertainment Guests - View Past Shows
by Doug Jones
Peggy Sweeney-McDonald’s Website
Healthy Hip Chick Jessica Porter and host Peggy Sweeney-McDonald
Jessica Porter wrote The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics and co-wrote The Kind Diet with Alicia Silverstone. She teaches macrobiotic cooking classes in Santa Monica, CA, where she lectures on the spiritual and emotional dimensions of macrobiotic practice. She has also taught cooking in New York, Toronto, Chicago, Atlanta, Portland, Maine and London.
When not writing, cooking or teaching macrobiotics, Jessica is a hypnotherapist specializing in smoking cessation and HypnoBirthing. She is a faculty member of the HypnoBirthing Institute, recipient of its Director’s Award, and trains midwives and doctors in the technique throughout North America, Europe, and South Africa. Porter has also produced two hypnosis CDs – Healing with the Hip Chick, and Hip Chick Hypnosis – for people practicing the macrobiotic diet.
In her free time, Porter has co-hosted a weekly call-in radio show on WMPG in Portland, Maine, as well as trying her hand at standup comedy and improv. As an actress, she has played many contemporary and classical roles and has been featured in local independent films. She has also written and performed her own one-woman show called “Zen Comedy.”
Interviewed by Simon Doonan for the “New York Observer” in January 2001, their acquaintance led to Jessica being featured in his second book, Wacky Chicks, published by Simon and Schuster in 2003.
In the late ’90s, Jessica spent three years traveling internationally as a macrobiotic chef cooking for private clients. For eight months in 1998, she cooked for Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.
As a macrobiotic chef, she worked under the guidance of many well-known macrobiotic counselors, such as Michio Kushi (The Book of Macrobiotics), William Spear (Feng Shui Made Easy), Lino Stanchich (You are How You Eat), and Denny Waxman (10 Steps to Strengthening Health).
From 1994 to 1996, Porter served as Manager for the “Way to Health” program at the Kushi Institute. There she supervised the coordination of students and teachers, and managed the faculty, which included Edward Esko, Wendy Esko, Alex Jack, and Charles Millman — all prolific macrobiotic teachers and authors. Through living and working at the Kushi Institute, she became part of a worldwide network of macrobiotic people, many of whom run macrobiotic centers, health food stores or co-ordinate regular gatherings of health-minded individuals.
At the Kushi Institute, she completed all three levels of macrobiotic training. These include in-depth study of cooking, macrobiotic philosophy, health care, and oriental diagnosis. She also completed the macrobiotic counselor training at Gulliver’s in New York City.
The author began her macrobiotic practice fifteen years ago in New York, where she was a graduate student in acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. While in New York, Jessica ran her own catering business called “Big Life Foods”, providing macrobiotic meals to health food stores.
A Graduate of Brown University with a B.A. in Semiotics (now called Modern Culture and Media) in 1988, Porter served as co-editor of the campus humor magazine, the Philtrum Press.
Growing up in Toronto, the author was an actress and co-host of the national radio program “Anybody Home?”, produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Peggy Sweeney-McDonald’s Website
Savoring the Sweetness is a Live Chat Show on Actors Entertainment, a channel on the Actors Podcast Network, a Pepper Jay Production.
