Raw Facts: An Interview with David Wolfe

When I transitioned to a mostly raw food plant-based diet almost five years ago, my health almost immediately changed. I had energy. My skin was clearer. I felt happier.

While it can sound like an extreme change, when you get to the bottom of what raw eating actually is, it’s the most simple form of nutrition. Modern chefs such as Juliano, Russell James and Rod Rotondi have then taken raw and made it into a mouthwatering, culinary excursion of deliciousness. Raw dishes, from lasagne and salads to cheesecakes and crackers, may take longer to prepare in the kitchen, but suddenly, food and its preparation possibilities becomes exciting. Eating becomes truly enjoyable, you stay fuller for longer on dense, nutritious calories and, in many cases, your health improves and you become a healthy weight that’s so easy to maintain. No. more. dieting!

There are many raw food teachers, but perhaps none as well-known as David Wolfe, who actually brought raw food into popular consciousness. He’s all about raw, as well as super foods and super herbs. He’s a treat to listen to and offers so much life-changing health and wellness information, which you can access online via his BodyMind Institute course.

In this four-part interview, David explains what the lifestyle is, why it can reap many health benefits, how to make a start and so much more. Stay tuned next week for part two.

What is raw food exactly? What is its origin? Is it a recent phenomenon?

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 different forms of vitamin C and E, destroys/damages amino acids such as tryptophan,  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.

The idea of raw foods eventually developed into a concept that bridges the great benefits of raw foods to the general population. That idea is the development of the concept of superfoods. Superfoods are the most powerful raw plant foods identified by great civilizations (e.g. cacao or chocolate by Native Americans, goji berries by the Chinese, maca by the Incan peoples, aloe vera by the Egyptians, noni by the Polynesians, Hempseed by the peoples of Central Asia, spirulina by Africans and Mexicans, etc.). Superfoods are the real supplements of the future — created in Mother Nature’s laboratories of wind, rain, storms, soil, and sun.  Superfoods in general carry more minerals, more nutrients, more interesting chemistries, are often complete protein sources, accelerate the absorption of herbs you take them with, and have healing medicinal qualities.

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.

What are the principles of raw food?

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 worldwide. 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.), superherbs, and superfoods.

When you eat these foods, the resulting effects on your health, wellness, and consciousness are self-evident. (You are what you eat).

We are also what we drink. I recommend real living cold spring water (low in calcium and iron) from the source directly. Living water connects to the living wild environment. Living water is a wild food. It is also free. Drinking living spring water from the source expands consciousness: try it yourself and feel the difference.

Here is the best food philosophy I’ve been able to come up with in the last 15 years: You are what you eat.

What are the benefits?

As the months and years pass, a person switching to superfoods, superherbs, living spring water, and an organic, raw-plant-food-based approach to diet may notice a greater awareness of spiritual ideas, such as becoming more intuitive, feeling connected to everything, gaining deeper desires to meditate, gaining a deeper experience of well being, feeling natural powers they have never experienced (or did not know they had), etc. 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.

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).

Are there any disadvantages?

WARNING: Eating fresh raw organic foods, superherbs, superfoods, and living water may cause you to repeatedly have the best day ever!

Major changes in lifestyle are typically met by resistance from those nearby family and friends who lack the information, insight, or inspiration behind what is driving your desire to change.

Find out more about David Wolfe and his raw food teachings at www.bodymindinstitute.com

**Stay tuned for part two of this interview next week!**