Mike: Hi, everybody. This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, joined by David Wolfe.
David Wolfe: How are you doing, Mike?
Mike: I'm doing great, David. For those who don't know who David Wolfe is, let me tell you: This is the raw food pioneer right here. This is a guy who experiments with raw foods, finds out what works, and then spreads that knowledge and wisdom to people. You're the co-founder of Nature's First Law, and you've got a new book out. Tell us about the new book.
Wolfe: The book just came out this week. This is a remake of "The Sunfood Diet," which was originally released about 8 years ago, and it sent me on a 6 year journey of about 700 lectures. I traveled the entire world promoting that book, and we finally got it into a hardcover version with a lot of color pictures and Kirlian photography -- that's the brilliant color photography of energy flow we've seen on the internet. It really brings people the knowledge and information to add raw food to their life and be able to make healthier choices. And it also fuses that unique thing that we have in America, which is success technology, or self-help technology. We combine that with food and the understanding that people don't do well most of the time because they don't feel well.
Mike: So, what is the number one thing that people need to understand right now that they probably don't know about raw foods, and how the vibration of those foods can affect their lives for the better?
Wolfe: I think it begins by understanding that cooking is a food preservation technology that was developed by our ancestors thousands of years ago. Because we have the technology of refrigeration and the ability to transport great fruits and vegetables and all kinds of different superfoods and exotic foods, we don't really need to be consuming all this cooked food anymore. It's become more of an excess than something that's necessary, and it actually degrades flavor. People are really into food. But they think, “Raw food? It's just going to be carrots and celery.”
Actually, it exposes you to a massive amount of flavor sensations. It's caused a literal epidemic of raw food restaurants to open across America. By the latest count today, there are 69 raw food restaurants worldwide. Twelve years ago there were only two. It just goes to show you what's happening amongst the cultural creative and people who are into different stuff and saying, "I don't want the breast cancer my grandma had, I don't want to go the way that my dad went. I'm going to do something different."
Mike: Indeed. It is really just getting back to basics. It's not something new, but it's catching on out there.
Wolfe: It's like a technological advance. When Ford came up with his assembly line, pretty soon other industries took on the assembly line and it just revolutionized the entire automation of everything; all manufacturing. That’s what's happening in the food world with raw food right now because we have an understanding, based on 150 years of solid research, that there is superior nutrition in raw food versus any other kind of food; processed food, roasted food, microwave food, et cetera.
Since we have that technology to process the food cold without losing any of the natural enzymes or minerals or any other compounds, people are saying, "I can take advantage of this." It can be done inexpensively and it can be added to products. It can be added into our diet, and it can be made more available. I find it interesting, because we live in a time where there's more disease, more illness and more people looking for answers; but, always in nature -- it's like God has set it up this way -- the answer is always there when the problem is created.
Mike: Nature has the wisdom, and it has the answers. Ask the questions and let nature give us the answers, because they're always found there, especially in plants.
Wolfe: I feel like I run my life by a saying a phrase that I feel is exceptionally valuable -- and that is, "God is always talking to you." There's always feedback coming back from the Universe, and I feel like that's true in the healing journey. There's always these little signs coming in, and we just need to become aware. It's really about the humbleness.
I think one of the reasons why our society is in a lot of trouble with health, debt and all this kind of stuff is arrogance, and this is about humbling yourself before, you know, God -- before Mother Nature, and realizing we don't have all the answers. We need to lower that barrier or that resistance, or lower the judgment in particular.
Mike: Although many people will bring a spiritual overlay to nutrition and health and raw foods, even without that, if you just go to the pure science it still holds up. You see the destruction of phytonutrients at higher temperatures, the loss of protein, the loss of digestive enzymes -- the Kirlian photography shows this. Can you show us some pictures?
Wolfe: I'd love to. I just opened to this one. This is a goji berry under Kirlian photography. It's just that explosion of energy, which I really believe is symbolic of the whole raw food phenomenon. We can have not only great health, but also an explosion of health. You have to feel good all the time in order to get there, you know. You can't be eating food that makes you feel terrible. That's what's great about raw food. Sure, not everybody should be eating massive amounts of lettuce or kale, but if you look at what's out there, all these different categories -- fruits and different vegetables, nuts and seeds, seaweed, wheat grass, superfoods, sprouts, and kimchis and sauerkrauts -- it's just unbelievable the choices we have before us.
Mike: You're making me hungry just thinking about it. What about the book? Where can people find the book?
Wolfe: Well, it's now available. RawFood.com has been our website we've had up as an online health food store for about 11 years, so we put it up there first. Amazon will have it soon, and then it will work its way out into the big retailers. Whole Foods, Wild Oats -- big chains like that are usually the first to get it. Some Barnes and Nobles have it. That's how these things just kind of filter out there. The name of the book is "The Sunfood Diet Success System."
Mike: So it's really about a lot more than food, as you said. It's also a technology for personal growth and exploration.
Wolfe: Correct. It's a technology. I'm really into minimum optimum. What I mean by that is how do we actually take advantage of our time, because we have so many opportunities to go for this product, or go here, go to that movie, or go to Disneyland, or whatever it is?
If you take the best technologies that have the most value and concentrate on those things, with the minimum amount of effort, you get optimum results.
Mike: Now that reminds me, one of the biggest questions our readers probably have for you right now is that they don't know where to start, and they're confused about all of this information.
Wolfe: Well, first of all, I've got to say the best place to start is walk into an organic health food store. Start eating organic food, and start eating some of those foods raw. Goji berries are great things to start with, and then you just feel your way out. Start having salad, stop going out to eat at night and start making your own food. Now how do you do that? Well, you just wing it. I mean, I'm way behind the current curve when it comes to making food. I just end up throwing everything into a blender, blending it up and running out the door.
You’ve got to go through a learning curve. I had this one guy who traveled with me for some time who was new to raw food and he was blending cabbage with MSM powder and water and eating it. I was dry-heaving watching him, but you know, he had to go through that learning curve of finding out what tastes good. You pretend like you know what you're doing until you figure it out -- and eventually you do.
What you can do with a blender is amazing -- I know about 50 different things I should be eating every day. You can't sit down there and eat 50 different things, but with a blender, you can throw 20 different things in there in the morning, 20 different things in there for lunch, 10 different things in for dinner -- you get it all, and then you have the most complete, rounded-out nutrition you've ever had in your life. It's a lot of fun and you can make it taste good.
People say, "Well, you know, I don't want to blend everything," but after a while you've been on this path -- the sensation of actually having to chew up all that food and then being tired after a meal is a drag. You want to have the energy to keep going and going, and therefore liquid nutrition becomes -- after a while when you're ready -- a better alternative.
Mike: Let's talk about some of the ingredients that people can use in those smoothies, because your company sells many of them. What are some of the more interesting or unique products that you offer at RawFood.com?
Wolfe: One of the biggest things that we've really done is innovated a lot of exotic raw food products back into the marketplace and back into common levels of consciousness. For example, we brought raw, organic cacao beans into the general commerce. After 500 years being out of the market, people didn't even know what it was.
Mike: Yes! I'm so glad you did, by the way.
Wolfe: Can you imagine what life is like without chocolate? That's what cacao beans are. It's the raw nut that chocolate is made out of, and once you've found out about it, it's a life-changing thing. It's like, "Whoa, wait a second -- not only is chocolate good for me, but it can be a major part of my diet with no side effects and it's all fun."
Mike: You have goji berries, you have yacon tuber -- what else do you have?
Wolfe: Well, I'll just run down the list. Cacao beans, goji berries, Incan berries -- which are one of the sacred foods of the Andes mountains -- Maca, which is a root from the Andes mountains -- another sacred food -- yacon root syrup, agave, a sweetener from cactus that grows out in the desert. We also do a lot of different olive varieties. I'm really into exotic olives and Mediterranean background, so I really love olives and olive oil. We do hemp seeds and hemp seed oil. We do many different exotic types of raw food bars that people make; different companies that are out there making Goji cacao bars or vanilla oat bars that are made out of raw food ingredients. We have a lot of that stuff. We also do a lot of distribution of information in the field of raw food.
Mike: You do a great job of getting information out. That's what I really admire about your work. It is not just about moving products or selling cases of product. You really have to have a passion for this and educate at the same time that you offer someone a product. For example, I order from your company, and with every shipment there's a lot of information. There's a whole catalog of what's new and what's interesting.
Wolfe: That is really a fundamental philosophy of our company -- every package that goes out is like a Christmas present of information so that people are getting turned on to this and that. There's colorful stuff, flyers and all kinds of information. That way, it's more of an entertainment experience. I'm really not just into information or inspiration, but also that ability to inspire.
Mike: You know, you're one of the people who's always talking about the mineralization, which is really what turned me on to this idea using ocean water for growing sprouts.
Wolfe: Best ever. Really what nutrition comes down to -- before we get into the things about raw foods versus this and that and the other thing -- the main thing about food is: Are we getting enough minerals in our diet?
Mike: Right.
Wolfe: It's been shown, for example, when a plant gets a disease. Ultimately, when you analyze the soil that that plant is growing in, there are certain key minerals that are missing, and if you put those minerals in the soil, all of a sudden that plant's disease goes away. You can take that metaphor and draw it out into animals and humans, and you can see what's really the big thing here. Mineral-deficient food is really the ultimate cause of all the food problems that we have today. That's why we have weakling plants that need to be sprayed with pesticides and have artificial fertilizers. Mother Nature figured out this mineral game a billion years ago, and it is known that if you take ocean water and you analyze it, every single mineral known and unknown is present in ocean water. If you use diluted ocean water on your sprouts, on your plants at home, your fruit trees, on your garden -- you start getting, in addition to just the fulfillment of flavor, the power of the food and the amount of food you need to eat goes down.
Why are people obese? They're eating food that has no minerals, so the body goes, "Hey, I don't know when to shut off," and it just keeps eating and eating and eating -- and ultimately, what the body's really looking for is minerals. Usually, it's only one or two different minerals like magnesium or sodium, or some major mineral like that. Anyway, getting this fully mineralized food made with ocean water -- and there's 6 billion gallons of ocean water just on the beach right over here -- it's an infinite resource. You can create the most powerful food in the world.
Mike: I think kids can be powered on that food also.
Wolfe: Right, that's another thing, too. Kids have a different kind of nutritional need than you or I do.
Mike: Exactly.
Wolfe: They need more minerals. If you're at home and you're wondering what to do, if you've got a corner in your garden, just take some diluted ocean water and put it in there and start growing some plants in there. All of a sudden you can feed your kid that vegetable or that fruit that's coming out of there, and they're getting something they can't get from a store.
Mike: Of course, a lot of the products that you sell at Nature's First Law are highly mineralized because they come from natural soils. I mean a lot of them are actually wild-crafted, like the Brazil nuts, correct?
Wolfe: That's correct. Well, the main thing about food -- even before minerals -- is that the whole thing that's going on with food today is love. If there's love in the food -- if the farmer loves what they're doing, and they love the whole making of the food and sending the food off to people and they have that whole connection with the earth -- the food's going to be great. They're more likely to put ocean water in the food or do all those things. So, the main thing we look for with our growers that we work with is love. What's the intention behind that? Is it grown for money, or grown because people love farming?
We also work with people who do ocean-grown food, so some of our food is ocean-grown. And we work with people who are able to package that food in such a way that there's no bacterial contamination and we're getting the food as fresh as possible to the final consumer.
Mike: That's a real challenge with raw foods, because obviously they're not irradiated, and they're not cooked at high temperatures. Do you do nitrogen packaging of some foods, or how do you really handle the shelf life issue?
Wolfe: That's a great question. Sometimes, we do vacuum packing and sometimes we do nitrogen flushing of containers. We work with facilities like the Synergy Company where it has 70 percent of its money spent on quality assurance to make sure there's no microbes in any of its substances. That's the kind of quality that we're really into. That's what people want ultimately, even if they don't know consciously right now that's what they want. Eventually, they'll arrive there if they just keep going down that path.
Mike: One of the things that's really happening out there is that this information is really spreading; the information about health and nutrition. The demand for things like agave nectar is exploding. I mean, just in this pavilion out here today, I saw at least six companies that are now using agave nectar that didn't even know about it last year.
Is it fair to say that love is winning, or that nutrition is winning? We're getting this information out there. We're succeeding in this marketplace. We are changing the health of the people out there. Is that a fair assessment?
Wolfe: I think it is a fair assessment. We are actually impacting major industries. The people that kind of watch us know what we're doing. I mean, I've got the biggest chocolate industries in the world watching my little company. Why is that? It's because they sense that there's a change coming. They sense that it's not going to be the same way it's been for the last hundred years. People want quality. They want organic. They want raw when they can have it, and they want an education that's associated with the food.
I believe a lot of this is driven by the internet and I think that's one of the reasons why the work that you're doing and the work I'm doing on the internet is having a massive impact -- because the internet obliterates the centralized control of information.
Mike: Yes, and again, to those reading -- what you are reading right here -- would never happen in a major newspaper or magazine, because you don't see this interview surrounded by ads. This is us talking about genuine nutrition. Real food. This is the stuff that will really help you be a healthier person, a disease-free person, a happier person with a healthy nervous system and healthy brain function.
Wolfe: Yeah, I think what's happening to anybody who's reading this right now -- you are searching for real information because you know you have been sold a few lies. A big company that's running a $50 billion enterprise cannot suddenly say, "Hey, these pesticides we've been using for the past 50 years are causing cancer in mice, animals and people." They can't do it. The government's on their side, too.
Ultimately, you have to empower yourself to go to the source and say, "What is clean? What is useful in the long term?" You end up looking at organic, plant-based, raw food, and that becomes the preponderance of your diet. Now, you might need a little of this and a little bit of that to make yourself feel satisfied, or whatever is personally amenable to your metabolism.
Ultimately, a big part of your diet -- when it's all said and done -- has got to be raw, organic and plant-based -- and that's the goal of having this conversation.
Mike: Do you think that people should attempt to grow their own food?
Wolfe: As much as possible. Nothing tastes better than your own food, you know. I just flipped open to a random page in a book by Johann von Goethe -- the great German philosopher. It took him more than 60 years to write this play called "Faust," which we've all seen. This play comes in different forms on TV shows and movies, and it tells of a man who makes a pact with the devil.
In that book, [Faust] asks Mephistopheles, the Devil, "What do I have to do to be healthy and happy the rest of my life?" Mephistopheles says, "Well, all you've got to do is grow your own food, take care of your own animals and don't buy stuff from far away."
I was reading this and I was like, "It's right there." I feel that the answer to every problem that we're facing right now really comes down to growing our own food and then processing the waste of that food as it comes through us in a way so that we're not contaminating water. When we've done those two things, we have essentially solved the world's problems.
Mike: That's very interesting, because it also shows your belief of how important it is that we actually live in harmony with the earth instead of exploiting it -- because today, the predominant philosophy out there is that the earth is ours to use, ours to exploit and ours to pollute. We dump on this earth with landfills, and what we do to the rivers and streams in this country is appalling, but obviously you believe in living in harmony with it.
Wolfe: Ultimately, to change and transform the planet, we have to create economic incentives and economic methods of manufacturing that are environmentally friendly, and that entice people into those things. When you're running a big operation and you know your competitor has this technology that's cheap and efficient, but it's trashing the planet, and you don't have it, then you're going out of business. You're kind of stuck.
But, if we can create options, let's say for example you're manufacturing plastic, you can make that plastic out of cornstarch cheaper than plastic. It's environmentally friendly, it degrades in the environment and there's no pollution. This is where it's going in big business over the next 20 years. I think everybody in his or her heart knows that we can no longer exploit the planet. We have to do everything we can to live in harmony, to plant trees, to create a peace. You know, there's an old saying my dad told me once. He said, "Don't crap where you live."
Mike: That's very good advice, because we all live on this planet.
Wolfe: Yes, and we've got to keep it clean.
Mike: It's wonderful too, because you are a part of an organization that is pioneering these new business models that honor the planet. People like "Amazon John" Easterling at the Amazon Herb Company. He's doing the same thing with the rainforests down in Peru. This is a huge trend. The ethical entrepreneur or the spiritual entrepreneur, as you said. Do you think this really has a chance of catching on in the free-market, capitalist society that we have today?
Wolfe: I hope so. That's really what it's all about. I really feel like the younger generation that's coming in right now; their entrepreneurial flavor is one that is very education-oriented, very spiritually oriented, and very much oriented toward saving the planet. They're not going to start up a business that has a side effect of creating landfills. They'd rather do nothing or they'd rather go live on a beach in Hawaii. That's what I'm seeing in the younger generation. I think what the older generation needs to do is create alternative business models that are cheaper but environmentally friendly.
Mike: Can you give out your web addresses again so people can find your information and find your products?
Wolfe: Well, I want to mention that RawFood.com has been an online health food store for about a dozen years, and is one of the strongest businesses that I'm involved with. One of the ways that I met you was through Lynn Foley who has been web mastering our site, TheBestDayEver.com. TheBestDayEver.com has been an informational resource -- like HealthRanger.org -- to just bring people all that information. Literally hundreds of lectures I've given are now online. There's MP3 files so tonight you can go to that website, and you sign up, you can download these lectures onto your iPod -- or other music player -- and listen to it non-stop and saturate yourself with that empowering information, all of which helps you to make better choices. Another site is DavidWolfe.com, which is more of a fun site that I finally put together after many years.
Mike: Well, for TheBestDayEver.com, I've got to say I love the site and for those who want to go check that out and download all that information, the best time to listen to your lectures is when you're preparing raw food.
Wolfe: That's right. Masaru Emoto's book, "Messages of Water," made some people familiar with it because of the "What the Bleep" movie, and some people got the book, but what it's saying is that water crystals respond to our consciousness. Water is always responding to our thought form even if the water is sitting over there. Well, the water is in food, raw food.
Mike: Absolutely.
Wolfe: Therefore, if we're putting that intention into that food or if we're growing our own food that has water in it, that food is essentially developing along a more ennobled form -- because our interest is in it, our love is in it, our consciousness is in it. You really can taste that when you grow your own food. Ultimately, one of the things about water is that it is associated with raw. Fire is associated with cooking. If you look at every living form, you will not find a fire in any living thing on the planet.
Mike: Of course, all the animals out there eat raw.
Wolfe: Right. What do you find in every living thing in the world? Every bacteria, every human, every plant -- you find water. All we really are is a machine that ennobles water, and that uplifts water to high levels of consciousness. You can't really do that on pizza. But, you can do that with fresh vegetable juice. You can do that with smoothies.
Mike: I love this whole area, and I know we can talk hours on this. Some people call it the homeopathy of foods. What do you call it? Do you have a name for that?
Wolfe: I just call it the best food ever.
Mike: Right on.
Wolfe: That's what I say when people ask what I'm into. I tell them that I'm into the best food ever. They say, "Well, that's too much for me. I can't do it now." It only takes a step at a time to do this, and there's so much nutrition in this. There's more nutrition in this than I probably got in a week when I was seven years old.
Mike: It's super dense, and it's like a whole meal.
Wolfe: Correct -- that's what we want to do. We want to bring people up to a level of nutrition where there's nothing lacking and they're really able to fully manifest their genetics. One of the things that can cause genetic problems is if there's a certain mineral that's missing -- in childhood for example -- and certain things never come up to a full functioning status, or if an immune system is constantly low because zinc might be deficient or there might be a deficiency of iodine. Then, the problems gets blamed on their genes -- when actually, the gene was never activated or expressed. Genetics are influenced by minerals. Dr. Maynard Murray showed that definitively, and this is all related to nutrition. Ultimately, everything in the universe is ingesting something, it's absorbing something and it's excreting something in our life. How does this relate? Well, that's saying that we all know it's in every culture in every religion -- every civilization throughout all of history and all time -- you are what you eat, and it really begins to come home to roost.
There's a good friend of mine, Doug Evans, who's one of the great spiritual entrepreneurs on the whole planet. I mean, this guy is absolutely a powerhouse of energy and concentration, and he's a raw food person and an organic person. He has a saying, and that is, "Genius is self-bestowed. Mediocrity is self-inflicted." You can become a genius in whatever you're doing if you take advantage of the technologies. One of those technologies is food. You're not told that in first grade. But, it's the foundational thing of who you're becoming in every moment. What food did you eat? Are all the minerals present? Are you getting all the right fatty acids so your brain and nervous system function properly? From that information, all of a sudden you're able to start thinking clearly. The fog goes away. ADD symptoms go away, and you can focus. You know, ADD is an epidemic in America, and it's affecting the economic power of America -- but it doesn't have to be doing this.
Mike: I find it amazing. Almost 20 percent of our school children now in this country are diagnosed with ADD. Crime's a problem, too. These children have aggressive behavior and suicidal behavior just because these 20 percent are dosed on psychotropic drugs. In my heart, I know that the technology you're talking about is the solution to this. Raw foods are the solution to these issues.
Wolfe: We know the solutions to our problems. This is very important for people to understand, and if you're in this field for a long enough time -- not just the field of raw foods, but just alternative health and nutrition, and even alternative lifestyles -- you do realize that all the solutions have been found. They're not implemented because either people don't know enough about it or spiritual entrepreneurs haven't gotten behind it. Another reason is that it's been deliberately withheld from us.
Mike: Oh, that last reason is a big factor. It goes back to guys like Dr. Weston Price, the dentist, back in the 1930s. He put the pieces together back then and was routinely ignored for decades. Not just ignored, but ridiculed and ostracized by conventional medicine, which said, "food has nothing to do with health."
Wolfe: You know what's so interesting about that? They say, "Food has nothing to do with health -- but here, eat these pills." It's still a food of some sort. We cannot get away from this whole food thing. So what we're really doing is we're just saying, "How can we best channel into our body the best food possible in every moment?" Now, of course, we're going to have slip-ups and what not -- we might make a mistake and eat this, but in general, direction determines destination.
So, if we're walking into that organic food store, we're going to be making better and better choices, and eventually what happens is the flow of food that's coming in suddenly comes in from over here -- all of a sudden -- and all our cells start being able to breathe. We are actually like a hive of 60 trillion different cells, and they each want their oxygen, they each want their water, they each want their goodies and they each want their protein. How are we going to get that from fried chicken?
Mike: We're not.
Wolfe: So, how can we get it? Well, we can get it now. We've got superfoods, we've got vegetables, fresh vegetable juices, raw fruits and vegetables in every description imaginable and we've got organic food of every description imaginable. The answer is there.
Mike: At this time in human history, we have access to the most exotic and the most amazing foods of any civilization that we know of in the history of this planet. It's due to people like you who are getting this out there, but we are blessed right now with access to this food that kings would have killed for, you know?
Wolfe: It's realizing that your body's a temple and the food that you eat is holy and sacred. If you are in any way a spiritual person -- I do believe most Americans are spiritual people -- you will look at your body and say, "Wait a second. I can no longer be dumping trash in here or be treated with every kind of antibiotic chemical, larvicide, fungicide, herbicide, et cetera. I've got to get on the good stuff."
Mike: Of course, once you get on the good stuff, if you ever go back and try some of that garbage food, you pay the price real quick. Your body tells you what's going on.
Wolfe: That's why it's not a rush, really. As much as I like getting on the good stuff, you eventually start feeling the low that happens from eating the other food if you fall back on it. It's automatic, because humans are motivated by pain, and they want to move away from pain and motivate toward pleasure. Well, that's just a human instinct. As soon as that food starts to make you feel sick or upset, you don't want it anymore. You want the stuff that's keeping you high and happy all the time.
Mike: We're talking with David Wolfe here from RawFood.com and TheBestDayEver.com. Check out both of those websites for your raw food ingredients and your raw food information -- a lot of information that goes way beyond raw foods into really personal development and spirituality. Just getting the bigger picture about what it's like to be alive today is key. It's a very interesting time to be alive and it's been a very interesting conversation with you, David.
Wolfe: Thank you, Mike Adams. Have the best day ever. It's been a pleasure.
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