San Francisco Examiner May 4, 1997 Some Like It Raw

[Guest guest]

SOME LIKE IT RAW

" Food is alive, just like you and me "

 

SOME LIKE IT RAW

By Leslie Goldberg

OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

 

" Food is alive, just like you and me'

 

Two things for sure: You're not going to get a hot cup of coffee or

a grilled cheese sandwich at Juliano's restaurant.

 

Everything at Raw is, well, raw - including the pizza, the burritos

and the rice. And Juliano, who uses no last name, is not the only

one in San Francisco into food that never ventures beyond 120

degrees.

 

Besides Juliano's small band of regular Raw customers, The City

boasts a whole community of foodies, for whom a stove, a grill, a

toaster and / or a microwave are totally useless.

 

" Instead of using killing heat, we use life-giving water, " said the

24-year-old restaurant owner, who was wearing harem pants, his hair

tied in top knot, while chatting with a visitor in his Sunset

District restaurant near Golden Gate Park.

 

" Food is alive, just like you and me, " he said. " Just stick your

head in a pot of boiling water - how would you feel? "

 

Convinced that cooking not only gets food very upset, but robs it of

its essential nutrients, Juliano has devised ingenious ways to avoid

subjecting innocent edibles to global-warming fossil fuel.

 

Rice can be made a lot less crunchy and a lot more digestible by

soaking it in water for two to four weeks, he said. And beans, if

they're soaked for days, until they get soft and sprout, can be

wrapped in cabbage leaves to make burritos. The pizza served at Raw

is " baked " in the sun - an admitted impossibility in the foggy

Sunset.

 

" One of our waitresses lives in the Castro, " said Juliano. " She has

a friend who has a deck. We bake it there. "

 

" Baking " the crust, which is made from ground buckwheat sprouts,

takes about 10 hours, said Juliano.

 

" We don't do deep dish, " he added.

 

Blood, caviar and sashimi

 

Once the eater gets past the idea that everything on a plate or in a

glass at Raw is as cold as a stone, the pizza tastes pretty good; so

does the rice; so does a lovely apple juice and beet juice cocktail

with a non-vegetarian name, " Blood. "

 

Like most raw foodists, Juliano eschews all animal products - eating

and serving only organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and soaked grains

and beans. But apparently some things are just too difficult to

completely give up. The restaurateur has fashioned " caviar " from

pomegranate seeds, " sashimi " from beet-stained aloe leaf, " cheese "

from ground up sprouted pine nuts and " milk " from blenderized

almonds and water.

 

Some raw foodists include raw meat in their diet.

 

" I had three friends who got into that, " said raw fooder Tom

Billings, a 41-year-old graduate student who lives in

Berkeley. " They all got really sick - one of them still is. "

 

A registered dietitian and the director of nutrition for Kaiser

Permanente, Kristie Patterson said that as long as people were

eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, beans and checking

with their doctor to make sure everything's all right, a raw foods

diet could be fine.

 

" A vegetarian diet or a vegan diet (no animal products) can be

healthful, " she said. " But it's very dangerous eating raw meat,

including fish. It takes great expertise to recognize microbes and

bacteria. We cook meat to make it safe. (Eating raw meat) is like

hunting for mushrooms in the woods - it can be deadly. "

 

Most people eating an exclusively raw diet say they're doing it for

their health. Juliano boasted of needing no more that six hours of

sleep and rarely visiting a doctor.

 

" Even when I do get a cold or something, I don't feel dragged out, "

he said. " It's like, " Let's go party.' "

 

Dorleen Tong, a teacher of English as a second language for San

Francisco Community College and a raw fooder, said she, too, needed

but a few hours a sleep.

 

" I feel good, " Tong said. " I feel happy. I used to be barely able to

get up in the morning. "

 

Billings who was once a fruitarian, said one of the problems with a

raw foods diet was that sometimes people on the diet didn't seek

medical attention when they should.

 

" They get these symptoms, and they're told (by other raw fooders)

that they're " detoxifying,' " he said. " Too many raw fooders think

doctors are agents of the devil. "

 

Isolated by diet

 

For nine years, Billings, who is 6-foot-1, ate only fruit. His

weight eventually dropped to 88 pounds. He recalled experiencing a

drug-like high that he now believes was caused by a mineral

deficiency.

 

" Sometimes people get into this, and they think now they're suddenly

very spiritual, " he said. " That isn't spirituality. "

 

An older and wiser eater, Billings has expanded his diet to include

50 percent bean sprouts, 25 percent vegetables and 25 percent

fruits - gaining 40 pounds in the process. " I'm still pretty thin, "

he said.

 

A lot of raw fooders believe in treading lightly on the planet and

insist that the diet represents a higher environmentalism.

 

" I was looking for the most healthful diet for humans and the Earth

as a whole, " said Don Weaver of Burlingame, co-author of a

book, " The Survival of Civilization. " An organic gardener who

describes himself as an " environmental volunteer, " Weaver said he'd

been totally raw for 20 years.

 

He acknowledged that a lot of raw fooders could end up feeling a

little isolated.

 

" It's such a different way to eat, " Weaver said. " But I believe that

it's important not to separate from others on the basis of diet and

philosophy. "

 

The San Francisco Living Foods Support Group holds monthly potlucks

at Fort Mason. They have a raw foods lending library and a hot line,

called the " sprout line. "

 

The group is sponsoring an all-day conference on raw food with

lectures, " cooking " demonstrations and food samples June 1 at Fort

Mason Center. Admission is $6. For information call (415) 751-2806