By Ta’Shia Asanti

According to statistics posted at www.blackhealthcare.com, a web site created by leading healthcare practitioners, African Americans are among the highest ranks of those diagnosed with America’s most deadly illnesses including HIV/AIDS, heart disease, breast and prostate cancer and diabetes.  Many African American holistic healthcare practitioners are recommending a raw food diet as a preventative measure to address the health crisis in the Black community. 

What is raw food? 

Raw food, also called live or living food, is food prepared and served as close to its original state as possible. Food that is considered raw is not heated over 105 degrees during preparation and the finished product closely resembles the food’s natural beginnings in content and flavor. 

Why raw food?

An alarmingly low number of Blacks know or even care what is inside the food they eat. Even fruits and vegetables that many of us think are healthy are often sprayed with toxic pesticides that have been linked to cancer, asthma, arthritis, lupus and other immune related illnesses.  Many Blacks, both knowingly and unknowingly, eat a diet high in fat, sodium and cholesterol with little or no awareness of the consequences.

Because raw food is not cooked or processed, most of it has little to no cholesterol and low or no fat. If the food is organic (no pesticides, additives or hormones), there are no harmful chemicals or pesticides on or in it.  Holistic medical practitioners have connected fried, processed, cooked and non-organic foods to many diseases prevalent among Blacks including cancer and diabetes.  Some Blacks who have adopted a raw food or even a vegetarian or vegan diet have experienced  miraculous healings of diseases and disorders which Western-based doctors had thought unlikely.  

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey challenged the beef and poultry industry when she aired a tell all investigative report that detailed the diseases infecting the animals millions of people eat every day.  Oprah’s report also exposed the fact that when a cow or pig is found to have cancer, only the portion of the body that has cancer is removed.  However, it is common knowledge that cancer cells move through the blood.  Thus, when sick animals are eaten, their illnesses could pass on to those who ingest their flesh.

Scholarly research has also pointed to diets forced upon enslaved Africans as the culprit of hereditary illnesses such as hypertension.  Enslaved Africans were forced to eat the leftovers from their slaveowner’s kitchen, which usually consisted of the worst parts of the pig and starchy foods high in sodium, cholesterol and fat. 

Holistic doctors have also made a connection to the salt absorbed into the bodies of enslaved Africans chained on the bottom of water-logged ships crossing the Atlantic and the tendency of African Americans to retain water.  Prior to being brought to America, Africans ate a lot of fresh, uncooked foods.  Being forced to adopt a diet that was foreign to their native land was yet another wound from the institution of slavery inflicted on the Black body.

Why the Raw Food Movement?

Raw food has become a movement in the West and on the East Coast with hundreds of thousands of converts.  One of the most notable raw foodists is best selling author Queen Afua who penned the New York Times bestseller, Sacred Woman.

“My body had literally shut down,” Afua said. “From fibroid tumors to high blood pressure, what I was eating was killing me slowly.  I realized that there was a connection between how I treated my body temple to the circumstances in my life.  When I realized my body is my sacred temple and began treating it as such, everything and everyone in my life began to reflect how I treated myself, ” she said during a conference  in Denver last month.

Another speaker at the Conference was raw food chef Rawsheed, owner of Rawsheed Raw Foods.  

“I dropped 100 pounds when I went raw,” Rawsheed said to conference attendees.   “When I was eating meat and fried foods I barely had energy to make it through the day.  When I purified my body from the garbage I had been putting in it for years, I got this amazing clarity about life.  I’ve traveled all over the world training raw food chefs and teaching people how to heal their bodies with the food that grows from the earth. ”

David Wolfe, who starred in the Sci-fi Channel r eality TV show, Mad Mad House, is one of the world’s most famous raw foodists.  Wolfe, who also goes by the name Avocado, hasn’t eaten a cooked meal for over a decade.  He is the author of several books on raw food that teach practitioners how to transition to a raw food diet. 

“The amazing taste and potential healing properties of fresh herbs, fruits, green vegetables and seeds prepared with love is reason enough to give it try, ” said Wolfe. 

The raw food craze has hit Denver.  Denver’s first raw food restaurant Café Karma, by Lalania Carrillo, Christina Massey and Faatma Mehrmanesh, opened in May. The Café’s non-stop patronage has the owners looking for a larger space to house their wholesome neighborhood café located just five minutes from downtown Denver. 

“I chose to create Karma along with my partners Lalania Carrillo and Faatma Mehrmanesh because we felt that Denver was in desperate need of a peace and love-filled space where health conscious, spiritually connected individuals could feed their bodies as well as their souls ,” Massey said.

Ietef Hotep Vita, founder of the Brown Suga Youth Festival and Conscious Consumerism Movement in Denver, is also a fan of raw food.  “Keep it green,” Vita is known to say to Hip-hop heads in Denver and around the world as he shakes up his drink of spirulina and fresh organic juice.

As always, before embarking on any dietary plan, consult your primary care physician, first.