Raw Energy Hotline - Sept 2004 (Part 4)

RAW ENERGY HOTLINE
SEPTEMBER, 2004
(Continued from Part 3)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Part 4

Naz: Now, one might say, are there other problems besides the B-12 issue? Well, the B-12 issue is very important. There would need to be a B-12 supplement to be raising your child on a raw-vegan. But B-12 isn't the only issue. Many children who are being raised on a raw-vegan diet are suffering various nutritional deficiencies that affect them later in life. And even if a person believes that perhaps a child can be raised successfully on a raw-vegan diet, they owe it to their child to research the issue before attempting to actually raise the child as a raw-vegan. It's not enough to research the issue by asking raw-food experts, because as I've pointed out in this interview, raw-food experts have been spreading incorrect information for a number of years. You have to actually get into talking to other sources of information, including nutritional scientists - people who actually study nutrition.

Rhio: I agree that within the raw community there are teachers that disseminate incorrect information and promote narrow parameters of the raw diet and lifestyle. I encourage anyone pursuing a raw food lifestyle to listen to a variety of teachers, read widely on the subject of raw food, as well as health topics in general, at some point visit one of the institutes that teaches the raw/live food lifestyle (like the Ann Wigmore Institue of Puerto Rico) and then pass all the information received through the screen of their own fine intelligence. We need "thinking" raw food enthusiasts, not just followers of some teacher or "guru". I have seen it happen many times where people surrender their own common sense, logic and analysis just because a speaker is charismatic and persuasive. Well, that is what speakers do, they are trying to convince you of something, they are trying to inspire you with their information, but at the end of the day if you are to succeed, you have to engage your own intelligence in the process. I repeat, it's extremely urgent that people become "thinkers" not just blind followers of a philosophy.

Frederic: Have you seen yourself children who've been raised on a raw vegan diet?

Naz: I know friends of the family of the infant that died recently in Florida, and they tell me that even the older children in that family were emaciated and looked like Nazi workcamp inmates.

Jinjee's Note: That family fed their children about five different kinds of foods only. Avocado, corn, and three other things. It was a freak situation. Hundreds of children on a "normal" diet die every day from obesity-related diseases but they never make the news individually.

Rhio: When I read some of the reports of that unfortunate family in Florida whose child died, I noticed a couple of things that seemed wrong. First of all, they were giving the baby wheatgrass juice. Wheatgrass juice has its place, but a baby's first food should be Mother's Milk. Why wasn't the baby on mother's milk? A baby can live on mother's milk for the first two years of its life without any problem whatsoever. (This is assuming the mother is well nourished.)

Secondly, the mother had 5 children in 6 years. That is too many children in too short a period of time. She may have been nutritionally depleted and not able to supply the new baby with a good nutritional inheritance. According to the best advice, a woman needs three years between pregnancies to make sure that both she and the newest child will be optimally nourished. (There may be exceptions, of course.)

It's hard to comment on the particular circumstances of this family and their children because not enough information is available (or if it is, I don't have it), but what I do know for sure is that thousands of babies, who are fed "regular" food and formula die every year of sudden infant death syndrome and many other causes and the mothers don't go to jail for it and have their other children taken away. Mistakes were made, yes, but mistakes are made everyday in "mainstream" families and the families aren't punished for it. In families whose children eat cooked food and die, diet is never even a consideration!!

If anyone on this list has any information on what happened to the family, whether they got their children back, etc. , please let me know. Thanks.

Frederic: Is 100% raw ideal?

Naz: Here's what I think now: a person on a raw diet, including fermented dairy products or eggs, will do fine. But if a person was going for what the healthiest diet is, I think having one meal of cooked vegetables per day - steamed vegetables or an oriental stir-fry, or something like that - is actually even healthier than being 100% raw for this reason: Studies have shown that certain important nutrients in vegetables are better absorbed and utilized by a human being from cooked vegetables. And other certain important nutrients are better absorbed and utilized by a human being from raw vegetables. So, the best of both worlds is each day to have cooked and raw vegetables in our diet.

Jinjee's Note: Don't you mean eat all your vegetables raw and one cooked tomato? By the way the latest studies are now showing that the cooked tomato is only beneficial for women while the raw tomato prevents prostate cancer in men.

Naz: So actually, as far as what would be the most healthy diet, I think it would be one meal each day that includes cooked vegetables, like some steamed veggies or stir-fry and one meal per day that's basically a big, raw, vegetable salad, and, if there's a third meal, that can be a couple pieces of fruit or fruit smoothie for breakfast, and that would be raw. So the diet that I just described would be two third raw. And then there's got to be a good source of protein in that diet, which means that perhaps with the cooked meal, one might have some kefir, some yogurt, or perhaps, on the salad a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

Jinjee's Note: I'm not saying that this diet wouldn't be good. It is still a huge cut above the Standard American Diet. Dr. Walker lived to be over 100 years old and healthy on a 75% raw diet including fruits for breakfast, a big salad for lunch, vegetable juices once or twice a day, and rice and steamed vegetables for dinner. If you can't be happy on a 100% raw diet long term, don't do it. Happiness is at least as important to your overall health as diet is! Personally I am happiest when eating living foods. This may or may not be true for you.

Rhio: Some reports say Dr. Walker lived to be 115. I have a friend who actually knew him and she said that he used to chase her around the table... meaning that... he was very sprightly at an advanced age... and no viagra!!

Frederic: What's Missing in the Vegan Diet

This leads me to question the protein theories that I have learned. The current RDAs for protein are 0.8 grams for every kilo of ideal body weight, which seems fairly easy to get on a raw-vegan diet. So where do you get the impression that protein is such an important element in the diet?

Naz: Where we get the impression is from the actual crippled people and people with nervous disorders on the vegan diet. See, on paper, like you're saying, it all looks fine. But in reality, you have people on long-term vegan diets having real problems.

So that's where we find out that there are problems. So then the investigators say, "Okay, even though we thought that there was plenty of these nutrients in a long-term vegan diet, we have these degenerative brain diseases and things like that happening to vegans: so what's the problem?" Then they discover that there are certain long-chain fatty acids and other things that we're not really thinking about when we're just looking at how many ounces of protein is in this or that.

The real complexity comes in that there'd be these things that we haven't factored in. And then even right now, there's no reason to think that in the next five or ten years they're not going to discover more of those little things that we don't currently know about, because they keep discovering more. You have to realize that in the 1900s, nobody knew what B-12 was, nobody knew what vitamin C was, nobody knew what vitamin A was - that's all stuff that got discovered later. And as the years go by, they keep discovering more things. Rather than look at all the things they've discovered so far, and then look at whether or not you can get them on a certain diet, it's good to look at groups of people who have been following a certain diet and if they're healthy or not.

Jinjee's Note: Yes, and these things are usually discovered in plant foods. Even if they are discovered in animal food sources, what happens to these nutrients when you cook them is that they are altered into toxic molecular structures. And it is simply unsafe to eat raw animal foods due to the high levels of bacteria that break down dead meat.

Naz: Long-Term Vegans Don't Look Good

One of the things that I've just noticed, with my own eyeballs, is that a lot of long-term vegans actually don't look healthy. They look kind of emaciated, their skin is kind of yellow, they've got bags under their eyes, their hair's not good - it's splitting, their fingernails aren't good. So just looking at long-term vegans, like if you go to a vegan's organization's meeting and look at the people and you'll realize that they actually don't even look healthy, especially when you look at the people that have been on it for longer than 10 years. So then you start finding out that they're having really major health problems related to certain nutritional deficiencies.

Jinjee's Note: I have met so many raw-vegans who look extremely well. The most beautiful people I have ever met are raw-vegans. They have a glow, a clarity of the eyes, youthful skin, a wonderful energy, and a bearing that is beyond beautiful. You meet a fair amount of them who look sickly because that is why they got into the diet, they were sick to start with. And you do meet some who look depleted because they are going through some level of detox or they haven't yet dialed in the diet to get enough nutrition from it. With vegans, often they live on processed vegan foods, which aren't any better than any other processed foods. Then you factor in the spiritual elements. Many raw vegans have trouble dealing with the levels of power that they encounter within themselves after going raw. Power tends to flip people out. Like the nouveau riche, like celebrity, like the clergy, like political leaders, the power in these positions can corrupt. The corruption from raw power can be seen in some people's faces manifested as anger, greed, egotism, alienation, fear, paranoia, snobbishness, fanaticism, and arrogance. This is not the norm, but it does happen to some people. Most work through it and end up in a really good place.

Naz: I want to emphasize that I was a vegan. I was a radical vegan. I was in favor of the philosophy, and I still think it's a beautiful philosophy. I still think it's fine for a person, in spite of all that I've said - to just knowingly become a vegan. But what they shouldn't be under is the false illusion that they're following a diet that's healthier than other diets, which is what they thought. In fact, it's probably not as healthy as certain other diets. And it's okay to do it, as long as you realize that you are taking a risky dietary choice, and you're doing it for ethical reasons, not health reasons.

Jinjee's Note: If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. It's an orderly universe that makes a lot of sense. What makes sense is beautiful. What is beautiful makes sense.

Naz: Raw-Vegan Fallacy #3: Enzymes

You're probably familiar with the very recent case in Florida, where a small child died on a raw-vegan diet. When that happened, there were a lot of newspaper articles in Florida about the raw-food diet. And those reporters were going around, asking different nutritional experts for their opinion on the raw-food diet. Well, some buddy in Florida sent me a couple of newspaper articles, and in those articles, there were a few nutritional scientists interviewed. They were pointing out, like I've mentioned before, that most of the nutrients get absorbed better in a cooked vegetable, and a few get absorbed and utilized better in a raw vegetable. Therefore, the healthiest diet would be one that included both raw and cooked vegetables, because then you're getting the nutrients that are better absorbed in each way.

But there are other fallacies that nutritional scientists pointed out. One of which is the whole living enzyme thing. Only one researcher, in the 1940's, that Dr. Howell, who always gets mentioned in the raw food literature, believed that there was a chance that, when you ate raw foods, those enzymes in the food would make it to the part of the digestion process where they could be helpful, before they got themselves completely fried. But, your other 99% of researchers don't believe that. And this is what people in the raw-food movement don't realize, is that the idea that the raw enzymes in food that you eat are going to help you digest your food is not believed to be true by 99% of researchers. The reason is because before food even gets to the point where the nutrients are being extracted, it's already been totally broken down by your own digestion process. When you eat food, it goes to a place in your stomach where there's these incredible "fires" with acids, and stuff like that, and it totally breaks down your food before it gets to the point that those enzymes could help in the way that raw-foodists believe they help. But, the other thing is that the enzymes of a plant are not the same as the enzymes of a human being, in our digestive tract. The enzymes of a plant are designed by a plant to help the plant digest its nutrients, its food. So the enzymes of a broccoli plant are for the broccoli plant to digest its food. If you look at them with a microscope, they aren't the same as the enzymes in a human digestive tract.

Jinjee's Note: perhaps plants have enzymes that help them digest their food, but apparently they also have enzymes that make them grow, ripen and rot. These are the ones that help the plant to decompose in our system. The enzyme doesn't make it to our stomach if it is cooked. But my understanding is that the enzymes in raw food are absorbed through the saliva while chewing, setting up the right enzymatic activity in our stomach. With cooked foods the enzymes are dead before the food even goes into our mouth, so the body doesn't know what kind of food to get ready to digest, and so it generates all kinds of digestive juices which takes away energy from our metabolic enzyme reserves.

Rhio: If nutrients get absorbed better on cooked vegetation, somebody better inform the deer and bears and possum and birds and other wild life who look very healthy to me, at least the ones that I see on my farm. Pig farmers sell their pork by the pound, so they want pigs to put on weight. When these farmers feed their pigs raw potatoes, the pigs stay sleek, but when the potatoes are cooked, the pigs put on the weight sought by the farmers to increase their profits. That doesn't mean the pigs are healthier, only that they weigh more. A lot more. They become OBESE! (Obviously they have absorbed an abnormal amount of starch from the cooked potatoes.)

Dr. Edward Howell is not the ONLY researcher on enzymes who understood their importance to health, although he was one of the first to put out the information. There are many, MANY other researchers reporting on enzymes and we DO KNOW that the enzymes present in the raw food you eat help to digest that same raw food, and the reason that we know this is because when you eat food raw, the pancreas produces less enzymes -- that is not speculation, it has been tested. Why does it produce less enzymes? Because less are needed. The pancreas of a cooked food eater is enlarged in size as opposed to a raw food eater. This has also been proven through autopsy. The pancreas of a cooked food eater expands to supply more tissue to produce more enzymes. It is OVERWORKED.

Also when you eat food raw, digestive leukocytosis does not occur. Digestive leukocytosis (sometimes called pathological digestive leukocytosis) means that the body is creating a reaction to the cooked food by sending white blood cells to the organs of digestion. Leukocytosis happens every time you eat cooked foods, or have an infection or sustain an injury to the body. White blood cells contain enzymes so it has been surmised that the enzymes are used to digest the food. Leukocytosis DOES NOT OCCUR when you are eating raw food. Less enzymes are secreted from the pancreas when you are eating raw food. Less enzymes secreted... less work for the pancreas.

Naz: Now there are a few plant enzymes that have been found to help digest certain things, like for instance in papayas you have papain. There are a couple of plant enzymes that seem to have a beneficial effect in digesting certain things, but the idea that we have when we are eating our salads and our raw foods that all of those living enzymes in those plants are somehow going to aid our digestion process actually is not what science has found.

Jinjee's Note: Again, if you read the medical journals you'll notice that these scientific studies have all been done using cooked foods. Also, they have been done on people who eat a cooked diet. The inner terrain of a raw-foodist is very different from that of a cooked foodist. Nutrients react differently in different terrains. So fruit sugar will affect a raw foodist very differently than a cooked foodist.

Naz: Underweight Raw Vegans

If we go to a raw food conference, you notice that a lot of men look quite skinny or emaciated. Some say it's detox and that the weight will come back, but then many have been on this diet for quite a while and still are quite underweight.

Jinjee's Note: If they worked out, they would put on weight. Also, being skinny is not a bad thing. We're just conditioned to think it is. Why is it that women are supposed to be skinny and men aren't? And could that fact be associated with the fact that women live longer? The calorie restriction diet has been proven to cause longevity in all animal groups tested. See CalorieRestriction.org . Also, all people I've seen pictures of who lived to be over 100 were skinny.

Naz: That's the big problem now, but there are a few exceptions to the rule: people who have amazing digestive systems and are able to digest nutrients properly on an all-raw diet. But the important thing is that those are the exception to the rule. The vast majority of people does not adequately break down and digest all the raw foods that they're eating. And that's why they can't reach a healthy weight.

Jinjee's Note: I would say that it is a minority of people who can't break down and digest raw foods. These are people who would have just as much trouble breaking down cooked foods. They simply have digestive problems, which would be healed on the right raw-vegan diet for them that included ample vegetable juices, germinated almond milk, and fruits.

Naz: I mentioned to you that several people have died on a raw food diet and that when they died; the doctor said that their body had starved to death. Those weren't people that were fasting; they were people that were eating raw foods everyday. But their body starved to death because these individuals had less effective digestive systems than the average person. So, even though the average person would not digest as many nutrients from the raw vegetables as from the cooked vegetables, people with poor digestion digest so few nutrients on the raw food diet that they can actually starve to death even though they are eating everyday.

And so, when one sees things like that happen and then try to bring that up and talk about it in the raw-food movement, then everyone gets really defensive and starts attacking you and labeling you in some negative way.

Jinjee's Note: Standing up for what one believes is true is never bad. I would not label Nazariah for it. I don't think it is bad that he is doing this. But those who have other beliefs and experiences should stand up too, so that both sides can be considered.

Naz: What raw-foodism has become is just another "ism," that is defended by the true believers. And any information that I've provided you in this interview, what the true believers will do with it is that they'll simply look at it and immediately start forming arguments and opinions to counter it, without ever being open to the possibility that it might actually be true. Just like a Jehovah Witness would defend Jehovaism, and a Mormon would defend Mormonism, raw-foodists will defend raw-foodism.

Jinjee's Note: On the contrary, I believe that one can be very healthy on the diet Naz is outlining. He, however, is stating that the raw food diet is dangerous, which I disagree with. Every body is different. Every mind is different. Every spirit is different. There are many factors that contribute to health; diet, sleep, water, exercise, environment, mental state, spiritual life, family life, social life, work life, genetics, attitude, beliefs, and probably other unknown factors. How can one say that one diet is right for everyone? Or that one diet is right for you for your whole life? I ask only that you think for yourself. And that you don't devalue your own experiences. Believe in your experiences. Trust your intuition, your instincts, your inner guidance, and the true desires of your heart. There is no such thing as scientific fact. There are only scientific theories which each generation of scientists build upon with new theories. Science is the study of truth, which is infinite in its mystery.

Frederic: The Raw-Vegan Movement

When we talk to these leaders, people like Gabriel Cousens, they'll acknowledge the B-12 issue. But you don't just recommend supplements but move away from the vegan diet completely. Why?

Naz: The thing is that I'm not so personally invested in having to defend the raw-food diet or the vegan diet. I simply got into all of this because I was a seeker of truth, and I was looking for a diet that was spiritual and healthy, and wherever truth has led me, I followed.

Jinjee's Note: If truth led him to the raw vegan diet, what led him away? Health problems? Perhaps these could have been solved by fine tuning the raw vegan diet for him. Perhaps his health problems would have been worse if he hadn't been raw. It could be that the problems were set up a long time before he went raw. It could also be in his mind. If he was excessively worrying about deficiencies and focusing on them, they could have been brought about that way.

Naz: The problem is that with most of these noted leaders of the movement are authors. That's how they got to be the noted leaders, because they were writing the books. And they're on the lecture circuit, they have clients, they're earning their living from being an authority on veganism or raw-foodism. If they completely just shift and say, "I no longer believe that the raw-vegan diet is anything that should be advocated to the large number of people," then the problem is that it pulls the rug from underneath them, personally, in regards to how they're earning their living. So I hate to say a thing like this, but from what I've seen with my own eyes, it seems to be part of the problem.

Jinjee's Note: I don't think that the people who write about raw foods would be able to live with themselves for very long if they knew they were giving out false information. I don't think these authors are the kind of people who would do something like that. One doesn't get rich as a raw food author and lecturer. I can speak from experience on that. Their motivation is usually a passion to help people as they have been helped themselves. And I think most of them firmly believe what they are teaching.

Naz: The leaders, the authority figures, are earning their living from being promoters of this particular diet. So therefore - and even the best of them - when they start to see some problems, their instinct is to just recommend a particular supplement, or something like that, and of course, usually they sell the supplements that they're recommending. You'll notice that most of them do. So they sell those things, but if they were to simply say, "Gosh, you know even though I became a famous author on this topic, it doesn't actually seem to be valid anymore," they would have to change their entire career. The thing that they're famous for would not be something that they aren't in favor of anymore. It's a radical thing that they would have to experience and go through.

Jinjee's Note: I can only speak for myself and say that if I ever found out that this diet was harmful in any way or caused any problems in the long-term that I would publish that information far and wide on my website, my newsletter, raw forums, and articles. My goal is not to make money but to be able to make money doing my right livelihood, my calling, which will always be aligned with my highest truth with no compromise.

Frederic: Long-Term Raw-Food Authors Eating Cooked Food

Are you saying that these leaders may actually not be vegans themselves but won't come out publicly and say that?

Naz: That's not what I just said. But since you are saying that, on whether or not they are vegans or not, all I can say is that I have seen with my own eyes certain things... One incident occurred when I was one of the speakers at the raw-food convention in San Francisco, a few years back. Two of the speakers were really insistent that one has to be on a 100% raw-vegan diet and that 80% raw is not okay to get the benefits. They said out loud that you have to be 100% raw-vegan. And each of those speakers claimed to have been 100% raw-vegans for 20 years. They were the most aggressive, assertive speakers in the entire convention, really negative towards anyone that would just eat partially raw. Well, before the end of that weekend, I saw each of them sneakily eat cooked food.

I went for a walk and a few blocks away from the convention center and I walked by a pizza restaurant, and there was one of the speakers who had said those things, and he's eating a pizza. You can order a pizza with no cheese on it, but even then it would be cooked food and he was claiming that he hadn't eaten cooked food in 20 years. And it looked like it was a cheese pizza.

Then when I was leaving the San Francisco airport, and I was walking around that round concourse in the airport, with little restaurants and things like that, and there was the other speaker who had been so aggressive and assertive about having to be 100% raw. He was sitting at a table having a plate of spaghetti. I don't know whether that was vegan or not, but it was certainly cooked. And, as I was approaching him and he saw me coming up, he stuck up a newspaper and hid his face behind it. But I didn't embarrass him by walking up to him.

One of the real problems in that raw food movement with those experts and authors is that they have a lot of guilt because they get into this thing about having to be 100% raw. And when they themselves have a binge or sneakily eat some cooked food, they don't want to admit it because it would wreck their reputation as the great raw-foodist that never eats cooked food. So therefore they eat the cooked food on the sly and then have guilt about it. They start to get into a very vicious cycle psychologically. Yet, when you speak to them or when they do their lecture, they just still claim to have never eaten cooked food in all these years. They put on a fake front to the public. So I saw that with my own eyes with a number of the leading individuals.

So, are there some of those leaders who really are 100% raw-vegans through the years and are healthy? There might be. But, they also might not be. I mean, all I know is that the ones that I get to know, the more I get to know them, the more I see them eating cooked food on the sly, or having really severe problems like anxiety attacks, panic attacks, clinical depression, teeth falling out, fingernails breaking, hair falling out. So I'm just not personally impressed with my experience of the raw food movement and the raw-food experts! That's just my own personal experience with all that.

Frederic: But I'm sure some people will come to you and say, "Oh, I know this guy who's been a raw-vegan for 30 years, and he's muscular and he's really healthy."

Naz: Yeah, and what I always think of when I hear that is those speakers that I saw that said that they had been 100% raw for 20 years and that very weekend of the raw food convention both of them ate cooked food. So, I take it all with a grain of salt. In other words, those people might believe they know somebody that's been raw-vegan for 30 years and is in great physical condition, but whether that person really has been or not, or whether that person really is healthy and isn't suffering some things behind the scenes, one doesn't know. And so, I remain open to the possibility that there are some individuals whose particular body type has permitted to be a raw-vegan for thirty years and be in good health. I admit that possibility, but my own experience tells me that that would be few and far between - it wouldn't be most people.

Jinjee's Note: It is an interesting co-incidence that Naz has run into so many raw leaders cheating on their diets. I have heard such rumors before, but it would seem a very freak accident to happen upon even one such incident in ones lifetime. I have also heard several raw leaders openly say that they are not 100% raw all the time. And those that do say that they are 100% raw I believe. Their sincerity, commitment, and dedication is very clear to me. It hurts me to see them maligned here as a group.

Rhio: I have no reason to doubt that Naz saw what he says he saw. I do not know him although I met him once briefly at that same raw food festival in San Francisco. I hope he is being truthful... I've heard things also about some raw teachers/authors. Some raw food so-called experts may not walk their talk … maybe there are some that view the raw lifestyle solely as a business and do not follow it in their personal lives, or maybe they believe what they say, but have not been able to implement it fully in their own lives, or maybe they just had an off day. I have also seen some things that don't look right... but I also want to point out that sometimes a raw food person can be maligned on circumstantial evidence (I'm not saying this was the case with what Naz saw). For example, every month I get a delivery to my house of organic ostrich and chicken. Now, someone present when I receive the delivery or someone that peeks into my freezer might have doubts about me… until they learn that I have cats… (My cats eat the raw meat with raw vegetables.)

Some guests to my house might find some cooked food in the kitchen cabinets or refrigerator and might doubt my sincerity... until they learn that I have roomates... who also eat ... and unfortuntely, not raw food. (Thankfully, they usually eat out.)

I also know that people are human and there may be times when due to extreme pressure, stress or circumstances they go off the diet, like, for example, when I saw the world trade center disaster unfolding through my window, it triggered a couple of days of popcorn eating. The shocking tragedy caused me to revert back to my old way of handling stress, but then I regained my senses and was back to my raw diet stronger than ever.

Naz: Lack of Honesty in the Raw-Vegan Movement

Frederic: There's not much honesty in the raw movement, as you're saying...

See, there's a definite problem there. And it's not, a "problem of the raw movement." The problem is just human beings. Whether you're talking about politics, whether you're talking about sports, whatever field you're talking about, you find that there are a lot of things that are done for the profit motive. That individual people are usually looking out for how they're earning their income.

Now we see that and criticize it, in things like the oil industry and the munitions industry, but the same exact thing is true in the health food industry. It's true in health movements, raw-food movements, and things like that. There gets to be certain groups of people who are earning their living from it and feeding their egos by being the authority figures. The human species seems to, in general, still have a problem struggling with basic honesty.

In the raw-food movement, you sort of set yourself up for the worst of human nature, simply because you get into a one-upsmanship thing where, "what percent raw are you?", "How long have you been 100% raw?" You get into this sort of like "raw-food one-upsmanship," which cultivates the worst in human behavior patterns.

Rhio: I don't think you can say it is dishonest to be human and have a human failing once in a while. Some raw food leaders, like Chef Cherie Soria, for example, say quite frankly that they are not 100% raw. Viktoras Kulvinskas has talked very openly about his struggles with the diet and his addictions. The Hippocrates Health Institute advocates 75-80% raw diet.

Perhaps there are people "earning their living and feeding their egos" BUT MOST of the speakers and authors that I know are genuine and sincere in their efforts to get the information out and do not fit into these negative characterizations.

Frederic: Supplements

Many of the authors in the raw-movement, who used to recommend really simple, basic raw-vegan diets, are now getting into all these supplements and super-foods. It seems that they're noticing that this basic raw-vegan diet seems to be deficient. Why is that?

Naz: There are two reasons for that. One is because of what you just said. There's an interesting thing about the raw food movement, which is different than other field. In the raw-food movement, if you come into it and are a raw-foodist for a fairly short time - like two or three years - you tend to start writing your books.

In the raw-food movement as a whole, people get into the idea of the pristine version of the raw-food diet, which wouldn't include supplements. They do that for a period of time and write a book or two while they're on that version of the diet. Then, all of the sudden in their own lives, they start having the problems of the nutritional deficiencies, and then they start looking for the answers. At first, the idea is that the answer is like some simple fix, like, "Gosh, if I just take a B-12 supplement, or if I just eat this algae" or something like that. So then, they start looking for the answer in that direction. So, that's one reason why all these raw-food guys end up getting into pitching supplements.

But the other reason is that once you've become a raw-food author and are getting to speak at the raw-food events and are earning a bit of money being on the lecture circuit, you quickly realize how much more money you could make if you were selling supplements. It just becomes really obvious that if all of these people who are attending your lecture had the opportunity to buy from you some vitamin C or buy from you some fatty acids or something like that, well, you're going to walk away from that event with more money in your pocket. Plus, you can only be in so many places in a year, you can only do so many lectures, you can only earn so much money from that. But the amount of money that you can make over your webpage if you're hulking supplements is astronomical -there's no limit to it. So, once a person is viewing their career as being a raw-food teacher, they soon learn that they'll make a lot more money if they're also selling supplements.

Jinjee's Note: In my opinion the above is a gross generalization, but with some truth to it. A lot of the speakers on the circuit are doing a lot of social raw food, dehydrated food, not enough fresh organic foods, which could lead to depletion.

Rhio: If you believe in taking supplements then you are not "hulking" them to just make a living. If you believe in supplements and then go to the trouble to find the genuine food-based ones and make them available to people, I don't see that as some sinister endeavor that you are doing just for the money. This kind of idea is a throwback to the idea that if you are doing something good, you cannot make any money at it because then it becomes suspect… What's wrong with making some money and doing some good at the same time? In order for the raw food movement to grow and become more mainstream, MORE "vendors" are needed to provide the food and information and if people are going to work at providing goods, services or information they should be able to make a living at it. Why should their motives be impugned? And just from a practical point of view, how long will a raw food restaurant stay in business if they are not making money? How long will an organic farmer stay in business if he/she are not making money at it?

I believe in taking supplements at certain times and for different reasons. The world that we are living in is unbalanced and tends to create imbalances in the body. For example, working under fluorescent lights day after day pulls the vitamin A out of the body and that's why you see so many office workers need to get glasses eventually. Certainly a raw food diet may correct that, but it may not be enough… it depends on the individual. Offices could install full spectrum fluorescent lights, but are we to wait until they do so? Even if we don't work in an office, we visit offices, we visit gyms, we visit health food stores, we visit and spend time in numerous places that use fluorescent lights so all of us are being affected to some degree.

Stress from everyday living depletes the adrenals. (causing deficiency of B-Complex)
Smoke, pollution and city living deplete Vitamin C.
Lack of sufficient sunlight on the skin depletes Vitamin D and use of sunblocks prevents its absorption.
Refined grains deplete Vitamin E & F.
e t c e t e r a...

All of the above may or may not be handled completely with a raw food diet. We are all individual.

Naz: But that first reason that we talked about, which was, they themselves start to experience nutritional deficiencies and are looking for answers - that's in there too. So there's these two. Then, the question is, would that be possible to go on a raw-vegan diet that wouldn't include supplements? I'd recommend Gabriel Cousens' latest information. It's not in his book. It's in his e-mail bulletin, and he actually contradicts what's in his book - he admits that. He says that what he put in his book is what he believed at the time. He now believes that problems with B-12 in the vegan movement are much more severe. Before, he was saying you could get B-12 from certain sources, like spirulina and blue-green algae and certain sea vegetables. He now does not believe that. He believes that those are analog B-12 that can't be absorbed by the human body. And so now he's advocating that people take a B-12 supplement. He says that maybe 20% of human beings could do a vegan diet without having to take a B-12 supplement, but at least 80% can't. And people shouldn't just assume that they're in that 20% category, because the odds are against them.

He believes that 20% might be able to go without a B-12 supplement simply because when he tests vegans, 80% of them are found to be in serious B-12 deficiency. But to me, that doesn't necessarily mean that 20% of the people can go without B-12 supplementation on a vegan diet. Because in fact, of those 20% people that he's testing that right now, aren't deficient - how do we know that three years from now, 10% of those people won't have become deficient? In other words, a best-case scenario, which is what Gabriel is talking about, is that maybe 20% of the people on a vegan diet wouldn't need the supplement.

Jinjee's Note: I respect Dr. Cousens' work, but if the above is an accurate account of his research my initial question would be whether these people were B-12 deficient on paper only or if they were actually experiencing poor health? There are recommended daily allowances and measurements that are exaggerated beyond what a person really needs.

Rhio: And the conundrum is that B-12 supplements do not come from sources that sound appealing to vegetarians. Reportedly one method of producing B-12 supplements involves using activated sludge and the other method is from meat. I've seen some B-12 supplements advertised as vegetarian ... could that be from the activated sludge? Mmm.

Go to Part 5