Interview With John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part II of II)

The following is the second and final installment of an interview with John McCabe concerning his book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health. Here he ventures beyond his own story and the story of writing this book, and goes on to explain the intentions behind Sunfood Living, and the need in today’s society for the movement that it promotes.

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You call Sunfood Living a “Resource Guide” and have been praised for its clarity and comprehensibility as an “Encyclopedia for Healthy Living.” Is it your intention for the book to be referred to as a reference book or to be read continuously from cover to cover? How do you imagine readers to use Sunfood Living most effectively?

I’ve heard from several people who say they have read it cover-to-cover. I’ll take it as a compliment that anyone did do it.

You never know how certain books will connect with people. Of course, you can’t control what people think of your book. It takes on a life of its own. I’ve heard people describe the book as a “Bible.” I think that might be a compliment.

I didn’t consider that the book was going to be read by people in places like Brazil, China, Australia, and India. But, that is what is going on. I’ve heard from people in those countries, and others. Authors today may want to consider that they are writing for a global market.

I think of the book as a reference book. I suspect that people would most likely read the first half of the book, and then use the resource guide in the second half to look up topics that interest them.

Sunfood Living at once explores both the environment and personal health. Did your interest in writing this book originally stem from one of these two subjects? Or did you anticipate the intimate connection between an individual’s food choices and the health of the environment from the beginning?

I had always been concerned about the environment. Even as a child I liked to plant trees, and I kept a vegetable garden going since I was first able to start using a shovel. As a boy I would go into the nearby woods to clean them of trash. I recently found out that the woods and meadows I hung out in as a child have all been cut down, and most of the area is a large parking lot. Specific trees have been planted, and they are wide enough apart so that a tractor lawn mower can get between them. The dirt pathways have been paved so that people won’t get their shoes soiled. It’s all so pathetic.

By the time I was ten years old I had pretty much concluded that I didn’t want to eat animals. I had no idea that other people avoided meat. I only started to tilt toward a plant-based diet after I saw a deer hanging from my neighbor’s back yard tree, where they had tied it up by its hind legs and slit open its neck to drain its blood. I was alone when I saw this, and it changed my life.

As far as the animal farming industry and the impact it has on the environment, when I was young I had no idea how much of harm animal farming was and is doing to the planet. Now there are many studies concluding that animal farming and all of its related industries cause more global pollution than all trucks, cars, and airplanes combined. The most common use of farmland throughout the world is to grow food for billions of farmed animals, not for people. The most common use of synthetic fertilizers is to grow the food for farmed animals. The fertilizers are the number one cause of dead zones that are now in every ocean. The fertilizers are also major players in the excessive microscopic algae growth that is killing sea coral around the planet. Sea coral support 25% of all life forms in the oceans, and all sea coral have either died, or are growing at stunted rates. The algae is also blocking light in the lakes, rivers, and oceans, which allows bacteria to grow out of control, which is killing all sorts of marine life. The bacteria feed on the sugars from the algae, and the bacteria also feed on the little creatures called polyps that make up the sea coral. Those are some levels of the damage being done by the animal farming industry, and by farms that are using synthetic farming chemicals. I am glad that I am not participating in the animal farming industry.

When we consider what people are eating these days, and what they treating as food, it is easy to make the connection between the health problems they are experiencing (obesity, diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc.) and the foods they are eating. This is especially true when you look at people who follow a plant-based diet, and compare them to those who consume whatever commercial culture is advertising as food. If it is advertised on television and radio as food, you can pretty much consider it to be junk food. Real food doesn’t need to be advertised. It is raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and seaweeds that we should be eating. And not fast food and packaged stuff advertised as convenient, and especially not anything that contains synthetic dyes, flavorings, scents, preservatives, or other chemicals. Junk food makes your life inconvenient because consuming it leads to health problems.

As far as how the book happened, I can’t really pinpoint any one thing. I had written a book about the corruption in the medical industry. It was titled Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates. That book got me to thinking of ways that people can maintain and improve their health so that they wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to rely on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and surgery to make them healthful.
I began writing a book in 1994 that was all about the vegetarian diet. Over the years I would work on it a bit, then put it away. Eventually that book is what became Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health.

It wasn’t one thing that got me to write the book. It was many things. Life is a complex combination of intricate details that all play off of and impact one another. Sunfood Living connects the dots. Our health equals the health of wildlife and Earth. We are all connected. What you do each day impacts wildlife thousands of miles away. People should recognize that and adjust their lives accordingly to be a part of the solution rather than carry on being part of the disease we are calling global warming.

As the Foreword describes, this book is infused with ethical consciousness. In what ways do the ethics of global health become linked to politics? Do you see this relationship as productive or problematic?

We are all politicians. We are all campaigning for how we believe the world should be. We do this by our daily choices. We should start being what we want to see.

If we don’t change our ways very soon, we won’t have to worry about any of this. The ice caps will melt – they are melting. The ocean currents will change – they are changing. The ocean life will collapse – it is collapsing. When there are no sea creatures to support the circle of life of the land creatures, the land creatures will die. The nuclear power plants on the edges of rivers and oceans will flood. The world will be poisoned beyond anything covered in Al Gore’s documentary, The Inconvenient Truth. Massive extinction will take place – a massive extinction is taking place.

Is that a problem?

People need to become involved in their lives, in becoming part of the solution. The number one way humans interact with Earth is by what we eat. Change what you consume to be more environmentally sustainable.

In Sunfood Living, you present a system with which to approach the world: challenge, action, resolution. Why is this course of action important and what does it achieve?

I try to provide information that will educate people, both through my writing, through quotes I include, and through Web sources and suggested reading material.

The best way for getting people to act is to get them to understand. If they don’t understand something, they are not likely to act on it.

We are Earth and we are each other. We absorb things that are around us. There are substances constantly passing through our skin and bodies that then travel into other things. There is no separation of us and Earth. Thinking that we are separate from each other is fallacy. We are breathing in gasses, drinking water, and eating food. We are taking in wavelengths of light from Sun that are used by our bodies as nutrients. We are producing molecules that leave our bodies and saturate the people and things around us. If you look at us under a supercharged microscope, you can see that nothing in us is actually touching. There is space between the smallest substances. The energy fields of the planet are playing into the energy fields inside of us. What we choose to do impacts other things on subtle levels.

We are alive at an amazing time. We have the opportunity to transform ourselves and to transform the Earth into a much more healthful state.

You are achieving something with every choice you make. But, is it what you wish to be achieving? Are your achievements part of the solution?

You just touched on the fact that we are alive at “an amazing time.” Can you please expand on the particular reason for this book to be written now, for the world today? Are there any changes on a global level that you hope to see resulting from the distribution of Sunfood Living and other books on related topics?

If now isn’t the time to transform human culture to be more Earth friendly, than I don’t know what time it is.

I hope Sunfood Living turns people to a whole new level of health, a different way of dealing with their every day decisions, and gets people to set new standards of how we treat Earth and the web of life on Her.

And I hope Sunfood Living plays a part in getting us to restore and protect wildlife habitat so that we no longer have to worry about another creature or plant going extinct.

CLICK HERE to read Part I of the interview with John McCabe.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s new Sunfood Traveler web site, a simple and free guide to raw food and sustainability.

David Wolfe Featured on Coast to Coast Radio

David Wolfe is the bestselling author of The Sunfood Diet Success System, Naked Chocolate, Eating for Beauty, Amazing Grace and the upcoming Superfoods. On August 7, 2008 Wolfe was a featured guest on Coast to Coast Radio. In this interview, Wolfe offered his insights into the rapidly expanding world of raw foods and expounded upon his motto, “You are what you eat.” He explained that education is critical if people are to reach their peak physical performance. Wolfe encouraged everyone to adopt a raw foods diet, full of high power nutrition. This is important for those who are healthy, as well as those who are sick.

CLICK HERE to download the MP3 and listen to David Wolfe on Coast to Coast Radio.
CLICK HERE to learn more about David Wolfe’s books.

Interview with John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part I of II)

John McCabe is one of the leading lecturers and authorities on raw food nutrition in the world today. His new book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health, offers solutions and improvements for the consumerist lifestyle that is plaguing society today. He addresses the intimately related subjects of health and the environment, raising awareness while promoting active change toward the lifestyle necessary for the future of our planet. The following is the first installment of an interview with McCabe in which he describes his own involvement in the Sunfood movement as well as his process in writing this new book.

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Your book explains that Sunfoodists “do not eat animal protein of any sort, including from dairy, eggs, meat, or derivatives of these. They eat only uncooked (not heated, fried, boiled, grilled, toasted, blanched, broiled, barbecued, or micro waved) food consisting of the wide variety of edible plants.” How did you come to adopt these dietary choices and lifestyle? What health improvements has this change accomplished for you personally?

Probably the most common definition is of raw food vegans. Some choose to consume bee products (honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis), which does not classify them as vegans.

The term “Sunfoodist” has been around for at least several decades. When Dugald Semple wrote his 1956 book, The Sunfood Way To Health, he pretty much defined Sunfoodists as people who follow an uncooked vegan diet.

David Wolfe’s book, The Sunfood Diet Success System, which I helped to edit, includes raw honey and other unheated bee products in the classification of superfoods. Frederic Patenaude’s recipe book, Sunfood Cuisine, which I helped him to write, includes honey as an optional sweetener for some of the recipes.

Sunfoodists are a variety of people living in various cultures. Not all are so strict as to only consume a totally unheated diet. Many, may drink herbal tea. Some may steam certain foods, such as sweet potatoes. Others may eat soup, which is pretty safe. My book explains that lightly boiling foods does not create the harsh chemicals, acrylamides and glycotoxins, that are created when you bake, fry, sauté, toast, broil, barbeque, micro waved, or otherwise cook foods at high temperatures.

But, mostly, the Sunfood diet consists of unheated, fresh food, and preferably those that have been organically grown, or otherwise whatever is the highest quality available to you. I always advise people to become involved in growing some of their foods. What else could be more healthful than food picked from your own garden?

As far as how I got into eating a raw food diet, that is a long story. But, basically, when I was growing up I always kept a vegetable garden. I grew up poor, and a lot of times the only real food I could get was what was growing outside. It was also what I liked to eat more than anything. There were a lot of wild fruit trees, berry bushes, and even wild tomatoes and melons growing in the nearby woods and meadows. I noticed that I felt great during the summer. In the winter, when I didn’t have access to fresh food, I would always get sick for weeks at a time, and my skin became a mess with eczema and acne. I had mostly been a vegetarian since I was ten, but still ate junk and sometimes meat. As I recognized how good I felt in the summer while eating fresh foods, and how cruddy I felt in the winter eating whatever, my desire grew for fresh fruits and vegetables, so that is what I started doing more and more. I haven’t had a cold in years, and I don’t have the skin issues I did when I was younger. Eliminating all dairy and junk food- especially fried food, and consuming a lot more greens, including green juices, seems to have been the most beneficial dietary move. Daily exercise, becoming educated, and staying physically and intellectually active work in conjunction with diet to maintain health.

When I was young I had no idea that other people were doing this raw food thing, or that there was a classification for it. When I got out of high school I worked in loud and dirty factories and nobody there seemed happy or healthy. I had already known that I wanted something very different for my life. When I was 16 I had hitchhiked across country and also went on long road trips with friends. I found that I liked the ocean. Eventually, after quitting factory work, I moved to California. On my hitchhiking adventure, I had seen fruit growing in California in the middle of winter, which didn’t happen where I grew up. By the time I was 20 I was working as a background extra in a bunch of movies and TV shows, and was also working as a private chef for wealthy people in their mansions – and I worked as a limousine driver. I had lots of exposure to a lot of people who I grew up seeing in movies and hearing sing on the radio. Peggy Lee and Doris Duke, who were best friends, and almost like a mom and aunt to me, taught me how to make smoothies and juices from fresh fruits and vegetables. I found that a lot of the old timers were very much into fresh fruits and vegetables. For instance, Jimmy Stewart kept a vegetable garden next to his house, and he shared them with his neighbor, Lucile Ball.

For a while I moved all over the country and got into all sorts of situations. Wherever I lived and no matter what I was doing, I sought out the most healthful food.

David Wolfe was the first person I met who told me about Sunfoodists. I met him randomly at some natural products convention in the 1990s. He walked past me and I stopped him to find out where he got his hemp backpack. We ended up talking in the middle of crowds of people streaming through the convention. By the time I had met him I had already written two books about the medical industry. He asked me to look at the early manuscript of his book, The Sunfood Diet Success System. I went through it with a red pen and made a ton of notes, then sent it back to him with a lot of information about topics I thought he may want to research. That is how we became involved with our writing projects. I ended up working as a research and content editor on the first six editions of that book. He also used me for his other book, Eating for Beauty. Some other authors have also used me, but the agreement was as a “ghost,” so I’m not allowed to mention the other authors.

When I first started realizing that people were following fresh food diets, there was a big empty void of information about the benefits. Now there are all of these books, Web sites, seminars, and raw food restaurants. It is cool that I helped fuel this thing. Raw food has become this huge movement. Hollywood people and some sports stars have become interested in raw food. Wall Street is beginning to notice. Just recently a major food company purchased the raw food nutrition bar company, Larabar.

I know many people who have dramatically transformed their health by following a Sunfood diet. One is Angela Stokes of RawReform.com. Another is a man in my neighborhood. At one time he looked like a thug-for-hire. Now he looks like a prince. Sergei Boutenko is another who experienced dramatic benefits after switching to a raw food diet. He was diagnosed with diabetes and told that he would need to be on insulin for the rest of his life. Since cleaning up his diet, Sergei no longer takes insulin. With his sister, Valya, he is the co-author of the new recipe book, Fresh.

Outside of your dietary choices, how do you incorporate the theories and values described in Sunfood Living into your life in daily practice?

Just like everyone else, I am here making daily choices, trying to make my way, and hopefully making the better choices.

Diet is just one small part of the book, and it is one small part of who we are.

How we act displays our thoughts and standards.

I believe we can all make better choices, and improve our standards. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to rely on multi-national corporations to supply our every need. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to not be involved in some aspect of growing food. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to purchase soaps and household products that contain chemicals that damage the environment. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to support the animal farming, fast food, and junk food industries when we know that, combined, they do more damage to the planet than any other industries.

Collectively, what we choose to do as individuals can change the world. The collective culture, collective mind, collective diet, and collective choices of all of us can dramatically improve the world, or do otherwise.

I, like everyone, know that the biggest room is the room for improvement.

As far as specific things I’m doing, that would have to include a lot of things. One of them is that I mostly ride a bike to get around. It is something that I have always done. But now it is being looked at as a solution to our problems, and it is. I grow some of my own food. I make food, and I am involved in a network of people who also do the same.

If you look at what Cuba did to save their country after the Soviet Union collapsed, you can get a good idea of what North Americans can be doing.

Cuba once relied on the Soviet Union for food and fuel. But, when the cold war ended and the wall fell, they suddenly found themselves in a terrible situation. Cubans had to change their ways, and they had to do it quickly. They revolutionized their food system. Within a few years the amount of food Cuba was growing increased by several hundred percent. They became involved in biofuel production and in other alternative energy sources. What they did localized their economies, which is more healthful than relying on products and cash flow from distant lands. Suddenly they no longer worried about their next meal, they simply turned to their yard, to neighborhood gardens, and to local farmers’ markets.

I strongly advocate that people turn away from car culture; away from relying on fossil fuels; away from supporting chain restaurants; away from the meat industry; away from celebrity obsession; and away from all of the practices that are greatly damaging the planet.

Much of your book is based in hard facts, convincing statistics, and an immense compilation of relevant resources. Can you describe the course you followed in order to accomplish all of the research to complete the text?

I read a lot. I do a lot of studying to find out what it is that books, newspapers, and other sources of information are saying. I try to find out where people found out the things they learned to make their conclusions. I’m not good at settling for surface answers. I’m not the kind of person who follows gurus or believes everything I hear in the mass media.

When I was an intern at a public radio station they gave me the job of writing the morning news. From that, I realized how much of the stuff you hear on popular news sources is rehashed from other sources. Lots of times they get the facts all wrong, and sometimes they do it on purpose to present a certain slant to a story that serves their agenda. Hollywood, the government, and corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to present information in ways they believe will benefit them. A lot of what you are hearing in the news is some level of mistruth.

To compile my first book, Surgery Electives, I spent loads of time in university libraries reading the textbooks that doctors read to become doctors. The UCLA medical library staff thought I was a medical student. I never told them that I wasn’t, and I had never told them that I was. They helped me in all sorts of ways. I contacted government records offices and got copies of reports and also transcripts of meetings and hearings. I dug up old news stories. I went out and interviewed people, including medical malpractice attorneys, doctors, teachers, legislatures, authors, nurses, government employees, and pharmaceutical and insurance company workers. I met with people who truly repulsed me, including people who did terrible things or who were involved in all sorts of corruption. But I kept a calm manner because I wanted to get information out of them that I could use to write my book in a way that it could be most helpful for the readers. I also spoke with people who were left with their health ruined medical mistakes. I went places and saw things that people like to shove away because it is too terrible to face. A few of the people I interviewed for the book ended up committing suicide because the medical problems they had been left with after surgery mistakes left them debilitated far beyond anything they felt they could deal with. I also spoke to people who lost family members to medical errors, including one particular family whose daughter was killed as two medical students were operating on her for cancer. They accidentally punctured her heart. The autopsy showed that the young woman had no sign of cancer in her body.

What triggered me to write that book was a small article I read in the newspaper one day about a woman who murdered her doctor, and who then committed suicide.

I wrote Sunfood Living by doing lots of reading, and by talking with lots of people. I interviewed slaughterhouse workers, and a whole slew of people who shared information that helped me write the book. I also watched a lot of documentaries and saw things that I would otherwise never care to see.

While writing my books, I developed my own way of writing. I like to include lots of quotes in my books so that the readers know that they are not just reading my opinion, and that when I do state something in a book, I’m basing it on research.

The information that you use to support the central ideas of your book comes from a wide spectrum of sources—everything from quotations about Darwinism to references to Orson Wells’ radio broadcasts to an exploration of the cost of maintaining golf courses. During your inquiries into such a variety of topics, was there anything that you came across that you did not expect to find or that was surprising?

The one thing that surprises me the most is that people have no idea where their food comes from; that most people aren’t involved in growing any of their food, and never have been involved in culinary gardening.

Eating is our most basic need. How could anyone live without coming to the realization that they are completely ignorant about their food sources? But, look at the garbage people are eating. If it looks sexy in an advertisement, they want to put it in their mouth. And it doesn’t seem to matter what is in it, or from where it originated.

I have a friend who eats all sorts of junk food. When I presented her with some basil that I grew, she didn’t believe that it was basil. She thought it only came dried and crumbled in little jars people purchase at the supermarket. When I suggested that she taste it, she winced and said that it needed to be dried first.

We are living in a time when most people depend on stores and restaurants to supply their food. That shows how distanced people are from Nature, and provides evidence of why the world is in such a messed up state of health.

McCabe is the author of Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates and has been a ghost co-writer on health-related books by other authors. He has also been a content and research editor on books written by David Wolfe, including the best selling raw vegan lifestyle book The Sunfood Diet Success System. His next project is the upcoming book Hemp: What the World Needs Now.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s Sunfood Living web site.

Sacred Commerce: Business as a Path of Awakening

Café Gratitude founders Matthew and Terces Engelhart built their award-winning raw foods restaurants on a commitment to always being present to the amazing abundance of our world. This pledge is evident in every aspect of their business, and the pair has succeeded in creating not only incredible culinary experiences, but remarkably spiritual and positive workplaces as well.

The excerpt below, from Matthew and Terces Engelharts’ new book, Sacred Commerce: Business as a Path of Awakening, shows how a change in perspective can paint workplace conflicts in a whole new light.

Chapter 12
There Is Nothing Wrong

Most of us have grown up in a culture where there is definitely something wrong when things do not turn out the way we expect them to. If it wasn’t that way for us at home, it most likely was that way at school. Consciously or unconsciously, we have been acculturated to believe that there is a way that life should be, and if it isn’t that way, there is something wrong with us, with those around us, and with life itself. Letting go of this concept can be challenging, for we have also come to believe that change occurs when something is so wrong we can no longer stand it. We want you to consider that there is power in realizing that change can be initiated at any time, and nothing needs to be “wrong” in order to actualize change.

Consider this: you could change a job or a relationship that is in great shape. It isn’t a prerequisite that something needs to be in bad shape in order for you to move on. Making something or someone wrong diminishes you and your life; it places you in judgment of someone or something and separates you from the unity of life. Only when we are one with the whole of life can we know ourselves as fulfilled and complete, missing nothing. Many people spend their lives looking to complete themselves through accomplishment. What if the only true completion is when we come to know ourselves as one with all of life, with no separation or judgment?

Some people imagine that the flip-side of “nothing is wrong” is resignation to a set of circumstances. That is not what we are saying. We are advocating standing for what you believe, creating business as an opportunity to initiate powerful change in the world, including the awakening of its people, and a good starting place is the vision that there is nothing wrong.

I recall an occasion in which an employee contacted us feeling angry and unappreciated. In the face of this expression, I reflexively began to wonder why we were working so hard to keep this person on board. I started thinking, ‘This is a waste of time.’ I caught myself and shifted my attention to all the ways in which the employee had contributed to our company. I also thought about the beneficial difference we have made in the employee’s life. My judgment separated me from the win-win we had been for each other, the awakening process we were sharing. We could learn and grow from being in relationship; this person was actually contributing to us, in part by flushing out my impatience. When I let go of my inclination toward making the employee wrong, I immediately felt connected and appreciative.

Practice

Identify a situation at work where you are creating the belief that “there is something wrong; it shouldn’t be this way.” Now consider what the impact of that view is on the quality of your life. Ponder an outcome in which you let go of the idea that there’s something wrong and instead just see that this is the way that situation is–what would your experience be? What might you be feeling? What actions might you take?

From Sacred Commerce by Matthew and Terces Engelhart, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2008 by Matthew and Terces Engelhart. Reprinted by permission of publisher.

To learn more about the Engelharts and Café Gratitude, visit http://cafegratitude.com. The site includes menus, workshop information, newsletters, media clippings, and videos.

CLICK HERE to order a copy of Sacred Commerce.

Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days

What:
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days
This thought provoking and inspiring, new feature documentary about the healing powers of live foods features Gabriel Cousens, MD, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Spurlock from SuperSize Me, Rev. Michael Beckwith, David Wolfe, and six people with the courage and love to heal and transform.

Where & When:
The Newport International Film Festival, Rhode Island
June 5 at 6pm and June 7 at 12pm

Tickets are available at newportfilmfestival.com.

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Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is an independent documentary film that chronicles six McDonald’s-munching Americans with diabetes who switch to a diet consisting entirely of vegan, organic, live, raw foods in order to reverse diabetes naturally. The six participants are challenged to give up meat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, soda, junk food, fast food, processed food, packaged food, and even cooked food – as well as go without their loved ones and many of their creature comforts – for 30 days…

…Simply Raw shows each participant’s remarkable journey and captures the medical, physical, emotional and spiritual transformations brought on by this radical diet and lifestyle change. Participants were supervised by Gabriel Cousens, M.D. and Helen Ross, M.D. at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona.

The feature film Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is in post production and will premiere at the Newport International Film Festival.

CLICK HERE to view the film trailer for Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days.

CLICK HERE for more information about There is a Cure for Diabetes by Gabriel Cousens.

CLICK HERE for more information about The Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center.