Die Old , Stay Pretty

Hawking Stay Young Tea and meatless meat,
Marvin Goldberg finds new purpose in the health profession.

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR
Special to The Jewish News

ressed in a standard white
lab coat, its pockets
jammed with pens, Dr.
Marvin Goldberg stands in
the middle of Royal Oak's Nutri-
Foods hawking the benefits of Stay
Young Tea.
"Sure its eight bucks a box of 40
tea bags, but each bag makes a half a
gallon. So that's four cups there, mul-
tiplied by 40 bags, and you have 320
cups at two cents a cup," he says,
pouring a potential customer a
steaming cup of the brew from a
stainless steel carafe. "And that is not
to mention the things this tea can
do. ”
Dr. Goldberg, who once sold
Electralux vacuums to pay for med-

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ical school, has been quite successful
in gaining a wider audience for this
product. He says it helps to control
weight, clean the blood, relieve con-
stipation, cure diaper rash and reduce -.
bad breath as well as the intensity of
hangovers. In fact, the tea is now a
best seller at the health food store in
the trendy downtown Royal Oak
strip near Main Street and 11 Mile
Road.
"It's a miracle tea," he claims.
The stint in the store is the latest
attempt by Dr. Goldberg to ease
Americans out of bad eating habits
and into a healthier lifestyle. An
Orthodox Jew who ate his last piece of
meat at 16 when he moved to a city
with no reliably kosher meat, Dr.
Goldberg said the American diet is
inherently unhealthy.
"We eat too much meat, too much

other cities, Dr. Goldberg finally set-
sugar, not enough vegetables," he said,
tled on a cardiovascular surgical spe-
ticking off a list of health problems
cialty-and set up shop in Flint.
related to• poor diet.
One day, while staring into the
'And we are suffering because of it.
chest of a patient suffering from
We need to change the way we eat,"
clogged arteries, he had an inspiration.
he said.
"I was looking at these plaque-filled
Dr. Goldberg began his health
quest at the age of 5, when, as a young coronaries and thinking, 'This is not
what I should be doing. I should be
tonsillectomy patient, he was inspired
helping them before they get
to become a doctor. After com-
Dr.
Marvin
here,"' he said.
pleting high school, he left his
Goldberg
Perhaps it was luck, or
South Bend, Ind., home to
peddles his
maybe it was a simple coinci-
attend Butler University in
"miracle" tea. dence that he was also suffer-
Indianapolis. He later earned
ing from a disc problem in
bachelor degrees in chemistry,
his back. An acquaintance suggested
biology and botany before attending
he try a tea made from a South
Chicago Osteopathic School of
African- grown herb called rooibos.
Medicine.
He was surprised by the results.
He traveled through a few hospi-
"I drank the tea, and after about
tals before interning in surgery at the
four weeks the pain went away," he
Cleveland Clinic. After practicing in
said. "When I stopped drinking it, the
rural Texas, South Bend and a few