Local Chef Brings Herbal Medicine and the Power of Mushrooms to Fine Cuisine

“That’s the happy food dance, it happens automatically ‘cause you know it’s good,” Zachary Mazi says, landing back on the ground again after a burst of arm-flailing, heel-clicking, lip-smacking jubilation that indeed did look quite involuntary.

In the back of the Westside New Leaf Community Market in Santa Cruz, Mazi is putting the finishing touches on a baby bok choy, seaweed and shiitake mushroom sauté in a cooking class called “Healing Foods for Auto-Immune Disease.” Mazi is tall, tan, thin, 35 years old, a Portland native, with a small dark gages, a buzzed head and an infectious smile.

Mazi is on quest to show people how critical their nutritional choices are to their health, combining herbal medicine and fine cuisine in his cooking classes, wellness lectures and one-on-one coaching. Together with his partner, naturopathic doctor Juli Mazi , he founded the organization Food is Medicine in 2012. At the core of Food is Medicine’s philosophy is an appreciation for the complexity and constant changing of the human body, and an aim to simulate this in our diets.

“Our bodies are really intellectual, really smart, so long as we give our bodies fuel and really give them what it wants,” Mazi says.

 Variety is a main tenant of his teachings, as is the presence of “living foods” like probiotics (particularly mushrooms), putting gut health center stage. Tailoring your diet, or going to the kitchen pharmacy as Mazi calls it, can also target inflammation, one of the main components of many diseases.  Mazi’s theory of food even delves into nutritional genomics, with the belief that the food you ingest can help express good genes and discourage bad ones. In today’s class, Mazi is teaching a small group how to cook effectively for auto-immune disorders. The staples of this diet are anti-inflammatory foods like mushrooms, turmeric (the number one anti-inflammatory in the world, according to Mazi, and “the only side effect is a yellow tongue!”), green tea and kelp.

“Shitake mushrooms, in my opinion, should be eaten every day by everyone,” Mazi declares.

Equally important is avoiding inflammatory foods like wheat, dairy soy, corn, processed oils and meats. Today Mazi and his guests are preparing the very green aforementioned sauté, kale steamed in coconut oil, Mediterranean chop salad, roast leg of lamb and green tea and honey roast pears.

“I like to paint a picture of, if you really eat the food that’s good for auto-immune diseases, it’s really good food!” Mazi said.

Taking notes and hanging on his every word, the group shares tips and troubles and a lot of “ah-has!” and “mmm’s.” Mazi teaches with the knowledge retrieval and confidence of a doctor, chopping skills and French vocabulary of a trained chef, the curiosity of a scientist and the demeanor of a yoga instructor. He’s an encyclopedia of facts found somewhere between a mycology textbook and a cookbook.

Mazi says he always hated mushrooms (a statement hard to believe after hearing him talk about them), but after delving into Shamanism in his early twenties he made a list of the things he hated and loved and had to disappear both lists. Mazi says he had to make himself eat and like mushrooms.

“It took me almost two and a half years, and now I can’t live without ‘em!” he laughs.

Mazi’s next class, The Circle Of Nutrition, will be held at the New Leaf Community Market in Santa Cruz on August 7 and will focus on foods at the edge of life cycles, from fermenting foods and active cultures to mushrooms and fungus.

Mazi’s principles of probiotics, nutritional genomics, medicinal mushrooms and anti-inflammatories all seem to boil down to a simple concept: what you eat can and should make you feel good. In essence, the happy food dance.

“If food makes you dance, you know you’re in the right place,” he says, contented.