Winning Tactics for the Raw Food Diet — An Interview with David Klein

Mike: Welcome Dave, to Habit Guide… OK, first of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself and the work that you’re doing with regards to diet and healing and so on… and how you got into it all.

Dave: Well, it’s quite a story so I’ll just give you the edited highlights :). I’m editor and publisher of Living Nutrition Magazine which comes out twice a year. It’s America’s only raw food lifestyle magazine and we have 3,000 subscribers in 40 countries…

I’ve also been director of the Colitis & Crohn’s Health Recovery Center in northern California since 1993. And I’ve authored or co-authored several books, for example ‘Your Natural Diet: Alive Raw Foods’ and ‘Self Healing Colitis and Crohn’s’. There’s lots more to tell though, so if people are interested, they can go to the self healing empowerment website, my full biography is there.

As far as how I got into all this, well, when I was 17 my health began to gradually decline and I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. After that, I had eight tortuous years of colitis flare-ups and off-and-on drug therapy.

By age 26, I was a weak, sickly shadow of my former self. I was having gastric explosions every time I ate, up to 10 painful bowel movements a day with mucus and blood.

Then in 1984, I had the great fortune to find a doctor of Natural Hygiene, Dr. Laurence Galant in Staten Island, who told me about the concepts of self-healing and eating a natural plant-based diet.

After studying Natural Hygiene some more, I had an amazing experience one night and everything just “clicked”. I started a diet with plenty of fruit and it suited me very well. My energies continuously increased as I detoxified and began rebuilding my body. That was the start of my new healthful lifestyle and I’ve never looked back.

Mike: So, the Crohn’s Recovery Center has been carrying on for a while now?

Dave: Yes. I began counseling people professionally in 1992. I overcame the ulcerative colitis 23 years ago and ever since then I’ve wanted to get the information on how to heal this type of disease out to everyone. I felt like I was kept in the dark.

The answer was always there but it was pretty much hidden and suppressed by the medical community because they don’t believe in anything that’s not a technological or pharmaceutical cure or remedy. So after I healed up I took off some time, then got back into engineering. And then after working for several more years in that I got laid off in ‘91 and then I decided that I needed to create my own health career.

I went to a nutrition school out here, Bauman College, and got certified as a Nutrition Educator. My thesis report was on healing colitis and crohn’s disease naturally and I kept on expanding that report every year and started selling it and eventually ended up with an on-line book store… selling “Self Healing Colitis & Crohn’s”.

And then 2 years ago the book became a paperback and since then I’ve sold about 10,000 copies all told and this winter, my book became number 1 and then number 2 on Amazon.com under “colitis books.”

So, I’ve been counseling people for about 14 years professionally and I get about 99% of them, at least, healthy and it’s very gratifying work to pass this information on.

Mike: It’s an incredible statistic that… 99%. It’s makes you wonder… are there no medical people that know about this kind of thing that are thinking “Wow, you know, this is an amazing thing. Why aren’t we doing this to heal Crohn’s and colitis?”

Dave: They don’t want to know and they’re not even allowed to help people with only nutrition and natural methods. They would lose their license if they didn’t do the drugging approach. So they don’t want to know!

I’ve had over a thousand clients and most of them go to their doctors and say “I want to do this natural approach” and the doctors either roll their eyes or they say “Don’t do it”. A few of them give the go ahead but even if these clients get healthy and they see it, they don’t want anything to do with it. They just help the next person because their whole career is based on the medical approach which is nothing but, diagnosis, drugging and surgery.

Now, it’s been an absolute miracle that a gastroenterologist medical doctor in Los Angeles found my book ‘Self Healing Colitis and Crohn’s’ at a health book store in Los Angeles. Her name is Dr. Zarin Azar. She was already knowledgeable of and into Natural Hygiene, nutrition and fasting. And she really wants to help her patients while recognizing that nobody gets healthy doing the medical approach.

Believing in the the Natural Hygiene approach of my book, she contacted me, we met and have been great friends ever since. We’re now planning to work together, helping people heal the natural way. Zarin is an absolutely wonderful person. We hope to get a new Colitis & Crohn’s Health Recovery Center going soon in southern California so we can help a lot more people together.

Mike: And she’s a regular General Practitioner is she? A regular doctor?

Dave: She’s a gastroenterologist which means she specializes as a medical doctor in helping people with gastrointestinal diseases.

Mike: So what you’re saying is… she can’t use the ordinary medical channels to help people?

Dave: Well, working in a hospital system she tried but she realized she can help people better in private practice where she is freer to advise on nutrition.

Mike: OK… So, this is going to be a building where people can go and stay, and get better from crohn’s and colitis?

Dave: We don’t know if they’ll be able to stay there yet but she’s going to open an office. The problem with colitis and crohn’s is that most people are unable to travel because they’re going to the toilet left and right. We’ll be able to counsel many by phone and the ones that are able to travel can see Zarin for a checkup if they desire that. Hopefully some day we’ll have staff, with a nurse or two where we can help people recuperate in-house.

Mike: So the normal medical treatment for colitis and crohn’s, does that involve surgery and taking parts of the bowel out and things like that?

Dave: Well, that’s usually (but not always) the last resort after a person’s been sick with raging bowel inflammation for many years and the medicines are “not helping.” Of course, medicines cannot heal. In my case I was sick for 8 years and the last gastroenterologist, after seeing 7 of them, said that… you’ve been sick for 8 years, statistically, you’re probably going to get cancer in a few years. So it’s time to either cut out your colon or try 6-mercaptopurine, a drug which knocks out the immune system.

This was when I was age 26 and very sickly and at the brink. So those options sounded like total insanity to me and I wanted no part of either of them. I wanted a natural solution to this and I did not realize I had it in Natural Hygiene.

But yes, that is what the doctors do and it’s incredibly sad that some of the clients I’ve talked to have only been sick for a year or two and they’re bleeding and having 10 to 12 bouts of diarrhoea every single day and the doctors say “Lets cut out your colon” which is tragic because in 99% of the cases where they do these surgeries, it’s totally unnecessary. The colon can heal up spontaneously if one properly implements the proper diet and healing plan which is what, of course, I and other Hygienic doctors and educators help people with.

My healing was mind-blowing, I healed up so quickly. On the 4th day of all fruit and juices, I knew it was all happening perfectly and on the 4th day, I was jumping for joy! My colon which was sick for 8 years totally healed up within 4 weeks—bloody ulcers and all.

Mike: “Outrageous’ is the only word I can really come up with… the fact that the medics will go to the lengths of cutting out people’s bowels when something is so simple as a cure.

Dave: Right. I was totally outraged to the point where my head was ready to explode at the whole medical system for keeping me in the dark and drugging me almost into oblivion. I realized that I had to take care of myself and rebuild my health before I could start doing something believable in the world with regard to natural healing. That’s because people don’t understand it and they wouldn’t listen to me until I become healthy myself and was healed and healthy looking for a few years.

But yes, it’s incredibly sad. The whole basis of medicine in many regards is incredibly sinister and evil and their egotistic approach to this keeps people suffering when they really need sensible help. But it’s promising that a couple of years ago there was a study and it found that about 60% of Americans regularly seek alternative health modalities to help them with their issues. And some medical schools like Harvard offer nontraditional healing classes which are popular. The medical cartel is crumbling as more and more people get worse and worse from its ill-logical ways.

Mike: Excellent. So what specifically did you do to heal? Did you just change onto a raw diet straight away or just fruit or what was it?

Dave: Well, it takes a whole mind, body, even spiritual revelation to get going on this and see really good results. To me it all made sense one night. I realized that biologically we are fruit eaters. We’re not designed to eat cooked food, we’re not designed to eat all the modern crap that society offers us. And I realized that I had to get totally back to nature and be apart from all the dietary and health beliefs that society is into.

So I got the message from the Natural Hygiene teachings of Dr. Shelton and Dr. T. C. Fry and I realized that I had to do something radical— I had to think “outside the box”—and it all made sense. I understood how to do it one night after reading all this Natural Hygiene literature and really contemplating my fate.

And then it all made sense and I essentially knew exactly how to do it one night and I applied it the next day. I started doing juices and smoothies and on the fourth day I started eating solid fruit, and a little bit later some steamed and raw veggies and, amazingly, I started having formed bowel movements and the chronic pain and bleeding was gone. My vision improved dramatically and depression lifted. I started coming back to life and feeling in love with life again.

I felt like I was let out of jail! It was like dying in hell for 8 years. Finding the solution was as simple as eating fruit and letting go of taking drugs or relying on doctors ever again was liberating and mind-boggling. I got the clear message that my body could totally heal itself and it absolutely did.

Mike: Yeah, my story was similar. I was ill for 13 years with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The transition wasn’t as quick as yours but certainly, once I started with a raw diet I actually felt my brain coming back to life… I could feel ‘pinging’ going on in my brain as if things were waking up.

Dave: I had a similar experience to you I think, because I had chronic fatigue from malnutrition, going to the toilet all the time, being on drugs for 8 years. I healed up quickly but it took me actually 5 or 6 years to totally rebuild my body and to totally overcome the last vestige of the chronic fatigue. So it was a long process of rebuilding but that really seems like nothing now because I became healthier and happier. So I totally understand that it takes time with the chronic fatigue.

Mike: As a sustainable kind of diet, what’s a typical days food on a diet like this? Are you in a regular routine with your diet where you’ll have a certain thing for breakfast, a certain thing for lunch, certain thing for your evening meal? How do your instincts take over and how does that fit into a daily plan for people to do?

Dave: Well, instincts and senses are the key words. I don’t believe in doing anything regimented with meal times and foods, except keep it simple and follow food combining guidelines. I believe in following the senses and empowering people to do that because I don’t know what’s right for everybody. Their bodies tell them what it needs. I don’t give a standard diet and say that this is what you’ve got to stick with for weeks and months on end. There’s flexibility in it…freedom to “follow thy senses.”

The key to raw food diet success is to listen to what our senses call for, which means we have to enjoy our food thoroughly. It has to be eaten in a way so that it’s digestible and we have to eat so we don’t overload our organs of digestion and elimination. And every aspect of eating has to be totally harmonious with our biology. So, I encourage people to read the basics that we teach in Natural Hygiene.

I teach in my books that biologically, we are designed to eat mostly fruit and our digestion functions best on fruit. It has all the nutrients, it’s the easiest to digest, it’s the most pleasurable and is the best source of caloric fuel.

We also need vegetables but when we have say a gastrointestinal problem, like I had, we certainly don’t want to start eating raw vegetables, except in the juiced form. We need a transition and certainly have steamed veggies, sweet potatoes and squash, but to limit that to once a day (dinner). Avoiding mucus -forming foods like dairy and grains is important. In specific cases, people need a simple, high-water content healing diet… it maybe juices or soft fruits for a while.

As far as a daily diet, we should always eat when we experience true hunger. We should try to space out our meals so that we’re not constantly eating and flooding our blood stream with nutrients. We should get enough fruit sugar during the day in order to be sustained. Sugar is our cells’ only fuel, so if we don’t get enough fruit sugar during the day we’re going to be looking for caloric satisfaction from other foods and the other choices are really only fatty foods, starch and sweet junk foods. So, if we overeat on fatty foods, specially with people with a history of digestive problems, that just keep people toxic, retarding their healing.

If we get adequate satiation from the fruits during the day then we’ll be ok with just having a small meal of something fatty with a salad for dinner. Generally, that’s the best approach to long-term health. If people are going to eat the cooked food, the steamed veggies, potatoes and squash, I suggest they eat it with an equal or bigger portion of raw food (a salad) for dinner.

Mike: Ok… if we could talk a for bit about protein in raw diets? You hear a lot of argument in raw food vegan circles that we are frugivores and so on. And a lot of reference to Bonobos – our closest primate relatives, and that we should use that as a model for ourselves. But then Bonobos eat 5% of animal foods… around about, based on some studies. It seems to me that a lot of raw food philosophy takes parts that they want to use and discards other parts…

Bonobos for example, as well as the 5% animal foods, eat a lot of vegetation which doesn’t seem to appear in a lot of raw vegan diets. So do you think if we are going to use a primate model and comparative physiology that we should use the whole of the model and not just bits of it?

Dave: Well, there’s a lot of ways to look at the question “What is man’s proper diet?” I always come back to “follow your senses.” Eating something that crawling on the ground, with big eyes and legs and a shell, or something that’s soft and squishy which is crawling around, or something that we have to strangle then try to dig our teeth into, or bash or slice and is dripping blood is not appealing to my senses. I think that kind of behavior is either a perversion or a last-resort when fruits are not available.

We know conclusively that there are no nutrients found in any animal source food that we cannot get from fruits and vegetables. The best testimonial for that is vegans who’ve been doing this for 10, 20, 30 40, 50 years. And there are many who are doing it in excellent health… not a lot, but we see them, more and more. Many are in the loose-knit raw food community, and most of the healthy raw vegans write for my Living Nutrition Magazine. I, myself, overcame serious severe malnutrition and bone decalcification doing a raw, fruit-based vegan diet for the last 23 years.

So, I don’t think we have to look at the primates and say they’re including some meat or whatever because it’s vital. You know, when an animal is stressed, it does things which are not normal. If the season is not producing enough fruits, if there’s a drought or there’s not enough supply because the other hungry animals got there first, primates, including humans, will resort to eating anything to survive. We can eat omnivorously. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to digest that food well or that’s it’s going to be healthy for us but it can certainly be sustaining. Obviously, most humans eat a lot of cooked foods and a lot of meat and most of it doesn’t digest and just decomposes in their gut every single day of their life and some of these people live to be 100 years old….suffering common maladies galore with severe physical and mental degeneration.

So, it comes down to this: if we purify our body, our body will tell us what is most appealing, what our true nutritional needs are. If we modern humans have always lived in an area where we can get good quality fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, I don’t know why a person would turn to eating raw meat or bugs or anything like that when he/she can get avocados and nuts and seeds which are totally satisfying.

Mike: OK, specifically looking at protein, have you looked into the nitty-gritty of how much protein is in your diet and if it’s enough and comparing that to the scientific data and how much protein science tells us we need. For example, I was at looking at the Harvard Medical School site the other day and they were reckoning that for most people, 0.8g of protein per Kg body weight is sufficient to cover 98% of the population. But for vegans, the figure is more likely to be 1g of protein per Kg body weight per day. Have you related what you do to figures like that or are you just going on the “lets just stick with instinct” theory?

Dave: I stick with instincts because I don’t think that any modern nutritional science has anything to offer us, for many reasons. Obviously all their studies are based on unhealthy populations who are eating tons of cooked foods. We know that when we cook proteins we’re destroying most of it, so maybe that’s why their figures are higher than we think they should be. Also, the meat and dairy industries have for 100 years coerced the masses, including the medical associations, into believing we need to eat their products at every meal to get our protein, lest we get sick and perish. We know that’s rubbish.

Their figures are pretty much skewed and you can throw most of them out the window and look at the true raw nutritional science behind everything. Dr. Douglas Graham and his wife Rozalind Graham in England, who I’m sure you know, are the most academically-oriented and accurate people when it comes to looking at the science and getting to the heart of the matter and finding out what the truth is and teaching accurate science.

I’m trained as an engineer and a health scientist, yet I know there’s a place for science and also a place for living instinctively and not getting bogged down with the numbers. People can challenge me left and right. I encourage everybody to think for him/herself. But you can’t really prove anything for yourself unless you’ve first met some really healthy vegan raw fooders, detoxed and lived on a good vegan diet for a few years. Shooting us vegans down without any personal experience is not valid.

Another aspect we have to recognize is that the body recycles about 80% of it’s protein. That means we don’t have to stuff ourselves with protein everyday. Also, mother’s milk at the height of lactation for a growing infant is only about 5% protein by weight. The ideas that protein is the main thing that makes us grow and prevents us from being too thin and not having muscle and energy is absolutely false.

So, the protein thing is way overdone. We know that most major illnesses are caused by excess protein and really what most people are getting is too much cooked fat and protein which is incredibly toxic after the heat has altered it. So, we don’t need to really think about protein. I never heard anybody or any source say we actually crave protein. When we’re craving some heavy food and people are used to eating meat, they say they’re craving protein, while they’re probably just craving fat.

Now if we want high quality protein, if that’s something we really want to do, in quantities which feel more satisfying than what they are hearing about, I suggest they get some really high quality raw nuts and seeds. E.g., almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, squash seeds, walnuts. Soak them for an hour or more, rinse them well then blend them up in a blender with water or maybe even some tomato or orange juice and make a dressing with them. They can strain it to get all the gritty particles out (which we can’t digest) and they can make a high-protein, satisfying milk out of that. But, really, what they taste and get is fat satiation. That can be a most healthful thing, as long as we don’t overeat or combine foods poorly.

We almost never see people with a condition where people are low in protein in this society. Protein is not the main problem, in virtually every case where people are underweight or suffering with other health issues. It’s really overall malnutrition.

Mike: I was reading a book recently and basically the theory was this: we were tropical animals to start with, something happened, we left the canopies of the jungle, went onto the savannah and scavenged dead animals, things like that.

We got a lot of protein from vegetation [originally] and, as you said, given certain circumstances where our ancestors’ regular food supply wasn’t there, they ate just about anything to survive.

The theory is that we started eating a lot more animal protein and fats and, because of that, lots of things happened: we developed a bigger brain, we needed to cooperate and communicate more, especially as we became hunter-gatherers.

What do you think about these ideas, are they something that fit into your philosophy?

Dave: This is obviously a huge subject and obviously no one will ever be able to know the mental capabilities of our ancestors 10,000 -100,000 years ago. We all come up with our own visions and can gain a lot of bio-spiritual insight after we’ve done a raw vegan diet a while, purified and done some fasting, and our minds have become very clear. We can each reach our own conclusions. People can reject my take on things and that’s perfectly good. We each need to delve within for insight. Here’s my take:

Obviously throughout history there’s been many glacial epochs, a lot of climate change due to volcanoes and natural planetary cycles. Human’s food supply obviously has diminished and waned over the epochs and man migrated to the northern parts, Europe and elsewhere, and gotten out of his natural element. We don’t have woolly coats, so when we migrate out of our natural climate we need to have clothing, we need to eat heavier fatty foods, to feel sustained.

We have a digestive system that can eat just about manage any foods but that’s not going to guarantee that we’re going to thrive and have good longevity by eating more fleshy foods. But it helps us cope in cold climates.

History has been a long and mysterious epic. We don’t know everything that happened. As far as theories that by eating more meat and getting more protein, that increased the size of our brain, I’ve never looked hard at the science of that. I like the idea that our brains were fine as they were, that our mental capabilities and senses when we were raw fooders living in tropical forests and jungles were incredibly keen and vibrant, and we did not need to “evolve” further. Did eating more protein make us evolve or de-evolve?

If scientists are correlating eating more protein with brain size, I don’t myself really see how that’s improved man’s function and capabilities as far as living rationally and healthfully on this planet. If that did coincide with man’s brain development, I don’t necessarily think that that’s a good thing or an evolutionary phenomenon. I don’t think we should look at primitive man’s mental capabilities in a negative way.

There’s many many different aspects to look at in that regard. Obviously in the last 100 years, with the technological revolution, man has been destroying the planet and risking his own survival with all this incredible brain power he supposedly now gloats about. Is having a bigger brain and complex communication a good thing? Are we living with less or more stress and is our longevity really that great? I don’t think so, but that’s my opinion.

I think that living instinctively, living simply, not being a technologically-oriented being, is a much better way of being for humanity and I’m not really impressed with man’s increased brain size just because perhaps he ate more protein. Just go out in Nature for a day and think about it the next day when you get back to your modern lifestyle. To me, “being” in Nature beats thinking in this modern human world with all of the complex mental exercises and mind chatter.

Mike: The point is really, have changes taken place in the millions of years since we left the tropical forests that we can’t go back on any more? That’s the big question. Have we adapted to a diet that’s higher in protein and higher in essential fatty acids?

Dave: Certainly not. Our body’s capable of digesting just about anything but if you take a look at children who are raised on a raw food diet today, and their parents were raised for generations, many generations on cooked food, and these modern raw food children are fed properly — and I’ve seen a few of them — they were the healthiest, most beautiful, most beautifully poised and intelligent people you’ll ever see.

I myself lived on a diet of junk, eating meat at least twice a day since about age 3 or 4, eating every bit of junk food rubbish you can imagine, living on all kinds of chemicalized or preserved meats and so forth up to age 26. Then, after years of degenerative disease, I suddenly adopted the raw food diet, on about 90% fruit and it didn’t set me back. In fact I detoxified and built superior health and I’m about to turn 49 next week and I’m well rested and everything is going well for me. I feel like I’m a teenager and am strong on a supposedly “low-protein diet.” And most of my raw vegan friends eat “low” protein diets of roughly 10 to 15% protein per dietary calories. I don’t see how humanity has adapted to eating all that meat and rubbish, all that heavy fatty food, since most of them are sick most of the time. Sixty percent of our society are sick today and degenerative disease is the norm in Western society. Cooked fatty, high-protein and cooked, refined grains are the main culprits.

Mike: What I feel is — in terms of optimal nutrition — ok, I agree with you entirely, a diet in cooked grains, high in cooked modern meats is definitely a bad thing. But I do like to look at the diet of bonobos, chimpanzees and even the diets of traditional cultures — and they all include small amounts of animal foods in there.

And I’m just wondering whether it’s not a necessity. I’m not saying cooked animal foods — the history of cooking is quite short. But there’s even evidence that we even went through an aquatic phase. I don’t if you’ve heard of that one? — which is the reason we lost a lot of our body hair and so on. And maybe we relied on small amounts of fish. And of course it would all have been raw back in those days.

Dave: I don’t see any evidence to support that theory.

Mike: I’ve seen documentaries on the Maori for example who just took things out of the sea and ate them raw, there and then. But these weren’t modern, cooked meats, these were things just taken directly out of nature, like eggs, like fish and so on. Do you think the optimal diet might include small amounts of raw animal foods?

Dave: I wouldn’t call that optimal, because their toxic loads impose some degree of burden on the body. Those animal food items provide some good nutrients in the raw state but, again, nothing that cannot be obtained from fruits, nuts seeds and plants. Avocados have all the fatty acids and essential proteins we need without the toxicity of animal foods.

Here’s the way I look at things: I was just in Belize in Central America last week for a vacation. It’s an absolutely beautiful country where monkeys abound in the western hilly jungle forests. Now consider this: all through my stay there I didn’t see one avocado. I found out the avocados were out of season.

So, imagine being a monkey or an early primate in the tropical forest. Our sensory apparatus naturally lead us to enjoy sweet foods (such as sugar apples and berries), sometimes fatty and creamy foods (such as avocados and durians which can both have some sweetness) and sometimes savoury and salty foods (such as leaves and tomatoes).

So, if they were not able to find sweet ripe fruits or ripe avocados, as archeology shows most or maybe all of them probably satiated their hunger by eating bugs and bloody animals which are salty and fatty tasting, providing amino acids. Perhaps that behavior became more and more common in some species leading to more stimulation/aggressive behavior because of the toxic load. Does that behavior mean that is optimal just because primates evolved bigger brains?

I look at the big picture: bigger brains did not lead to better health, nor to more harmonious ecological living nor to more culturally civil dynamics. I think that animal protein in the diet did not improve the natural order of things one bit. The animal foods did not give them specific nutrients which were not found in fruits.

Ripe fruits impose no toxic load, supporting serenity without without aggressive killing…without mindless, heartless destruction of living creatures. As a vegan and observer of vegan humans, I don’t see how killing and/or eating dead animals improves us in the optimal direction.

As University of California at Berkeley Professor Dr. Katherine Milton has long reported, the Spider Monkeys in Central America eat mostly fruit. They’re energetic and they go racing through the trees for ripe fruit, and they’re mentally keen. The Howler monkeys in that region subsist on mostly leaves and perhaps some animal foods and they are slow, dull and lethargic. I have also read that Bonobos, our closest primate cousins, eat exclusively fruit if that is what is available.

Obviously these animals are eating a very simple diets, unlike modern humans. I.e., they’re not eating, 20, 30 or 50 different kinds of foods per day and polluting their bodies, overloading their organs of detoxification and elimination and corrupting their senses.

So their bodies are much purer, fitter, more robust and capable of handling the animal foods, which are far more toxic than fruits and plants, than we humans are. In other words, they can handle the small amounts of raw animal foods relatively well.

My contention is that if there are no avocados or other fatty foods available to primates and if they are acculturated to eating some vegan foods (“monkey see, monkey do”), or if ripe fruit is scarce, then they’re just going to go for whatever food they can find to sustain themselves. It’s survival of the fittest. You’ve got to find something to eat if your food supply is short.

Mike: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. As we expanded out of the tropics, our natural foods became less and less available and what was there was more and more seasonal. So more and more we had to try to adapt to unnatural foods.

Even plants that were toxic when eaten raw, so they had to be cooked, they had to be processed. So I think we shot ourselves in the foot badly by leaving the tropics basically!…

Dave: We probably had to leave the tropics, as it left us. Picture the Sahara Desert. Picture “the Land of Milk and Honey” and today’s mostly barren Mideast region. Maybe there was some volcanic catastrophe and the human population was reduced to living in caves, eating grubs and killing mammoths to make clothing, eat and survive.

I don’t know if there was ever a really good population of nut trees in the world. I don’t know if there were a lot of avocado trees around in times when it was a really warm epoch. If we “needed” to develop bigger brains to kill animals and create a culture as hunters, I don’t see how bigger brains helps with that.

Heck, ants know how to kill and gather and build great homes, and their brains are the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

Mike: I’ve read a lot of worrying reports of the long term… In the short term, you healed, I healed, you see lots and lots and lots of testimonials about people doing amazingly well short-term on raw food vegan diets.

Long-term, I’ve read a lot of concerning reports — for example, those by Nazariah of the Essenes–I don’t know if you’re familiar with him…

Dave: Yes, I know him, the head of the Essene Church of Christ in Oregon.

Mike: …he was particularly outspoken in a few interviews and he reverted to the traditional Essene diet after trying raw foods and talks about — particularly in one interview — about people actually dying of starvation, well… the doctor’s pronouncing that they’d died of starvation and so on.

What have you learned from doing raw foods that people should be aware of, to avoid these pitfalls? And what are the pitfalls?

Dave: We have to look at a lot of information and see a lot of raw fooders and not allow our impressions to be skewed by a few people who have had problems. Many have problems in the beginning, which is because they were sick and are not getting proper counseling.

Getting healthy, with proper counseling or the proper approach, does not guarantee smooth sailing in sudden success. The adage, “we have to get sicker before we get better,” may apply in some cases for a little while till the body gets the rubbish out during the initial detox phase.

The issue is, are you totally supporting health during your transition or are you doing some things which are still keeping you toxic and undernourished?

There are some educators and doctors in this field whose help is sought by these these struggling people. Not all of them know how to properly help their clients. We tend to only find out about the people who have had problems. Many wrongly assume they tried the best approach because they were guided by a raw food doctor or diet guru.

Of the cases I have learnt about about, because they became my clients, I found that in actuality they were given improper advice–-unatural, unhygienic advice that cannot possibly support healing and robust health in the short or long term. Many were loading up on supplements and greens and little fruit.

The supplements stimulate while enervating and the lack of caloric fuel from fruit sugar keeps them in low energy and, often, bingeing of fat (nuts, seeds, avocado) for calories, and that spells disaster.

However, there is an overwhelming majority of people who are succeeding with the raw food diet. Most of those have common threads: they were either never seriously ill, and/or they studied and understand the principles of Natural Hygiene, and/or they have a good Natural Hygiene coach, and/or they think for themselves, let go of dietary and healing fallacies and follow their instincts.

We have seen many at the raw food festivals (Rawstocks) which Dr. Doug Graham and I have put on, and at his events and many other gatherings worldwide. We are all learning from year to year as we go along. It takes time to find the insight to do the raw food diet the natural way, i.e., letting go of cooked food eating habits which extends in many cases to bingeing on raw fatty foods and on “raw” junk foods, which are an increasing new phenomena in our field.

There’s now many of people getting into the raw food diet. Thanks to the explosion of the internet ten years ago, the raw food field has expanded more than 1000% in size. Maybe over 70% of the people have only gotten into the raw food diet in the last 3 years.

So, as far as saying there’s been a lot of long-term raw fooders that have had a problem, that’s really a very small number and percentage. I mean, less than 5% of all the vegetarians in this country and maybe the world are into raw foods, and only like 1% of them have been doing this long-term. I’m in my 23rd year and have seen and learnt a lot, and that is a lifelong process.

Again, the few with problems become visible to the doctors and educators in this field, and those problems become blown way out of proportion.

So the bottom line is, if we follow our instincts and follow proper diet and lifestyle guidelines, following a diet which pretty much follows Dr. Doug Graham’s 80-10-10 diet — 80% simple carbs, 10% protein, 10% fat, which is what I’ve been doing for 23 years and most of the healthiest people I know, they just pretty much follow that, which means you have one small portion of fat per day, if any fat at all — that’s the most time-proven way to create really good health. That is our natural biological diet… it always has been and it’s still the best approach to health and longevity.

So, we need to bear in mind that s lot of people are coming into this arena from malnutrition and severe stress, and it takes time to transition into this. You can’t live a fast-paced life and get back to nature at the same time.

Mike: I agree with you that, for example if, for everybody that had a health problem, it was blamed on the mainstream diet, the mainstream diet would be abandoned tomorrow.

People get cancer, diabetes, heart disease but people aren’t up in arms saying ‘What are we doing about this? Why are people eating this mainstream diet?’ but if something happens when people are doing a raw diet, everybody’s up in arms about it but the facts are that people who do try it long term are having problems, so what are the pitfalls?

For example, if somebody wanted to try a raw food diet tomorrow, and wanted to do it well, what do they need to learn from the people who have failed in the long-term?

Dave: That’s a great question Mike and I addressed that specifically with about 12 or maybe 15 specific major items entitled exactly that: ‘The Pitfalls of a Raw Food Diet’ which is coming out in my next Living Nutrition magazine. I’ll try to recall them off the top of my head.

I always start with education. We have to be properly educated in doing this diet. We must learn the basics of physiology and the overall principles of health as taught by Natural Hygiene.

We have to understand that we are not natural wheat grass juicers, we can’t handle a diet of mostly vegetables and sprouts (we don’t get enough calories), we don’t digest fat t well enough to eat is in high quantities, i.e., we can’t overload our system with nuts and seeds and avocados every day of our lives, as some people do once or twice, every day they eat more than a pound of fat, and we cannot thrive on complex raw food recipes.

We have to get properly educated from a good coach if we have some kind of a health issue going on, so that we do the proper diet for each phase of our health.

We also have to slow down the pace of our life and start living more naturally. A lot of people are trying to heal up an illness and do this diet and work a 9-5 job. That is too much stress for the body and it won’t have enough energy left over to accomplish the healing.

A lot of people just have the wrong beliefs. The last couple of years ‘raw food junk food’ has infiltrated the whole arena and people are thinking that these are ’super foods’, yet there’s nothing super about them–they are just concentrated or slightly or even highly toxic junk “raw”, but really concoctions of dead foods which are mostly indigestible.

Also, we need to explore eating a variety of fruits, especially the tropical ones and not fear fruit. Ripe fruits are 85% to 95% water and not all sugar as some have been misled to believe. Fruitaphobia is a sad trend in raw food circles which must be quashed. Fruit is our most healthful food and it “works” for everyone who lives and eats Hygienically, which means in accord with our natural biological mandates. And this can be a practical way to live for anyone and it has proven to be just that, over and over.

People also have to understand that we need to practice some degree of food combining. People are constantly eating combinations of food which their digestive physiology can’t digest. They’re continuing to make themselves toxic every day of their life, just like they were doing with the cooked food.

They were used to the digestive, body odor other little health problems as a cooked fooder and have accepted all of that as a new raw fooder not seeking to take it to the next level in bodily purity and truly vibrant health. I understand it takes years for us to transition to that high level, but many are not even interested or aware of the possibilities which lay ahead.

Also, we need to exercise to earn our calories. The best raw food diet will not give the best results if we live eating more than being active and fit.

Those are the main factor that stand out. It really starts off with education about the physiology of things and learning to slow down their life and get in touch with one’s senses.

Mike: I think the “calorie” one is a big one. I think that’s responsible for a lot of the failures — it’s just not eating enough. Not eating enough fruit basically, not eating enough calories.

Dave: It’s incredibly sad that there are some people in the raw food movement in the United States who are totally anti-fruit. The reasons for that have been written about by Dr Doug Graham and myself written about in my Living Nutrition magazine. The fruit nay-sayers look under their microscopes at unhealthy people’s blood and see gross toxicity. And while these people begin eating fruit, or if they have been unhealthy on a diet high in fruit, they see that fruit makes the organisms in their bloodstream flare up.

This is true, but only in the short-term and/or only if the people are not eating a proper low-fat hygienic diet and getting adequate rest and sleep. The Natural Hygiene doctors have helped people with these very conditions become well on fruit-based diets–it takes time and proper education and care, then people can eat fruit in good health.

If people want quick fixes and want to be healthy and happy for the long-term on a low-fruit diet (I’m not talking about average health but, rather, vibrantly dynamic health), then they won’t get there. Many fool themselves by living on stimulating fatty foods, supplements and raw junk foods and think they are doing great. That’s not living our normal, natural health potential….it’s a different experience which is not what I want or teach.

Mike: The whole fruit thing, while you’re trying to heal is a big one, because I remember when I first tried to do raw, I just didn’t want fruit. I think you hit the nail on the head there: when you’re toxic — and I’ve come across this before — the body just doesn’t crave fruit.

So is the answer that we go on the sprouts and we go on the greens and then when we’re healed we go back on the fruit?

Dave: Well, when I’m working with a client, some of them the fruit doesn’t appeal to them and some of them have candida and other issues where the fruit is just too energizing and it just makes candida symptoms flare up.

So I think ‘ok, let’s just try to do one piece of fruit for breakfast and have it with greens. Some people don’t do well with fruit in the beginning unless they always have it with greens: lettuce, celery and/or cucumber — and that has worked for every single client — and even the ones who are recommended not to have any fruit because they had chronic fatigue or candida. Some fruit with lettuce works for everyone I have encountered. That always gets them to the next stage where they’re able to start eating more and more fruit.

Mike: So you recommend, if people are in a toxic state, like with chronic fatigue, they eat their fruit with greens, leaves, cucumber, that sort of thing to start off with?

Dave: Right. Just introduce it gradually and keep on doing a lot of purified water to clean out and then, as the body fluids and the tissues become cleaner and cleaner and if we get enough rest which is the biggest factor in healing, we will have built up enough energy for the body to accomplish the detox and healing.

Then the senses will become more pristine and they will start appreciating the natural flavors of fruits much better and things will become normalized and the fruit love affair will kick in and live will be much nicer.

That takes time. If people want immediate results, they may get it doing the no-fruit approach, but you can’t sustain yourself on that. You can end up eating way too much fat and that doesn’t really result in health.

Mike: OK Dave, just a couple more questions… how do you feel about the use of raw milk, raw eggs and things like that occasionally?

Dave: Those are going to be incredibly mucus forming and clogging in my system. I’ve only met one other person who was incredibly strong and thriving and enjoying his raw goat milk, a body builder. God bless him–he’s never been sick and that works really well for him…

If people want to try these foods I say, close your eyes, sniff it, taste it, check it and see what your senses tell you. Then observe your body for the next day. Do you have a lot of mucus, is your nose running, are you constipated, does your breath smell in the morning, are your bowels putrid, are you craving more and more fat, is your mind becoming dulled, are your emotions rougher or still serene?

Because animal foods are high in protein, if we don’t digest all the protein, it putrefies in our warm gut and makes us toxic and we can smell it and we can see its effects. And, because most people grew up eating meat 2 times a day, they continue that pattern of overeating on fatty food. This keeps them from being vibrantly healthy if they continue this for years and years. The more we overeat on fat, the faster we age.

If we eat so that everything digests, we end up with a pure body, a clear mind, boundless energy and no digestive difficulties and to me that’s the loveliest way to be. Fruit supplies our best fuel and keeps us clean and youthful.

Mike: Have you had any health difficulties in the last 23 years you’ve been doing this?

Dave: I’ve had a couple of issues, one which some asthma and bronchitis caused by my breathing in some toxic flea powder (diatomaceous earth) which I unfortunately put down to try to combat fleas which my cat brought in the last few years. Avoid it at all costs! I am going to work to get it banned from household use. By doing a series of fasts, I got rid of that.

The only other issues I’ve had were related to eating too much nuts, seeds and avocados. It was giving me some acid reflux and making my gut achy. Many, like myself, find nuts to be very seductive. We need to exert discipline and maintain a low-fat diet which looks like no more than 2 ounces of nuts or 1/2 avocado per day with a dinner salad. On a low-fat fruit-based diet I feel awesome and have boundless mental and physical energy.

Mike: OK… you feel like a teenager, yeah?

Dave: Yes, and if we stay fit, if we’re rested, if we’re happy with our situation in life, if we’ve gotten most of the stress out of our life, if we do enjoyable things and we’re surrounded by people whose company we enjoy, then we should feel absolutely wonderful… way beyond what we ever felt on cooked food.

Mike: And how old are you now, did you say?

Dave: I’ll be 49 next week.

Mike: I don’t think there’s many 49 year-olds that feel as good as when they were in their teens these days!

Dave: Well, I have a few friends who do, but not many and we want to help everybody get this information. That’s where our heart is–we really want people to follow their senses and prove for their self that the raw food lifestyle works.

Mike: OK. Two of the big issues that I’m aware of is Vitamin D, which has an obvious solution–get more sunlight and the B12 issue. Do you take a B12 tablet yourself?

Dave: Yes, we must regularly get some sun on some parts of our skin. I never had to take a B12 supplement until last fall. After all of the fasting I did to clear my lungs, I was very thin and a bit depleted. Things weren’t feeling quite right so I went and had the MMA test (methylmalonic acid), which is the only proper way to test for B12. My B12 was very low so I corrected that with methylcobalamin B12 supplement for a month and all’s well and I have gained back most of the weight and am full of energy again.

We generally only get into low B12 problems if we’ve had very poor nutrition, if our gut is inflamed impairing absorption and/or we’ve taken antibiotics. The next issue of ‘Living Nutrition’, volume 19 which is coming out in about a month, will have the most most scientifically based, well-researched article I’ve ever seen written on the B12 issue by Dr. Paul Fanny. He’s the President of The University of Natural Health.

I worked with Paul for 4 months polishing up that article and it’s going to be a real eye opener and a stunner. The information about how the body absorbs B12 is going to be a revelation and a comfort to vegans who have been scared into thinking we need some animal foods.

Mike: I’ve just done a little bit of research into B12 because somebody ask me a question about it. And what I learned was that vegans, generally, over time, become depleted of B12. I don’t know if this applies to raw vegans but certainly
general vegans and even vegetarians, over time can become depleted of B12 and this can cause a lot of problems.

Nowadays as well, we know about the B12 link with homocysteine. High homocysteine levels can cause a lot of damage if you’re not getting enough B12. Why not just take a B12 tablet?

Dave: Supplements are useful if we’re in the danger zone, but unnecessary after a problem is corrected if we live a healthful lifestyle, with well-grown fresh fruits and vegetables in the diet. We want to live as closely to nature as possible and avoid sanitizing our fruits and vegetables to the point that all of the bacteria is lost.

Pills have sugar added to them and colorings–and they come from factories. Under healthy conditions, B12 is made by bacteria in the gut and absorbed by the colon. Also under normal conditions, B12 which occurs on our food will be absorbed in the ileum with the aid of intrinsic factor, which is secreted by the stomach.

If we live healthfully, the body will absorb adequate B12, and we don’t need a lot of it to maintain peak health. When we are sick and stressed, everything can become depleted, not just B12. Eating a cooked food-based diet creates a toxic environment in the gut, leading to inflammation and poor absorption. Raw vegans typically only run into B12 absorption problems when they overeat fats and irritants such as onions, cayenne, salt and other spicy additives.

Mike: Dr. Fanny’s article in the latest issue of ‘Living Nutrition’–that has scientific proof does it, that raw vegans that are living healthily don’t need to take a B12 supplement?

Dave: It has the established physiological science which is backed by observations made by the most esteemed health scientists we Hygienic Doctors know. I associate with the most knowledgeable physiologists in the world, such as Drs. Fanny, Vetrano, Graham, Gallo, Sniadach and Trader as well as Professor Rozalind Graham.

One study done by some Natural Hygiene doctors about 30 years ago which showed that the incidence of B12 deficiency was incredibly low in vegans who are eating a lot of raw foods.

Mike: And how about regular MMA testing? Do you think it’s worth people doing that if they’re doing a vegan diet?

Dave: Some people do. If they want to rely on their senses and they’re living the most natural, stress-free lifestyle they can then they may feel “I don’t want any testing, I’m relying on my instincts.” If people are stressed, they don’t have their diet and lifestyle routine down well and they have been feeling off balance, by all means, have an MMA test and work at creating a healthier lifestyle.

Mike: What sort of symptoms are there in the initial stages of B12 deficiency–what generally happens?

Dave: The first stage is probably fatigue or maybe nervousness. A lot of people experience tingling extremities and/or scalp. These may or may not be related to B12 deficiency, but rest and simple diet is always prudent for healing.

Mike: So if someone’s been doing a raw vegan diet for quite a long time and he or she feels fantastic, then there’s nothing to worry about? But if the person starts to feel off color, you would recommend having an MMA test just to eliminate B12 as an issue would you?

Dave: Not necessarily, but it’s the person’s decision. The first things I would look at are: how many hours of sleep does he/she get, is he/she over-stressed in any way, what is his/her diet–is there salt or too much fat, etc. There’s many, many factors that can make a person fatigued and mess up their nervous system.

So I would take a look at the whole picture via a questionnaire which is about 8 pages in length and I may ask many more of questions to get to the root of issues. After you’ve properly assessed the whole situation, then you can make intelligent choices as to how to proceed to correct the problem.

Most people need a rest. We’re not designed to be active or busy to the point of doing dozens of things every day, which is what most people are doing without adequate rest and sleep.

Mike: Ok I think we’d better leave it there for today. It’s been fantastic talking you Dave. Are you up for doing another one if I collect a few more questions together… or people have got questions?

Dave: Of course, Mike, any time. It’s been a pleasure and I thank you for helping to get this essential wisdom out the the world.

Discover The Secrets to Happiness...

I hurt for 13 years. It was hell... torture... feeling very bad for a very long time. And that had a devastating effect on every aspect of my life.

With the little energy and focus I had, I hunted for answers. In fact I spent twenty YEARS trawling for answers. You can just imagine the trying, and stumbling, the desperation and frustration...

But now I've seen BOTH extremes of life... from wanting to die every day to the joy of health and happiness. The truth is that all my suffering drives me with a passion to help you not to suffer. Why I can't say, because it's just there, in me.

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Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy