Raw Energy Hotline - September 2004

Rhio's
RAW ENERGY HOTLINE
SEPTEMBER, 2004
(212) 343-1152
www.rawfoodinfo.com

Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies.
Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have
eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.

Fred Allen
Comedian & Radio Show Host circa 1940s

1) Two documentaries worth seeing.
2) Two interesting and informative websites with corresponding newsletters
3) Frederic Patenaude's controversial interview with Nazariah of the Essene Church WITH commentaries from both Jinjee and me (Rhio.)

1) Two documentaries, Outfoxed and Control Room show how the news media today doesn't just report the news objectively as it is mandated to do, but how instead it molds, shapes, distorts and invents the news to suit it's own (or someone's) agenda. This is why we (the public) end up with some of the erroneous and false opinions that we hold. The news should be about facts and truth. These two documentaries shed some light on the realities of the present day news media. Because the mainstream media is failing so woefully in its mandate (to actually be "fair and balanced"), in the last year or two, there are a slew of documentaries being made to try to present a more balanced and accurate picture and to make us aware of the disinformation of our daily news. Interesting, isn't it? It seems that facts and truth have to find a way out, when blocked from one channel, they ooze out another.

2) Two valuable sources of health information:

Val Archer's free e-mail newsletter, Healing With Living Foods, gives guidance and inspiration on how to include raw and living foods in your lifestyle. Val writes in a uniquely enjoyable way, always positive, makes you feel good.

To subscribe, go to: http://eatsprouts.com/menu.html

To read archives, go to:
http://gogreen.org/cgi-gogreen/dada/mail.cgi?f=list&l=health

Health Freedom Resources, is another free newsletter and website with lots of great information for the health seeker. The website address is: www.healthfree.com and you can sign up for the newsletter at the lower right hand corner of the page. There are also archives that you can peruse.

3) Dear Readers,

Recently an interview with Nazariah appeared in an email newsletter sent out to the raw/live food community by Frederic Patenaude. This interview has stirred up a lot of controversy on the issues raised and also some fear about being 100% raw. I believe that it is constructive and positive for the raw community to be thinking about, investigating and discussing these issues. As a community, we are still pioneers in going back to and reclaiming our natural diet, and as pioneers, we also can make plenty of mistakes while in the process of working everything out.

I was receiving a lot of email from people wanting me to express my views on the various issues and I was preparing to do so, but in the meantime Jinjee's commentary on the interview arrived in my email which covered many of the points that I was going to make. (Jinjee's website: www.thegardendiet.com)

So, for the purpose of presenting alternative views, ideas, thoughts, and experiences, Jinjee's commentary together with the original interview, plus a few comments of my own are presented below.

Because the entire original interview is a long one and somewhat repetitive, and the commentaries make it even longer, I'll be sending this email in several parts over the next couple of weeks. Rhio

Nazariah Intervew with Frederic Patenaude, March 2004,
Plus Separate Commentaries from Jinjee and Rhio

Jinjee: This critique of Nazariah's interview with Fred Patenaude is in response to the many emails I have received from people saying they are now afraid to try to go 100% raw. My intent is not to prove Naz wrong but rather to show that it is possible to be entirely healthy long-term on a well-balanced 100% raw-vegan non-supplemented diet.

Here is my initial response, followed by the interview with my commentary. Please feel free to share this and distribute it freely.

Re. Naz's article, even though my personal experience has been opposite to his and I and everyone in my immediate family seem to thrive ridiculously on a non-supplemented 100% raw vegan diet, I think that Naz's points may have some validity. Here's the thing he wrote that really grabbed me:

Naz: "But you don't just go from a meat eating species to all of a sudden being a vegan species without a lot of traumatic problems. So I advise a more intermediate step. Let's first evolve into being vegetarians for a number of generations, then let's evolve into veganism and let evolution happen in that way".

Jingee: This is interesting because it shows that deep down inside he still believes in the "rightness" of veganism. He believes that this is where we will "evolve" to eventually. I believe that I and my family will always thrive on a 100% raw vegan diet and I don't anticipate any problems and I believe that we will always be 100% raw vegan. But perhaps it is "belief" that is the key here. If we believe that we will thrive, we will. If we are looking for a way out of the diet, if we don't really want to do it, then that is the information that will come to us. There is plenty of "evidence" to support both sides of the issue.

Science is still in its infancy, and therefore very inaccurate, especially in the fields of nutrition, biology and medicine which are largely supported by multi-billion dollar profit-motivated corporate interests. The truth on these matters is very difficult to get at and discern. My answer to this problem is to go with your own personal experience. Try it. If it works for you, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. You have to take it back to basic common sense. You have to trust your own experience more than you trust anything you see in print.

My friend Anahata believes that the raw vegan diet is only for those who need to vibrate on a higher frequency to do their work in the world. She believes that different types of work require you to vibrate on different frequencies, and that this requires different diets.

Quantum Physics illustrates a new scientific discovery that the smallest central part of a molecule is able to be directed by our will, and responds to our expectations. This gels with my spiritual outlook that we co-create reality with God. We have a much smaller but very powerful and important part in this creativity. And I wonder sometimes if maybe the collective consciousness of humankind on this planet is in a quantum way even changing the very molecular structure of foods and chemicals, affecting what kind of a diet is the healthiest!

March, 2004
By Frederic Patenaude

First Experiences With the Raw Vegan Diet
Deaths in the Raw-Vegan Movement

Frederic: What is your background with the raw-vegan diet?

Naz: I'm 46 now and I've been a vegetarian since I was 17. At that age, I not only became a vegetarian but also a raw-foodist. I included raw dairy into my diet because I had met an elderly Essene teacher who recommended that. Historically, that used to be the Essene diet. The Essenes, for the most part, were not vegans. They were vegetarians, and many of them were raw-foodists, but they ate fermented dairy products - yogurt and kefir. So that was my diet for 7 years. During that time, I did great - no problems at all.

Then, when I had moved to another location, I became very attracted to the vegan philosophy, because it is a beautiful philosophy. I then became a raw-vegan.

After 5 years on a raw-vegan diet, I lost the ability to walk. All of my extremities - my hands, my fingers and my feet - were in such pain that I couldn't move. I had central nervous system problems and I was B12 anemic. All of that happened after 5 years on a raw-vegan diet.

Jinjee's Note: Naz experienced B12 deficiency. He is the first case I have personally heard of that has become B12 deficient on the raw-vegan diet. Statistically far more meat-eaters suffer from B12 deficiency than vegetarians, vegans, and raw-fooders. A recent Tufts study - see footnotes for website address - shows 40% of Americans are B12 deficient. Less than 10% of Americans are vegetarian.

Rhio: Naz says he did great with a little fermented dairy. I believe this confirms Dr. Ann Wigmore's philosophy of adding fermented products to the diet. For those who want to stick with vegan -- it can be accomplished just as easily with nut and seed yogurts and kefirs, seed cheese, rejuvelac and sauerkraut. Of course Dr. Wigmore wasn't the originator of fermented products, which have been used by many civilizations since ancient times, but she brought them to the forefront and made them an integral part of her healing program. Unfortunately, many natural hygienists do not believe in using fermented products because they say that the food is rotting. I respond by saying that while the food could become spoiled by fermenting for too long (which leads to decomposition) while the food is still in the young fermenting stage (the period that it should be consumed) it is a viable, valuable source of enzymes and many nutrients, including Vit. B12.

Recently I became aware that Vit. B12 deficiency is also being caused by nitrous oxide emissions created by catalytic converters in cars. Apparently the levels of nitrous oxide now in the atmosphere can cause depletion of Vit. B12. There is an article on this by Dr. David Gregg on my website. Go to www.rawfoodinfo.com and look in the Articles Section under Health Information.

Naz: So I switched back to eating the raw fermented dairy products. At that point, being as nerve-damaged as I was, I also included eggs. I healed myself by reintroducing those products.

Jinjee's Note: Perhaps the ideal raw-vegan diet might prove to be one that includes fresh raw organic goats milk as indicated in The Essene Gospel of Peace http://www.thegardendiet.com/essene ...but Storm's response to this is that no other adult animal in nature drinks the Mother's milk of any animal so why would we need to? {Storm is Jinjee's husband.} I think that if one eats a balanced raw vegan diet including fresh organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, salt and oils that one will get all the nutrients needed unless there is some extraordinary circumstance preventing normal digestion and absorption of such nutrients. Where else can nutrients come from? Any heating destroys the molecular structure of the nutrients, making them harmful to our bodies. And it is unsafe to eat animal products raw. Extracting nutrients from foods and synthetically creating supplements with them seems to me to be un-natural. I fully believe I can get all the nourishment I need from natural non-animal sources.

Rhio: People come from all kinds of backgrounds; city, suburban and country living situations, differing contacts with chemicals, pesticides and radiation in their home and workplace, different levels of health, different "former" diets, various stages of body toxicity and different ages at which they make the changeover to raw. As such, I believe that the "one size fits all" concept doesn't work. Raw diets and lifestyles have to be tailored to the person and their situation. In many instances a body is so toxic and depleted that supplementation with food-based, low-heat processed supplements may be beneficial.

Naz: At that point, I was wondering whether this was an experience unique to myself, or whether other persons had had problems on the raw-vegan diet in the long-term. In the short term, you don't have those sorts of problems. They're nutritional deficiencies that take several years to manifest themselves.

Lack of Success in the Raw-Vegan Movement

So I did some research. I put a call out on the Internet at different raw food chat boards. Because I was one of the speakers at raw-food events when they were held, I got to hang out with the other noted raw-food speakers. I started realizing that problems like I'd had were rampant in the raw-vegan movement, but don't get talked about.

When the people who lecture and write the books start themselves having problems on the diet, they hide that fact because they are earning their livings being a raw-food lecturer/author. I hate to say that, but it's that way. I've seen it happen again and again, when I will personally know a famous raw-food speaker/teacher, and because I personally know them, I know that they are going through anxiety attacks, panic attacks, clinical depression, that they're having pain in their joints, they're losing their teeth - things like that. And yet, I'll see them speak at a raw-food convention and they never mention any of the problems they're actually experiencing. They just praise how perfect the raw food vegan diet is. And what happens is any time people are having problems on the raw-vegan diet, they get told that they're just experiencing detox and cleansing. But that's just a pat answer.

Jinjee's Note: I have met many teachers in the raw-vegan movement, they have spent considerable time at our retreats, they have spoken candidly with us about their experiences, and I have not personally heard of any such problems.

Rhio: I have met many teachers of the raw philosophy also but I do have to agree here with Naz that some of them have had problems. But if they had problems to the degree that Naz had then they would not be able to hide it, since Naz said that he was completely disabled.

I was talking to one person once when he showed me all his "new" capped teeth in his mouth. A raw diet is not supposed to result in rotted teeth. This particular person made the changeover to raw as a fruitarian for a few years and though I tried to warn him, he did not listen to me. I believe that a fruitarian diet can dissolve the over acid condition of a body too fast and the acidity being released in the mouth tissues can damage the teeth. This particular person may have had weak teeth from heredity and his earlier diet. I have also met and spoken to many people who have lost their teeth on an "exclusively" fruitarian diet, and also people whose teeth become sensitive on an all fruit diet. The sensitivity may be a prelude to more serious problems with the teeth.

There are some groups of monkeys that eat all fruit and have no problems, (although I suspect that they eat green leaves too) but we must remember that the modern fruit that most humans eat is picked green and so has not had a chance to ripen on the tree and develop all its nutrient values. In a more health conscious and utopian world community, each family or block would have its own fruit orchard and therefore pick those fruits at the peak of their nutritional value.

I have also met fruitarian teachers who appear to be dehydrated and their skin is wrinkled and leathery. This is not my idea of a healthful picture.