Recently, I was asked “What is a raw foodist?” Larry and I are both what is considered ‘high raw’ foodists. Which means, that we are vegan, in that we don’t eat any animal products which includes all dairy, eggs, yogurt, cheese, etc. And about 80-90% of our diet is raw vegan food. I enjoy creating dishes that taste like some of our favorites such as raw tacos, raw pizza, raw lasagna, all made with nuts and vegetables, and other ingredients that pull it all together. You’ll find these recipes and more when you subscribe to my my weekly Raw4Healing recipes.

Now some raw foodists will disagree with me on this point: I do not feel it is necessary to be 100% raw all the time, in fact, often times it simply is not realistic for most people. But I definitely feel that the benefits of an 80% to 100% raw food lifestyle far outweigh any other dietary choices out there. We enjoy some things cooked, like yams, brown rice, black beans, Lima beans, whole grains, etc. Larry still enjoys eggs occasionally and I’m not super strict about what he eats.

Basically, after having gone through detox, colon cleanses, etc. it’s okay to ‘fall off the wagon’ so to speak once in a while. Sometimes it can’t be helped, like when we go to the kids’ house for dinner, or family and friends get together. And if that’s the case, we’ll bring something from our kitchen to share. People have to do what is right for them, what works best for their lifestyle, and their families. But bottom line, it is important to look seriously at what is in our food, the quality of it, the chemicals, pesticides, preservatives, food colorings, artificial flavorings, MSG, GMO, hormones, etc., etc., and how it affects our health after eating this way for 10 - 20 years. That’s why so many chronic diseases occur in the 40 and over age group. We’ve been programmed to eat this way, and society constantly tells us to eat these processed foods. It’s on TV, newspapers, billboards, magazines, everywhere.

I’ve been a health nut all my life, I learned a lot from my grandparents, who took vitamins and were considered ’strange’ in their day. They became vegetarians back in the ’70s after my grandfather read about how animals are inhumanely treated and slaughtered, and the hormones, and pesticides that are in the beef and chicken. This all ends up on the table or in a restaurant. He immediately became a vegetarian, I remember it vividly. I was in my 20’s and it was pretty radical for our family that always had traditional turkey for thanksgiving and roast beef for Christmas, and ham for Easter!!

But they both lived to be 93 and 94 and would have lived longer if the doctors and prescriptions had left them alone, thanks to medical intervention.

Both my parents died from medical intervention, my dad of leukemia, and my mom from a rare debilitating paralyzing disease. My dad’s cancer went into remission when he started doing some natural treatments, holistic and nutritional therapy. But his doctor said it wasn’t going to work and insisted he go back for radiation and chemo… he died soon after that. My mom had a stiff neck, and some tingling in her legs, and the doctor wanted to do exploratory surgery on her neck at the famous Stanford Univ. hospital. She almost died on the table there twice. When they sent her home, she couldn’t walk, was paralyzed on her left side, and suffered that way the rest of her life. She was only 30 at the time, and lived to be 71, much longer than any of us kids expected.

After my grandparents and parents died, I started to do a lot of research. I didn’t want to be another statistic… and I knew I had some genes to fight against. This was back in 2005 right after my mom died, and I became a full blown vegan, having already been vegetarian most of my life. Last year, in researching for one of my other health sites, I learned that raw food was the next best step toward optimum health and healing. Thus, raw4healing.com was born.

Since then, my husband has lost over 40 pounds, and I have lost 20 pounds… and so many little health issues that we generally attribute to getting old are gone. Gone are migraines, hypoglycemia, arthritis, skin rashes, sleep disorders, mood swings, went through menopause without a hitch, constipation, joint pain and stiffness, all gone… we both have increased energy, and feel like we’re in our late 20’s.

Before attempting a food switch, it is important to find some books to read about it, or articles, but I like Dr. Mercola’s books. I also like David Wolfe’s, and my other favorite is Gabriel Cousens, “Conscious Eating”. The internet is LOADED with tons of free info, testimonies, etc., just Google ‘raw food’ and you’ll find all you need to know, plus what I have too, but don’t stop there. Plus, I should add it is best to check with your doctor, preferably a holistic practitioner, or a nutritionist who knows you and your health requirements.

Also, most people eat the SAD (standard American diet) and as a result, need to first go through a detox program. If constipation is a common health challenge, then ‘juice feasting’ helps to regulate elimination. This is what killed my mother. She was always constipated, trying all kinds of laxatives and in time, the toxins in her blood reduced her immune system, causing her heart to work harder, and she died of a heart attack. Part of it was because she was unable to be active due to her partial paralysis… but she almost always complained of constipation and I didn’t know enough at the time to help her.

So I started my detox program with fresh wheatgrass juice and carrot juice several times a day. This was before I learned about ‘juice feasting’ (consisting of fresh fruits and greens, like spinach, kale, romaine lettuce), which I also recommend but it requires a high speed blender, OR a food processor, then transferred to a regular blender. Two quarts a day for a week, to two weeks, or more and drink plenty of filtered water. Some people are very toxic and during the detox will experience headaches, cramps, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, but usually for only a few days… Then transition over to solid food, but only organic all natural fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Preferably 100% raw for a few months… after that, it becomes a personal thing, you learn what works for your own body. Like I can tell right away if something I ate is going to agree with me or not.

People complain that it is hard to give up the foods we grew up with, often times considered comfort foods. Dietary changes are a personal thing, each person needs to do their own research, and do what works best for them. Many people cannot or will not give up their favorite foods, but refuse to face the fact that they may actually be addicted to them. Thanks to scientific food engineering, they have done an excellent job of brainwashing and hooking the masses for profit, and certainly not for health!

What keeps me on the natural, vegan and raw path are the major conspiracies in our government and secret world organizations that control the quality of our food and water, and that our food is processed without any regard at all for our health, in fact it is designed to make us want it all the time, with artificial flavorings, colorings, etc., (consequently we have an extremely HIGH obesity rate nowadays) and also designed to destroy our health so that the medical INDUSTRY and pharmaceutical industries, and the major food corporations (yes, they are all in this together), can stay in business - stay rich… because if people get healthy, then they don’t make any money… and our government, the FDA, etc. all support this scheme. I urge people to do their own research about what is really happening behind the scenes with regard to the deliberate contamination of our food and water supply.

Many people reject what I say about our food being ‘designed’ to make us sick, either because they trust their government (after all we’ve been programmed to believe them, right?), or they feel helpless and powerless, which isn’t true. There are many activist groups that are more public and out in the open about these issues, marching in the streets with signs to protect our health freedom, before the cops come and take them away… and you won’t hear about it on your evening news.

A long time ago, I studied to become a nurse, only to drop out after learning that much of the training is about how to treat with drugs, etc. No nutritional training, and that is true for doctors, too. My sister in law is a charge nurse in a hospital, and she agrees with me 100% - we have great discussions. She said it is true that pharma reps come in with stacks of pizzas for the doctors and nurses, and they are trying to ’sell’ their drugs and literature to the nurses - and if that doctor or hospital ’sells’ enough of their drugs, they get kickbacks and dinners, and vacations, etc.

Needless to say, the raw vegan lifestyle is so much more than a dietary change. First, I feel it is following what God ordained in the beginning, in Genesis 1:29: “And God said, “See, I have given you every herb (vegetables) that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.” And second, it’s more than just improving our health; it involves every aspect of our lives, our relationships, our families, our environment, and what is going on behind the scenes that is never allowed to be made public. News and information that never makes it to the national TV networks, or newspapers. If you want to know, you have to dig, and be ready for surprises.

I think of John Lennon’s famous song: “Imagine”. Imagine world peace. Imagine global health. Imagine if everyone followed a high raw vegan diet. There would be no sickness and disease. No need for doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. Babies would be born healthy and grow up to be healthy and high functioning adults. People would be at peace with each other, there would be no wars because they would not be consuming foods that contain excitotoxins and high amounts of sugar and other chemicals that cause mood swings, aggressive behavior or mental health issues. There would be no need for raising beef and chicken, or for slaughterhouses, or dairies. The land would be cared for and fed organic natural compost fertilizer and used for growing crops that feed people, not cows or other animals. Our air quality would improve if we didn’t have methane gas that come from cattle farms. There are at least a hundred human and environmental benefits if everyone followed a high raw, vegan lifestyle. Maybe someday I can research that aspect of it and post it here.

Blessings!
Larry and Lauren

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Mike Adams, The Health Ranger, is one of the few vocal advocates for our rights to health freedom. Below is a post from his site: Natural News regarding plans to remove the nutritional value of our fresh produce. Please write your legislature and request that foods that are irradiated be labeled, and become active to block the mandated requirements of all foods being pasteurized.

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Comments by Mike Adams,
the Health Ranger

There’s a new plot underway to sterilize your food and destroy the nutritional value of fresh produce. The players in this plot are the usual suspects: The USDA (which backed the “raw” almond sterilization rules now in effect in California) and the American Chemical Society — a pro-chemical group that represents the interests of industrial chemical manufacturers. The latest push comes from USDA researchers who conducted a study to see which method more effectively killed bacteria on leafy green vegetables like spinach.

To conduct the study, they bathed the spinach in a solution contaminated with bacteria. Then, they tried to remove the bacteria using three methods: Washing, chemical spraying and irradiation. Not surprisingly, only the irradiation killed nearly 100 percent of the bacterial colonies. That’s because radiation sterilizes both the bacteria and the vegetable leaves, effectively killing the plant and destroying much of its nutritional value while it kills the bacteria.

The USDA claims this is a huge success. By using radiation on all fresh produce, they claim, the number of food-borne illness outbreaks that happen each year could be substantially reduced. It all makes sense until you realize that by destroying the nutritional value of all fresh produce sold in the United States, an irradiation policy would greatly increase the number of people killed by infections and chronic diseases that are prevented by the natural medicines found in fresh produce!

Why fresh, living produce helps prevent sickness

The USDA, you see, has zero recognition of the difference between living produce and dead produce. To uneducated government bureaucrats, pasteurized or irradiated vegetable juice is identical to fresh, raw, living vegetable juice. They believe this because they’ve never been taught about the phytonutrients, digestive enzymes and life force properties that are found in fresh foods, but that are destroyed through heat or irradiation. This, the USDA is operating out of extreme ignorance when it comes to food and nutrition.

Even a simple leaf of spinach contains hundreds of natural medicines — phytonutrients that help prevent cancer, eye diseases, nervous system disorders, heart disease and much more. Every living vegetable is a powerhouse of disease-fighting medicine: Broccoli prevents cancer, beet greens cleanse the liver, cilantro removes heavy metals, celery prevents cancer, berries prevent heart disease and dark leafy greens help prevent over a dozen serious health conditions while boosting immune function and helping prevent other infections. But when you subject these fruits and vegetables to enough radiation to kill 99.9% of the pathogens that may be hitching a ride, you also destroy many of the phytonutrients responsible for these tremendous health benefits!

This means that while irradiating food may decrease outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, it will have the unintended consequence of increasing the number of people who get sick from other infections (and chronic diseases) due to the fact that their source of natural medicine has been destroyed. For many Americans, you see, salad greens are their one remaining source for phytonutrients. Given their diets of processed foods, junk foods and cooked foods, there are very few opportunities for these consumers to get fresh, phytonutrient-rich foods into their diet. And now the USDA wants to take that away, too, by mandating the irradiation of all fresh produce.

Let me make a rather obvious prediction, on the record: If the irradiation of fresh produce goes into effect in the United States, rates of infection among consumers will sharply increase, not decrease, due to the removal of immune-boosting natural medicine from the food supply. Consumers will also experience higher rates of cancer, heart disease, dementia, eye disorders, diabetes and even obesity. By destroying these thousands of healing phytonutrients, irradiation will leave many consumers defenseless against modern society’s many health challenges.

It is no exaggeration to say that a policy of mass irradiation of fresh produce is as blatantly stupid as the Romans building their aqueducts with lead-lined waterways. As historians have explained, after the aqueducts were built, the water delivered to the Roman population was contaminated with lead — a heavy metal that causes numerous health problems, including insanity. Many historians blame the lead-lined aqueducts as one of the primary reasons why the Roman Empire fell: Its leaders went mad, and the rest is history.

I would argue that America’s leaders are already mad, but that’s beside the point. If we start irradiating our food, thereby destroying its nutritional value, we are going to unleash a cascade of unintended consequences even greater than the Roman’s aqueducts. Absent the protections of phytonutrients found in plants, the health of most consumers will rapidly decline, and we’ll see the U.S. thrust into a quagmire of chronic disease and medical bankruptcy. (It’s already heading there, of course, but killing the food supply will only accelerate the downward spiral of health.)

Let’s sterilize all the food!

The USDA has never met a food sterilization plan it didn’t like. It backed the recent almond sterilization law that went into effect in California last year, forcing all almond growers to sterilize their almonds by subjecting them to toxic chemicals or cooking them at high enough temperatures to kill anything that might have been alive (such as the almond itself). Now, all the raw almonds consumed in America are purchased from overseas growers, where raw still means raw.

Raw milk has also been under attack in California and elsewhere. The USDA supported laws that essentially banned the sales of raw milk, requiring milk to be sterilized, too. If you now irradiate all the fresh produce, you have a food supply that is predominantly sterilized — otherwise known as “dead.” And dead foods lead to dead people.

That a society’s health regulators would want all foods to be dead should be downright shocking to anyone who knows anything about health and nutrition. Live foods keep people alive, but dead foods make people dead. It’s really not a complicated concept. The USDA’s definition of “food safety,” however, is based on the idea that the health of one immune-system-compromised individual who can’t handle a little E. Coli is more important than the ongoing health of the entire population. Thus, all foods must be killed for everyone.

I strongly disagree with this approach. Foods should not be expected to be sterilized. In terms of food safety, emphasis should be placed on boosting the health and immune systems of individuals so they can survive occasional contact with E. Coli rather than trying to create a sterile environment in which nothing is alive. As it turns out, the people susceptible to food-borne illnesses are precisely those individuals who have compromised immune systems due to their intake of vaccines and antibiotics. Thus, it is modern medicine that has made these people vulnerable to food-borne illnesses. Blame the drug companies, not the bacteria.

But the USDA would rather blame the food. Blaming conventional medicine for the harm it has caused to the human immune system is not politically correct. It’s better to blame the food, then use scare tactics to announce yet more outbreaks and hope for a public outcry for widespread food irradiation. And that brings me to the “final solution” on food irradiation.

How the USDA plans to join the FDA in keeping everyone sick

There is a corporate-sponsored plot underway in the U.S. today to keep people sick and deny them access to information about natural cures (such as medicinal foods) that would prevent disease and keep people out of the hospitals. In more than 1,500 articles on this website, I’ve documented the FDA’s criminality, the USDA’s indefensible actions, and the criminal behavior of drug manufacturers who only earn profits if they can find a way to keep the entire population sick and diseased for another generation or two.

Destroying the natural medicine in the food supply sure would be a highly effective way to create more customers for Big Pharma, wouldn’t it? I think it’s all part of the “keep the population sick and diseased” plot being carried out by an evil partnership between drug companies and the U.S. government. We already know that the FDA and USDA work for the corporations, not the People. We already know that they will do practically anything to boost their profits (including conducting medical experiments on infants, drugging schoolchildren, lying to the public, fabricating clinical trials and more). Is it any surprise that they would now attempt a “final solution” on the food supply that kills the food and thereby results in a huge reduction in the population’s intake of the disease-fighting nutrients found in fresh produce?

The social engineering recipe

Pulling this off, of course, requires a bit of social engineering by the USDA in order to force the public into demanding something be done. If you’re the USDA, you can’t just suddenly announce a national food sterilization plan; you have to prime the pump with a bit of dirty work. Here’s the simple plan for accomplishing that, if you’re the USDA:

1) Conduct poor inspections of fresh produce on purpose, in order to cause a large increase in food-borne illness outbreaks. (We’ve seen this increase happen over the last 12 - 24 months.) This can be easily accomplished by reducing the budget of food inspection offices, or removing inspectors from the payroll altogether (which has already happened).

2) Wait for the outbreaks to happen. When consumers get sick, run national press releases announcing how dangerous the food supply is.

3) Watch the consumer reaction as people and lawmakers demand “something be done!”

4) Fudge a study with the American Chemical Society to show that washing doesn’t work and that irradiation is the only solution. Time the release of this news to coincide with the public outcry that “something be done!”

5) Once the public is demanding a solution to food-borne illnesses, roll out a national produce irradiation requirement that sterilizes all the food.

Mission accomplished! This, of course, leads to point #6:

6) Watch the population become increasingly sick and diseased (thanks to the lack of phytonutrients that used to be found in the fresh produce), and cash in on your Big Pharma shares as the population is herded into hospitals for lucrative treatments with monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals.

It’s the same old social engineering trick that’s been used to hoodwink the American people hundreds of times. How do you get the public to support a war in the Middle East? Stage an attack on U.S. soil first, and wait for the public outcry. How do you get the People to support the mass sterilization of their own food supply? Lower your inspection standards, let the sickness spread, and then wait for the public outcry. It’s the way governments get things done these days: They manipulate the public into demanding the things they wanted to accomplish in the first place. These are sometimes called “false flag operations” in a military context, and they’ve been conducted by the U.S. government on numerous occasions, just like they were conducted by Hitler in Nazi Germany to justify his invasions of neighboring countries. You can read about False Flag operations on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

What “they” really want: A dead food supply

Let’s be blunt about this: The corporations running this country (which also run the U.S. government) want the U.S. food supply to be dead. They don’t want foods to be used as medicines, and they sure don’t want the natural medicines found in foods competing with their own patented pharmaceutical medicines (that just happen to earn them a whole lot more money than any food ever did).

Don’t you find it curious that this attack on the food supply is coming out now, right after all this incredible news about the healing power of foods has been hitting the science journals? Every week, it seems, we find out about another amazing health property in a food. Black raspberries reverse oral cancer. Pomegranates halt prostate cancer. Green tea halts breast cancer. The list goes on. Just on this website alone, we’ve probably published 1,000 stories over the last two years on the disease-fighting properties of foods.

The thing to realize here is that many of the healing properties of these foods are destroyed through pasteurization or irradiation. If you’re a government that wants to “take away the People’s medicine,” the fastest way to accomplish that is to mandate the sterilization of the food supply. Kill the foods and you take away the People’s medicine, and that forces the population to use pharmaceuticals instead.

The FDA, for its part, has for many decades conducted its natural medicine censorship campaign, whose only purpose is to deny the People access to accurate information about the healing properties of natural medicines found in foods and herbs. But apparently that wasn’t enough: The Internet came along and people found a way to educate themselves. So since the FDA couldn’t keep the truth about natural medicine bottled up and censored, the government has now apparently decided to just sterilize all the foods, thereby destroying the natural medicine and transforming Mother Nature’s gifts into dead calories.

The USDA’s decisions here are not based on public safety, folks. They’re based on corporate greed. Just look at how they handled the raw almond controversy in these related articles: http://www.naturalnews.com/almonds.html

The USDA as operated today is a front group for wealthy corporations. It is not interested in helping the People. It’s interested in protecting the profits of corporations… even if that means destroying the food supply and turning the population into “dead eaters” who die from other diseases caused by the lack of phytonutrient protection.

How you can help stop this latest atrocity against our food supply

What can you do to stop this? Be prepared to fight irradiation plans with a massive outcry that demands our food supply be protected from radiation. There are two things that need to be accomplished, and of course the USDA and FDA oppose them both:

1) Require the labeling of all irradiated foods with a large “Irradiated” label or sticker.

2) Block any attempts to mandate the irradiation of fresh produce.

Stay tuned to NaturalNews.com for more on this story. We’ll be joining with other pro-consumer groups (like the Organic Consumers Association) to rally our readers in opposition to this food irradiation effort.

I believe we must keep our food supply fresh and alive. (Sounds kinda obvious, huh?) And if there’s a little extra bacteria on the spinach, it’s nothing that a healthy body can’t handle anyway. Take some probiotics and avoid antibiotics, and you’ll be just fine. E. Coli is really only a threat to the health of individuals who have had their immune systems (or intestinal flora) destroyed by pharmaceuticals in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with some living organisms in your milk, on your almonds or on your spinach. Wash your food, get plenty of sunlight and avoid using antibiotics.

The human body is NOT a sterile environment. To try to make our food supply sterile is insane, and anyone who supports the irradiation of the food supply is, in my opinion, supporting a policy of genocide against the American people. To destroy the vitality of the food supply is a criminal act of such immense evil that it stands alongside the worst crimes ever committed against humanity.

You see, it’s not enough for them to poison our water (fluoride), poison our children (vaccines) and lie to us about the sun (skin cancer scare stories). Now they want to destroy our foods… and thereby take away any natural medicine options that might actually keep people healthy and free. Remember: A diseased population is an enslaved population.

Now go eat your Big Mac, drink your Pepsi and don’t ask too many questions.

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This is from Raw Family monthly news letter for March/April 2008

Ode to Organic Farmers

Dear Friends,

We like shopping at stores that carry organic foods. The organic industry is a fast- growing industry in the United States. We’re not the only ones who notice that - large corporations do too. Recently I ran across a unique website created by assistant professor of Michigan State University, Philip H. Howard, PhD. From this website I learned that my favorite frozen fruit company, Cascadian Farms, is in fact owned by General Mills. I contacted Dr. Howard and he graciously gave me permission to publish his research link.

You will find out many more connections:

Odwalla - owned by Coca Cola
Naked Juice - owned by Pepsi
Spectrum Organics, Garden of Eden, Celestial Seasonings and others - owned by Heinz
Boca Foods and Back to Nature - owned by Kraft
Dagoba Chocolates - owned by Hershey
Morningstar Farms - owned by Kellogg
Horizon and White Wave - owned by Dean
Nature’s Farm- owned by Tyson
Annie’s Naturals- owned by Solera Capital
Maranatha- owned by American Capital Strat. Ltd.
Power Bars- owned by Nestle
Seeds of Change- owned by M&M Mars

You may see for yourself; look for your favorite companies at this link:

http://www.msu.edu/~howardp/organicindustry.html

One can imagine how difficult it is to maintain small organic food factories. A lady I knew once ran a raw food bakery with piroshkis and scones and was only able to survive four weeks before they got stuck in debt and had to close down. Since learning of her experience I consider all organic farmers and health food companies to be heroes, as they are competing with those who sell sugar and white flour products. Even though the prices of organic products seem high to us, very often they earn as little as a charity.

I completely understand how the smaller companies often feel forced to crawl under the wing of larger corporations. The good news is that we have a way to support small corporations: by buying locally grown food.

Below are two amazingly comprehensive websites that will help you find organic sustainable farms, stores and restaurants in your area.

http://www.localharvest.org/… and http://www.eatwellguide.org/

We have a weekly farmer’s market from the end of April till the middle of November. I go every Saturday and depending on the season, purchase anywhere from $40 to $80 worth of produce. Then I don’t have to go to the grocery store for my fruits and vegetables. I receive great benefits in buying from local farmers:

~ I save quite a bit of money
~ My produce is of the best quality
~ I support my local organic heroes
~ I receive the enjoyable experience of communicating with the people that grow my food
~ I help save gasoline and the environment by buying food that wasn’t shipped thousands of miles
~ I feel connected to nature and the seasons, even though I spend my life in front of a computer.
~ It tastes so good!

To better understand what it takes for small farmers to make a living, I invite you to watch this heroic video, in which Jaime Jones, owner of The Date People (www.datepeople.net), climbs a 60 foot ladder, to reach the tops of high date palms.

Turn on the volume, listen to the funky music and enjoy!

Check out this Youtube video of The Date People.

The Date People

I hope you’ll be inspired to get to know and support your local heroes.

This is in response to an article on PopularMechanics.com

I find it interesting that most folks look to science to cure the problem of old age, sickness and disease. Why? Because that’s what they get paid for, right?

Our society is so programmed to look for answers to our questions from the experts. From the organizations that are paid to do research. They are paid to report a certain criteria for their findings.

Let me get to the point. Sure there are creams, pills and potions to stop balding, reduce wrinkles, improve bone mass, etc. But there is no money to be made in telling people that if they stop eating the manufactured junk that our major food corporations, medical industries, and pharmaceutical industries want to stuff down our throats, literally! Think about it! If you want to live a LONG, productive and active life: listen to this: STOP EATING the junk food, stop eating animal products. Yes, you read that right!! Start eating all natural fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts. Reintroduce flavors like you never had before. Flavors that the food corporations are trying to copy, but only Nature can create.

Our bodies were designed to live off of raw, fresh fruits and vegetables, not beef and chicken pumped up with pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, not dairy products that contain all of the above, but also casein and other toxic substances. We were not meant to eat canned, or frozen instant dinners filled with preservatives, MSG, hydrogenated fat, and way more protein than the body can process. We cannot build health on packaged, processed boxes of food, chips, soda, pizza, sweets, etc.

There is a cure for old age, as well as for many debilitating diseases, chronic ailments, obesity, and the most common disease of all: fatigue. It is true. When people reverse their addictive habits to cooked food, processed snacks, soda, fast foods, animal products, etc., they find that the benefits of raw food, (no, not raw meat!) truly does change their life. The weight literally falls off, the bones and joints stop aching, headaches are gone, they experience more energy, sleep better, sex is better, thinking is clearer, and health issues begin to disappear. When they are sacrificing less enzymes to digest food, because raw food contains its own enzymes to process the food, life is extended (any food cooked over 118 degrees has lost all enzymes). Aging is reversed. When the body no longer has to fight the toxins that are consumed from animal products and all processed, manufactured food, it is able to stay pure, and clean from toxins. Toxins are not allowed to build up in the body, thus it stays healthy, longer.

This is just a short, very brief synopsis in response to the article on popularmechanics.com about aging. There is no money being made in telling people to change our diet to raw, natural, fresh fruits and vegetables. To learn new and awesome recipes to create beautiful raw food dishes. To use a high-speed blender, a dehydrator, and a food processor to create awesome dishes that are healthy and delicious, too. To introduce your mouth to new, and incredible flavors.

Here is a thought: Maybe the FDA, the food corporations, meat and dairy industries, the medical industries, and the pharmaceutical industries are more interested in keeping us minimally well. Sick enough to need the doctor on a regular basis (money for the doctors, right? On a raw food diet, you save money by not needing to see the doctor.)  sick enough to require medications for whatever your ailments are (again, money for the big drug companies), and sick enough to die at a reasonably early age so you don’t deplete the Social Security money, or live too long to crowd the planet…

Do you think the Cancer Society, and the Heart Association Society, and all the other gazillion ‘societies’ are really trying to find a cure for whatever they stand for? The CEOs are making too much money to sacrifice closing down their societies, because I read somewhere that the Cancer Society has in it’s bylaws that they will close down as soon as a cure is found. But wait, there is too much money to be made in looking for the cure, right? When in reality, there really already is a cure, but it’s kept secret. Because nobody is able to make money from something that was provided to humanity from God. Doctors won’t tell you to stop eating animal products and processed junk, because if you are CURED, they can’t make anymore money off of you. They are trained to prescribe a drug that ‘stops’ the issue temporarily, never cures it, so you’ll keep the pharma corporations in business, and you’ll be back to the doctor later when the symptom comes back. Meanwhile, your body is fighting off the toxins from the drugs you were prescribed, and are obediently taking. In most cases, a simple three day juice fast will cure whatever ails you.

So you do the research. Check out websites that endorse the raw food lifestyle. Look at the thousands of testimonies online of people who lost tons of weight, cured their diseases and sicknesses, and gained tremendous amounts of energy. One can live to be easily 120 years old or more on a pure, raw food diet. Just cut out the crap that the grocery stores and media want you to consume, and learn about a better way to eat and live.

Disclaimer: (I have to say this) If you are on medication, please do not stop without first consulting your doctor.

Self-sufficiency is power. Power to take control of our own lives and our health too. Growing our own food is a start. Stepping away from the corporate food chains and irradiated / genetically modified fruits and vegetables is the right step in the direction for health. Eating fresh, LIVING and raw food is an even better step towards our health. The more people that do that, the less sickness there is in this world. When we have a higher percentage of healthy people, we have a much more productive community, people who are truly tuned in and sensitive to one another. Loving and helping one another is the true path to peace on Earth! Thank goodness we still have that choice!

Below is an excellent video from Path to Freedom. Credits and their own bio is below the video.

Path to Freedom presents ‘A Homegrown Revolution’ A collaboration of selective media clips which feature their urban homestead and farm which focus on the need of radical action — growing food in the city.

This self produced, short music video was shown at Peter Seller’s Cultural Art’s class at UCLA followed by a short presentation by urban farmer, Jules Dervaes founder of Path to Freedom. The class focus was on the art of slow food and among other guests invited were Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and Eric Schlosser.

Like Victory Gardens of yesteryear, start your own homegrown revolution, grow your own food in your back or front yard — for more information visit the urban homesteaders at www.PathtoFreedom.com

Since the early 80’s the Dervaes family has slowly transformed their ordinary city lot into a self sufficient urban homestead.

(NOTE: This video’s creation, concept, layout, sound pickups and editing was done in a marathon session of just three days so please excuse any choppy editing! )

VIDEO FOOTAGE COURTESY OF
Path to Freedom
Treehugger TV
CBS2 / KCAL9
SPA8 / Chris Klonecke
Gina Angelique / Chris Hall
EARTH RISE Dance Performance

INTERVIEWS COURTESY
Path to Freedom
Christopher Klonecke
Gina Angelique / Chris Hall
CBS2 / KCAL9

MUSIC COURTESY
“Revolution Cry”
Lifehouse / Blyss

“World”
Five for Fighting

“Paths of Victory”
Bob Dylan

“Looking Out My Backdoor”
Creedence Clearwater Revival

“Smoothie Song”"
Nickel Creek

“Drive”
REM

“Green Grows the Rushes”
REM

“Footprints in the Snow”
Songs of the Hills

“Seneca Square Dance”
Songs of the Hills (less)
Added: November 08, 2007

I came across the information below from a fellow raw-foodist: Maureen Veto-Slater at http://rawkc.com. At last someone who agrees with my thoughts on corporate conspiracy against the general public by shoving junk food and fast food garbage down our throats so that we can keep the medical and pharmaceutical industries in business! Hallelujah!

She says on her website:

Q: What is the difference between prescription

medications and street drugs?

A: One pusher wears a suit.

Do you know a “Legal Junkie?”

Recipe For Disaster

Some folks think the real answer is a secret to vibrant health and the “fountain of youth” when it is simply what you put into your body.

And even more about what you DON’T put in!

Literally…You are what you EAT, POP, or DRINK.

So why don’t we know this? Dr. Mercola calls this…

“Most Astonishing Health Disaster of the 20th Century”

What does he mean? According to Dr. Mercola:

* At least 106,000 people die every year from adverse drug reactions.

* A mere 6% of all adverse drug reactions are properly identified.

* Most side effects are instead mistaken for new disease symptoms, leading to further drugging and unnecessary medical procedures, increasing the risk of death even further.

* Most of these deaths are from EXPECTED adverse reactions, because they are an extension of the drugs’ action.

* The mortality rate for people between the ages of 45-64, who took their prescription drugs CORRECTLY, rose 90% in just five years.

* Each year, 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed.

* Medical errors and deaths equate to six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each and every day. The only difference is the media coverage…..there’s no public displays of grief for those who die of faulty medicine.

* Modern medicine is no longer about health. It is a for-profit disease industry that can only survive if millions of people get sick, and stay that way…

* An industry that fails to tell you how processed foods, alcohol, excessive calories and insufficient exercise are recipes for disease.

* Why are we kept in the dark? Follow the money…

* As of 2001, Pfizer is the number one profitable company of all the Fortune 500 companies.

“The American medical system is the NUMBER ONE killer in the United States.”

* Adding to the problems created by this flawed system? Deceptive marketing that has changed our eating patterns, so now more than 90% of the money people spend on food is for highly processed unhealthy foods.

–Dr. Mercola