Rhio, Hooked on Raw

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Rhio, a leading proponent of the raw/living foods lifestyle, through her lectures, radio shows and website provides information about health-related issues and raw and living foods. Rhio is also the author of Hooked on Raw, a comprehensive 358-page book on the raw/live food lifestyle. It has 32 chapters, half of which feature 350 gourmet, live food recipes. The other half of the book deals with many pressing issues impacting our health, such as the irradiation of foods, genetic engineering of seeds/plants, and the extensive hybridization of seeds. Other topics covered are the value of organic foods, wild foods and fertile soil; the wonderful, rejuvenating effects of fasting; ideas on how to integrate into a raw/live food lifestyle, and much, much more.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Caryn Hartglass: Hi I’m Caryn Hartglass, and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Good afternoon, good morning, good evening wherever you are, and whenever you’re listening. I’m glad to be here with you today, and we’ve got a great show. We’re going to be talking with Rhio, and Rhio is a leading proponent of the raw living foods lifestyle, through her lectures, radio shows, and website, she provides information about health related issues, and raw and living foods. She is the author of Hooked on Raw, which was recently revised, and we’re going to be talking a lot about that on the show today. It’s a big book! Over 350 pages on the raw, live food lifestyle. It has 32 chapters, and it features gourmet, live food recipes, and it also deals with many pressing issues impacting our health, such as radiation of food, genetic engineering of seeds and plants, and the extensive hybridization of seeds, and the value of organic foods, wild foods, fertile soil, wonderful, rejuvenating effects of fasting, ideas on how to integrate in raw, live food lifestyle, and much, much more. Rhio’s really knowledgeable and a really talented individual. Are you with us Rhio?

Rhio: I’m here! Thank you!

Caryn Hartglass: Welcome! Thank you so much for joining us, and I’m really excited to talk to you today. I had the opportunity a while ago, maybe early 2000 or sometime around then, you had these fundraisers and events in your home, and I was going to say cooked up, but no, prepared a wide range of wonderful, wonderful foods.

Rhio: Oh, thank you, thank you. And I just wanted to compliment you, I was on your site today, and I heard your singing. I had actually heard you once before I think at an event at…

Caryn Hartglass: I remember.

Rhio: You remember that event?

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, you and Lee sang also.

Rhio: Lincoln Center.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh right. No I remember being at a raw food festival once, and you and Lee did some really adorable duets and songs.

Rhio: Okay!

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, but… I used to run a food festival at Lincoln Center five years in a row, called Taste of Health

Rhio: That was the one! I heard you sing there!

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, and I like to say that I organized this festival that had around 10,000 people come every year, but I did it because I wanted to say that I sang at Lincoln Center. Which really isn’t true obviously.

Rhio: Well, I imagine you can sing anywhere. You have a wonderful voice.

Caryn Hartglass: Thank you. Well one of the things that I liked to do at that event was sing songs about food. And I didn’t write any of my own, but what I frequently did was rewrite some of the words to make everything vegan friendly, and so it’s funny because you just sent me some songs and unfortunately I just got them, so we’re not going to be able to hear them on the show, but they are about foods, so maybe you can tell us where we can find those songs.

Rhio: I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sent them too late. Well they’re going to be in an upcoming album that I have. The album title is called I’m Just a City Girl Transplanted in the Country. And the songs that I sent you, are, one is called, “Where’s All the Protein?” cause that’s the first question that comes up, as you know.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s right.

Rhio: And the other one that I sent you is called, “Have Some Papaya Today”.

Caryn Hartglass: I love papaya! In fact, I think, I think I will. I’m going to have to pick up some as soon as this show is over. So you have a website, just I want to get this out before we get going, www.rawfoodinfo.com.

Rhio: Right.

Caryn Hartglass: And it is loaded, loaded with information.

Rhio: It is! It’s jam-packed. As a matter of fact, I’m doing an update. I have a tech working on an update, and he’s been working for months! He says I never saw so many pages!

Caryn Hartglass: Right, well that’s the complication when you update a website when there’s so much info because a lot of it ends up being lost in the raw sauce, and we don’t want to do that.

Rhio: Right, no no, he’s not going to lose any of it, but it is taking a while.

Caryn Hartglass: And you also do a radio show.

Rhio: Yes, I do.

Caryn Hartglass: And that’s online too, so people can check that out, what’s that website?

Rhio: They can check that out at www.nytalkradio.net.

Caryn Hartglass: Right.

Rhio: And I have a new show each week.

Caryn Hartglass: The thing is that we’re doing all that we can to put out this really valuable information that will help our health, make us have long, quality, wonderful lives, and also do great things for the planet, and we’re doing whatever we can, wherever we can to combat the media, mainstream media, of all kinds of misinformation.

Rhio: Oh for sure, for sure.

Caryn Hartglass: So I support you.

Rhio: And I support you! I saw you on Dr. Oz too! That was wonderful that green drink you gave him!

Caryn Hartglass: Oh yeah! Thank you! That was amazing, and I will confess I like being on television.

Rhio: I do too!

Caryn Hartglass: And I would really like to have my own show, let me put that out there on the universe.

Rhio: Me too!

Caryn Hartglass: Because, there really aren’t any. Dr. Oz is doing a great thing, but we need to see more shows, or just shows that focus on plant foods!

Rhio: Exactly and we also need to see shows that go even beyond Dr. Oz, because you know Dr. Oz is holding the line at a certain point, beyond which I think he self-censors.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, well I said things…

Rhio: We don’t want to self-censor!

Caryn Hartglass: I said things on that show that they edited out.

Rhio: Really! Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.

Caryn Hartglass: But I wasn’t on very long but I tried… I was carefully planning what it was I was going to try and say, depending on what he asked, and they didn’t include all of it!

Rhio: You came across beautifully, really.

Caryn Hartglass: Thank you.

Rhio: And that juice was the bomb!

Caryn Hartglass: Well, I do that everyday. 16… I said I did that everyday on this show and it is my religion, where I juice everyday, and there are lots of reasons behind it. I was into juicing, not on a regular basis, but I realized the importance of it a long time ago, especially because of the situation we’re in with depleted soils, and all of that, we can get into that in a minute. But you may or may not know, I did have ovarian cancer.

Rhio: I was reading that this morning. I was sorry to hear that.

Caryn Hartglass: Which really struck me because I’d been leading this healthy, vegan lifestyle, and I was completely raw for two years, and I want to believe even though none of that saved me from getting the disease, I believe that I wouldn’t be alive today if I didn’t have the lifestyle that I, and eating the foods that I’d been eating.

Rhio: And it’s not only the food Caryn, it’s so many, you know there are 80 thousand chemicals in our environment today, 80 thousand chemicals, think about it!

Caryn Hartglass: I was a chemical engineer for 20 years, so I know I was exposed to some of them.

Rhio: Right, so anyone or combination of those can cause things that we’re not aware of.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I know. So what can we do? We can do whatever we can to…

Rhio: Eat raw.

Caryn Hartglass: Eat raw, or a lot of raw foods and really supercharge our immune system.

Rhio: Definitely.

Caryn Hartglass: So you have a pretty interesting story on how you got to where you are today. Maybe you could just give us a little snippet.

Rhio: Well my first introduction to raw was when I a teenager. It was the first job I ever had, was in a juice bar in a health food store. And in that juice bar, I was serving fresh, raw juices and smoothies, and people used to come in and tell me that they were getting, let’s say the potassium drink for a certain condition, or watermelon juice for their kidneys, or this for that, and I started making the connection for the first time in my life, that wow! I mean, previously to that, I hadn’t had a… If we have the time, I’ll tell you a childhood experience I had with garlic, but this was like the first time I had the connection. People were actually teaching me, this is healing me or keeping me healthy or whatever, and so I started making those connections, and then when I was working in the juice bar I would stare across the other side of the store where there would be all these interesting products and books I had never seen before, and it was just so intriguing to me, and so when I got my paycheck at the end of the week, I would trot over to the other side, and I really never made any money that summer cause I’d spend so much money in the store, but one of the books that I bought was by Ann Wigmore, and as you know, or maybe your listeners, or if they don’t know, Ann Wigmore is sort of the mother of the raw food movement, the modern raw food movement, and so I was definitely introduced to it early. I’d like to say that I jumped on it then, but I didn’t, but what I did do at that time is I introduced juicing into my life, I got a juicer, and I also got rid of all the foodless foods, the white flour, the white sugar, all the stuff that’s really… all the processed foods, and I just went for fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, but they, some of them were cooked, at least 50% was cooked at that time, and then later, later, a few years later, I had sort of a tragedy that happened to me, and as most people do, unfortunately we assuage our feelings and our emotions with food, and I ate a lot of it, and I gained a lot of weight. I’m only 5 foot tall, and so I’m petite, and I gained like 80 pounds, over 80 pounds, and so I had that weight on for four years, and it was bothering me a lot, I stopped singing, because I had been singing previously, I stopped singing, and it was bothering me, and then, my partner, who’s a great guy, just amazing, he, I kept telling him, you know how you do when you know you got to do something but you’re not… but you just can’t motivate yourself to start to do it, because it’s such a big project.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, it seems too huge.

Rhio: To lose a ton of weight like that! So I kept telling him, “I need a motivation! I need to be motivated.” I bugged the hell out of him. And one day he comes in and he says, “Guess what, I just booked us into a club that we used to work when I was singing, and it’s 6 streets away. So you’ve got the motivation now! Get yourself together!” That was one of the most wonderful things anybody ever did for me.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Okay. Well sometimes that’s all that takes when we have something really big that’s important to get us, to give us a kick in the butt!

Rhio: That’s true. Exactly!

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. Well, you’ve… First I wanted to say, when you said you were 5 foot, I’m 5 foot 3, I consider myself pretty petite also, but when I think of you, it must be your aura or something, because I think of you as a big presence. Not a large person.

Rhio: Right, right.

Caryn Hartglass: I think of you just, you know I don’t see you as small. I see you as someone who has a lot of information to bring. I don’t think of you as 5 foot.

Rhio: Oh okay.

Caryn Hartglass: I don’t know how to put that. I think it’s a… When I see myself in a reflection in a mirror sometimes I think, “Oh, who is that little person?” because I perceive myself as being big and powerful.

Rhio: Well thank you, I think that’s good.

Caryn Hartglass: So I think it’s a strength that I’m talking about.

Rhio: Right. That’s good. But I have been called a “big mama” before! But I think that sometimes sing bluesy songs, so they get the impression, like a “big mama”.

Caryn Hartglass: This book that you have, it originally came out in 2000. What was the incentive to rerelease it?

Rhio: Well it’s actually been out all this time, it has never been out of print for 10 years.

Caryn Hartglass: Great.

Rhio: I kept it going myself, and had pretty good sales on it, and then through, just appearing in different places, and speaking in different places we came into contact with a publisher, and they approached us on publishing the book, and we thought, “Okay, ten years later it’s about time, why not.”

Caryn Hartglass: Right. Well there’s certainly being a lot more activity, or a lot more interest in raw foods.

Rhio: That’s true.

Caryn Hartglass: Which is a good thing.

Rhio: Yes.

Caryn Hartglass: And what’s great about this book is about half of it really goes into some great discussions, and what you’re really good at is putting it in layman terms. Putting all these complicated issues into dialogue that people can understand.

Rhio: Well thank you, thank you. When I… I was working on the editor with this, and one of the things that he told me is, “I never saw a book that started with ‘Hi, my name is Rhio’”, and he said, “Are you sure you want to do that?” and I said, “Yes!” I was talking to people. People to people!

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I think that’s important, especially, well more and more in this, high level media age, where more things are on video, when we go back to the printed word, we want to connect.

Rhio: Right. Let me just say one other thing. The funny part about it is, back when I was shopping the book, because I was dying to get a publisher to begin with, I didn’t choose to self publish in the beginning, and I did get two publishers, and you know that whole beginning section that you think is so great, both of those publishers wanted me to eliminate them, or cut them down to 20 pages.

Caryn Hartglass: Right.

Rhio: And I couldn’t do it!

Caryn Hartglass: Well, there are different kinds of books on diet, and some of them are by medical doctors, and a lot of people feel the need to have all of this clinical information for medical doctors, and there’s a place for that. That’s really good, and I’ve got a lot of them. But then there are… Sometimes you need something that holds your hand, and that’s like a friend. And talks to you in a way that you’ll understand, and that’s what this book does.

Rhio: Well, thank you.

Caryn Hartglass: So, any of you out there that need a friend to help you along, eating healthier foods and more raw foods in your diet, Hooked on Raw is a great book to pick up, and I say, “pick up”, but you need two hands cause it’s a big, heavy book.

Rhio: It is. Big book.

Caryn Hartglass: There’s a lot of stuff in it. Okay, so there are a few little topics I just wanted to talk about in here that you discuss that I think are really important, and are confusing to some people. And the first thing is enzymes.

Rhio: Okay.

Caryn Hartglass: So…

Rhio: Okay. So enzymes, that are the first thing that people, raw food people, usually go to. And enzymes are certainly very important, because when you cook food, you’re destroying the enzymes, because enzymes they’re not heat tolerant, so between depending on what kind of food it is, between 105-118 degrees Fahrenheit, you’ve destroyed, or greatly reduced those enzymes. And why this is important, there was a researcher back in the 1930s, and there’s been some researchers since as well. This one that I’m referring to, his name is Edward Howell, he was an enzyme researcher, and he would test animals on cooked food and raw food, and he found that the animals that he gave the cooked food to overtime their pancreases would increase, and he surmised that that was happening because when an organ has to produce some kind of product like enzymes, it has to sometimes increase its tissue to meet with the demand of how much enzymes it has to produce. Where as, when he fed the animals raw food, they had normal pancreases, not increased in size. So that was one of his theories was that we are depleting our bodies of enzymes by eating cooked food. He believes that you have an enzyme bank account, and it’s finite. I hopefully, I don’t want to believe that, because then I would believe in aging, and I don’t believe in aging, and I have certain other beliefs that that, what he says doesn’t go along with.

Caryn Hartglass: Sure.

Rhio: But, this is what he said, so if that were to be true, then we really have to guard this like a bank account that we really need. And the best way to do that is to eat raw food, or to eat as much raw food as you can.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, what’s interesting is we see a tremendous increase in diabetes, and we know that Type 2 diabetes is caused by an overworked pancreas, and it just kind of gives up.

Rhio: Yes.

Caryn Hartglass: So we’re seeing it.

Rhio: We’re seeing it. And by the way I’d to tell your listeners that there’s a doctor in Arizona that has done some wonderful work on that. He’s been able to reverse Type 1, I mean Type 2 diabetes, and in some cases, Type 1 as well, with the raw food diet, and do you want me to mention his name?

Caryn Hartglass: Sure!

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