The Right Combination • Burning the Midnight Oil

Transcription

Aloha, this is John Kohler with Okraw.com. Today we have another exciting episode for you, and this one has actually been 20 years in the making, believe it or not. That’s 2015 celebrates my 20th year being into a plant-based, raw fruit and vegetable based diet. I started back in 1995 and many you guys may know, I almost lost my life when I was younger. What got me really serious into the raw foods diet and almost since the time I’ve started, I’ve been educating people about raw foods first by creating a website, Rawfoods.com or living-foods.com and now more recently, giving YouTube lectures and going around and teaching people in person. And so what I’m going to share with you guys next, and I want you guys to turn this video on when you guys have some time. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not a quick five minute video where I give you everything you need to know in five minutes, right? Because frankly, I don’t believe in those kind of videos. Everybody in our society today, we want the quick fix. We want the pill to get it up. We want the answer in two minutes. Well let me tell you guys, it’s not going to happen. Life is an experiential process and it’s an adventure. And over the last 20 years I’ve learned so many different things and in this upcoming literally two-hour episode, I’m going to share with you 20 different things you need to know to be successful on a raw foods diet. These are things that I’ve learned, and some of things I wish I learned a long time ago to basically I can be in an even better place today. Trust me, I’m still learning today and I want to always encourage you guys never stop learning and stop growing and stop becoming better wherever you’re at. Now before I get into this video, I want to share with you guys one more tip that actually didn’t make it in to the video. And the tip was simply this: eliminate as many toxins as you can in your life, whether that means environmental or chemical toxins like Barbasol shaving cream, Crest toothpaste. Those have some nasty ingredients that are not good for us. Anything that you put in or on your body or near your body gets absorbed into your body and may have negative health effects. This is what I try to steer away from. I don’t use a cellphone. My cellphone actually right here is an iPhone 4 and it actually has no cell service. If you turn it on, it’s always in airplane mode because it’s these cell signals that produce a lot of RF frequency right by your head, and there’s studies in Europe that show it causes things like brain cancer. I know some of you guys need your cellphones, you’re tied to it. I also want to encourage you guys to disconnect and get out o nature but that’s, I included some of those, but we want to try to get toxins out of our lives and that’s one of the things I didn’t get to put in the video. So anyways, without further ado, I’m going to get into that video but the last thing I want to tell you guys, if you don’t have two hours to watch this, down in the bottom there’s a little spoke wheel, gear-looking thing on YouTube. I think it’s down on that side or maybe on that side. You can click that and actually you can speed up the play that this plays so you could have me and hear me talk at 1.5 times speed or even two times speed and then I’ll talk like this. And if you can understand me when I talk like this you’ll be able to understand me when I talk at two speed. And then it’s actually going to take half the time to listen to the video because I do want you guys to get all of this video so you can be more successful than I have been living a plant-based raw foods diet for the last 20 years because there’s not a lot of people doing it successfully or just for this long. Especially a lot of the people that you may be watching and looking up to on YouTube, they have not been doing raw foods this long. And when you’ve been doing it this long, you can have a little bit more wisdom, be a little bit more wise, a little bit more clear, more clarity about some of the right ways and some of the maybe not-so-good ways to od things. I try to teach you guys always the best of what I know, and what I’m teaching you guys is simply my opinions on what’s worked for me and hopefully when you guys try it, it’ll work for you as well. So without further ado, let’s get into the video. So I want to give a talk today at the Woodstock Fruit Festival of Hawaii to share what I’ve learned over the last 20 years on a plant-based raw diet. I started back in 1995, so this is my 20th year that I’ve been doing this, and I’ve seen a lot of people come and go out of raw foods. Some of my teachers that I’ve learned from are still doing raw foods today and I don’t like to say I follow anyone’s particular style, whether I follow natural hygiene or A1010 or high fat. I kind of pick and choose from all the different kinds of raw foods diets that are out there until I find what best suits me, and that’s what I encourage everybody out there to do. Find what best works for you because we’re all a little bit different. Some people thrive on more calories and carbs and less fats, and some people maybe like a little bit less calories which has proven more longevity, and maybe more high-nutrient foods. I’m kind of more the camp of eating for nutrients. Now I have a handout going around today and this is basically “Top 20 Things I Wish I Knew 20 Years Ago When I Started a Raw Foods Diet,” plus a bonus tip, so I just put this up or made this up. I’ve been thinking about this, it was my 20th year this year. I’m going to make a video on this topic, and I’m like well what better way to motivate me to get my ass to gear than to give a live talk in front of people? So I came up with this and thought hard about it. Lots of walking around on the beach and stuff. Something would come to me and I would write it down, so it’s pretty complete. I got almost everything in there, and there’s a few things if you’ve got a copy from the bottom of the stack, there’s like three copies of my latest revision, 2.0. Everybody else got version one, so there are some things that aren’t on yours so you might want to take a few notes. I tried to include most of all this in the list, some of it might not make sense, it’s kind of notes for me primarily but it may also give you an idea. It will be online in my YouTube channel Okraw.com. I want to ask everybody right now. How many people here know who I am and know the work that I do and maybe seen some of my videos? Alright cool. So the majority of you guys know who I am and know what I do. I’ll give a brief synopsis for those of you guys that actually don’t know who I am. My name’s John Kohler and I got into raw foods about 20 years ago because I had what’s called spinal meningitis and almost lost my life. I was put in the hospital right after I got out of college, and the doctors told me I wouldn’t make it out of there alive, and that’s not a fun place to be at any age, but especially when you’re in your 20s and have your whole life ahead of you. So luckily I can’t say I made it through spinal meningitis because of the raw foods, but that led me to get into raw foods. So when I was coming out of the hospital, I said, “Doctor, why did I get spinal meningitis? Because none of my other college mates or anybody got it except for me.” He says, “Well, you have a chronically weak immune system known as complement immune deficiency.” Then he said, “Well we could immunize you against meningitis, but it only immunizes you against certain strains, but you could be susceptible to meningitis or any other disease and be back in the hospital and not be so lucky next time.” So this really scared me because when I was in the hospital, I thought even if I had a million dollars, even if I had the most money in the world, I was a millionaire, billionaire, all this stuff, even if I wrote a check to the doctor, Mr. Doctor, one million dollars, do not cash unless John walks out of there, money would have done me no good. So many work for just money in our society today at the sacrifice of their health, because they wake up, they go to their job, they don’t get enough sleep, just to make enough money to pay their bills because this is what we’re taught we’re supposed to do. And I don’t think that’s the best thing to do personally, but if that’s what you want to do, that’s great, but what I really learned in the hospital when I almost lost my life was that the most valuable thing that you own is your health. Because without your health, you don’t have anything. Without your health you’re not able to go to work. You’re not able to change the world. You’re not able to love others. You’re not able to enjoy the beauty of Hawaii, the ocean, the beach, anywhere, if you’re not here to do it, if you don’t have your health. If you lose your health, like I almost did many years ago. So, anyways, after I got out of the hospital, I knew I had some kind of complement immune deficiency thing, and that means i have a chronically weak immune system. The doctors blame it on my genes, and I think they blame a lot of thing son your genes when they don’t really know what it is because as much as I appreciate doctors and Western medicine, they can help you in some instances, like I broke my arm. Yeah I’m going to totally trust them when I break my arm. They’re going to set it, I’m going to of course eat my healthy foods to help heal it a little bit quicker. Or a traumatic accident, but I think they get it wrong on many, many different things. Giving prescription drugs and just giving people insulin when they got diabetes, when I’ve known people and I’ve seen people and I know in my hart that Type 2 diabetes can totally be reversed by eating the proper diet and simply putting the right things into us. Anyways, but way back when, I didn’t really know what I needed to do. I found out that I need to build my immune system however I could, and my first step for me into raw foods was juicing. So I went on a juice fast, juice-style diet for about six months and started cleansing. I also did colon cleansing, and one thing happened to me because I was born with a whole bunch of autoimmune conditions, such as asthma, is an autoimmune condition. Like skin disorders. I’ve had eczema and emphysema, also had allergies because they’re all autoimmune conditions where you have a hypersensitive immune system. And so I had this dry skin condition, so I’d always get teased as a child in grade school because whether you’re black or a different color than all the other kids, whether you have red hair or whether you have dry skin, the different person always gets picked on. So I was always picked on for the dry skin and my pediatrician would tell me, every year I would go for my annual check up when I was a child, would say, “John you’re going to grow out of this at 13,” would always give me prescriptions to put on my skin. Nothing ever fixed my eczema, my dry skin condition. It was tough as a child, and he told me, “John when you’re 13 you’re going to grow out of it because your hormones are going to kick in.” And so I’d wait every year, wait every year, and it was my 13th birthday, and I woke up, my biggest wish was okay I’m going to wake up, my skin’s going to be fine and here I am getting to be a teenager. Hopefully start to date in a couple years and what girls’ going to date a guy with dry skin and all this stuff. So on my 13th birthday I woke up and my skin was exactly the same. So I lived with this condition until I got up to juicing and cleansing and then the raw foods and I remember just after going on a pretty strict cleanse, it’s called the “Rise and Shine” cleanse, and you do like herbs and psyllium and bentonite and chlorophyll and says you can drink as much fresh juice as you want, but I missed that part and did as much fresh water as I wanted. So it was a pretty intensive cleanse and after that cleanse, my skin cleared up 100 percent for the first time since I could remember. I remember just taking a shower, and I wasn’t really paying attention to my skin, but I remember looking at my whole body and I was like, “Oh my God, my skin’s normal like a normal person.” The doctors could never do this to me. I remember crying in the shower and I don’t know if I was crying in the shower because I was happy that my skin was cleared up, or that I was scared because I had to live this raw food diet if I wanted my skin to clear up and if I wanted to be as healthy as I wanted to be. And this was back in 1995, when there wasn’t a whole lot of people doing it like today and there wasn’t an Internet to connect people and to really get a lot of information about this stuff. So, that’s pretty much how I got into it. I got really dedicated because back then, my thought was, “Okay John, if you eat something unhealthy, eat something cooked, you could be back in the hospital and potentially lose your life, whereas if you eat raw, you can be healthy. Look what it did to your skin, and if it did that to your skin, what else is it doing inside you? It’s increasing your immune system and all this stuff. This is simply how you have to live.” So from that point in 1995, I’ve been 99.99 percent raw. I’m not going tell you I’ve been 100 percent. Anybody that says they’re 100 percent raw, I kind of would question that in this day and age unless they live on a ten-acre fruit farm up in Maui and my friend does, and I know he’s all raw. But if you’re just out in the real world, there’s so many temptations. We’re all human. I’ve eaten baked potatoes way back in the day, I don’t know, 17 years ago after a big breakup with my girlfriend. And I learned how it made me feel after I had baked potatoes the next day when my energy’s so high. Usually if I’m eating raw and I eat baked potatoes, my energy goes lower than it was, and I didn’t really feel like getting out of bed and we’ve all probably felt this. I’ve learned that if I’ve eaten really dense gourmet raw foods, my energy level goes down. If I’m mostly pretty clean fruits and vegetables, my energy goes up. And over these years I’ve just learned little tidbits and things all along my journey the last 20 years. I want to find out how many people have been doing raw foods. If you’re new into raw foods, been doing it under six months, raise your hand. Alright, cool. And if you’ve been doing it maybe six months to like a year. Alright, cool. And if you’ve been doing it for like one to two years. And let’s see, two to four years. Alright and how about, let’s see we could go four to seven years. And over seven years, anybody? Alright. So yeah, I mean all during your guys’s journey, whether it’s been six months so far, whether it’s been a year, I’m sure you did things at the beginning where you were like oh, that doesn’t work so well, and now you’re going to do something a little bit differently. You’re learning and you’re adapting and changing. That’s one of the amazing things about humans and what we could do. Hopefully we’re learning. Not everybody always learns from their mistakes, but that’s something that I really want to encourage, like I encourage you guys to mess up because it’s when you mess up and when you fail is when you actually learn and in my opinion you succeed. Because if you’ve never journey out the box, if you’ve never say I want to try this crazy raw foods diet, you would never have found this. And if you don’t attempt to do, try new things, then you won’t ever get to the next point. One of the principles I like to live my life by is the principle of CANI, in Japanese it’s known as “kaizen.” C-A-N-I. It stands for “constant and never-ending improvement.” And that’s what I encourage everybody in this room to strive for. If you do something today, maybe just find a little bit better way to do it tomorrow, be a little bit more efficient with striking coconuts, to take one less swipe at it to save energy, to open it more efficiently so you don’t have the water spray out, or whether that’s growing foods. You grow it in the better, different manner so you could get more nutrition in the food or whether that’s preparing your meal. How can I save two steps or increase the nutrients in the food by maybe changing the procedures on how I make my salad at night. So I’ve constantly been doing that. I know not everybody’s as technical or s pragmatic as I am, but no matter how you do it, I want to encourage everybody to always keep improving because if you fail to improve, you’re going to be like an American carmaker that still makes clunky cars with poor gas mileage whereas Japanese cars they have this kaizen model which we sent over. I learned this in marketing in business school when I went to college, they sent this guy over to Japan after we bombed them in World War whatever, Denny, and he talked to them about this constant and never-ending improvement model, and that’s why they have the best cars, higher resale values than American cars, and they last really long. My parents got a Honda that’s like 200,000 miles and my parents’ Toyota was like 200,00 miles and they’re really cool how the cars are actually made using this technology. So I guess without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into these. Some of these I’ll talk a lot about, some of these I’ll talk a little bit about. Number one, it’s really important is to eat when you’re hungry. It’s super simple but some people are like “Oh, it’s 8 o’clock. Gotta eat breakfast. Oh it’s noon. That’s lunchtime. Oh it’s 5, it’s 6, it’s dinnertime.” Eat when you’re hungry. I like to eat when I’m hungry. Like here at Woodstock, I’ve been waking up every day and when I wake up, I’m not instantly hungry because I’ve been sleeping for like, about seven hours of sleep that’s pretty good. I’ve been sleeping for seven hours. I’m not like oh I’m really hungry, and hunger is not felt in our stomach like some people may believe. It’s actually felt in our mouth. But when I do wake up, what I do like to do is get hydrated, so whether I have filtered water or for me, at Woodstock I like to have coconut water. I get hydrated and once I’m hydrated, I’m good to work for the day because once again, when you’re waking up and you’re eating breakfast you’re breaking your fast of seven hours. I like to extend that fast as long as possible into the day because my body has more time to do the healing and do all the other things it needs to do. Some people go to bed and wake up and instantly they’re burdening their bodies with God forbid, like eggs and bacon and all these heavy foods. At least just do like a fruit juice or something, but I like to drink some coconut water, some filtered water, and I go to work. Some of you guys may see me every morning over by the building just working online for a couple of hours and I get involved with my work, doing what I’m doing, and I’m not even hungry. And then I’ll work and in three four hours, I’m like I think I’m hungry now. And then I’ll feel hungry in my mouth and maybe have something really light. I like to have something usually fruits in the morning or some juices and then I eat, once I started eating, and I’ll talk about this later, it’s another way, when you do eat, how you should be, but listen to your body and find out when you’re full. Oh, there’s 10 papayas and they’re all free here at Woodstock so I’m going to eat all of them because I can’t get them at home, you know? It’s just good to eat until you’re satiated, until you’re full, paying attention to your body for that signal, instead of just eating a blanket amount of calories, 3,000 calories a day because somebody on YouTube says you’re supposed to do that, right? I mean we’re all different and one of my beliefs and one of the things that’s really true with nature, with animals is the more exercise, the more physical labor that you do, the more you’re going to want to eat. The less to you do, if you’re more sedentary, sitting by the computer, somebody sitting by the computer should not eat 3,000 calories a day. Not a good idea in my opinion. But you’re going to eat less and if you listen to your body truly, you’re going to eat the right amount. And I know, especially if you’re beginning and new into this, like I think many of you guys are, it’s going to take time to learn, but the main thing is you just have to be open to listening to your body and be focused on your body and listening to what it needs. That is something that you have to learn. It took me many years to learn to tune into how much I eat and what I need to eat. And also, know when to stop eating. So we have stretch receptors in our stomach so that when we eat enough, they stretch out and it signals our brain to stop eating. We also may not feel hungry in our mouth anymore when we’re eating. We may also get something called taste change when we’re eating, like we’re eating dinner and the first bite oh my God it’s so good because you’re so hungry, and you’re eating maybe 30 bites of 40 bites and the fortieth bite’s like huh, this doesn’t taste so good. I don’t know if I want anymore. But the first bite was so good and you don’t understand, well maybe that’s your body telling you hey, maybe it’s time to stop. Even if you have five bites left, I still work on this sometime. I’m pretty good usually. Even if you got five bites left, I got to finish my plate because my momma told me I gotta finish my plate. If you get that signal and you got five bites left, I usually put it in a jar and put it in the fridge and I’ll eat it the next day. Add it to my salad or whatever, right? So stop when you’re full. And if you eat whole, plant-based foods in this way, you will never overeat. If you stop when your body tells you to stop and you eat whole foods. Now if you’re eating processed foods like oil and sugar, not normal, our bodies are not built to handle this and give us the proper stopping mechanism, then that’s going to throw a wrench in the whole system and mess you up. On to number two. Spend time out in the sun and connect with nature. The sun is wonderful. I love the sun. Vitamin D is great. Some people are more sensitive than others and once again, listen to your body. You’re out in the sun too long you’re like man, I really should go in. Go inside. If you feel you need sunscreen, you might want to do that. I don’t particularly like to use sunscreen and if you are going to get sunscreen, use a natural one, which we’ll get into down in the list a little bit. Sun’s important to make the Vitamin D. Also it nourishes us and it’s critically important. Also connect with nature and get out into nature. Every day I’ve been here at Woodstock, I’ve gone out on at least a minimum one-hour hike, sometimes two to three hours. And I like to go through especially some of the rain forests here and just be out in nature with flowing water streams and waterfalls and hiking up the mountains and seeing the amazing critical view and the real fresh air blowing in my face and the breeze to take up good air. Nature’s so good. Right next to the ocean, there’s these things called negative ions that are coming off the water that make you feel good. So many people live inside too much, sitting at a computer all day and they don’t have enough nature in their life. Having a few houseplants inside is not getting enough nature in your life in my opinion. This is a big one right there, and this is one that’s not really talked about a lot in raw foods: Focus on nutrients instead of calories, fat or protein. Nutrients such as phytochemicals or antioxidants, which are anti-aging. Many phytonutrients are protective against disease. Eat foods with their trace mineral content. Get nutrients from food sources when you can and supplement only if needed. So there’s a lot to digest in there. So, the first point on that is, I want you guys to focus really on eating for nutrients. If you want longevity in your diet, if you want optimal health in this diet, you’re not going to eat for calories. Calories, we do need calories to survive and in the olden days, and people throughout the ages, maybe we ate a starch-based diet or whatever, but that was when food was a scarcity and we needed high-calorie foods just to stay alive. This is an age where we have supermarkets. You can grow your own food in your backyard, and we’re not really starved for calories. You look around and people have calories in excess and it causes many issues. I want to encourage you all to eat for nutrients because it’s these nutrients that are going to allow you to stay young for longer and fight diseases for you. Things that are white foods, whether that’s white sugar, white flour, white bananas, they have lower nutritional density than colorful, rich, vibrant-colored foods such as strawberries or blueberries or some nice, brilliant, red papayas or some mangoes that have orange hues, or some leafy greens that are nice, dark, and green. Let’s see, Dr. Joel Fuhrman made up this chart called the ANDI Scoring System. How many people have heard of this? A-N-D-I. It stands for “Aggregate Nutrient Density Index,” and if you go to any Whole Foods, they use the ANDI Scoring System. I don’t know if they’re still doing this, but they used to, and they’d have scores on different produce items, different bulk bins and different things in the store. So it rates food on a scale from 0 to 1000 and at the 1000, those are the most nutrient-dense foods on the plant, which are the most calories as compared to nutrients. And this is something that I believe. You want to eat the most nutrient-dense food with the least amount of calories, and those are the greens. Leafy greens are the most nutrient-dense foods on the plant because they have a lot of phytochemicals and phytonutrients and vitamins and minerals without the calories. And so the first category would be the leafy greens are the most nutrient dense, then followed by the vegetables, and then followed by the fruits. And then grains and all this stuff are lower on the list. Of course, meat is near the bottom, and processed junk foods are at the bottom. This already tells me raw foods is a superior diet because this doctor already recommends eating fruits and vegetables as a primary source and dominant in the diet. I just happen to make it most of my diet, or almost all my diet. And every different nutrient, there’s discovered and undiscovered nutrients that are so good. There’s iso-thio-cyanates in things like broccoli and cruciferous foods that are protective against cancer. These protective compounds are also in the onion and garlic family, and there’s cannabinoids in the cannabis plant that are good for other things, and every different food has different phytochemicals and phytonutrients. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about that, but we really want to go for eating foods that are colorful and eating fruits and vegetables and especially the leafy greens. Oh, the other thing that’s also important, too, besides the phytochemicals and phytonutrients are the trace minerals. This is something that’s also not really talked about in the raw foods diet. We think oh yeah, we just eat fruits and vegetables, we’re gonna get enough minerals and trace minerals. I drink coconut water, that has a lot of electrolytes and a lot of minerals in there. Well based on my research that I’ve done and my experimentation on myself, I would not agree with that statement because primarily the way that foods are being grown today is not how they were grown 100 years ago. Most farmers, especially conventional farmers, are just putting NPK, which is three minerals, fertilizers back into the soil to grow the plants, and they’ve done research on plants that plants will grow with three minerals. But we need a lot more than three minerals to optimally thrive. We can get by on three minerals or a small amount of minerals that are in the food that is being grown in commercial agriculture of today, but if we fully want the highest level of health, we need to ensure we get the full spectrum of trace minerals into us. So that’s why I grow my own food with trace minerals and I also consume other foods such as seaweed and sea vegetables that are grown in the ocean, that the ocean has all the trace minerals because it’s all washed down from the earth and it’s all being washed away into the ocean. You also want to focus on the trace minerals, it’s very important, and the other part of this was, I always want to encourage you guys to get your nutrients from food sources, rather than vitamin supplements. There’s very few vitamins and supplements that are necessary on a raw foods diet, but there are a few if you are not eating properly. For example, in Iceland or Switzerland, there’s not a lot of sun up there. Might be prudent ot take some kind of Vitamin D. I would rather go to somewhere where it’s sunny and make my own Vitamin D for free, or I’d rather get a light box that puts out the right spectrum of lights so that my body can make my own Vitamin D. I’m using that apparatus and my body to do that when I’m making the right nutrient, which is hopefully sunlight or secondarily a light box but before, I actually took supplements to do that. Another nutrient I found to be potentially deficient in a raw foods diet is Vitamin B12 and so people say take B12 supplements. Well, that’s a big complicated issue and I’m not going to get too much into that today, but in nature, we would get B12 from the bacteria that’s either living in the plants or on the plants as we’re eating them, but with conventional farming and even organic farming, they’re wiping out a lot of bacteria, the specialized bacteria, that makes the B12. That being said, I did find a vegan source of B12 based out of a food. It’s called SugaVida and they claim to have B12 in their, it’s a sugar made out of the squeezed palm fruit, the palmyra palm, and I have a video on that. So I’ve been taking for my B12. In addition, another vegan source may be chlorella, if you want to try to get it from a food source. But if that’s not working for you, I would recommend taking a supplement. But you see the kind of chain I’m trying to go through? I’m trying to go through whole foods first. If that’s not possible, then I’ll jump down to some vegan foods, because I would much rather eat some whole vegan foods than eat a supplement that’s manmade in a factory, so I think everyone should try to do this. Instead of going to the supplement and subvert nature, because in nature there is some way we would get B12 and what I’m working with now and is I’m working on the getting the specific bacteria that make the most amount of B12, because there are different ones, different bacterias, and some make more than others. I’m going to make a little powder that you don’t take but that you will spread in your garden and they will thrive and they will make B12 all over your garden. And then I’ll be eating that stuff and I’ll get my B12 that way. Because that’s how it would work in nature, but because we’ve gotten so far removed from agriculture and disturbing the soil and how it should be, that’s not happening, so that’s why there’s B12 deficiency not only in vegans, not only in raw foods, but in the general population. Another food that maybe many raw vegans may not be getting and maybe even vegans is Vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is very important for bone development, amongst other things and you could take a K2 vitamin supplement. Or, I would choose to get my K2, it’s mostly usually from animals, but the vegan source is known as natto. And the natto is fermented soybeans, so they take the soybeans and they cook them and then they actually culture them by adding a bacteria. And then the bacteria make vitamin K2. I’ve seen many raw foodists with bones that aren’t as strong as they could be and teeth issues, and it has to do with K2 might be missing because other than that we’re getting a lot of the minerals it takes to build bones, provided you’re getting enough sun. So here on the island, hopefully before I leave, I’ll be able to get over to Aloha Tofu in Honolulu. They have their factory there, and you could buy the natto for super cheap, so I always like to get some when able to get it fresh and raw. Because most natto you find on the mainland, it may be at a Japanese store, but it’s been frozen to ship it over, and it’s not the same when it’s been frozen. If you have any questions, please hold them to the end. I’ll have a session at the end for questions and answers. Next thing is, have proper oral hygiene. I like to floss and brush two times a day, and after not seeing a dentist for 16 years, I saw a dentist so I could only say I would recommend seeing a dentist at least once a year, possibly two years, and reduce the acid fruits. That’s very important. When I first got into raw foods, acid fruits, any kind of citrus that is not optimally ripe, and if you’re buying citrus at the store, and you’re not picking it yourself, you don’t have your own trees, it is not optimally ripe. I’m sorry. I’ve had grapefruits off my tree that have virtually no acid. I’ve had grapefruits from the store that are really acid, and they really do a number on your teeth. And if you’re eating really ripe citrus, I don’t think that’s an issue, but everybody else is not really eating ripe citrus, and even things like pineapples start to erode your teeth and mess them up over time. So if you’re going to eat citrus, that’s cool. Make sure you rinse right after with baking soda or something, and really be prudent on it because myself and me and my friends have been doing this for a really long time, have had teeth issues. Another thing I believed when I started raw foods was that oh, animals don’t brush their teeth. I’m a rawfoodist, I’m a naturalite. I don’t need to either. Wrong answer. I’ve had some cavities. Actually it’s been pretty good. I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve had some cavities, but I had one root canal and you do not want to get a root canal. That root canal did not work out so well I’m going to get the tooth removed because with a root canal there is just breeding bacteria. It’s a big issue. So this could all be avoided by having proper oral care and what I recommend for that are two things, I’m going to make a whole vide on all the dental stuff I do, which is a lot, but number one, floss every day! I know brushing’s not enough, and I’m not a dentist, but floss every day! And I know you guys hate taking the dental floss between your fingers, sticking your fingers in your mouth. It’s so dirty, nasty, and it’s a pain and it hurts your fingers. Get one of these guys man! This thing saved my teeth. It’s called the “Reach Access Flosser.” They have it at Target. Basically it’s like a toothbrush, but they put a little floss thing, just put one on there so you can go in your mouth. This makes flossing so much easier. You take this flip thing, you put it on there, and you just go right in your mouth. Up and down. Boom! I just did the bottom quarter on my mouth. I could’ve done it a little bit better because you definitely want to go down each side of the tooth and up and then up, but as you guys can see, it’s super simple. Actually I got some gunk out. But yeah, after every meal, you should do that, even after citrus. After citrus I don’t know if I would brush, but that’s called the “Reach Access Flosser.” I f you don’t know, it’s available in the US, I don’t know if it’s available around the country. Kmart, Target, Walgreens has them, and I like to get the ones with the unflavored because they not only have the flavored refill, which I don’t want to have the flavored stuff in my mouth. Another thing I recommend is a toothbrush, and once again I’m no dentist, but I’ve learned a whole lot about toothbrushes in the last year. And this is a toothbrush from Japan, this is for those of you guys that are fanatical like me. This is solar toothbrush, so it has little solar cells in here, and it sends the energy up to this little thing, and this little thing generates little ions that go into your mouth that help dislodge the plaque or so they say. And I believe it, because when I started using this toothbrush, even without using toothpaste, it’ll get your teeth clean. And when I first started using it, it would get my teeth squeaky clean. Like wow my teeth are cleaner. You can feel the ridge between the teeth just by using this. And always, always get an extra fine bristles if you can, or at least minimally fine or soft. Very important. That’s all I’m going to say on toothcare on that. I’ll have a video where I get into more detail on some of the other things I do. But minimally, if you don’t remember anything else, please brush and flush twice a day. You’re going to thank me in like 20 years when you don’t have any cavities or lose some of your teeth like even some of the raw foodists here. Especially for you new guys, because I know there’s a lot of new guys here, and one of the things I first did when I first started getting into the raw foods diet, if you’re not familiar with the amount of food that you will need to eat, so I recommend keeping a food diary. Now this may sound kind of corny or whatever, but basically you keep track of what you eat. You not only keep track of what you eat, but you can also denote how you felt after you ate certain foods. We all may have food allergies to different foods, or maybe pesticides or contamination on a food that you may be allergic, but you will never know this unless you have it written down and you know what you ate and how you felt afterwards. This is tremendous for you in able to pinpoint things that are going on, if things are or not digesting well. Maybe you’re allergic to oranges, or maybe oranges that are acidic, because you wrote down, “I had acidic oranges,” and maybe had upset stomach or whatever, and so write this down so you won’t repeat the same mistake, because if you continually do something that’s not good for you, it’s going to cause big problems. I had a friend, he had some health situation and he was told by somebody or decided upon himself to go on an orange juice fast, and he had really bad hurting pains in his intestines or something, and he was like “I just need more orange juice and it will fix it. More orange juice will fix it.” But finally it was so bad he ended up going to the doctor and he figured out that the orange juice was inflating his intestines when he was supposed to be healing it, but he wasn’t. And so I always like to believe listen to your body, it’ll tell you. If you eat something and it gives you a stomachache, then maybe that’s not the best thing to eat. You might want to try something different. Also, especially when you’re new to keeping a food journal or diary, you can go to Fitday.com or Chronometter.com and you can type in what you ate that day to see the breakdown of calories, fats, and proteins and carbs and all that, if that’s important to you, but also to see how many calories, because one of the things I see a lot is people just don’ teat enough calories. They think they can get away with eating two oranges for a meal and that’s it. Yeah, if you’re sedentary sitting by a computer all day, you might be able to get away with that, but you’re probably going to need a little bit more food than two oranges for a meal. Number six, this one is going to get a lot of people, and I want to thank this lady named Jasmine Klower, where I learned many things from when I got into raw foods. She had lost her life because she was living in a house near some trees, and the tree came over in the wind or a storm and it crushed her, so she taught me to clear the trees by her house, but also she taught me about squatting. So squatting for eliminations, if you’re Asian, some of the people from the Asian countries, that’s how they go to the bathroom. I can demonstrate her, you just sit down and you squat. There’s a hole right there. For those of you who have been to foreign countries, that’s what you do, but in America we sit because, I don’t know, we’re so civilized or something, but this is a really poor position because that actually kinks your intestine so you don’t get a good flow out there. If you look at any animal, like if you look at my little dog, his name is Oakley, he’s so cute. He’ll walk around and be like dododododo and he’ll squat and you see him squat because he’s getting his bowels all lined up there and it flows out pretty good. And so squatting is essential, whether you want to stand on the toilet and squat, like this, but standing on the toilet, be careful because you fan actually fall out and it’s quite dangerous. They do make squatting stools, it’s called a Squatty Potty, and there’s a number of other ones. Or you can use, I’ll demonstrate on this chair for you guys. See this is the toilet right here, and you would sit on the toilet and then to squat on the toilet without standing on it and having to balance, you would basically boost up your legs. So if you use some foam book or whatever and boost up your legs, and then you try to lean forward. So your legs would be up here and you would lean forward, so now you’re making that squat position even though you’re still sitting on the toilet. It’d be better if I had one of those things to boost my legs up because it’s hard to lift them up, but yeah, so that way your bowels are in the right position so you can get the full elimination and also feel better, too since you can get all those toxins out of you. I highly recommend and encourage squatting for elimination. Super important and that’s another thing that’s not talked about. I do have a video on squatting that’s in a bathroom if you want to learn more about it on Okraw.com. Number seven, this is also really important. Increase your leafy vegetable intake, as well as vegetable intake. My goal every day is to eat two pounds of leafy greens a day and supersize your leafy green and vegetable intake by juicing. I haven’t seen too many long-term fruitarians who only eat fruit, so once again, the greens are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, we want to eat them. They have a lot of amazing phytochemicals and phytonutrients that are very protective for us. Also, as much as I love fruit, as I move on and get more mature in my raw foods diet and eating, I’m finding that vegetables are critically important and essential for health. I know a lot of people may believe that fruits are the best and everything and yes, fruits are great, but we cannot neglect the vegetables. They are lower in calories, so to get more of them I like to eat two pounds of them a day, and two pounds of leafy greens is about 200 calories. One pound of fruit is about 300 calories. To eat two pounds of leafy greens, that would be two huge salads. I don’t necessarily do that. I may eat one pound of greens at night for my salad, but I like to take a pound of greens and just put it through the juice, because one pound of greens through the juicer gives you about one cup of juice, a whole bunch of pulp that I compost, you can feed it to your worms. So I have really the nutrients from the juice in a more digestible, assimilatable format for me. And I’m getting all the nutrients out of it. Of course you can also blend greens to enable you to eat them faster. I also want to encourage you guys to eat vegetables. I know a lot of people eat fruits, but vegetables are also very important besides the leafy greens. They’re really rich in minerals and have some nutrients that the fruits do not, and it’s really about finding your balance on how much you need to eat, but once again, try to focus on leafy greens and the vegetables in the long run, to be successful in the long-term, I think that’s the most prudent thing to do. The only successful long-term fruitarians I’ve seen are the ones that grow their own food in mineral-dense soil, and if you’re buying a lot of fruit from the store and expect to be successful long-term, good luck. Let’s see. Number eight: Get proper rest and sleep every night. Rid yourself o alarm clocks and watches if you are able. So that’s a pretty strong statement. One of the things that I like to live my life by, and even before I got into raw foods, was I liked to get the proper amount of sleep. And I don’t know if I need five hours, eight hours, seven hours, two hours, consciously, but unconsciously my body does. So the rule that I like to live my life by is I go to bed when I’m tired and I wake up whenever I wan to wake up. When m body wakes me up, that’s when I’m ready to get up, because this is the only way you’ll be guaranteed to get enough sleep. Because if you wake up with that alarm clock, if you said like, “I’m going to go to bed at 10 o’clock because that’s my bedtime.” I don’t know, maybe you’re not tired, maybe you’re overtired. I try to listen to my body for when I need to sleep and I’ve set up my life so that I can go to bed when I’m tired and wake up when I need to wake up, whenever I want to wake up, unless I have a flight that I really need to get to the next day. Also I don’t wear a watch, and I don’t like to be constantly a clock watcher. I’m not at my job like when is the day going to be over so I can go home? Just being too concerned with the time ages you prematurely because it’s creating excess stress and worry, so if you can set your life up so that you don’t need to worry about the time or the clock. I don’t know what time it is and I don’t really care. Enjoying life and living in the moment, actually. That should’ve been another thing in there. Live in the moment. Don’t think about the past, because you can’t change the past. Don’t dwell too much upon the future. Number nine, super important: Focus on water-rich fruits and vegetables as the basis of your diet that are prepared at home. So, once again, the basis of my diet as is any successful raw foods diet should be fruits and vegetables, not these gourmet raw food chocolate bars, not these dry packaged granola things. Not even prepared raw foods out of a restaurant, because a lot of the places are doing pretty high fat and adding a lot of additives to their recipes that aren’t necessarily good. Also prepare them at home so you know how you’re preparing and what you’re putting in them so they have your specific touch and ingredients that you like to add that you feel your body may need. Number ten, this is very important, especially when I was first new into, like many of you guys are today, you want to live by example and not preach or share your diet, unless you have sincere interest from others. Because what we’re doing in here, we’re like extremely different from the mainstream, and I know I was excited about it too when I first got into raw foods, and I wanted to tell everybody, even my parents, the people I love the most, I wanted them to know because they could save their life, they could be healthier, but don’t share it. You’re going to do yourself a favor because you’re just going to run up into roadblocks, because this is so different and new to them, they’re not going to believe you, and then you’re going to have to argue with them, and then they’re going to hate you, like my girlfriend’s going through right now. We were just talking on the phone. She said, “John I’m so different form my family now.” I’m like, “It’s alright honey, just keep doing what you’re doing and try not to share. Just talk about other things. Focus on other things besides the diet, unless they have a sincere interest.” Whether that’s your friends, your family, and just live by example. One year at Thanksgiving, I went to my cousin’s house, and there was all this raw food, and this was my second year, and I brought a nice big salad to share with everybody and there’s like dead turkey on there. And I made some comments about dead turkey carcass on the family and how bad meat was, and that was not appropriate. I was trying to help people, but it just was pissing them off. Just be quiet and have fun, do what you’re doing. My parents would try to convert out of eating raw foods because it was so weird. My mom’s a librarian, she would email me research articles on why eating all plants and stuff is not healthy, and I just didn’t listen to nothing and continued doing what I was doing and it probably took about a good 10, 12 years but finally they were like wow, look at John, and look at Jim, who’s my brother, two years younger, and look at the differences in their health. John barely gets sick, Jim’s always sick with colds, this, that. Jim’s like overweight and extra heavy and needed glasses and can’t see now and John doesn’t need glasses and he’s a good weight. Finally they came around and finally I got them eating more plants and more raw foods and I got my dad to do a 30-day water fast and he went pretty much all vegan after that. More recently my mom had some health issues, so I got her to do a juice fast, and now they’re more committed more than ever. They’re still not all the way where I am. They probably won’t be, but I’m glad that they’re eating more fruits and vegetables, but this took many, many, many years to happen, and it will happen to your friends and loved ones, if you’re just a role model and they see what you’re doing. They’re going to ask you when they’re ready, so you should not share that because it’s just going to create animosity and headaches for you. Literally try to keep your diet a secret from people. If they want to be supportive, they’ll support you. That’s that. Number eleven: Find a community for support. This is very important. When I first went raw, I found a local raw foods, living foods support group in San Francisco. I would go like every month for meetings. This was back in 1995, when it wasn’t even that popular. Nowadays with all these meet up groups and all this kind of stuff, there’s a lot more groups for raw foods and people into a fruit and vegetable-based diet. Coming to things like Woodstock, it’s great. You can find a community online or in person. Community’s very important for support because if you can meet somebody face to face that’s doing what you’re doing, especially somebody’s that’s been doing it longer, there’s always somebody at the group, most of the time, that’s been doing it for 20 years, that’s more experienced than you, that can share tips, like I’m sharing with you guys mine. And if you want more tips, once again, I have my website listed, Okraw.com is my website where I have over 450 videos where I’m sharing other tips and getting more into some of these specific tips. Let’s see, number twelve, this is super important. Have a really compelling reason why you’re doing this. My compelling reason to do this diet was because I almost lost my life and it’s my belief and for the first many years, I lived on sheer willpower of not wanting that pizza that smelled good or the cookies or whatever because in my head it was like okay John, you can eat the pizza, you can eat the cookies, but what are the consequences? The consequences can be, or probably are, you’ll end up in the hospital again, and you might lose your life. That’s not fun. I don’t want to do that, so I just stuck with the diet through sheer willpower. They might not be able to do that, they might give into their willpower. For me it was literally life or not life, so it was a little bit more serious. For most people, they may just want to lose some weight, they may just wan tot be healthy. It’s not like life or not life, but whatever your reason, have a really strong reason. You can even put that on the mirror when you wake up in the morning and you’re doing your hair so you can see your reason, and that will keep you motivated to some extent. Number thirteen: Be glad and focused on the positives in life. This is really important. There’s so many pessimists out there, and I know it’s easy to say be positive in life, and for many people, it really is difficult. I’m not one of those people that teaches about being positive and stuff, but I will tell you that it is really important. You want to have an “I can” attitude, and as you know, you are what you eat, but you become what you think about, right? And so think happy thoughts, think good thoughts, be glad about life and that you’re living today. Living in gratitude. Super important. I won’t really get much into that, but that’s taken a long time for me to be more positive. One of the things I like to think about is how a situation can benefit you. So for example, one of the situations that was a little bit more challenging for me to think about how it could benefit me was the day before this event, before I flew out to Hawaii, I had harvested like a four foot by eight foot bed of Chinese napa cabbage, a whole bunch of lettuce. I got out of the garden, finished gardening by like midnight in Las Vegas. I had a headlamp on, I had lights out. But I brought all this stuff in, I’d been up since 7o’clock, am, working and I needed to process the cabbage and maybe I was going to make some sauerkraut. I got this really nice ceramic crockpot handmade, one of a kind, nice and different colors from this guy in the Vista Farmers in California, and it held a lot. I was going to put all the Napa cabbage chopped up and put it in the fermentation crock, which he sells for at least $100 or something. And I’m carrying it over to wash for the first time and my hands were a little bit wet because I was washing my cabbage, and it slipped out of my hand, and this fermentation crock that I was going to use to ferment all my cabbage was now on the ground in pieces that I couldn’t replace because it was one of a kind and also a gift. And I’m like, wow, now I got all this cabbage, and I said a bad word at first. Like okay John, how could this benefit you? You got to always ask yourself a better question. Like well, maybe I wasn’t supposed to use that crockpot and maybe not I have the ability to figure out how I’m going to ferment all this stuff without a crockpot. So then I have these half-gallon mason jars and I go well, we could just ferment in mason jars to see how that works. So I cleaned that up, threw it away, and fermented in mason jars instead. But always try to look for a reason why a situation could benefit you. Oh, I missed my airplane. Oh, I missed that turn on the freeway. I’ve missed plenty of turns on the freeway and let me tell you, I’ve found plenty of farmers’ markets and natural food stores with good fruits because I’ve missed turns, so it’s all how you look at things, right? It’s very important. That’s super important. This is very important. I’ll have a little demo. Eat the highest quality, most vibrant, freshly picked food that will spoil, organic, mineral-rich, fresh, and I’m going to do a bricks test. This is also something not often talked about in raw foods, that we want to eat the highest-quality food. Now, we already know we’re eating fruits and vegetables, which I said before are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, but how can you make the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet better? Well by eating better quality of what you’re eating, and based on my research of traditional standard agriculture and even organic agriculture, they’re not doing it the best way possible, to grow the most nutrient-dense or the most antioxidant-, phytochemical-rich foods. They’re literally growing for the pounds. Everything is sold, for the most part, by the pound in the grocery store, and so more the farmer can produce, the more money he’s going to make. That’s what they’re going to focus. They might focus on making three oranges. They might taste like shit, or big tomatoes that might taste like nothing, but they’re bigger so they’re going to sell better. And so, I wish the whole industrial agriculture system was founded on selling things based on quality and in Japan, they do do this. You can buy one fig for $100, but it’s the best fig you’ve ever eaten. That’s probably expensive, but at least they’re kind of moving in that direction. They value high-quality stuff. Good quality cars or whatever. But unfortunately, this is not the case in America. Farmers are growing foods to make a buck, and they’re just trying to make a living like everybody else. Even at the farmers’ market, you have the option of selecting from different farmers. Like for example, when I first go there, I went to a farmers’ market, and there were two sellers selling the longan, they’re the little fruits. So I went to both of them and sampled the both of them, and you could tell your taste buds are the best indicator of the nutrients. The better they taste to you, in general, the more nutrition it has. So I got the longans from the guy that had the better-tasting ones, and they were really good. Now, if you don’t trust your taste buds and are into nuance, or you like scientific confirmation like I do, you can get something like this. This is actually called the Bricks meter, it’s an affordable refractometer, 0 to 32, and what this allows you to do, and we’ll pass it around for everybody. This will allow you to check any fruit or vegetable. You’ll need their juice. You may have some difficulty getting their juice. You may need a garlic press if you’re somewhere. With fruits it’s really easy. We’re just going to cut this. This is a honey tangerine, we’re going to cut this and we’re going to squeeze this out, some of the juice on the refractometer, and we’re going to put the top down and we’re going to look at this. And then what you’re going to look at, I’m going to send this around so you could see it, you’re going to see a white area and it’s going to go up to a blue area. So this is reading at about a 14. So we’ll send that around to everybody. How do you know what a 14 is? So you go to this handy dandy refractometer manual with the values. So this has a lot of different common fruits and vegetables rated and for example, apples, if they’re poor apples, they’d be a 6. For average apples they’d be a 10. Good apples maybe a 14. Excellent apples are 18. So in this way, if you took this meter for example to Whole Foods, which by their company policy, if you request a sample of a fruit or a vegetable, or even something in their deli counter, which I do for my dog, they have to give it to you. So you could go in there and say, “Hey I want a sample of those apples. I’m thinking of buying.” You could sample it, eat some, and put it on the Bricks meter and see where the apple’s out. I don’t do that at Whole Foods and sample one of every apple, but you could do that, though they might say something. Then you could find the highest Bricks apple and you could taste it and it’d be the sweetest one. But at least this will give you a sense of what the fruit quality is on a scale — poor, average, good, excellent. And unfortunately most of the foods that I’ve checked are usually in the average maybe good and there’s some that are excellent, but that’s pretty rare to find, unfortunately. Let’s see here. Those were the tangerines. Unfortunately tangerines on not on this list, but oranges are. Poor orange is a 6, average orange is 10, a good orange is 16. An excellent orange is 20. So this one was 14, which is a little below good. After everybody see that, I’m going to check the other tangerines that we have and see where that is at. But by simply checking the produce, you can assure that you’re going to get higher quality and besides just the number which mostly shows the sugar content. The other thing that you guys know now to look for is right at the demarcation line where it goes from white to the blue color, it’ll be like black and white, like go from all white to the blue color. Just clear differentiation. Or it’ll be like white then it’ll get cloudy and fuzzy and then go to the other color. So what we really want to look for when we’re buying vegetables, you really want to look for that cloudiness, instead of that black and white. The cloudiness means that there’s more dissolved solids, like the minerals and stuff, so that’s a more nutritious fruit than one that doesn’t have the cloudy part. So the example in the back of this brochure here is they tested store-bought grocery beans, or green beans, and they tested the Brix from store bought. The store-bought was 4.2 and the taste was garbage, and this is home-picked beans that weren’t even at their peak optimal ripeness, there was a problem while they were harvesting and gardening, but the Brix was 6.1 and the taste was decent. So I mean literally by growing your own food you can have higher quality food and that’s just the Brix, but if we then check the nutritional quality to compare the two, something like the calcium was twice as much in the garden beans. The potassium was over twice as much. The protein was almost twice as much, so even in the same amount of garden beans, you can get twice the amount of protein. Once again, more nutrients, less calories by having higher quality food and this way we can eat less to promote more longevity. Also get more of the minerals and phytochemicals that we really need without all the excess calories. Super important. Try to eat the highest quality source, the best stuff you can get and grow your own. Number 15: Grow your own and grow beyond organic with trace minerals and microbes. See Growingyourgreens.com. So that’s an ad for my YouTube channel. I have over 1,050 videos. I have over 210,000 subscribers right now and I’ve been viewed over 30 million times. I basically teach the culmination of what I’ve learned in raw foods, which is to be the healthiest you want to be, you need to be growing your own food because if you’re leaving it up to stores, to farmers, they’re not doing it. You can hope and wish they’ll do it, and some farmers are slowly incorporating some of the practices that I would do, but I’ve never had a store-bought food that tasted better than some of the stuff I’ve grown in the garden. To have the highest level of nutrients. And if we lived in the Garden of Eden, or we lived 1,000 years ago, there’d be more wild foods growing, we’d be eating more wild foods and it’d be more nutritious just because we haven’t messed with the soil, we haven’t bulldozed, we haven’t tilled, we haven’t done all these crazy things to the earth. And if you think about, when they’re farming, right when they clear a rainforest, which I actually do not agree with the practice of clearing rainforests to grow food and unfortunately most of the food is not fruits and vegetables for us but oil or grain products for cattle feeding or animals. They clear the forest out and then they have a whole really rich fertile land because that soil’s been built by the forest over the years, the farmers go into plant whatever they’re going to plant there, and then they get incredible yields for that couple of years until that land is depleted. And meanwhile they’re pulling out bushels and bushels, and a bushel is I don’t know, how many pounds of corn or whatever agricultural commodity they’re pulling out, they’re pulling out a ton of product from that but they’re also pulling out the nutrients, they’re stripping the soil. It’s like strip money, they’re stripping out the soil, and then they think they can just bring back like a pallet of these nutrients in a bag to put back into the soil, all the stuff that they took, and a bag is not going to compensate for all the nutrients and the biodiversity and the microbes in the soil that were in the soil. And most farmers do not put back as least as much as what they’re taking out with their crops. My goal is to put back more into my soil than what I’m taking out after every season, to give my plants whatever they want to absorb, because I’m not a master botanist or biologist, but basically you need to give back generously to the Earth and let the Earth figure it out. I’m not really going to get more in it about that other than add trace minerals such as rock dust, rock powders, and also sea solutions and ocean solids to add 70 to 90 trace minerals back into whatever you’re growing so that you’ll have more nutritious food than what standard agriculture’s doing with mostly three minerals and sometimes standard agriculture will go up to 16. Number 16: Get proper exercise and movement in your life, whatever that may be. I think I saw Tim Sheep over here, he might have took off. He likes to get into all these crazy exercise videos and that’s great. You could like running, you could like, I don’t know, rock climbing, rollerblading, ice skating, hockey, gardening, yoga, whatever it is. I’m not a big fan of gyms because I’d rather be able to check off two of my things at one time like I could be out in the sun and garden and get exercise and get movement. I like to multitask, but whatever you enjoy. It’s very important, every day get off your ass at your computer and do whatever you enjoy. Outside would be best. And I can grow my food in my garden, too. Number 17, as I’m a little dehydrated right now: Stay hydrated. Super important. Dehydration can cause many health challenges just in itself and it’s very important to stay hydrated. My goal to get hydrated is not through any bottled water or even spring water. I like to get naturally structured water from the plants. My favorite source of water is coconut water, so I’m glad to have that here while I’m in the islands, because that’s nature’s purified water. The coconut palm absorbs all the water from the Earth, and many coconut palms live by the sea so it literally filters a lot of ocean water, takes it up, and puts it in a nut in a more absorbable state for the minerals for us. And if I can’t get my coconut water, then I like to juice celery and cucumber, which are once again nature’s structured water in the form of a juice. And then of course I do drink regular water. If you are drinking regular water, all water is not the same. I definitely recommend some filtration to take out some of the things that are now in the waters — contamination, fluoride, chlorine, and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, always try to get structured water whenever you can from water-rich foods. And I do find that the more fresh fruits and vegetables, especially juices and smoothies, I drink, I tend to drink less water. So in general, in a day, when I’m traveling or I’m back in my home city of Las Vegas where it’s very dry and arid, in Las Vegas I like to drink 32 ounces upon awakening and 32 ounces before I go to bed because literally just being in Las Vegas, you’re dehydrated because it’s so dry, the water’s being pulled out of you while you sleep. And I would find that if I didn’t drink water before I went to bed, I’d be really dehydrated in the morning and it’s not good to live in a constant state of dehydration. It can cause health issues. So when I go to bed, before, and when I wake up, 32 ounces, and other than that, I drink maybe 16 ounces before bed and when I wake up in the morning, other places I seem to be alright, but that’s just me. And during the day I get water from foods to get all the water and hydration I need from my foods. Number 18, super important: Love yourself, like yourself, accept yourself as you are today. And listen to your intuition. I won’t go into that too much but basically, you have to like yourself, love yourself where you’re at and value yourself because otherwise you’re not going to want to make the changes that you do in life. Number 19 might strike a lot of people as odd, but it’s eat cannabis! And other raw plant foods you haven’t been eating. The main message is eat diversely but I thought the cannabis would get your attention. But yeah, I started eating cannabis in its raw form because it’s a nutrient that I wasn’t getting and in its raw form it is said that it cannot get you high or have any psychoactive effects, which has been mostly true for me, except I discovered a recipe unfortunately that did make me high, which I did not want. It was not cool, because once I got high, I just really didn’t like the feeling and I just wanted to be back to my normal feeling of being high on life, high on fruits and vegetables without having some kind of stimulant or weird thinking stuff. But I will have a video on 4/20 on how to get high on cannabis raw. For those of you guys that want to do that, and for those of you guys that want to avoid doing that. But, anyway, eat a diversity of fruits and vegetable. So what I’m going to do is send around a few things I’ve been eating while I’ve been in Hawaii. These are a few things on here. The green one, this is actually a sea vegetable. I’m sorry, this is a land vegetable known as sea asparagus. It grows on the land, it’s also known as salicornia or a sea bean. Some Whole Foods will sell them. On the mainland there’s like $10, $15 a pound sometimes. The next two we have are actually sea vegetables. This one is known as ogo. It’s a special sea vegetable that you can only pretty much get in Hawaii, maybe other tropical countries around the world, and these are fresh, not dried or rehydrated. And these are farmed so they’re not from the ocean, they’re not contaminated. So this is a crunchy kind ogo, and this is the soft kind, the chew kind ogo. And once again, these are grown with some ocean water and so these have more of the trace minerals that tend to be deficient in your diet if you’re not eating things with high mineral content. So I like to flood my body with as much trace minerals as I can, minerals in a plant-based form, not minerals in a Centrum supplement, or animal products your body for the most part can’t absorb too much of. If your body doesn’t need it, it will just send it out the other side. So I like to eat also seasonally and locally when I travel, so I get a wide spectrum of nutrients. Grab a little bit of this stuff and pass it around. Hopefully I have enough so everybody can try it, but yeah for me, some of these things, I don’t know about you guys, but for me, some of the dinners here are a little bit bland. I make things taste better at home and I think people are thinking this diet is austere or something, so you got to enjoy it. I haven’t been really enjoying the dinners, but if you add some of this stuff to the dinners, like oh my God I’m totally happy. And it’s just because the food that we’re eating, at least for me anyway, is not lighting me up. It’s not making me happy. The food that you eat should be making you happy, and if it’s not, then is there something wrong with you or is there something wrong with the food and once again, if we’re eating food out of the grocery store, they’re not putting the nutrients back in. If I was at home and I was picking lettuce out of my garden, it’s much more flavorful. Things out of my garden are much more flavorful and they taste way better and they’re higher up on the Brix and they have that cliviness and they light me up more and I actually have to eat less, because it is more nutritious. So yeah, eat diversity, whether that’s cannabis leaves, whether that’s ashitaba or kokum, things I grow. I really scour the Internet on my travels to find different plants that are not commonly eaten or available in the supermarket and really a lot of growers aren’t even growing a lot of the plants that I’m growing. If you want to eat them to get the phytonutrients in you, to get the different taste sensations in you, you have to grow them yourself because once again, my ultimate goal in my raw foods diet is 100 percent health, not 100 percent raw, although I have been 99.999 percent raw. Now how many gardeners are in here? How many people grow their own food? Alright, cool, so there’s a couple. So I have some of my ashitaba seeds that I will hand out, just a few random people here. So this is one of my favorite healing foods in the whole wide world. It doesn’t look like much in here, but you can look up my video on YouTube on the ashitaba. Its from Hashijo Island in Japan, and when you cut this plant, like if you cut yourself you bleed red, if you cut this plant it will bleed yellow. It’s quite odd because a lot of plants they maybe bleed white, like lettuce. This plant bleeds yellow, which is known as chalcone, and it has a lot of phytochemicals and phytonutrients and antioxidants, and they’ve done research with cancer and ashitaba and a lot of different conditions. The ashitaba, it’s so good, I mean that’s something money can’t buy, so I try to diversify and eat a wide variety of foods and I’m always discovering new foods. And as I discover them, I grow them so I can eat them and get their benefits because the fact of the matter is clear: the nutrient you need the most is the nutrient that you’re not getting. If you’re not getting the ashitaba, maybe there’s a nutrient that’s going to protect you against cancer or some of those TV shows where it’s the last man on the Earth and the dude was immune and he’s the last guy on Earth. I was watching that series and it was kind of fun, but what if these plants and these combinations I eat make me just a little bit healthier than the next guy you know? I was talking to somebody today who was swimming in the ocean and he’s swimming with some guys who are bigger than him, and they were concerned about the sharks. I guess the guy said basically if the sharks come to eat me, all I need to do is swim a little bit faster than you or be a smaller target. So the guy could get away. So I don’t want to be a target for cancer or another disease because I’m going to have all these phytochemicals and phytonutrients in me, hopefully that’s going to prevent me from getting sick. I rarely get sick. Prevented from getting any of these crazy diseases, because I’ve met plenty of raw foodists that are no longer with us because they did get cancer. Now, just because you’re raw foodist, that’s not a panacea, that does not make you immune to cancer or anything else, but you can do things as a raw foodist to ensure you have a higher probability of not getting cancer or other disease, once again, by eating a phytonutrient-rich, plant-based diet. And eating new, diversity and varieties of food. So aside from growing your own, it’s really important because you’re really not going to get the diversity of foods in nature. Another thing I can recommend is learning about the wild leaves and the wild foods where you live and once again don’t pick any wild food and eat it unless you 100 percent, or 110 percent know that it is edible, because this will give you access to different nutrients that you’re not eating that are available at your grocery store, so that’s a free way to do it, even without a garden. You could also grow food inside as microgreens or sprouts. That’s another excellent way. Of course, if you want to get something like ashitaba and you can’t grow it, you can actually get it in a powder form at a health food store. Now it is quite expensive and that’s where I learned about ashitaba, when I go to the health food industry shows where they sell all these different powders in jars and try to sell you stuff, and I’m like well why should I take that stuff in a jar if I can do better than a jar? I can get the seeds and grow and eat the live plant man. And so that’s what I try to do, but it might just be advantageous to eat, if you’re really into this, to buy some of the different foods to get them into you. Number 20 is partake in conscious eating. This is super important. I learned this from a San Francisco living with raw foods group literally 20 years ago where every raw foods group meeting was a potluck. We would go there, set our food out, we would talk amongst us, we would get our food, and spend 10 minutes eating our food, they would ring a bell. “Okay, it’s conscious eating time! Everyone please be quiet and be with your food! Smell your food! Sniff your food! Be present with your food and eat it and don’t talk to anybody.” There was this one lady who would always talk, so don’t be here, but everybody else learned about more conscious eating and paid attention to their food and being with their food and enjoying every mouthful and more importantly, chewing every mouthful to a mush. This is why we give baby food to babies, because they don’t have teeth and they can’t chew their food to mush. So many people I see on a raw foods diet, as evidenced by going to the bathroom after them, there’s big chunks of stuff left that are not getting digested. So, if you don’t chew your food into the mush, your body can’t assimilate it. So that’s why I like to juice to get it into a more absorbable format. Of course blending will also do that, while blending will do that, it also tends to oxidize a lot of the phytonutrients and phytochemicals. So that’s why I prefer juicing over blending, but if blending’s going to allow you to get a better uptake, that’s fine. Just don’t overblend. But yeah, try to have no or minimal distractions. Chew your food to a much before swallowing. Sometimes my big salads at night for dinner may take me an hour, an hour and a half to eat, and I know many people may not have that kind of time. So then I might recommend like a blended salad. That’s been something very important to me, because if we’re putting good food in and you’re not getting maximum mutilation and absorption out of the food, then what good is it anyway? Now we’re done to the extra tips, so this is the extra credit because I came up with more than 20 things. Live with gratitude, right? This is very important. There’s this whole happy gratitude in the San Francisco Bay area and it’s the whole concept of being grateful for what you have. So many people, especially the younger generation, they expect things to happen to them instead of being grateful for what they have, and this is not really going to make the world a better place by always expecting things and try to have an easy life and have everything come to you. Instead be grateful for the things you have. So one of the games that I like to play with myself when I’m not having the best day or something’s not going right, I’m like okay John, and sometimes I talk to myself so if you see me over there I’m just talking to myself, don’t worry. We all do that. You can start talking back to me, but I don’t know if I’ll answer you. I’ll go okay John, what are five things you’re grateful for? And then I try as fast as I can come up with them, five things I’m grateful for. So what am I grateful for now? Well I’m glad for waking up this morning, because some people did not. I’m glad I’m having some fresh coconut. I’m glad for sugarcane juice. I’m glad I got invited to a farm that I’m going to get to go out to later, check out some cool permaculture farm, and I’m glad I’m able to share this talk with everybody. So I mean, just come up with five things and if you do this on a daily basis, you’re going to train your brain, much like we need to learn and train how to write the English language, or whatever language you do. The more you think about what you’re grateful for, the more you’re going to live it and embody that. That’s all. The next extra tip is it’s not about 100 percent raw or 100 percent cooked. And you create your own rules and can make your own rules to win instead of lose. The main message I want to give to everybody is eat more fruits and vegetables, because I know some people are like oh I’m going to go on a raw foods diet. I know a lot of you tried to do that. I’m going to be 100 percent raw! Like some magical thing is supposed to happen to it. It doesn’t, I’ll tell you that. We’re all human, we all slip up at some point. We’ll all eat something and then you eat a cookie or something and then instead of just eating one cookie, it’s oh I messed up. I’ll eat more cookies because I already messed up. Screw it! And so, that’s when you’re setting up your game. Your game is 100 percent raw or I fail, right? Why not set up a game where my game to be successful is if I eat one extra fruit a day, this is like baby steps if you’re a beginner, if I eat just one extra fruit day, I’m a success! Celebrate success instead of failures in your game and you will succeed. Today I’m going to eat two extra fruits! Everybody can do that. I’m going to eat one extra leaf of lettuce! Come on, that’s really easy, but you get my point. Set up the game so I’m going to eat raw all day and then for dinner I’ll have steamed lentils or rice at night. Just set your game up so you can win. I’m going to exclude processed foods or I’m going to exclude 80 percent of raw foods and I’m only going to allow myself one processed food that’s vegan at the end of the week if I’ve done all this. Just set it up so easy so that you win and keep making it a little bit harder. Super important because I’ve seen people try to go 100 percent raw. They don’t make it, then they say the raw food diet doesn’t work or something because they didn’t have the willpower. Most people don’t have willpower. Once again, an inch is a cinch, but a yard it’s hard. You can set up your own rules for you own life, whether that’s in food or in gardening or in whatever you’re doing. This is important, number three, for extra tips is question everything. Even if I’m saying something, don’t believe me just because I’m saying it because there are many people out there telling you stuff that may or may not be true. But check it out. Do some research about some of the things that I say. I think most of the things I say are pretty spot on personally, but I don’t get everything right either. And as I learn new things, I will tell people hey I was wrong. I said you can’t get high from raw cannabis. I learned that was incorrect. So now I’m correcting myself. But learn because I was taught from all the doctors and medical doctors that do raw cannabis you can’t get high, so that’s what I thought, but I felt different. But anyway, so learn to do your own research on what people tell you. Once again, when you eat a raw food diet, experiment on yourself. Try it and see what works, and I want everybody to think outside the box. We’re all taught to think inside the box and think of things from this perspective, but what if we stepped outside the box and looked at things just a little bit differently? It would be a better solution. And this is how technological advances and advances happen. If I didn’t think about how I could juice cannabis to get a higher uptake of phytonutrients and phytochemicals in there, I wouldn’t have discovered how to successfully get high off raw cannabis, not that I want to do that, but now I know how not to do that. I’m sure a lot of people will be really curious on how to do that because a lot of people that smoke, I would rather have them use their juicers and blenders to eat more fruits and vegetables to get high on cannabis for 10 hours instead of smoking it many times a day and mess up their lungs. And they get other beneficial properties in the juiced cannabis they wouldn’t get when they inhale when smoking. And also I was juicing just leaves of the cannabis plant. Most of the time you have to grow the plant out to get the little buds to get to smoke them. Now what if you could just grow it to the leaf stage, get the leaves, and go out of your mind, if that’s what you want to do? So that’s kind of like thinking out of the box. Number four: Live a peace-filled life. Very important. This is opposite of a stress-filled life. And I want you guys to focus on what you want, instead of what you don’t want. Instead of “I want to lose weight,” or “I don’t want to be fat,” how about “I want to be skinny.” They mean the same thing but the way you say it means a lot. And try to have, instead of a stressful life, try to have a peaceful life without stress. And do what I want to do and have my own time to do what I want and not have too many time constraints so that I have to be there at this time. That’s just what I like because once again, stress in your life can cause disease and many challenges in your body and wreck your system. We are fight or flight creatures, and many people in our society today are always in the fight mode or flight mode or whatever, because it’s like we’re being chased by a tiger, and that’s a good time to be stressed out because you gotta get the adrenaline, you gotta get running, but when everybody’s stressed out because their boss is pissed off at them, your wife is mad at you, whatever. Like my dad, he’s always stressed out because my mom is always yelling at him, which really sucks for him. But he chooses that life. The more stress, you can get more cortisol, which means more belly fat, which means a whole bunch of other stuff, and you’re not going to be as healthy as you could if you weren’t stressed out. So one of my challenges right now is trying to get my girlfriend to live a more peaceful, stress-free life. Number five extra tip, this is super critical, super important. Get an annual blood test and know where you’re at. Hopefully you guys, if you own a car, you’re taking it to get regular oil changes and the mechanic will check it out to make sure it’s running alright so you don’t have major blowouts on the freeway. But I think everybody, especially that’s raw or vegan or even just vegan that’s doing this, which is so different than what society does, get an annual blood test to check in. Oh I’m eating fruits and vegetables I’ll be fine. Well, that may be true, but you don’t know unless you can verify. One of the ways is to do a blood test and the blood test is not obviously going to show you everything, but it’s going to at least give you some insight on where you’re at if you are eating a healthy diet. If not, you can make adjustments and corrections to get to be as healthy as you can be if that is your goal. Now besides getting an annual blood test, what’s very important, once you do get the blood test, is get it interpreted by somebody that understands a raw vegan plant-based diet because some of the numbers on a raw vegan blood test, if a regular doctor looked at this, oh my God, this is too low! You need to eat egg or some crap, right? Because they’re not used to looking at something different. They’re used to looking at standard blood tests which in some cases are very unhealthy, but it’s just what they see all the time and is what is considered normal. We are abnormal, right? I like to think we’re really healthy and everybody else is normal and unhealthy. So I would recommend my doctor, my friend, Dr. Rick Dina of Rawfoodeducation.com. I will soon have a video on my Okraw channel, where I go into detail on blood tests with Dr. Dina. He can definitely get you on the right path and make adjustments to your path if needed, or he might just say no man, you’re doing great, keep it up. Number six, one of my tips I like to do personally is I like to use spices and seasonings. I know some of the people may be against spices and seasonings and all this stuff, but once again, I don’t make meals out of spices and seasonings. I like to use in small amounts to get flavor, to make my food taste better, so I like it more and also derive health benefits. So one of the things I like to use is curry. Curry has tumeric. Tumeric is very anti-inflammatory amongst other things. It is also high in antioxidants. I also like to use planted foods as a spice or seasoning, as I do with seaweed. Did anybody get to try that seaweed that went around? What did everybody think? Yeah, I mean it’s great. So I wouldn’t make meals of that stuff, but I like to have a little bit of it in my salad that night. It makes it taste that much better plus I’m getting additional phytonutrient and phytochemicals that I’m not getting from my normal foods. So in my opinion, the food you’re eating should taste good for this to be sustainable. Extra tip #7: Celebrate your mistakes and learn from them. I talked about this a little earlier, but that’s super important. We’re not all perfect, I’m not perfect. I’ve messed up plenty of times and I think the people that are the most successful actually mess up the most times. Celebrate your mistakes and learn from them. The problem I have is when people continually make a mistake and don’t learn from them. That’s a problem. Number eight, this is something I learned actually early on is have a purpose. Have a purpose in life. One of the things I learned early one when I was in the hospital, and I didn’t know if I could make it out alive. I could only pray that I was going to make it out, because it wasn’t up to the doctors. The doctors had no treatment that they could give me to assure that I was going to make it out of there, but I prayed that if I got out of there, I was going to do something with my life to help benefit other people, to live in service, because when I thought about it more, even if I worked my life away for money, what good would that do others or even me? So that’s why a big purpose in my life is to help educate others about what I’ve learned over all these years and to help other people on the planet. Do unto others as you want unto yourself, or something? So I mean whatever your purpose is, whether that’s to help others or whether anything else, have a purpose driven life. Super important, because that keeps you motivated and keeps you going and focusing in one direction because that’ll keep you happier in your life if you’re filled with a mission and purpose, rather than not having one and being like an airplane that takes off to go to Hawaii and ends up in Fiji or something. Because they don’t know their destination. Number nine: Learn to create your own recipes in the kitchen based on what you have and what you want to eat. So I know many people, and this is going against culture here, but everybody wants that recipe book. John you need to come out with a recipe book so I know what you eat! Well what I eat is because it’s what I have in my garden or what I feel like eating, and I don’t know if that’s going to be healthy for somebody else. I want to try to concepts that people can grow their own food, have their own gardens, and be able to pull from those ingredients so they can make something that’s going to feed and nourish their bodies, because what I need may be different from what other people need. For people that are longterm successful in this, people have been doing this for a long time, they don’t use recipe books. They just whip up some stuff in the kitchen, right? And it feeds and nourishes them and it’s fun when they make it like no recipe that I make, even though I have standard recipes that I like to do, that I enjoy, it’s not always the same. I always add an extra pinch of this, an extra pinch of that, the lettuce quality that I have today is different than the lettuce quality yesterday. And if I’m getting lettuce from the store it’s different from the lettuce from my garden and all this kind of stuff. So I really, really want people to start coming up with their own recipes and even if this means taking a recipe that you look up online or have in a book and like well I don’t like that ingredient. I’m going to take it out and put this instead. And you’re going to make a few things that don’t taste good, and you’re going to learn when I did that, it messed up it up so I’m not going to do it anymore. So now you’re going to do it different and better the next time. I really want to encourage people to start making their own recipes based on what they have available. If you’re on a budget, one of the things I still do is every week in my area there’s several organic stores and they put on sale a handful of organic items. And those are the items that are in abundance that I may not have growing in my garden. And I’ll buy a lot of things that are on sale, and that week, a lot of my meals are based around what’s on sale that’s organic. So I get the lowest price, also eating what’s most in abundance and what’s in season, because the things that are on sale are usually in season, too, because they got a whole bunch of them and they got to get rid of them. And I’m eating my diet around that. Every week the sale changes so every week I’m eating different things based on what they have. And I just make up recipes out of that. One of my favorite types of recipes I make that I want encourage everybody to make, which is actually not on this list, is raw soups. They’re far more nutritious than a salad and I’m not really going to get into it more than that, but I do have a video on Okraw like an hour-long presentation on how to make a raw foods soup that’s excellent. So I want to encourage everybody to watch that. Number 10, this is really controversial: I want everybody to unlabel yourself. If you call yourself a raw foodist, basically what I don’t like for me personally is I don’t like putting people in boxes. Like oh I’m a vegan, I can’t eat honey. Or I’m a raw foodist, I can’t eat anything over 118 degrees. Or whatever it is. Instead of trying to label yourself and put yourself in a box because boxes, I don’t care what kind of box, even a cardboard box, it’s limiting. It restricts you, it restricts you from what you’re going to do right? Instead I want you guys to have an open definition that is fluid and constant to change. Instead of defining myself as a raw foodist, which if I am, if people want to say what I am in two words, or raw food vegan or whatever, I don’t really want to say that. I say I eat a whole food, plant-based, fruit and vegetable, abundant and primary source of my calories diet in its most freshest, most possible state with the most amount of nutrients. Or something. And define it with words to give it a broader definition, because raw foodists you can eat dates and nut butter all day and you can be a raw foodist. That’s not very healthy. Or there’s so many things. You can eat high fat raw food pies all day, but that doesn’t mean you’re healthy. When you describe yourself in a different way with more words, it really gets down to the essence of more what you are than trying to sum yourself up in one word as a vegan or two words as a raw foodist. And this is something that I really only come upon in the last five years. I don’t want to be put in a box because it offers me more flexibility. You can go down with your ship if you’re being too in the box mode. I’ve seen plenty of vegans that are junk food vegans, maybe raw food vegans that may not be healthy because they’re trying to stay inside the confinement of their box. And yes, I totally agree with compassion to animals. I totally agree with a lot of philosophies of vegan, but I don’t want to be stuck in a box. Like oh you got some leather shoes, John you’re not vegan. I don’t care. I’m living with more compassion than most people out there. I don’t eat animals. I don’t want to harm animals, but I don’t want a label on me because I’m not entirely vegan. I might do some things to bugs in my garden or I might eat an occasional aphid because they’re in my garden and I missed on when washing it off, but even if you’re vegan, you’re probably eating some bugs out of the garden or in your lettuce so you’re probably not vegan anyway. Last extra tip is a few things. One of them I already talked about, the principle of CANI. Constant and never-ending improvement. Always improve what you’re doing. One of my other favorite sayings is by the inch it’s a cinch, by the yard it’s hard. And we were on the ropes course the other day and once again, if you try to just go to the ropes course you’re going to fail, but if you work with your team and take one step at a time, one tightrope walk at a time, you’re going to get to the end and you’re going to finish successfully. So once again instead of trying to go 100 percent raw overnight, just increase the raw percentage just a little bit. Whatever you’re trying to do and you’ll be successful. Another principle I really like to use which really helps people is the principle of good, better, best. This something that really helped my brother. My brother still eats a standard, conventional American diet, although I have made an impact with his life because I’m like okay Jim, do good, better, best. And they’re basically three different options. Normally he might go out and eat at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or Burger King. But so I’m like Jim, you could do better than that. Why don’t you just eat at Chipotle? So Chipotle at least they use whole, fresh ingredients and they make everything prepared fresh instead of shit out of boxes and way processed food. And of course what’s better is a fresh salad or smooth at home, which he knows, he knows he could do that. But he’s really lazy, like most Americans are, and he doesn’t want to prepare his food at home. So I got him eating at Chipotle and I’m glad he’s at least moving in the right direction, rather than still continuing to eat the really crappy food, not that I would recommend what he’s doing to anybody out there. But at least he’s moving in the right direction. I think we all need to be continually moving on in a continual movement towards a better way of eating and a better way of health and that is, even after 20 years, what I continue to strive to do each and every day as I go on. It gets a little bit more challenging to find a better path to continue my health journey that I’ve been on for these last 20 years. I guess the last thing that I have written down in my notes is I really want people to be consistent. It’s not what you do 20 percent of the time. It’s what you do 80 percent of the time. If you could just eat fruits and vegetables 80 percent of the time and maybe even whole cooked foods the other 20 percent of the time, you’re going to be way healthier than the person by incorporating all the tips I’ve given you today, like 30 tips. You will be more successful because of it. And that’s pretty much my talk for today. I’ll take any questions if you have any. JOHN [answering audience questions]: I would recommend a series of blood tests, you can see where you’re at and where you are. Exactly. Good point, thank you. JOHN: So I haven’t gotten into tempeh yet. I eat natto, I like its flavor number one, but I like that it has the Vitamin K, too, which in my opinion a very important nutrient that’s hard to get otherwise. So if I’ve found a nutrient in the tempeh that I might not be getting from another source, which I would rather get it from a raw food source than a cooked and then fermented source, then that would be my choice. So the question is what do I do if I don’t feel hungry but I feel a drop in energy. Do you still eat, what do you do? And that’s a tough question. I don’t know it all, I don’t know everybody’s particular body and I can’t say do this. I could tell you that if I had that situation, what I would do is if I didn’t really feel hungry, I would minimally get hydrated. Preferably get hydrated with some nutritious water, some nutritious water. So I would use coconut water, some kind of vegetable juicers, green juices, fruit juices to get some energy in me and also allow me to stay hydrated. So I’d really try to take it easy because if you’re not hungry, your body is maybe telling you you’re more ready to cleanse. That’d be my first guess. JOHN: So the question is, what kind of sunscreens do you use? I don’t really like to use sunscreen. My favorite sunscreen is clothing, so I’ll take my clothing off if I want to get sun. I’ll put my clothing on if I don’t want sun. If you want clothing that some sun will go through, you’ll want to wear flax or linen clothing that will allow some sun penetration. I also like to use hats, which I didn’t bring but in my garden in Las Vegas, the sun’s pouring down. I like to wear a nice wide-brim hat so my face doesn’t get a lot of sun. And if I have to use one, I’d tend towards one at the health foods store with some of the different minerals in it that will reflect the light. Also if using coconut oil will give you small bits of SPF, but it’s not really that strong and you have to reapply. Carob oil. So I haven’t used carob oil, but one of the things I know is one of the foods I really like is astaxanthin, and it’s an algae that’s very high in antioxidants and it has protective qualities. So that might be something good to look for in sunscreen protective products. Yes. JOHN: So the question is if you had to choose a color of the rainbow or a food with nutrients, what are the two or three colors you choose? Well, I guess I would choose green because green is a really dominant color on the planet. I would choose blue and maybe red and orange. Purple would be good, too. You really want some of the darker colors, but I don’t like to discriminate against any color fruit or vegetable. JOHN: So the question is what is my opinion on alkalized water? I mean, that’s a big topic. They sell these alkaline water machines for a lot of money and stuff and I’ve had one for some amount of time and used it and then I didn’t use it. I thought I felt different, didn’t feel different. Number one, it’s really important to have a good filtered water. Many alkalizers that are being sold today don’t have a sufficient filter to remove some of the bad crap in there, but they do put alkalinity in the water by shifting around the minerals in there. For me personally, I would much rather drink a green juice or something that actually has a living structured water with nutrients and phytochemicals as well as alkaline, instead of the alkalized water. I’d rather drink coconut water before I drink alkaline water. I don’t really see the super huge benefit. I don’t think it’s that miraculous like they claim it is. If you’re getting an alkalized water it’s already filtered and that’s just an extra thing. I don’t think it’s really an issue but I don’t see a super huge benefit and I see a lot of marketing stuff behind that. JOHN: So the question is what’s the name of the toothbrush. The toothbrush I have is called the Soladey 4. And that’s the one that has the solar panel that releases ions that kills bacteria and stuff. And what is my opinion of distillation? So, I used to really not like distillation because it was heating the water hotter than what nature would heat it up. So they say distillation is normal John because it heats water and evaporates, just like how the clouds let down the rain. Well, the evaporation of the ocean doesn’t happen at a boiling temperature, otherwise we’d be cooked like a frog in hot water if we went into the ocean. So it happens at a much lower temperature. So I’d much rather prefer distillation that occurred at a lower temperature but based on more recent information that I’ve had, I’m under the opinion now that distillation is probably a better way to purify water than say reverse osmosis, provided you have a carbon filter after the distillation process because distillation will not remove some of the volatile organic compounds. JOHN: Ashitaba. A-S-H-I-T-A-B-A. Ashitaba. A-S-H-I-T-A-B-A. Also known as Angelica keiskei. If you do a search for ashitaba, you will see all the different research. It’s really good. They say there’s research on it for cancer and other conditions, but I’m not a doctor, I’m not here to tell you what something is good and not good for. I like to say I just want to get these foods into me and let my body figure out and let it do what it’s going to do. But if I’m not getting that food, it’s not going to be able to do that stuff. JOHN: Marine plasma. So the question is have I ever used Shilajit and marine plasma? So I’ve had Shilajit a few times and the marine plasma a couple times. Once again, I like to have a more inclusive raw food approach than oh, fruits and vegetables, we’ll get everything from fruits and vegetables. I like to include different foods and see how it makes me feel, see how I react. I have a whole shelf full of different green foods, superfood powders and do I eat those every day? I might put one in my smoothie once a week because I think there’s a benefit in spirulina and chlorella and acai powders if I can’t get fresh acai berries or something. So I probably use some of that. I haven’t really done anything like that, but I can see, especially the sea stuff a little bit more than the Shilajit, but it’s probably all good and if you just include a little bit, I probably would, yeah. JOHN: So what did everyone think when they looked through the little meter? Did you guys see what I was talking about? Any other questions? Yes. JOHN: Where did I get the sea asparagus? So this sea asparagus, they actually sell it at the Whole Foods in town. And then also this one I actually got at the farmers’ market, so they go to several farmers’ markets. This farmers’ market, I saw them at the Mililani market on Saturday. This one was the KCC Farmers’ Market at the community college on Wednesday. I’m pretty confident they’re going to be at the farmers’ market tonight in Kahlua and they’re going to be at the farmers’ market on Saturday at the KCC. JOHN: Yes, so you can more than likely take back the ogo because they ship from here to there. The sea asparagus, I’m not so sure. Now if you live in California, you can actually harvest the sea asparagus, also known as salicornia, yourself. It grows in the San Francisco Bay area, so I go down in the Bay in California and just harvest my own. And besides just harvesting my own, I’ll actually dig some up to take home to my house and grow them. Alright, so this one’s a clear defined line, and this is 15, so this is a little bit better than the last one. So California wins over Florida. JOHN: Do I have a favorite book to identify fruits to forage for? I don’t have a favorite book. I haven’t really delved into foraging in a major way myself. I do like the book by Katrina Blair, which, if you’ve never foraged before, it’s the one book everybody should own because it goes over the top 11 or 13 weeds that grow everywhere that disturb soil. So this will ensure that you will be able to find food wherever you are basically, except out in the wild. And also, I made a video with her on Growingyourgreens and if you go to the end of that video, I have a space where you can order the book from here and she will also send you those seeds of the plants in her books. You can grow them, cultivate it in your garden for really nutritious, dense, rich soil. So you can learn firsthand what they look like to identify them and become intimate with them through all the different stages. Plus have the easiest garden ever by doing it with weeds. JOHN: What was the most difficult part about eating more healthy in my lifestyle? For me, probably doing it affordably, but I figured that one out. Because it can get very expensive to eat fruits and vegetables, especially high quality ones, so you got to have ways to make it more affordable so you can do it. I know some people, once again, even with the money you spend, you’re voting for your health every time. I haven’t had health insurance for like over 20 years now. I put all the money into being proactive instead of reactive with my health and eating healthy foods and of course being careful and not breaking bones or doing stupid things that are going to get me hurt. Alright, I gotta get out of here, but I’ll be around if you want me to answer any questions. Just come and ask me. Thank you. JOHN: Alright, congratulations, you made it all the way through the two-hour long video. If you guys liked this format, really liked this video, give me at thumbs up, let me know. It’s not too difficult for me to film and tape different talks. I’ll have to go through a few things like get the extension cords and set up the camera up a little bit differently and have the room shifted a little bit differently, but I really enjoyed giving that talk at the 2015 Woodstock Fruit Festival in Hawaii, and I want to encourage you guys, if you want a good time, a good party, and have that connection you’re not feeling over YouTube. I know many of you guys are like man John’s my best bud. I’ve watched all his videos, I know all about him, but I know nothing about you guys because you guys are just watching all my videos. But a place like Woodstock Food Festival is amazing and I hear this this upcoming one in New York, coming up in August, this year, is probably going to be the Woodstock Fruit Festival ever. So if you want to experience the Woodstock Fruit Festival, be sure to check it out. Be sure to check the link at the end of this video and check out Woodstock. I would encourage you guys to go and meet me, ask me more questions or whatever. But yeah, also, if you would post down below any comments, any questions, or any of the things that you’ve learned over the short time or long time you’ve been doing raw foods that I can learn from, because I’m always out to learn and grow. And I’m thinking to myself I’m a sponge in the ocean here. I’m a sponge and I get to soak up so much information, and let some of it go as it doesn’t serve me anymore, and that’s what I really want you guys to do. I want you guys to use the information that could serve you, and let the other stuff go, and maybe you’ll pick up new information and let old stuff go or bring old stuff back in that yo may have forgotten. My goal in making these videos, all these different 1800 YouTube videos is to make the world a better place, and I also want to encourage you guys to pay it forward. All of you guys watching have the power to make a difference in the world. I’m on a beach here. If there was starfishes on the beach and they were all turned upside down, that means the starfish is not going to make it. You got to flip the starfish over so that it can continue to live. If there are 100 of them on the beach, I don’t know if I can turn over all 100, but at least I can make a difference to the one. And that’s what I want you guys to do. You can make a difference to specific people in your lives, whether that means making YouTube videos and five people, ten people, 100 people watch it or just by talking to your friends and loved ones and immediate family members so you can start eating a healthier diet today and more importantly, living greener on this beautiful planet that we live. So, also be sure to subscribe to my videos, if you haven’t already. I have over 450 episodes on this YouTube channel if you’re interested in learning how to grow your own food. Be sure to check out Growingyourgreens.com and if you’re interested in buying some of the equipment, like the juicers and the blenders that’ll allow you to make and prepare delicious smoothies and consume them much easier, you’ll want to check me out at Discountjuicers.com and my corresponding YouTube channel for that, Youtube.com/rawfoods. So that’s pretty much it. Once again this is John Kohler with Okraw.com. We’ll see you next time and until then, remember, keep eating your fresh fruits and vegetables. They’re always the best.