Raw Food Author and Chef Experiences Working at the Hippocrates Health Institute

Kevin: Well Nomi, welcome to this program. I'm excited to have you.

Nomi: Hi Kevin, it's good to be here.

Kevin: Why don't you start very quickly for those people who might not know who you are, just tell a little about yourself.

Nomi: OK, I'm Nomi Shannon, I have a book called, "The Raw Gourmet" which is kind of the raw food bible for people who are just starting. Especially because if you read the whole book from cover to cover you'll know everything you need to know to have a raw food kitchen. I have a newer book called, "Raw Food Celebrations" and that book is for people who want to have like a celebratory meal. The book has menus so you have an entire Italian menu for example or an entire Thai menu. It's set up so that you can prepare most of your food in advance which is an unusual thing for raw food. So that if you work from Monday through say Saturday or Friday, you can do most of the prep and then have your event on Saturday, Sunday without feeling like all you did was work.

Kevin: Right and putting together these amazing recipe books is just one part of your experience. You started out at Hippocrates correct?

Nomi: Yes, yes I worked for quite a few years at Hippocrates Health Institute which is a really wonderful, beautiful raw food retreat. The food there is very gourmet and I really am comfortable and familiar with all the aspects that come along with a raw food diet. Cleansing, healing, homeopathically, supplementation that kind of thing. People think of me as a chef and as a caterer and as a creator of recipes but raw food is on continuum from therapeutic to gourmet and really Hippocrates and places like it, such as Optimum Health Institute in San Diego, cater to the therapeutic aspects of it. When people are wanting to become well, improve their health or prevent ever becoming ill. There's a whole range that I'm familiar with and able to teach.

Kevin: Tell me a little about what kind of people that came in to Hippocrates, what kind of things helped them and how they left.

Nomi: OK, I left Hippocrates in '95 so it's quite some years since I've been there, although I've gone back quite a few times to teach because one of the things they have besides a regular three-week program, they also have a nine-week health educator program which is learning a little bit about a lot of different subjects. It's great for people who want to be in the alternative health field to help them learn all the range of things that are out there and then when they leave there they would maybe choose one or two subjects, maybe iridology which is study of the eye of the strengths and weaknesses of the body or there's just probably 15 or 20 subjects that we cover lightly and then if they want they see what they want to learn more about. So I ran that program.

The normal person that attends Hippocrates, people come there from all over the world. It is an expensive program which is why I also mention Optimum Health Institute, there's one in Texas and one in California. There's a place in Puerto Rico called The Anne Wigmore Foundation, essentially the same program. The other places I mentioned are far more affordable. I have literally seen people from every single country in the world attend these places. People have come there that were very, very ill with maybe various kinds of cancer. People have come there who have already undergone surgery, radiation, chemo, maybe became well and then a few years later something came back and they decided to take a natural route. There's another institute in Mexico called The Gerson Institute which while it's not exactly like this, they do a few different things. It's very world renowned. They are able to do things that can't be done in this country, that's why they're in Mexico. There are places in Germany, there's places all over the world. Alternative health really is what it is. There's lots of people who are completely well that go there to learn the program, to clean up their act, their nutritional act. Unfortunately it's very, very often that someone's already sick. To go to a place like Hippocrates, it's not a hospital, it's not a clinic, you can't be in bed sick. You have to be well enough to be able to take care of yourself.

Kevin: OK.

Nomi: Features of the program are wheat grass juice, sprouts; they teach you how to grow these things. You juice the grass, you drink it, that kind of thing. What sets Hippocrates apart from the other places, are the food is truly gourmet and the quality of the classes, that kind of thing. You can even learn this from books. I like people if they can, especially in the beginning, especially if they have a health challenge and they don't know much, rather than sort of desperately attempt to cobble together the information, especially if they're already panicked that they've gotten a diagnosis that frightens them, I'd like to see them go to one of these places. Let somebody else make their food for three weeks and they have classes all day long which they can attend and learn how to do it. They're immersed in it so they're simultaneously cleansing and healing and learning what to do when they go home.

It's just easier rather than try to talk to someone on the phone and then you do this and then you make this and they're not well and they're panicked. I'm like, "You know what? What's more important you're health; take a few weeks off from work, unpaid. Yes, it's a sacrifice."

Kevin: Yeah.

Nomi: But get yourself into the program, especially if you're very ill. Take that three weeks to rest and relax, you'll get lot of cleansing done in three weeks. Then you really know what you're doing when you come home.

Kevin: What are some of the things that you find that most people just need? Whether it's supplements, or it's food or things that universally will help people get on a healthier track.

Nomi: Yes. Well the whole fast food thing, everybody seems so, including me, rushed and busy, even if they're at home all the time. With the Internet and all that, people are, even a generation or two ago people made most of their food at home. Now they're getting it out. It's hard to have good nutrition when you're not making your own food and so the transition even isn't from a person who makes pasta on Monday and roast beef on Tuesday and beans and franks on Wednesday. They're actually eating at home and so what their transition is, OK I'm just going to make different food. The transition now is, learn how to boil water, almost. You're not really boiling water literally when you're eating raw food but the joke is I can't even boil water to make an egg. I don't even know how to do that. The people, the generations that are coming up now, have never made food.

Kevin: Yes.

Nomi: Let alone learning how to do it at home. That's the biggest learning curve. And then people are always worried about time. So I have really, and a lot of people in the raw food movement, have figured out ways to have really great nourishment in a really small amount of time. Like you guys, I shared a smoothie with you before we turned the camera on that you had thrown together in your blender, a green smoothie. And that is, there are, they have to learn that, that's the sort of universal thing that people are learning. How to create really healthy food for themselves in a quite short amount of time. That is the biggie.

Kevin Gianni the host of Renegade Health Show - a fun and informative daily health show that is changing the perception of health across the world. His is an internationally known health advocate, author, and film consultant. He has helped thousands and thousands of people in over 21 countries though online health teleseminars about abundance, optimum health and longevity He is also the creator and co-author of "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution."

Raw Gourmet, Author and Educator Shares the Benefits of Transitioning to Raw Foods

Kevin: Why don't you just give us a little brief history of why you're here and then we'll move onto the real meat.

Nomi: Okay, back in the beginning I started my raw journey, so to speak, about 20 years ago. I had just moved to California and I found myself not feeling well for the gazillionth time in my life. I had sort of a litany of issues and I remember it was around Christmas time where a big table was set up in the back room with all kinds of cakes and Christmas stuff and I subsequently, many years later, found out I really can't eat wheat. I wasn't feeling well and not only vague but it was sort of like an intolerance that affected my entire digestive tract and really some of the words to go along with the description would be fibromyalgia, hypoglycemia, mood swings, really severe allergic sinusitis because I had moved from the East to the West Coast where there was pollen at all times, a lot of digestive problems, acid reflux, systemic candida, blah blah blah.

I went to a holistic doctor, Dr. Barney Meltzer. He was in Del Mar, California. One of the things he said to me is I want you to eat 50% of your food raw. And I said to him, the following sentence, which I've

since heard 5000 times: How will I get enough protein? That's the first question and he kind of rolled his eyes and it's all I can do to keep from rolling my eyes. Really, Kevin, it was just simple for me to go 50% raw. I've always been kind of a good cook. People eat raw food in their daily life. They eat coleslaw, they eat salad, even if it's just lettuce and a slice of tomato on their McDonald burger or something. It's not like an alien entity. I just upped it. My hypoglycemia at that time was so bad, I don't know if this has ever happened to you but I used to fall asleep while I was driving. I could get in the car all alert and literally wink off and it's like a miracle that I didn't kill someone or get killed. And what I did for that is this doctor said just carry around a pocket full of almonds. Raw almonds and when you start to get that feeling, that sort of sleepy feeling, or even before that if you know it happens every hour or whatever, just chew slowly on a couple of almonds. I mean this literally almost overnight cured that situation. I'm not talking about your driving tired. I'm talking about, you think you're fine, then you get in the car and you start nodding off. That had to do with my combination of food and eating too many carbs and stuff like that too.

So anyways, it was pretty dramatic, just the 50% change and after a year of doing 50% I went to one of the several places in the country where you can go for a three week retreat where it's wheatgrass juice and buckwheat and sunflower sprouts, and lots of raw food, only raw food and classes and that was very profound for me. I lost some weight and everything was completely cleared up from that. Just like serendipity, within 6 months I was working at the world-renowned Hippocrates Health Institute. I'm talking 20 years ago now. I'm going to tell you, I was 44 years old when I started this journey and I just want to share with you that I'm going to be 65 years old in 2008 and I really feel like I should throw a big party and show people what 65 can look like and frankly, if I had started younger it would look even better.

Kevin: So why don't you talk a little bit about the Hippocrates Institute and we'll get into the meat of what raw food can do for you therapeutically.

Nomi: I'm glad you asked this Kevin because there's a lot of buzz about raw food, a lot of books, a lot of restaurants and there's a big stress on the gourmet, culinary aspects and I sometimes wonder if there aren't some people out there, whether they're chefs or whether they're teachers

who really don't exactly understand or know that this came from a therapeutic point of view, a way to cleanse and heal yourself without necessarily having to get involved with the medical community.

And really I think my book is one of the very first books that introduced this whole kind of more gourmet and palatable subject. And there's nothing wrong at all with all the delicious things that are happening. It's just that I don't want to see people forget that it's grounded in something that's good for you, so really raw food is on a continuum or a spectrum, all the way from therapeutic up to gourmet.

What I mean by that is you can talk about water-fasting, for example, or juice fasting where, with water fasting you are resting and it's best to be supervised and you are literally only drinking water. What happens when you do that is, after a few days the energy that your body normally uses to digest, assimilate and eliminate is going into healing. It can be very profound. Then you can do carrot juice combinations and there's lots of people who have stories to tell about that like Reverend George Malcolm or Dr. Lorraine Day both of whom are pretty important people in the raw food movement because they both had a really serious cancer and they feel that they were able to become well by juice fasting. Then you can get into, and this is what a lot of the retreats do, they have some juices

but they also have good simple raw food. You again have that cleansing, de-toxifying factor. Then there's your everyday raw food, somewhere in the middle between this kind of severe and simple raw food, somewhere between that and the really gourmet, multi-nuts, all kinds of sauces, is your everyday, at home, how to eat raw food because a lot of people are really committed to being anywhere from 50% to 100% raw. They do see a health difference. Really depending on who you are and where you're coming from is where you're going to be on that continuum. If you for example, have a cancer you want to be on the more therapeutic end of it.

Kevin: Let me ask you this. What is kind of an ideal balance, say throughout a year, of therapeutic to gourmet? I mean, is there a percentage? 50% therapeutic? 10% gourmet? The rest in between? What do you think is ideal?

Nomi: If only I could answer it because each of us is so unique. If there were one exactly right way to eat, let's say in this case because I have a book, The Raw Gourmet and I'm considered to be an exact, if there was just one right way to eat raw food I'd be a gazilionaire. The reason there isn't is that because each of us is so unique. Some people can eat almost all fruit with a little bit of green. Many other people, they just can't. That's just all there is to it. People do get confused. They go, I don't know who to listen to, I read this book, this says that or this person they said that, and the reason for that confusion is, people kind of want to be told what to do.

I mean, we grew up in awe of the medical community and our parents before us did, and they go, well the doctor said to take this pill, the doctor said to do this, do that. And people have given away their power in terms of their health. I'm faced with people constantly asking me what should I eat and how shall I do it. Gee, I wish I could answer that for you but I'm going to have to toss that right back in your lap and you are going to have to experiment. It's all experiential. It's just not a religion or a philosophy. It's what you eat. You have to do it to know. If eating a certain way works for you I can almost guarantee it's not going to work for your wife, or your spouse or your kids or your brother. So it's an impossible question to answer. How much plain and simple and how much really gourmet can one person take in.

One big common mistake though, so that people learn, like from the Ann Wigmore books or from going to one of the therapeutic kind of places, Hippocrates is one of them, and they're pretty gourmet, but there's also a place in California and a place in Texas called Optimum Health Institute. A place in Michigan called Michigan Creative Health Institute and the food is very very simple. People think that's the way you eat forever but that's really what they're really presenting is the cleansing and the healing. You can't usually eat that way forever because it's not going to be enough calories in there for you or even enough variety. So it's a learning process. Fortunately or unfortunately each person really has to learn for themselves. certainly help people do it, in consultations, but it isn't an easy question.

Kevin: What do you think are some of the best ways or most efficient ways to experiment on yourself when when you're doing this?

Nomi: I think that whatever you decide, from reading or taking a class or whatever, is what you want to do, I think you need to try it out and as the days and weeks go by, see how you feel. If you're losing too much weight or not losing enough weight or if the initial uncomfortable feeling,

which can happen when you cleansing and de-toxifying, tummy aches, head aches, aren't going away, you need to revisit. One person can eat two avocados a day, another should only eat two a week, that kind of thing. I do think that a lot of people, my peers, who are writers and teachers in the community, have a tendency to if something works for them to then instruct that that's how you do. But I've learned from long experience there simply is no one right way. I'll give you an example. I had an employee come to my house several years ago. We each made smoothies for ourselves. Mine was -- I'll give you my favorite Green Smoothie. She used some sort of nut milk and some nuts and a few other things, some different fruits. I want to tell you I would have been sick for three days if I had made that for myself. It was just too rich, too filled with multiple nuts. This was a woman who was way thinner than I am. That's what she needed. She knew what she needed. I would have been nauseous initially and felt ill for, so it's really that is why people are confused. They read something, it won't work for them. That's the thing: there is no one guru.

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Kevin Gianni the host of "Renegade Health Show" - a fun and informative daily health show that is changing the perception of health across the world. His is an internationally known health advocate, author, and film consultant. He has helped thousands and thousands of people in over 21 countries though online health teleseminars on The Healthiest Year of Your Life. He is also the creator and co-author of "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution"

HCL Levels, Rotating Greens and Hiking Raw Information From Raw Food Author Victoria Boutenko

In this article, Victoria Boutenko shares on HCL levels, rotating greens and hiking raw. Victoria Boutenko, is part of a raw food family and is the author of Green Smoothies and Green for Life.

Kevin: So does someone just drink green smoothies to bring their HCL levels up again? Should someone be testing for their HCL levels and then see how it works? How you go about that?

Victoria: There are different ways how people could test a level of hydrochloric acid. There are some invasive and expensive ways and there also tests. I have in my book, "Green for Life" a simple test which is 99% accurate. If you answer any of the questions "yes", like four or more questions "yes", then you probably have low hydrochloric acid. And then it explains, the whole chapter explains what happens. And it doesn't hurt to even just add green smoothies, just a prevention so it doesn't happen.

And also in my book, together with Dr. Paul Faber, we performed a pilot study. Dr. Paul Faber, he's been working with people who had low hydrochloric acid and he's been placing them for years on the pill, a hydrochloride pill. With every snack they had to take it in order to be digested, the food. And so he asked if anybody would volunteer instead of this pill, or in addition to this pill, to add a green smoothie for one month. And he tested people before and after. After he retested them, the 28 people volunteered to participate in our experiment and I provided the smoothie. I made for them freshly made and delivered to them for one month. It was in 2004 and after one month he retested them and the improvement was 68.5% on average. That pretty much tells us that most people will reverse thesituation, if not in one month than in two months. Their improvement was depending on the age. The younger people reversed it more, the older people reversed it less.

Kevin: And do we know how it's working?

Victoria: We know how it's working. Most people have low hydrochloric acid because of deficiency in zinc. This is one of the key deficiencies according to my research and other people's research too. And the greens, when they're blended, they do have easy digestible, absorbable zinc and other minerals of course. And when we being to nourish our body then our digestive system recovers, it rests from overworking and then the hydrochloric acid level recovers, becomes normal.

Kevin: You put out the book "Green Smoothies" and now you're putting out a new book because a lot of questions arise. What are some of the biggest questions people had about green smoothies or just about their health as applied to?

Victoria: It's interesting that my book reached not only raw fooders but a lot of general public who didn't even think about changing their diet or who thought they were already eating a good diet because of its simplicity. Raw fooders, usually their typical question is, how can you mix fruit and vegetables? Which I already explained. But other people ask more practical questions. For example, Can you freeze them? Can you dry green smoothies? How many greens do you have to rotate? Because I teach to rotate greens so you don't eat the same greens all the time. I teach to always rotate greens. It's very, very important.

Kevin: Can you explain that just a little bit more?

Victoria: I can explain in just a minute. Other questions would be, what diseases? How long can you keep green smoothies? There are lots of questions. Why am I getting bloated when I drink green smoothie? Some people drink green smooth and they right away they eat their steak or their breakfast or pancakes and they get bloated. So I would say drink your green smoothie first without anything. Just green smoothie. And drink it slowly, make sure it mixes with saliva, sip, sip, sip and then 30 minutes after you're done you can eat whatever you want. Because in 30 minutes it will be penetrated in your body. So many questions.

So in my next book I don't repeat what I said in the first book. It's totally new information and I answer all these questions, many questions, and I add 150 recipes of green smoothies. Some unique recipes. Something with pine needles, with cactuses and some just good ideas for recipes. How to make puddings, how to make super green smoothies and other things.

So now why do we need to rotate is because greens are the most nutritious food on the planet and in order to prevent greens from extinction, nature placed a little bit of poison in each green leaf. But don't be afraid. This amount of poison, or I should say alkaloid, is so minimal, it is actually minute or homeopathic amount. The homeopathy as a science was based on poison in green leaves. This small amount makes everybody's immunity stronger, but we have to rotate. Because for example, parsley has arsenic as an alkaloid in it and spinach has oxalic acid. For example clover has alkaloid nicotine in it and romaine has opium and so on, so on, so on. If you just take one and the same you accumulate it, if you drink green smoothie made out of kale for six months you going to accumulate that alkaloid and it will affect your thyroid. You will begin to feel cold. That's why I say it's very important t that you rotate your greens. If you rotate at least a dozen of greens. One day parsley, one day chard, one day grape leaves, one day pursalane from your garden or dandelions. Rotate. Then you will be fine. But don't just drink one and the same all the time.

Kevin: We've never put grape leaves in our smoothie and they grow everywhere.

Victoria: Everything that's sold in a store originally came from wild nature. In wild nature most things are edible. But of course you need to check, whether it's poisonous in your area. Before you being to pick up everything, you need to check what is poisonous in your area. Because I don't want you to make cocktail out of poisonous hemlock or foxglove. But most things are edible and one thing you must always remember is you always pick your greens before blooming. That's when they're really nutritious. After blooming the nutrition moves into the blossom - the blossoms are very nutritious also. And when the seed is formed then the greens become not nutritious. Because the greens accumulate nutrition predominantly for the sake of the seed and propagation. And shortly after the seed is gone the nutrients from greens go back into the soil and then greens just fall off.

Kevin: Now you and your family hiked... did you hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail?

Victoria: We hiked from Mexican border to the Canadian border in in 1998.

Kevin: Wow, and you did it all raw?

Victoria: We did it all raw.

Kevin: Not even all raw though, actually with foraging, right?

Victoria: I will tell you that my husband, he carried 85 pound bag. I had mine was 50. And Sergei, he was 12 years old then, he carried like 35. And then, the girls, my daughter and my niece went with us, they carried maybe 10, 15. They were too young to carry very heavy backpack.

Kevin: Yeah.

Victoria: So when we started, when we hiked, me and my husband we carried most of the food. And, we couldn't really take that much food for five people for the hike. For example, date people donated us enough dates to have seven days per person per day during the entire hike.

Kevin: OK.

Victoria: Lots of dates.

Kevin: Yes, lots.

Victoria: And, we shipped them along the trail. And so, in the beginning of 100 mile stretch that will be many, very, very heavy chunk of dates. And, one time in the beginning, we were doing 100 mile stretch, and children would ask, they would eat seven dates, they would ask for more, because they're sweet and there's no treats there. And, we kind of let it go, OK, if they will eat them, then we'll fast with them two or three days in the end and then they will know that they should really ration.

Kevin: [laughs]

Victoria: But, after we ate all the food and continued hiking, we figured out it's not easy to hike and fast at the same time. We started to feel kind of down. And all we had left was a little bottle of olive oil, maybe a head of garlic and some kelp, that's all. And, suddenly we noticed that lots of greens, luscious greens around us were looking so yummy to us. Then we were so hungry. And, I knew a little bit about herbs. We started to pick up and try and taste and smell and try to remember , and we figured out there was malva there, there was wild celery, there was wild watercress.. There were things that we knew, plantain, sorrel. We started to pick it up and we would make a salad with few drops of oil, kelp, one clove of garlic thinly sliced with a small pocket knife.

Kevin: Uh-hmm.

Victoria: And, that was the best food we ever ate. Like the best gourmet food. It was so delicious. Everybody were eating and saying, "Hmmm, never ate better food in my life. I would always eat this way." And then, next station we reasoned that there is no reason for us to spend money and buy more food because we can find it everywhere all the time. We just went to local library and looked up some more greens that we could pick up and some berries. And, for the rest of the hike, it's more than 2,000 miles, we hiked mostly foraging.

Kevin: Wow. That's incredible.

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Kevin Gianni the host of "Renegade Health Show" - a fun and informative daily health show that is changing the perception of health across the world. His is an internationally known health advocate, author, and film consultant. He has helped thousands and thousands of people in over 21 countries though online health teleseminars about abundance, optimum health and longevity. He is also the creator and co-author of "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution."