So, I’ve just returned from my trip Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the 12th International Vegan Festival with no jetlag, sunburns, or hangovers. May sound like a pretty uneventful trip, but I had a great time! The purpose for attending the festival was to show my short film “Vegan Love” along with a little speech about my approach to vegan advocacy with filmmaking.
I did have great Portuguese subtitles for the film with the help of Beatriz Medina from the SVB (the Brazilian vegan association). However, as the concept and humor in my film are very English in nature, I was a bit concerned about how the film would be received with the language and culture gap.
To my surprise, most of the audience laughed in the right parts and many even came up to me afterwards to tell me how much they enjoyed the film. The icing on the vegan cake was when someone told me that watching the film had reinforced their vegan lifestyle by being able to associate with the
main character. In hindsight, I would say that the trip had also reinforced my passion and drive for vegan advocacy by seeing firsthand how large the movement is becoming around the world.
It was a very uplifting moment to see that my film was having a positive impact
with vegans on the otherside of the planet. I have taken that positive momentum with me and am now back in the US and back at work on developing my feature length film.
In all, I had a wonderful time in Brazil and was astonished by the warmth and openness of so many different people in Rio, vegan and non-vegan alike. I am already thinking of how and when I can return.
Other tidbits:
If you are ever in Rio and want to try some great raw vegan food, I highly recommend Universo Organico. The raw lasagna is amazing.
Also, there were two people that I was supposed to send a copy of the film to in Brazil. If you are reading this blog, can you please forward your address to me again and I will send along a copy. Your address was lost in my journey back to the US.
So, I am excited to have reached a personal milestone…I have maintained a 99-100% raw vegan diet
for just over one year. It has proven to be one of the best decisions of life. I feel much happier, much more energized, and clearer in my thinking/problem solving ability than ever before. To be honest, I was surprised by the way raw foods have had such a positive effect on my life. I thought my prior diet was “very healthy” having been on a standard vegan diet for 6 years.
Within this short article I would like to share a personal assessment of my going from vegan to a raw food vegan. First and foremost, I applaud ALL conscious eaters who have taken the necessary steps to improve their health through a discipline of diet. The sad truth is that many traps of unhealthy eating remain in my former vegan diet, like: highly process foods, heavy starches, and refined sugars to name a few. I feel compelled to share this assessment with my readers, having personally reached new heights of health and fitness from my experience with raw foods, and from meeting people that owe their lives to switching to a raw food diet.
The most typical response I hear from people planning a raw diet for the future is that they understand the many benefits, but are either too busy to implement the diet or believe it is too expensive for them to diet right now. I understand 
this reasoning - it does present a huge barrier. I used the same rationale when I first heard about raw foods. I used to say “having a raw food diet would be great, but it is not practical for me RIGHT NOW. It can wait until I have more money and time.” I understand now that my procrastination with beginning a raw foods diet was defeating the purpose of the diet altogether. Raw foods are not about making sacrifices now –by eating a tomato instead of a cheeseburger– so that you can live a couple of months longer in your 70s. It is about living up to your greatest potential right now — this very second, and every second you are alive.
This natural source of added energy helps us feel better. We become motivated to act on the improvements we have planned for ourselves. Our awareness of ourselves and our surroundings come into a sharper focus, allowing for a higher personal development. 
I found that fewer sacrifices were actually required of me to maintain a raw foods diet than I had originally worried about. In reality, rawfoods taste better, they can be cheaper to prepare, and they offer us a natural way to live in harmony with the environment.
Becoming “raw” was a logical step in an ongoing process to improve my health. I studied what the recognized professionals were saying but, because the diet became a ‘trial and error’ effort to find out what made me feel better, the diet was self-taught. I will admit that I had to prepare myself mentally to be able to stick to the diet. There are times when it can be frustrating. Accordingly, like any new and positive change to promote self-improvement, it will take time to learn, adapt and adjust..
For those interested and/or willing to try the diet, I have included some tips that may help:
1. Approach raw foods with a positive attitude. If you bring a negative attitude, you are bound to have a poor experience. Raw foods taste better than any cooked food available…hands down. If you don’t like what you have made, try again. Have fun and experiment!
2. Make time. Everyone is busy, but you only have one life and it is ticking away by the second. It is vital to prioritize your time to include health and well-being in a quality lifestyle. It directly affects how you live and interact with everything around you.
3. Investigate the science backing the diet. We’re not making this stuff up! Research the works of Dr. Colin T. Campbell, Dr. Gabriel Cousins, and the works provided by the Hippocrates Health Institute.
4. Do not get trapped into a 100% raw or nothing diet. It takes time to learn new recipes and establish new eating habits. Just concentrate on adding these amazing foods to your diet as soon as you can. You will likely begin to feel much better and your interest in cooked foods will naturally decline. If this doesn’t happen right away, then don’t worry about it! Everyone responds differently depending on your body and previous eating habits.
5. If you are new to raw foods, you could try it out for an initial set time, like 30 days. This way there will be less personal pressure in the beginning to continue the diet forever! The raw food diet does have a learning curve. Also, if you are craving a cooked dish and it’s all you can think about, go ahead and have it, then continue with raw foods. It is important that you feel as comfortable as possible during the process and not feel discouraged. Being 100% raw isn’t a competition or a bragging right. It is about being healthy and feeling great.
6. Try a green smoothie. A great beginning step to a raw diet is to incorporate green smoothies into your diet. For more information about green smoothies, please google the Boutenko family. Victoria Boutenko’s book, Green for Life is a fantastic resource for smoothies and the physiological basis for a raw diet.
-A second step would be to transition to eating only fruit and green smoothies until dinner. Also, try to have dinner early enough that you have at least 5-6 hours to digest the food before you go to sleep for the night. You will wake up feeling refreshed and energized.
I began changing my diet in high school when I discovered that I was severely hypoglycemic. After years of American junk food and bad eating habits, my blood sugar levels had dropped to 43/100 (under 40 would mean hospitalization). I was very surprised by this discovery as I had been a sports addict, from basketball, to baseball, to American football. I thought I was healthy. However, I was increasingly getting more blackouts and went to see a general physician. Basically, he said that I was getting too much sugar and not enough protein. As an oblivious meat eater, I thought my protein was covered. I began to research different forms of protein online and found that protein in meat is derived from the plants eaten by the animals. I made the transition to a plant based diet and within 2 months the hypoglycemia had all but vanished. My blood sugar level went up to 76.
I also noticed simple improvements, like eliminating milk, which improved my complexion. I was wonderfully surprised when changing my food choices actually worked for me. The information was readily available by reading about other people’s diet. It was one health benefit after another as I experimented with different people’s advice on self-improvement. It was less trendy back then, but I was motivated more by feeling better when I got it right.
Today, we face additional food challenges…paying attention has become critical. It would be great if mankind simply evolved by doing what is in our best interests. But, this is not likely as life is more complicated than that. For example, let’s examine the many chemicals that are added to our food. Adding chemicals to food during production helps keep the costs down for businesses during the various steps taken to reach our table. I found an excellent article, found on the Vital Earth Minerals website located (here), that opens a safety debate:
“Chemicals create mutations through chromosome damage, interfere with immune system function, and have been shown to cause a multitude of serious health conditions. Even if all of the food additives used in our foods were safe individually, rarely does any processed / convenience food have only one additive in it. And nobody knows the effects of the many different additives when they are assembled together in a single product. There are literally thousands of various and potentially dangerous combinations.”
I suggest that you read the entire article. It will certainly make you think about a rapidly growing problem, from one hardly recognizable just a few years ago. I would be a vegan and prefer to eat raw/living foods for this reason alone. There are other reasons. Realistically, the only way to consistently assure healthy food in our homes is by growing and preparing our own food. That is not very likely for most of us. Maybe science will prove that food chemicals are not that dangerous or that fewer chemicals will be needed in the future. If you insist on gambling with your diet please remember to fully consider the odds. You will be betting against the “profit and loss” sheets of most food production businesses.
It does not appear to be a lack of science that perpetuates the problem. It appears to be the lack of public inquiry, or people’s outrage against this treachery, that is missing. In a brief search for the culprit you may gloss over the nearly silent FDA and USDA regulators and land squarely on the “profit motive” of big business. Is there ever going to be a point at which agribusiness will “cross the line” in it’s pursuit for profits because it adversely effects the health of its consumers? What is that line? In fairness, I am certain that the FDA will argue that it defends the American food supply every single day. But, the FDA and other government agencies are limited in the duties they perform. I can just hear big agribusiness saying that I need to be specific and show examples of these claims. It would probably take me forever to find an example of overreaching by the industry. NOPE !!!, it took 2.3 seconds according to my search engine timer. I found an article dated October 11, 2008 (here). This article entitled: 
“Monsanto-Backed State Bill Seeks to Outlaw rBGH-Free Lable Claims on Milk Products”, informs the reader that agribusiness giant Monsanto (the drug’s manufacturer) has lobbied the Indiana house of representatives to pass a Bill that would PROHIBIT the dairy industry from labeling their products as being “rBGH-free”. Despite the claims of the Bill’s critics, that the public prefers to avoid the recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) in their dairy products, HB 1300 will be voted on in the House. The Hormone is used to vastly increase the amount of milk produced by the injected cows. This should prove to be an interesting battle between those farmers who make more money by producing more milk and those farmers who advertise a hormone-free product. Sadly, this also makes a competition out of the consumer’s right to know what is in their dairy products and Monsanto’s “bottom line”.
I am a vegan to simplify knowing what is good for me. It keeps me searching the blogs constantly to be informed about my food choices. “Live, and let live?”…good luck.
I read desperate comments left on blogs that reflect a growing frustration from people who have learned the importance of growing your own vegetables, but lack the skills to do it. Don’t worry, you have a great idea and there IS help available. Your frustration stems from the rapidly disappearing, or dare we say –nearly lost, skills that were taken for granted on the “family farms” of past generations. So, where in the world could the average person start from scratch and learn to “grow like pro”? Try Missoula, Montana.
I recently spoke with Tim Hall, the community garden director of the Garden City Harvest program located in the western Montana town of Missoula. He told me an amazing success story about a program started in 1996, growing vegetables on a small plot of land that ballooned into a sprawling network of vegetable gardens supported by the entire community. You can find out more about this program through their website located at: http://gardencityharvest.org/index.html. Tim says they offer garden-growing help to everybody that participates in any of the four programs within the Garden City Harvest organization. According to the website, the help comes from: different grants, foundations, local schools, the Courts, a supporting staff, a board of directors, local businesses, private donations, local buyers (shares), volunteers and others. The help goes to: students –for class credit, local food banks, volunteers (paid in-kind for their work), low income recipients and others in an effort to meet the goals of GCH’s mission statement:
Garden City Harvest’s Mission Statement:
1. Provide high quality food to low-income people.
2. Offer education and training in ecologically conscious food production.
3. Use our sites for the personal restoration of troubled youth and adults.
The mountain of work to coordinate all of these different interests seems to be a daunting task. However, over time, the pieces have fit together perfectly to form a truly “win-win” program that could easily be the right model for future growers of local vegetables. The hard-to-get resources of seeds, tools and plots of land have already been found and organized for the participants, together with a two-way communication system that provide answers for the participant to the never-ending questions about growing. Credit goes to the hardworking staff made up of dedicated and passionate people like Tim. To those of us who worry if it is even possible to grow our own vegetables, once we choose to do so, the answer is a resounding “YES”. People like us are doing it right now, even as we read this blog.That is proof that it can be done.
For others of us who are already growing vegetables; by learning from parents, are self-taught, or have found help, take at look at this model – it works. Many frustrated people need a helping hand from you that have gained the experience. You may be pleasantly surprised by the benefits of helping. After all, “you reap what you sow”, right?
I came across another trailer for a raw documentary but with a slightly different premise. It is called Raw 2 Raw Vegan about a vegans journey into raw food. I would definitely like to see the film but it seems like it would be quite difficult to market this film to the general public. In the trailer, this problem is especially evident since the person undergoing a raw transformation says he is feeling unwell about his new raw diet. It is all just speculation at this point, so I will try to reserve further judgement until I have seen the film.
