EAT IT RAW!

[Guest guest]

EAT IT RAW!

 

EAT IT RAW!

BY DEBRA DESALVO

Blenders, Sprouters, and Mashers Process Food in the

East Village

 

http://www.living-foods.com/news/eatitraw.html

 

 

" Yo! Any vegetarians in the house? " hollers Stic.man

of hip-hop's

radical duo Dead Prez. A roar and dozens of fists rise

up in CBGB,

which is packed. It's 3 a.m. and the young, mostly

Latino crowd has

been hanging all night for a showcase of politically

conscious Latin

bands booked by Ricanstruction. Despite the late hour,

the air is

strangely smoke-free.

 

" Any vegans?! " More shouts from the crowd. " All

right! " Stic nods

enthusiastically, dreads bouncing as he hops back and

forth.

 

" What about the raw foodists? Any raw foodists in the

house? " A few

whoops and hands shoot up, waving wildly. " Yeah! " Stic

 

shouts. " That's the shit! " as Dead Prez slam into " Be

Healthy, " from

their Loud debut album, Let's Get Free.

 

" Be Healthy " exhorts would-be revolutionaries to forgo

fried chicken

for juiced greens. They should play it at New York's

newest raw food

restaurant, Quintessence. " It's a political act to eat

raw foods,

because major corporations are poisoning people with

over-processed,

denatured food, " says Dan Hoyt.

 

 

 

Hoyt and his wife, Tolentin Chan, both 37, opened

Quintessence in

December above his former recording studio on East

10th Street. A

sandy-haired Midwesterner with twinkling ice-blue

eyes, Hoyt first

reduced his space to rubble 16 years ago, cutting a

hole in the

floor and installing Vital Music in the basement. He

recorded scads

of East Village rockers, from Alice Donut to Clowns

for Progress. In

1997 he tore the place apart and reemerged with the

Lab, which

specialized in custom sound design.

 

Meanwhile, Chan was doing some rewiring of her own. A

technical

designer at DKNY, Chan had asthma and caught frequent

colds. When a

colleague raved about the effects of a raw food

" cleanse, " Chan

visited her counselor, David Jubb, a self-described

" specialist in

colloidal biology " with a Ph.D. from NYU, who's been

eating raw for

27 years. He guided her through " nutritional fasts "

consisting of

smoothies, blended soups, and juices. Today Chan, a

slender woman

with bright black eyes, gorgeous skin, and a quick,

slightly

mischievous smile, recalls, " My health improved

tremendously. Now

I'm 100 percent raw and my asthma is completely gone.

I never get

sick, and my energy is really high. "

 

Inspired, Hoyt saw Jubb too. " The results from fasting

are really

drastic, so it's very motivating, " Hoyt says. " I lived

with hay

fever, food allergies, but when these problems go away

and you learn

more about eating this way, it seems so logical. "

 

The raw food diet consists of fresh fruits,

vegetables, and sprouted

seeds, nuts, grains, and legumes. " Sprouted grain

loses its enzyme

inhibitors and releases more nutrients, " explains

Jubb. Raw foodists

obtain most of their calories from monounsaturated

fats like

avocado, young coconut, and olive and flax oils,

instead of cooked

grains and beans. Protein and minerals come from leafy

greens,

spirulina, bee pollen, seeds, and nuts.

 

" People assume raw food is hard to digest, " Hoyt

notes, " but when

you cook food you destroy its enzymes and must use

your own to

digest it. Raw food digests itself. You don't even

have to eat it—if

you blend a tomato and leave it overnight, it'll be 90

percent

digested by the morning. Cooking was invented to

prevent foods from

breaking down overnight. "

 

" When you eat cooked vegetarian food, you lose the

life force raw

food has, " says Chan. " Vegetarians are calm and

relaxed, but they

don't always look energized, don't have that vibrant,

glowing

quality. That's the difference between a raw foodist

and a

vegetarian. "

 

Chan and Hoyt began attending classes and lectures

around

town. " People were into the nutrition, but they weren't

making the

greatest tasting—or looking—food, " Hoyt says,

laughing. " We were

making really good food at home. "

 

So he gutted his space once again and, with Chan,

created

Quintessence. They opened in bitter weather, but lines

soon formed

out the door. " I thought there were a few hundred raw

foodists in

the city, but there are at least a few thousand! "

 

 

 

 

The Apple Pie Shake, Coconut shake, and Weird

" electrolyte

Lemonade. "

Neighbors are drawn in by the restaurant's calm beauty

and gourmet

menu. " People think eating raw is gonna be like

chewing on weeds, "

Hoyt says, " but raw food is very vibrant. We use lots

of spices and

sauces. The flavors are very strong and clean. "

 

These days Quintessence has regular customers from the

tristate area

and beyond. " Six kids drove 16 hours from Iowa to get

here after

they found us on the Internet! " Hoyt exclaims.

 

Competitive triathlete Mathew Mercur, 26, another

customer, is

convinced that eating raw enhances his athletic

performance. " I was

nervous to try it, " Mercur admits, " but now I'm 90

percent raw and I

love it! I never get sick, I can train more, and I

recover faster. "

Mercur, who won the U.S. triathlon series championship

for his age

class and is training for the 2004 Olympic trials,

says he benefits

from the concentrated nutrition provided by juicing

and loading up

on raw fats. " I find fats a better source of long-term

fuel than

cooked carbs, which weigh me down. "

 

As for protein, Mercur says, " When you eat a steak,

you have to

break it down to amino acids. But leafy greens, nuts,

and seeds are

packed with amino acids and minerals your body can use

to build

protein right away. "

 

Until recently, the main resources for someone like

Mercur were

classes and coaching provided by High Vibe, the city's

only store

devoted to raw foods, and lectures and counseling by

Jubb and his ex-

wife, Annie.

 

Jubb, raised on an island between mainland Australia

and Tasmania,

was influenced by his Nepalese grandfather, " who

understood that our

choice of food was affecting the earth. " Jubb loves

the East Village

because " there are more people interested in this

lifestyle here

than in any other place in the country. There's a

critical mass of

consciousness building that's going to affect the

entire earth. "

 

Dagger, who owns High Vibe, also senses an

accelerating interest in

raw food among New Yorkers. " We get new people in here

every day,

and now with Quintessence, more people are getting

together and

communicating. Things are rolling. " Like Hoyt, Dagger

transformed

his former creative space— " my art studio, my

darkroom " —into his

business. He describes his inviting basement, with its

cavelike

white stucco walls and strings of white icicle lights,

as " the East

Village gone Southwest—a sanctuary, a place for people

to hang out. "

 

A laid-back artist-photographer-musician with tattoos

running up

both arms, Dagger got into raw foods because " I had

done so many

drugs and I just felt so bad. But I always tried to

eat right. I

started riding my bike like crazy and eating a lot of

watermelon. I

felt compelled to eat tons of it. I found out later

that it's very

alkalinizing, and drugs make you very acidic. "

Although he credits

eating live foods with his vibrant health and ability

to function on

four to five hours of sleep, Dagger says he's " not in

favor of

zealotism. Do you feel good? That's the only thing

that should

influence your decision. "

 

Paul Nison, who's developing a restaurant called Eden

above the

Hygeia Center on East 23rd Street, agrees. Nison was

diagnosed with

ulcerative colitis and told diet had nothing to do

with it.

Desperate, he experimented with raw foods and his

symptoms

disappeared. " I was told that by 30 I'd be lucky to

have my

intestines and I'd probably have cancer. I'll be 30

this year, and I

did a 117-mile bike race, and haven't gone back to my

doctor. "

 

Jubb student Narda Narvãez, a physical therapist,

founded the

Natural Wellness School at Hygeia in February. " I

started the school

to help the community, " she says. " Food is so

connected with family

and comfort that you need a new family to support

this. " Narvãez,

looking for a new space, intends to bring in a variety

of health

practitioners. She's starting a database of clients

who have

recovered from serious illness using raw foods

" because we need

documentation and research. "

 

Jyni Holland, a registered dietitian at NYU Medical

Center, wants to

see such research, as " there are no scientific studies

showing an

advantage to eating raw broccoli instead of cooked

broccoli. "

Holland also contests claims that raw foods provide

greater

enzymatic activity, because " the minute you pull a

plum off the

tree, you've separated it from its life force and it

begins to break

itself down. I don't want to put this diet down

without knowing

more, " she adds, " but if you have an immune system

compromised by

chemo or severe AIDS, we recommend a 'no raw food'

diet to protect

against bacterial infections. I would also be

concerned about

adequate caloric intake, and adequate protein, B12,

calcium, and

zinc. "

 

 

 

Holistic physician Dr. Ronald Hoffman notes that " some

people do

really well on the raw food diet, yet some do

abysmally. I do put

some cancer patients on a raw food diet, as it is

marvelous for

detoxifying. We usually use it for two to three

months. " Lots of

fats will " alleviate some of the potential problems

with this diet.

I give high doses of coconut oil to patients with

immune problems,

for example, as studies show it to be extremely

helpful. Also, if

you have ulcerative colitis or celiac disease, using

only sprouted

starches can help. "

 

Hoffman favors metabolic typing, a blood-test-based

method of

determining appropriate diets. " We are finding that

some people must

have meat, while for others it's not metabolically

suitable. My

hunch is that the people doing well on raw food would

be shown by

metabolic typing to be in the latter category. " He

cautions

that " people use food like a personal statement—too

much of that is

going around. It's best to avoid arrogance . . . or

using food as an

emblem of virtue. The macrobiotic people destroyed

their movement

with arrogance. "

 

Eliot Tokar, a practitioner of traditional Asian

medicine,

agrees. " A raw food diet is a very strong yin diet;

most people can

benefit when it's used for a limited period. It's in

danger of

becoming a fad, however, with people thinking it can

be applied in

any situation and be beneficial. This may be because

the diet can

cause very rapid change and can make you hyper and

spacey. "

 

While building Quintessence, Chan and Hoyt flew to San

Francisco to

work at Juliano Brotman's Organica, a popular raw food

 

restaurant. " Juliano was so helpful, " recalls Hoyt.

" He gave us

names of suppliers, showed us recipes. This is kind of

a movement,

so if you know something you share it. It's a

supportive community—

everybody's networking. We love that people come to

the restaurant

and actually talk to people at other tables. That's

what it's all

about. "

 

photographs by Michael Kenneth Lopez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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