Hemp Times, by Marta Zmoira

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When you take your food directly from nature, you are eating what your body is designed to eat.

Albert Einstein saw that what’s on our plate today decides our fate. “Nothing will benefit health and increase chances for survival of lie on Earth as the evolution to vegetarian diet.” So said the physicist. Every time you eat food in its raw state, you are eating a live food. You are spitting out a seed that has the possibility of giving life, which in turn gives you food, water, air, oxygen, cures for diseases, scenery and shelter.

Aside from the occasional salad, or fruit as snack or dessert, I knew nothing of raw foods before I walked into a restaurant situated a few short blocks from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Raw Living Foods is an expansive whitewashed space with high ceilings, columns and arches, creeping green plants and striking photographs framed within actual tree branches, which brings the feeling of the outside in.

We’re greeted at the door by the owner of this entirely organic, vegan and raw restaurant, a tall young man wearing shorts and a Minnie Mouse baby doll T-shirt, flat stomach exposed. His California sun-touched blond hair is up in a high ponytail, and he’s wearing the most radiant smile on his face. “Just Juliano,” he introduces himself, “like Cher, Prince and Madonna.” This self-proclaimed “chef who can’t cook” is radiating good health, enthusiastic energy and truly cozy hospitality, welcoming us with an ease and familiarity that makes me think, “Have we met someplace before?”

Juliano, now 25, opened Raw Living Foods two and a half years ago. First a vegetarian, then a vegan and finally making the leap to raw foods, Juliano has been living raw for nearly four years now.

He describes the first year of raw as “amazing”: “You can’t believe the effects, and after that, you’ve got to share!” After his initial raw year, he put his money where his mouth was, starting the restaurant on a shoestring budget. “The best thing about raw is, it’s good karma,” he laughs. “When you go raw, you know you’re on the last food path, the last word in food and health. You’re not going to fall for supplements anymore, or organic packaged foods from health-food stores. It’s the most energy-giving, perfect way of eating.”

Most of the vitamins and minerals in our foods disappear in the cooking pot. Raw, or “living,” foods are never heated above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures between 140 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit actually bring about changes in the composition of food, altering the biochemical structure of the protein elements, making them only semi-digestible.

“We’re the only hundred-percent-certified, totally organic restaurant,” Juliano emphasizes. “Even the flowers on the tables are certified organic. We don’t use anything prepackaged. Our cleaning products are lemon juice and white vinegar on everything. “Promoting the best food on the planet—and California organic has been claimed to be, literally, the best anywhere—Raw Living boasts the only organic vegan sushi bar in the world, and offers its wholly novel “living pizza,” baked with an “activated” crust of sprouted buckwheat.

“I was born and raised in front of the television and that’s where I lived for a long time,” he reminisces. “When I was 14, I gave it up, and I’ve never gone back and I never will.” At that age Juliano moved with his family to Palm Springs, where he discovered hiking, and inevitably, nature. This is where he began to acquire some of the abstruse bio-botanical nutritional lore that fuels both his business and his lifestyle today.

He doesn’t drink water. Sounding almost like a surfing Southern preacher, Juliano tirades, “Water either comes through old pipes and filters, or in plastic jugs which create trash and plastic residue and the water sits stagnant. Water should never sit stagnant! And these are your only choices—or you could avoid it altogether by not drinking it. If you’re thirsty, that just means you’re not eating properly. All the water we need ought to be in our foods, except we are cooking all the water out of our foods before eating them. Some people drink a gallon of water a day, and are not satiated.”

Orange juice is the answer—he’s convinced of that. “No trash, no pipes, no filters—it’s not sitting stagnant, but rather flowing through the veins of an orange. Remember, it’s alive. You’re getting beautiful sugar-flavored water that’s amazing for you.” And if you don’t like orange juice, he suggests drinking red wine, or eating blueberries or strawberries.

The moment a blade touches any creature’s neck, the process of decay and decomposition begins. The only thing that deceased flesh will do is spoil and rot. Raw, or living foods are just that—alive. Even after an apple is picked from a tree, sent to market, placed in a basket and then in a refrigerator, when it is finally eaten it will still have the potential to give life. This brings with it a true sense of energy and nurturing. You are eating what your body is designed to eat, and giving yourself pure liquid. From a simple apple, your body will get anything it requires even if the apple doesn’t contain it. The right food helps create anything from proteins to carbohydrates or any exotic vitamin or chemical that your body may need, simply by giving your body the fuel it needs to do its biochemical work.

Juliano talks about the planet as if it’s all an extension of his own neighborhood. Energized with an outlook that percolates positivity and spirituality, lightness emanates through him. “When you give up stuff you get stuff, and I swear, you get so much when you give up cooked foods.” Juliano rejoices that he has not had a cold for four years. His raw regimen, he proselytizes, engenders independence from doctors and dentists, an increase in energy, a need for less sleep, general clarity of mind and even the addition of 10 years onto one’s life. Those are some pretty life-altering claims, but to this man who lives a lifestyle in which incredible things are not only possible but are actually occurring, these assertions don’t seem so far-fetched. He sleeps an average of two hours a night, swears by three-day-long orange-juice fasts, and has written a number of screenplays, most recently a futuristic adventure exploring a world that has finally spiraled down to complete environmental decay. He is also completing a full-color book of recipes called Raw: The Un-Cook Book, scheduled to be published, (Harper-Collins, New York) this spring. The restaurant, too, is doing quite well.

Juliano has come a long way from filling the roles of chef, manager and the 10 other jobs he initially needed to do, to now hiring accountants and managers, opening in a bigger location in San Francisco’s Upper Market, and even looking to open restaurants in Los Angeles and New York. “So much of it has fallen into my lap,” he marvels modestly.

His dress code consists exclusively of cut-off shirts and shorts. In San Francisco, where it’s sometimes a chilly during the day and always cool at night, this is no gentle bargain with the environment. He sees his choice of attire as the perfect way to remind himself to stretch, move about and constantly be practicing yoga. “If you’re cold, don’t go out and buy a sweater, get up and move!”

Yoga is an essential part of Juliano’s lifestyle. “Posture is very important. If you are sitting or standing firm, with a straight back and holding everything tight and up, you’re always doing yoga. All it takes is three weeks of disciplining yourself by reminding yourself to sit straight. It takes 21 days to make or break a habit, and you’ve now changed your entire spinal-health outlook for your entire life.”

Although a persuasive proponent and living example of the benefits of raw foods, this man’s work is hardly done. “It’s a matter of education and getting the word out about raw food.”

Juliano breaks his own diet down into five categories: roots, leaves, nuts, seeds and fruits. He eats mostly fresh fruits; not only do such well-known items as strawberries and apples fall under this category, but also items which the uninitiated may still conceive of as “veggies”: eggplant, avocado, squash, zucchini and cucumber, for example. Grains like rice, corn and beans are technically considered “fruit” as well.

“When I gave up cooked foods I used to think, How will I live, what will I eat?” Juliano says reassuringly. “But there’s so much variety and choice in raw foods that I haven’t eaten the same thing in so long.” He either eats simply, like scooping up half of an avocado out of its skin with a spoon, or munching barehanded on high-quality apples, bananas or dates, or he will eat more elaborately from the restaurant menu. This comprises his own variations of old standards, such as the aforementioned living pizza mashed avocado on top of an activated-buckwheat crust garnished with sun-dried tomatoes, basil, eggplant, garlic, green pepper, onions and fresh tomatoes on top. The “salmon sushi” is made out of carrot pulp, the “ricotta cheese” from pine nuts. Perhaps he’ll have a torte for dessert, a delicious confection of dates and carob with walnut icing on top of a walnut crust, with syrup and strawberries. Or maybe an ice-“cream” sundae of frozen fruit sorbet. Everything is organic, vegan and raw, truly all natural—directly from the ground without chemical pesticides, and never heated to enzyme-destroying temperatures.

Luckily, he’s also very free with his recipes. “Any nut has a way of soaking or sprouting. Almonds and walnuts cream when soaked. Place almonds, or any nuts, in a glass jar and fill it with water. Soak overnight and spill out the water the next day, and they’re ready. Here’s a great milk tip: If you’ve got almonds, filtered water and a blender, then you’ve got milk. There’s so much variety. You can use any of your favorite nuts—almonds, walnuts, sprouted soy-beans. Put one part nuts in a blender with four parts water, you’ve got milk. Use one part water to one part nuts, and you’ve got cream or cheese. Add maple syrup, and it’s sweet cream; add parsley and garlic and it’s spicy cream. So now you have a cream sauce for pastas and soups. It’s really very simple.”

The restaurant is as unique as Juliano’s imagination. “Forever, what I want to do is open up raw restaurants anywhere I can. It’s been given to me and so I want to contribute back to the planet.” To Juliano, eating raw, organic, vegan foods gives the body exactly what it needs to live up to its fullest potential, helping it to be the self-repairing, perfectly agile super-machine that it was always meant to be.

RAW-CIPES

Black Tar
(Tastes just like chocolate syrup except it’s way better!)
In a blender place:
3 cups maple syrup
2/3 cup olive oil
2 tbsp. Vanilla Extract (optional)
1 cup raw carob powder
Blend well and enjoy!

Raw Sprouted Hummus
In a blender place:
2 cups sprouted chickpeas (garbanzos)
½ cup parsley
4 tbsp. Nama Shoyu
¼ cup olives
¼ to ½ cup olive oil (You can never have too much!)
1 tsp. Black cumin
1 tsp. Jalapeno
1 tbsp. Garlic
¼ cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Blend using rubber scraper to help turn over.

Nut Milk
1 cup favorite soaked nuts (almond, walnut, cashew, Brazil nut, macadamia, pine nut, etc.)
3 cups water
A few drops of almond or vanilla extract (optional-to taste)
Approx. 1 tsp. of maple syrup (optional-to taste)
Blend 2 minutes or until creamy. Chill well. Stain if perfect smoothness is desired.

--Recipes courtesy of Juliano, Raw Living Foods.