Q: What brought you back to Miami?
A: It had been many years since I had done any events in the Miami area. Eventually, I coordinated with Dr. Etti and Dr. Gabriel Cousens to return with them for an event on January 17th, 2010. This event went so well that I decided to return to help build up some more Miami momentum and share even more cutting edge health information in the areas of raw-living foods, superfoods, superherbs, living water, and (of course) chocolate! With the Sun, beautiful beaches, easy access to organic foods, and yoga, Miami is such a great place to become healthy and happy. Please join Dr. Etti and myself on May 7-8th, 2010 for an inspiring weekend of education, entertainment, and empowerment!
Q: What is raw food exactly? What is its origin? Is it a recent phenomenon?
A: The basic idea is that when we showed up on the planet, we didn't have fire, we didn't have shoes. How did we live? Well it's easier to sneak up on lettuce than it is a rabbit so we probably ate mostly raw plants. And that is the basic idea or the premise behind raw foods and raw-food diets. Ideally, the more natural and more original the food is, the better it is for you.
Raw food diets have been in the periphery of every culture in the world from Iran to India to Mexico to The United States. In the United States raw-food diet literature that I have personally read dates back over 150 years. We can surmise that raw-food diets have been present in America long before this.
The essential key concept that inspired me is that “cooking” food has had something significant to do with our “fall from grace” as cooking adds all kinds of chemistries to foods we may not be designed for, destroys B vitamins, eradicates vitamin C, dramatically increases the possibility of obesity, directly separates us from our natural food instincts and Mother Nature, and allows for the introduction of all different kinds of nutritional deficiency conditions. When we eat a balanced, raw-food-based approach to diet we begin to recapture our original, beautiful, natural, spiritual, joy-filled, ennobled state of being.
Q: What are the principles?
A: Here is the best food philosophy I've been able to come up with in the last 15 years: You are what you eat.
80% of the foods eaten by humankind are the same. These foods are almost always cooked, devoid of real mineral content, and sprayed with and grown in chemicals. In Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia most people, most of the time, eat the same foods. These include: corn, soy beans, rice, potatoes, wheat, barley, coconuts, oranges, yucca root (manioc, tapioca), chicken, dairy from goats, dairy from cows, meat from cows, coffee, cacao (cocoa, cooked chocolate), sugar (from sugarcane or beets). These are the most commonly eaten food substances in the world.
These foods create a certain type of consciousness, the results of which are self-evident by the dangerous state of world affairs and the general poor level of health experienced in the West and beyond. Again, “you are what you eat” asserts itself.
The raw, organic, mineral-rich, living foods I recommend create another type of consciousness. These foods include: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, seaweeds, sprouts, grasses (wheatgrass, etc.), fermented foods (sauerkraut, kim chi, etc.), herbs, and superfoods.
When you eat these foods, the resulting effects on your health, wellness, and consciousness are self-evident. (You are what you eat).
Q: What are the benefits?
A: As the months and years pass, a person switching to an organic, raw-plant-food approach to diet may notice a greater awareness of the spiritual world, become more intuitive, and feel natural powers they have never experienced (or did not know they had). One will find oneself having more fun in a garden than a movie theatre. A profound new connection will arise with plants and animals.
Every person is a work of art in progress. Either one can become progressively more beautiful, or one can follow the fate civilization has set out (mis-education, wage slavery, decay, illness, and an untimely death). Each action one takes determines which of these two destinies will be achieved.
Raw, organic, plant-based foods are a startling self-empowerment tools and agents of freedom.
Q: Are there any disadvantages?
A: WARNING: Eating fresh raw organic foods and superfoods may cause you to repeatedly have the best day ever!
Q: Is raw food only for vegetarians?
A: Not technically, however due to the danger of consuming animal products created by poor quality control, antibiotics, growth hormones, animal diseases (Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth, Blue Tongue, chicken cancers, etc.) as well as greed, animal products are becoming less and less reliable sources of protein or any nutrition at all.
Q: Is it suitable for children?
A: Yes. Raw plant foods are suitable for children. Certainly they are more appropriate for children than pesticide-sprayed canned baby foods, soy formulas, candy, breakfast cereals, factory-farmed meat, fish, and chicken products, and other heavily processed food items sold via marketing campaigns to parents and children.
Consider the simplicity of a child eating lettuce, an apple, blueberries, almonds, pumpkin seeds, etc.
Children stand to benefit greatly from the addition of raw, organic plant foods in their diet.
Q: For which persons is it suitable and for whom absolutely not?
A: I recommend 80% raw and organic plant foods in one’s diet, because this approach is relatively easy to attain for most people. And is, in fact, good enough for everyone to experience excellent improvements in their health. Those with sensitivity to fiber (cellulose found in vegetables) need to make appropriate adjustments with the types of raw foods they are eating. All of us should be careful with ingesting too much sugar (fruit). All of us can find benefits in drinking fresh celery juice. Raw berries are great for nearly every type of metabolism. Raw chocolate is wonderful for celebration, yet inappropriate for those with chocolate allergies. The point is: there is something in raw food for everyone. Especially in the beginning, eating 100% raw food is inappropriate for some people due to many reasons, including: being excessively thin, having very poor mineralization (poor teeth and bones), being too alkaline, and other extreme “vata” (Ayurvedic thin, nervous body type) conditions.
Q: Is it easy/difficult to make? What do you have to take in consideration?
A: Start consuming superfoods (cacao, maca, goji berry, marine phytoplankton, etc.) in a super smoothie every day. Simply replace heavily processed protein powders with real foods — superfoods!
Drink fresh vegetable juice (celery based) whenever possible.
Reduce cooked foods to one item per meal. Eat that meal with an organic salad.
Take raw, uncooking classes and/or read raw recipe books and find out how to make lasagnas, pizzas, breads, sauces, pates, desserts, and all kinds of other treats without cooking and without side effects.
Have fun with your food again. Discover natural highs.
Avoid factory farmed animal products immediately — that means avoiding just about all animal products on the market today.
As fast as you can, slow down fast fooding. Fast food is completely toxic to a consciousness of abundance.
Q: Is it easy to maintain, keep going?
A: Any of the superfoods and superherbs can be added into anyone’s diet. Simply discover the one’s you like and stick with them. Get out a blender and make entirely new types of shakes, smoothies, and beverages out of superfoods. Make all kinds of teas with the herbs. Better yet, take your superherb tea and blend it with superfoods.
Interestingly, superfoods and herbs meet and exceed all our protein requirements, our vitamin and mineral requirements, glyconutrient (essential polysaccharide sugar) requirements, essential fatty acid requirements, immune system requirements, and so much more!
Superfoods can be (and should be) consumed raw because 150 years of research has now demonstrated that living, raw food is superior in vitamin content, enzymes, co-enzymes, usable protein, usable minerals, glyconutrients, and many other elements of nutrition. Additionally, raw food is natural. Raw is how Nature provides us with food.
Q: Can you integrate it in a more traditional cooking way of life or do you have to go all the way?
A: I recommend 80% raw and organic plant foods in one’s diet, because this approach is relatively easy to attain for most people. And is, in fact, good enough for everyone to experience excellent improvements in their health.
By eating raw foods, one learns how to cook better. For example, one learns how to sprout beans first, then cook them, providing even more nutrition. Also, one learns the importance of eating salads with cooked foods. Another factor that raw foods teach us is simplicity. One learns how to eat simply and graciously. Cooking with raw coconut oil (which is resistant to rancidity and oxidation) can radically transform one’s favorite dishes. Raw coconut oil is even better to cook with than olive oil.
Q: How can you make the transition the most easy? What disadvantages can you come across?
A: I have found that the best way for people to eat raw food is to add it to their diet without feeling like they are being deprived. I especially advocate fresh vegetable juices and superfood smoothies daily. Once people see how good they feel, then they naturally want to eat raw food.
Remember: the law of attraction is constantly at work. We can attract health and healthy foods into our life. My goal is to eat “the best food ever” — so I attract this all the time into my life. You can too. This is the power of a decision.
Q: Is there any advantage in going raw for one day a week or does it do nothing?
A: Any amount of organic raw food helps!
What we eat helps to guide our path. Eating determines what level of health our body will experience. Every bite of food put into the body should add to our strength, spirituality, and beauty. Each meal becomes part of who we are at the deepest level.
A day of eating raw foods or a week or two of a raw-foods detox can do wonders for everyone.
Q: What about raw chocolate? Some more explanation
A: People always ask me what I eat. Raw, organic cacao beans (raw chocolate nuts) are a wonderful part of my diet. Cacao is the superfood of the future. Cacao beans are truly the food of the gods; the best food ever! What is cacao? Cacao is the seed (nut) of a fruit of an Amazonian tree that was brought to Central America during or before the time of the Olmecs. Cacao beans were so revered by the Mayans, Toltecs, Mixtecs, and Aztecs that they used them as money!
The raw cacao bean is one of nature's most fantastic superfoods due to its mineral content (magnesium, iron, chromium, manganese, zinc, and copper) as well as due to its wide array of unique and varied properties including an extraordinary content of: antioxidants, PEA, anandamide, and soluble fiber. Research has conclusively demonstrated that people who eat chocolate live longer and are less likely to experience heart troubles.
Since many of the special properties of cacao are destroyed or lost by cooking, refining, and processing, we feel that planet Earth’s favorite food is still unknown to most of us. Now we get to reconnect with the power of real, original, natural, dark, raw chocolate (no sugar, no additives).
You can read more about the world’s greatest food in my book, Naked Chocolate.
Q: Where can people access more information about you? Websites and books?
A: www.longevitynowprogram.com
www.davidwolfe.com
www.thebestdayever.com
www.sacredchocolate.com
www.21daystohealth.com
www.ftpf.org
David Wolfe Books and Projects:
The Sunfood Diet Success System
Eating for Beauty
Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future
Naked Chocolate
Amazing Grace
21 Day Program: David Wolfe on Raw Foods, Superfoods, and Superherbs