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THIS MONTH'S FEATURED ARTICLE
Viktoras Kulvinskas talks to Ela Harrison Gordon about Life, Food and Personal Responsibility
Ela: You are known as the father of raw foods: could you tell us first, how you came to raw foods yourself and then what prompted you to share it with the world?
Vik: Well, some come to it for spiritual, or mental, or ethical reasons, but most, like myself, come to it because of lifestyle and health challenges. I was connected with Ann Wigmore and involved in the Rising Sun Christianity, a healing center in Florida. Then I got very inspired by the book Raw Eating, (by Arshevir Ter Hovannessian) which was already 50 years old back then, and was later transcribed by David Wolfe et al as Nature's First Law. I also corresponded with Dr Edmund Szekely, author of The Essene Gospel of Peace - the most inspiring book ever, by the way. The Essenes were the most highly intelligent group in the history of humanity. They were 100% vegan, ate mostly raw foods, and lived 400% longer than their contemporaries in the Mediterranean world. After studying these, we started to convert Rising Sun Christianity into the Hippocrates Institute and to move over to raw foods. Originally, we had used a diet with a high percentage of cooked food. We came to find that a 100% raw food diet produced the most desirable effects on those with the most severe health challenges.
Unfortunately, back then I had no mentor or coach and didn't know what I was doing, and spent two years looking like a poster child for anorexia at 90lbs and 6ft tall and unable to gain a pound. Unless a person has a good enzymatic background, it's hard for them to put on weight. And so through my own experimentations, I learned about enzymes and fermented foods, krauts and seed cheeses, which I developed myself, and gained back 40lbs. I have developed a way of making kraut and kim chi that takes less than 24 hours, no special equipment needed, just a mason jar or a steel bowl. It took me 40 years to evolve this and I'm willing to share it with anyone who wants to know. (Contact details are included at the end of the interview.)
Ela: Being in the vanguard of a movement often means that you have to learn a lot of things 'the hard way' and undergo a lot of experiments on yourself, trial and error. I'm curious, because I've read that you suffered from an eating disorder at one point. I have that in my background too. How did raw foods play into or help with that?
Vik: Yes, that was later. During my bulimic phase several years later, that was when all my emotional problems came to the surface. You have to understand that I had an extremely violent youth, and I'm talking sexual abuse, bullets whistling all around me, other kinds of abuse, and this was all zipped up inside me so that I have almost no memory of my childhood. It began to surface when I was around age 17, with bleeding ulcers that I had for 10 years, and I just was not psychologically balanced. These traumas sit in the bone mass and resurface to haunt you when you get into cleansing, and I was naive and had no one to coach me.
But then a brain food came into my life, Aphanizomenon Flos Aquae (AFA), the blue green algae, which had a strong impact on my mental faculties. Now, years later, there is research showing that AFA can remediate ADD/ADHD/Autism/Alzheimers. I myself was able to reverse my grandmother's Alzheimer's in 5 weeks with AFA, enzymes and a mild herbal laxative - with no other dietary change! She was very un-cooperative and so I just had to do what I could do, and because of her non-compliance the effect was temporary, but for as long as she stayed with the AFA and the enzymes, the Alzheimers was reversed.
Ela: So, would you say that the AFA helped you to recover from your eating disorder?
Vik: Within one month of starting to use it, I would say I had a comfortable relationship with food. It took a while longer for me to develop a comfortable relationship with people, to get socially balanced. But now I'm comfortable with anyone, no matter what they are like - life is good!
Ela: That's a wonderful thing to be able to say. Do you take AFA daily?
Vik: I took it religiously on a daily basis for about 15 years. Since then, and nowadays, I'm more negligent, due to my general feel-good and better level of consciousness. I consider it a food, not a supplement. Sea vegetables and blue-green algae, as well as fermented foods and sprouts, have to be top of the list when it comes to therapeutic foods.
Ela: This magazine is dedicated to encouraging people to eat more healthily, more 'raw,' but in a pleasurable and non-dogmatic way. What do you think of the '80% Raw' approach?
Vik: At Hippocrates, we encourage people with serious health challenges to go to 100% raw for the therapeutic situation: we push them to make a 4 month commitment. After that, they'll probably go back to some of their familiar foods, but it has to be whole foods, with enzymes. At the World Raw Congress at Hippocrates, with representatives from 16 nations present, the conclusion was that if someone in a maintenance condition could eat 80% raw, they'd be doing exceptionally well.
The 2001 conference on degenerative diseases found that a diet that was composed of at least 67% whole, plant-based foods was preventative of degenerative diseases. It would be great to eat whole and plant-based at a higher percentage than that, but for these purposes, if people can eat two thirds of their diet whole and plant-based, they will be doing very well.
Ela: You just stressed the importance of whole foods: I'd love to hear what you think about some of the more controversial, which generally equates to more refined, items in the current raw food environment. Agave and cacao are particularly controversial lately: what do you have to say about them?
Vik: Any sweetener must be used with respect and preferably not at all, and especially should not be used in the context of starchy foods, as this can lead to flatulence. And if one has low enzyme resources and high levels of plaque in the blood vessels, it'll be hard to manage insulin, and these predigested sugars will lead to abnormal psychosomatic states, either you'll feel really good - artificially high, or really depressed.
I suggest to people that they take a tiny amount, like a quarter teaspoon, of honey or whatever, on the end of a chopstick, and take it into their mouth and then drink their tea, or whatever they're drinking, and then they'll get the experience of sweetness, which is uplifting for them, with minimal ill effect. Sweeteners are really not desirable - think of the situation in nature, where honey was really a rare treat for most humans.
People who give up all sweeteners, and also oils, find that their athletic ability improves dramatically. My friend David Troy, who is now a Hippocrates graduate and Essene minister, despite his past history of health problems and alcoholism, has done 30 chinups a day for the last 15 years. When he quit eating all sweets, salt and oils, he was able to raise this to 35 chinups! The oils, even good vegetable oils, even from avocados, can impede oxygen transport. Live cell analysis shows red blood cell oxygenation is impaired even after eating avocados. If I was preparing for an exam or had to be extra focused, I would certainly leave out all fats for that period of time.
Ela: So, the seed cheeses you mentioned earlier are the best way to consume fats?
Vik: Yes, and the fermentation process reduces the calories by around 60%. Nuts and seeds are around 60-80% fat and this puts a stress on the system. You can also reduce the fat content by starting the germination process with an overnight soaking, or you can soak them for one hour in very warm water.
And as for cacao, depending on the level of sensitivity of the individual, it can put a strong stress on the heart. At one point I ate some cacao beans, soaked overnight and fermented as you would for other nuts and seeds, and by the 6th or 7th one I felt a pressure on my heart area like one might feel after a hard workout. It is definitely a neurological stressor. I would say that cacao can be enjoyed on occasion and in moderation. When it's eaten daily, especially poorly combined, it will put a stress on the body. But sure, I still make chocolate mousse occasionally, like every two months, or eat a raw bar that has cacao in it. Anyone with a serious health challenge should avoid it completely.
And why are people eating anyway? Is it to sedate their minds, eating heavy food in order to be less conscious of their transcendental existence? When one is emotionally cleansed, the simplest, lightest foods are the most enjoyable, and allow one to be the most creative, expressing one's dharmic potential, rather than using food to get out of the now. And 80-90% of the US population is on some kind of mental stimulation, whether it is a prescription antidepressant, or coffee, or alcohol - coffee is the number 1 - adrenal jolt, you feel good ephemerally, you're out of the now.
Ela: You've talked about environmental, dietary and emotional stressors, and cosmic changes: what would you say are the biggest threats to human health at this time?
Vik: I would say that the biggest threat is unresolved emotional states - and the dietary indulgences that they lead to. People end up eating poorly because they're unbalanced, and then they deplete their enzyme resources. The number one cause of digestive disorders statistically has been shown to be enzymatic exhaustion. Cooked food is hard on your system, and the extent to which a person can handle it depends on their enzymatic inheritance. All wildlife away from human populations is disease free.
The UN is now saying that animal husbandry is the primary cause of the greenhouse effect. In 2 years from now, or at most 5 years, we're going to be seeing some serious impacts from this greenhouse effect. Take a look at the movie The Day After Tomorrow, or 11th Hour, watch the movie 2012, or even Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The media is full of information about what is coming down the pike and you can educate yourself about it.
We could choose to be intuitive and alkaline like the wild animals… When the tsunamis hit, all the wild animals, and even some of the domestic animals, were doing everything they could to get away to higher ground days in advance - their brains are fully functioning, they knew what was coming. Of course, the humans around them had no idea what was going on. Their brains were not working fully.
Ela: I have to confess that I sometimes feel scared when people talk about 2012 and impending disasters.
Vik: I have no fear about it at all: I celebrate it! Your being is eternal, so why be attached to your individual body? You're going to go on forever! They did some core drilling at the north pole that showed 600,000 years of history, and in that time there were 6 Ice Ages: we're way overdue for an Ice Age. Life is eternal - so enjoy your body, fulfill your dharma: you're here to do something special, not just sit around and eat!
Ela: What is the best way to connect with and identify your dharma?
Vik: A clean diet helps with discerning what your dharma is, but so do meditation and prayer. Gabriel Cousens, in his wonderful book Spiritual Nutrition, for which I wrote the introduction, explains this very well. The lighter you eat, the easier a spiritual practice will be. Sure, you can get enlightened ay any level of diet, that is the experience, but how you eat does help - so long as you don't get into judging others.
Ela: When we look at these different levels of diet, why is it that some people - like my husband - can eat all the junk food and drink all the coffee they want and seem to do just fine, remain strong and healthy, whilst others - like myself - absolutely cannot do this?
Vik: Well, you could put it in terms of Dr Williams' concept of 'individual nutrition.' Everyone has different levels of tolerance, for example my parents, or your husband, had very high levels of tolerance, whereas I was not so lucky. Or, rather, in the long run I think I was lucky. I had malignancies, advanced arthritis, was losing my hair - old age diseases - by the time I was 30. But now, at 72, I have a full head of hair that anyone would envy, radiant good health, the skin of a teenager and the flexibility of a yogi!
A person's health depends on their initial inheritance, the level of pollution in their environment, the degree to which their enzymes are depleted and the extent to which their immune system is hyperactive.
Inherited variance leads to accelerated aging conditions - like those children seen on the health channel on TV, little kids who look about 100 years old. They're usually very highly acidic, and usually born of older mothers who had difficulty conceiving and whose fertility was brought about by artificial means, and their births usually required medical intervention. But even aside from these extreme cases, 20% of kids nowadays have old people's diseases! There are so many kids who have arthritis, diabetes type 1 and 2, asthma, emphysema - at the beginning of the 20th century, these diseases were only suffered by old people. This is to do with genetic inheritance and the dietary habits of their parents.
If you look at the NYT Science Section May 23rd 2002, the Head of Harvard Medical School - now that's quite a distinguished source - stated that all degenerative diseases come about as a result of twisted proteins that can be observed in anyone eating the Standard American Diet. They have been able to identify these over the past ten years due to increased microscope capacities. These proteins make people's immune systems hyperactive 24/7. In my book Survival in the 21st Century 35 years ago, I showed the impact of heat in disorganizing proteins. The digestive enzymes can't recognize them, they cross the gastrointestinal membrane and flood the bloodstream. Then John Gaynor, in Science News 2007, showed that these denatured proteins reduce oxygen transport by 70%. The body has two strategies for dealing with this. Either it 'sweeps it under the carpet:' the denatured proteins get stuffed into the base of the thousands of miles of veins and blood vessels. Or, if the cardio-vascular system is compromised - and this can be discerned by creases in the earlobes: if an earlobe is creased, the cardio-vascular system is already under stress; the more numerous and deeper the creases are, the more likely the person is to have a stroke. In this situation, when the oxygen levels are reduced, cells mutate into cancerous cells. John Gaynor describes these cancer cells as vacuum cleaners - they suck up the proteins so that normal oxygenation can continue.
And then there's Dr T. Colin Campbell, with his China Study, which he undertook in collaboration with Oxford University and Cornell University, where he is professor of Nutritional Biochemistry. This study was of 10 years' duration, with a large data set and scientific review. The consensus was that we have not had enough evolutionary time to adapt to heat treated protein. See also Enzymes for Health and Longevity by Herbert Howell. Consider also the Eskimos, who ate raw blubber and other animal products, and lived into their 90's in good health. They would die in old age of acidosis, associated with low intake of vitamin C and flavonoids. When the white man came and introduced processed foods and the Eskimos adopted them, their longevity decreased from 90 to 45 years and the North Pole saw heart attacks, strokes, cancer, rheumatism for the first time. When people were well mineralized, with a good enzymatic inheritance from their parents, and were out in nature a lot, eating locally grown and minimally processed foods, they were healthy, and able to reproduce and, as Weston Price noted, had perfect teeth. Once processing was initiated, the Phosphorus to Calcium ratio was disrupted and dental decay set in. This shows that eating less processed and more raw foods, without being fanatical, is a good direction to go in. And there is scientific proof of this! Google for any degenerative disease - even pancreatic cancer, which is considered a death sentence, 'enzymes' + 'healing' and you will bring up scientific studies showing positive results. A doctor in Korea treating pancreatic cancer patients with enzyme therapy had a greater than 80% recovery rate without dietary change.
And this knowledge is heading for the mainstream! Now we have Dr Oz on national TV telling everyone that the best way to avoid degenerative disease is to stay alkaline and that the best way to do this is to eat a raw, green energy soup every day. If you're not green by December 2012, it's getting less likely that you'll be around. Looking at the sunspots in the sun, there are indications that there will be a series of flares, that occurs every 50,000 years or so, and the intense radiation will cause all kinds of disasters, telecommunications and otherwise, and we're literally going to get fried. The US Army has noted that as long as raw green plants are consumed, animals are able to survive even a lethal dose of radiation. Fermented foods are also protective. We have these 'flu scares that come around from time to time - the latest is the swine 'flu, but going back to the avian 'flu in 2007, Korean scientists noted then that if kim chi was consumed, it would prevent - and even cure - avian 'flu. Nutritionists in Germany ran similar tests and found that the same was true for sauerkraut.
Ela: What is your suggestion for those of us who eat very differently from the mainstream in the areas of tolerance of others' choices and acceptance of our own?
Vik: There are thousands of diets on this earth and every person eats differently: you have to respect all diets just like religions - I even accept that people smoke, so long as they do it away from me - so long as they do not do any harm. And as for those purists who criticize you for not being pure or raw enough, ask them what it is that they eat most of all. And they'll give you a list of the things that they usually eat. But then you tell them, 'No, no - what you eat more than anything else is air, and all air is cooked! It's cooked by automobiles, by EMF's, by environmental pollution… Nobody is 100% raw!
The January 1973 issue of National Geographic studied all the longest-lived cultures, and all the smartest, happiest, longest lived peoples ate around 1500 calories per day and 35g protein per day. Primitives in Papua New Guinea have been found who thrive on 5g protein per day! It was discovered that their GI tracts contained bacteria cultures, which are commonly found in healthy vegans, which fixated nitrogen from the air, and created 30g protein per day!
A study from the University of Chicago found that more than 60% of the calories are not available for energy from cooked food due to enzyme exhaustion. Dr Sumner showed that most people have lost 90% of their salivary amylase - a starch-splitting enzyme - by the age of 30. Dr Galton of Tufts University showed that whenever weight management is a problem, there is a deficiency of lipase - the fat-splitting enzyme.
Ela: I like to eat a lot of wild foods, and I know that one ends up eating insects and dirt. Some people are worried about this impacting the purity of their 'vegan-ness,' while others note that ruminants and gorillas eat insects too, and some even say that this should be considered a crucial part of the diet. Are people who obsessively clean their greens missing something?
Vik: Wild foods are the best, and I don't even wash my greens. But don't be picky over the details! It's far more important to look at your level of vitality, and how things look from a scientific standpoint. Rather than splitting hairs like the number of angels on a pinhead or a few insects on your lettuce, express and follow your dharmic calling! Which means, be creative, love yourself, love others as yourself. But yes, soil bacteria are important. In a healthy GI tract, 60% of feces is composed of bacteria. Take a look at the movie 11th Hour: it shows that 90% of our genetic material is non-human, that is, it's formed of beneficial microbes.
Ela: You're known as a practitioner of many other healing modalities: how does raw food complete the picture?
Vik: Oh yes, food is only the fuel! In my book, I wrote a chapter on the whole science of happiness and spiritual fitness, cleansing, longevity, and it is a part of that. When the fuel is as clean and light as possible, you feel bright. Eat a third less than you need to be full, and only eat when the stomach is empty, and don't eat when stressed. Minimize cold foods: it's better to eat foods at body temperature: cold foods are stressful on the organism. They slow the digestive process, which takes place optimally at 95-98 degrees or even higher. Once you get above 120 degrees, the food is 'cooked' and the chemical chains have been collapsed. But at 115-118, you're actually at the maximal level of enzymatic activity, which means that the food rots quickly if it isn't digested. This leads to pathogenic microbes, which excrete all kinds of organic acids, which makes you feel tired, aggressive, unhappy, emotionally unbalanced. Or, you could avoid all this and start taking responsibility for your future!
When it was found that over 65% of Americans are sick with incurable diseases, they asked the Surgeon General to investigate. In the introduction to his report - they didn't want anyone to miss this - it says, 'Don't expect any help from your doctor in trying to regain your health!' They identified five keys to health: Diet, Exercise, Attitude, Rest and your Environment. So, even the mainstream is recognizing this holistic perspective in health creation!
Ela: What do you do at the moment? I know you were in Costa Rica just recently.
Vik: Yes, I live part of the year in Costa Rica - on the Pacific side. We have about 40 acres with waterfalls and fruit trees, and there's a weekly farmer's market with many kinds of organic greens, and there are three vegan restaurants, colonic irrigation practitioner - and there's a very small population there. I also teach at the Hippocrates Institute - http://www.hippocrates.org - and in Chicago at http://www.karensraw.com - I'll be there in July. And I run retreats. We center it around belly dancing - as I said, I like to have fun - raw food, detoxing, yoga: we're strongly embedded in the tradition of harmonizing body and spirit by keeping in motion.
Ela: And stillness too?
Vik: Yes, meditation is stillness. Since around age 5 I have always spent a lot of time in quietness, in contemplation.
I also do personal consultations, by phone or internet: I love to connect with people. Basically what I do is upgrade people to their comfort level in terms of their diet.
You can email me at survival4u (at) msn (dot) com and visit me online at http://www.viktorasalive.com - or check out my book, which has been reprinted and supplemented with new material, especially to do with the coming changes around 2012. The website for that is http://www.survivalinthe21stcentury.com - and we do offer discounts in cyberspace.
Ela: Would you share with us what your charge is?
Vik: I generally charge $100 for a half hour consultation, and I'm very flexible with my time - if we're not finished, we continue. I'm here to help people. And sometimes if someone can't afford the fee, I accept a donation of what they can offer.
Ela: It seems like you are in trust and that you give, and that you receive what you need in return.
Vik: Oh, yes - follow your passion and you'll be taken care of! I've never worried too much about money, I've always just followed my heart. When I stopped enjoying my computer work, I just left it! And I told them, I didn't even know what I was going to do next. You have to trust your heart - and that includes in relationships. Your husband is 30 years older than you: I've been with a woman who was 30 years older than me, and also with women 30 or 40 years younger. We're moving into an ageless society, that will no longer discriminate by race or color either, and will no longer be cash oriented.
And the biggest change by 2012 will be the move from competition to cooperation: we will enter a period of 'At-onement:' it'll feel like we're all the cells of a single body. Think about it: the happiest people are the people who aren't paid for what they do but are volunteers: in fact, some people pay to work as volunteers! And look at the changes cyberspace has wrought: there is so much data freely available on the internet. There is no end to knowledge. And it's time for people to be empowered by knowledge. As Dr Deepak Chopra said, 'If they knew more, they'd do better.'
BIO
Ela Harrison Gordon is a Classical scholar, linguist and poet who has chosen to devote her life to healing and spiritual growth. She has worked as a raw food chef, beekeeper and farmer as well asa translator, writer and editor. Of English and Israeli heritage and raised in London, she has lived inthe USA since 2000 and has explored cultivated and wild land whilst living in California,
Hawaii and now Alaska.She regards her body's intolerance of grains and most modern foods, as well as her journey back
from near-death from anorexia, as blessings that have led her to a greater reverence for the body and its place in our
spiritual development, a more holistic understanding of health, and a deep interest in nutrition both of person and of planet. These blessings first led her to raw foods in 2003, and she is excited to share the breadth of what she has learned from pursuing the lifestyle in a variety of climates whilst integrating with local customs and growth patterns.
ARTICLE ARCHIVE
Explaining our Origins and Telling Stories At first glance, the task of identifying the human ancestral diet is like that of identifying a child's father. You make your best guess, you believe the most plausible story, you tell the story yourself.
Peanuts - they're not a nut and, like money, they don't grow on trees. Native to the Americas, they were introduced to North America from Africa via the slave trade. Metaphorical expressions like 'working for peanuts' and 'the peanut gallery' attest to their long and venerable history as a cheap
Why Cleanse Your Liver in the Springtime? - It seems that everyone is talking about liver cleansing at the moment. Of course, the concept of 'spring cleaning' is firmly ensconced in our consciousness and language. But why cleanse the liver in particular?
Viktoras Kulvinskas is known as the 'Father of Raw Foods.' He has touched millions of people, over more than four decades, with his messages of self love and fulfillment, compassion, and light but powerful nutrition. With a background in Pure Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science, he is very much alive to the wealth of information and sharing potential now available in cyberspace and has been utilizing his formidable critical faculties to research and promulgate an optimal diet for these times and for our best empowerment, making constant refinements based on scientific research and his own experiences. I had the delightful opportunity to interview him for 'Eighty Percent Raw.' In our conversation, he was brimming with information, enthusiasm and joie de vivre. I hope that this comes across here.
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