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Lifestyles in Focus presents
Lifestyles in Focus Cuisine
Ten years ago a conversation between mother and daughter led to the Ten years later they are still speaking and living their brand and always
beginning of a business which would take off and become a nationwide growing it. They are no longer just in Southern California, they are
brand. The mother was Toni Kraft, who at the time owned a motor skill across the country now. Their methods are not only for white collar
development gymnastics program, and had been a chef working for the or gold collar, but for blue collar. They are in hospitals and hospice
likes of Oprah Winfrey and Wolfgang Puck and her daughter Jessica centers, and they are teaching caregivers and healers how to care for
McClure, who was a graduate with a BA in Biology from Northwestern themselves, as well as for their patients. Lifestyles in Focus works with
and had worked in the medical research field working on diseases such the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine and truly believe that
as ALS, Lupus and Cancer at the R&D and bench level. The conversation in a society such as ours when we are constantly being bombarded with
they had focused upon was based on a common concern, both mother information from all directions and we need digital detox, information
and daughter had recognized how important personalized care was in detox, motion and food detox and if we don’t break all of this down and
the prevention of disease. They had also realized that caretakers, it is not all consumed we don’t end up with the balance we need and this
who often were women, were not very good at taking care of their own results as dis-ease.
needs, since they were often too busy watching over everyone else. When asked to sum up what Lifestyle in Focus stands for in one word,
Both Jessica and Toni realized that they needed to do something to Toni clearly repeats, “Balance, that would have to be what we all need in
initiate the impetuous of the need for individuals to be proactive in our lives and that is what we are trying to achieve through Lifestyles in
their own health and wellbeing. The notion that education is power and focus and Lifestyles in focus Cuisine.”
that people have the ability to positively affect their own wellness is
the premise on which Lifestyles in Focus was born.
Today LifeStyles INFOCUS® is a woman owned, family business based
in San Diego that serves as a Wellness Solution for companies, organiza-
tions, and communities both locally and nationwide.
Since Toni’s has trained to be a certified CHOPRA educated Ayurvedic
lifestyles teacher and Jessica worked in the biotech industry research-
ing and viewing disease from the very micro level, they both believe that
each person has the power to make real changes in their own lives – but
not without a little help. That’s where Lifestyles in Focus came in.
What Toni and Jessica and their staff do is they go into corporations,
hospitals, hospices centers and various other locations and teach how to San Diego
bring a healthy lifestyle to employees. They have learned over the past Woman
ten years that just lecturing employees on what they should do is not
necessarily the best way to approach their goal. They have now added
a brand new element Lifestyles in Focus Cuisine. With this new element
they are bringing food along to these events, so they can show attend-
ees how to incorporate healthy habits into their everyday lives. 43
As the owner of Café Merlot, a wonderful restaurant located at the
Bernardo Winery which boasts its own micro garden, Jessica explains
“So we create a cuisine specific to the event. We may cater to the sea-
son or a specific theme, demographics or mindset of the corporation.
When we started bringing food to the events we found that it made
these events much better in several ways. Jessica adds, “When the
attendees saw how easy it was to add healthy elements into their diets
and that quinoa really wasn’t that bad, they could leave the event with
some new ideas for making healthier choices. We would also teach them
about the healing qualities of certain foods, since my mom was so well
versed at the many different ways to utilize food for healing and in the
prevention of disease. In terms of the events the addition of Lifestyles
in Focus Cuisine we found that there was also an increase in attendance,
and the length of time the attendees stayed at the events increased as
well. This was a welcomed benefit to the practitioners who were exhibi-
tors at our world events.
When Toni and Jessica started this business they realized how impor-
tant education was. “We saw that women were terribly stressed. They
were trying to balance a life going a million miles an hour. They rarely
had time to take care of themselves, and if they couldn’t care for them-
selves they would not be able to be the rock for the rest of their fam-
ily. Because, let’s face it, women make almost all of the decisions when
it comes to food in a household. So if they were not informed about
the healing qualities of food and the healthier choices, their families
wouldn’t be either.”
With the busy schedules that most women in Corporate America were
faced with they knew that when they brought their presentations
into these companies they had to make these healthy changes palat-
able an digestible, because if it was too impractical and took too much
of a change these busy women could not fit it into their already crazy
schedules.