Raw Summit Interview with Victoria Boutenko

Raw Summit Interview with Victoria Boutenko Kevin:

Hi everyone, this is Kevin Gianni, Optimal Health Expert, and I’d like to welcome you to another very special Raw Summit Teleseminar, which can be found online at www.rawsummit.com. The purpose of the Raw Summit is to pass along cutting edge information about raw and living food technologies for you to reach optimal health, wellness, and success. Today I have an incredible guest on the line. She is an author and speaker. She an incredible resource and also very bold because in 1994, she decided to go totally raw and bring her family along. So, today’s guest to the Raw Summit is Victoria Boutenko. Victoria, I want to welcome you aboard.

Victoria:

Oh hello it’s my pleasure.

Kevin:

I am still excited about this call. I want – I mean it’s such an amazing feat to take your family from eating regular food to raw food. So, first why don’t you just tell us a little a bit about your story and why you’re here?

Victoria:

In 1993, my family became very ill. We now like to joke that we were lucky to get sick altogether. My husband, my two younger children and myself we got a very serious illnesses that the doctors couldn’t help us with. My husband had rheumatoid arthritis and hyperthyroid. He had 12 surgeries in his body.

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

I was 120 pounds bigger than I am today and I had edema and I had arrhythmia, which is irregular heart beat and this disease took my father. My daughter was diagnosed with asthma and allergies, and she was coughing every night. And then my son was diagnosed with diabetes. And, the doctors told him at that time that it was type 1 and that he had to go on insulin.

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

And we spent enormous amount of money on insurance and medical visit and drugs. But then eventually doctor told me, “Victoria, I don’t think we could anything else for you, you just have to pray now.”

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

At this point, I was only 38 years old. I didn’t want to die. I started to look for alternative and then I started to approach anybody who looked healthier than others and asked them about anything they knew about health. And, in two months, the universe placed in front of me the lady who I believe could be the only raw foodist in Colorado who lived at that

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time. I lived in Colorado then. And so, when she told me about raw food I was really disappointed in her because who could believe that stuff - just eating carrots and celery could cure you? I mean, that does not make any sense. However, whatever she told me everything made sense. She said for example the birds don’t cook and I knew it, it was true. She said the snakes don’t cook. She said, “Victoria you didn’t come in to this world with cooking stove attached to your belly.” I said, “That’s true.” And, she said I’ve been doing it for 15 years and I got rid off my colon cancer which was stage four 15 years ago. I said, “Wow,” and I knew she was not making it up. It took me another several months to put myself together to go on raw food because how would one go on raw food? How do you do this? At that time, 13 years ago nobody knew how to go on raw food. Nobody knew about raw food. Everybody would make square eyes and say, “What? Raw food? Isn’t just you’re the ice cream? What is that?” They just did have no clue. And, how does one become raw and then I was thinking. Well, my brother’s birthday is in two weeks. I cannot go before that and then Christmas is coming and then after Christmas, sale is coming and then my favorite chocolate cake on sale. I’m just, how does one decide when, what time like is it 12 o’clock, is it 8 a.m.? I’m like how does one go on raw food? How do you become weird and just stop having a pleasure? Kevin:

What was the most of the things that you were eating before?

Victoria:

Before we were eating everything and when we went on raw food it seems like we ate nothing.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And because we didn’t like vegetables, we are…we just bought from fruit like banana and like some of the most generic like basic fruit, like oranges and Washington, which is the apple and they were not even organic. But, as soon as we became hungry, there were just piles peels of bananas and oranges and very quickly I run back to the store and bought every possible thing there was on fruit section and I just chop and put a lot of oil or pepper and salt on it and we were just eating them like crazy. We were eating in style and within a matter of hours, we started to feel better. It’s amazing that since January 21, 1994, when my family became a Raw Family, our Raw Family birthday, the next morning, we felt better and my daughter never had another asthmatic attack since then.

Kevin:

Are you serious?

Victoria:

Yes. And I found my son’s sugar in the morning in the kitchen pricking his finger with this blood sugar monitor and he said, “Oh my machine is broken.” I said, “Why do you think it’s broken?” He said, “Because it doesn’t show the right numbers.” I said, “What’s the right numbers?” He said, “It used to be 270, 300 my sugar and it is now 125.”

Kevin:

Wow.


Victoria:

And it’s never been that low. So, the change was so quick and my husband didn’t have to do the surgery that said that without this surgery he will die in less than two months. And, I started to lose weight so easily and I know who died from arrhythmia. In three and half months, my family run 10-kilometer race. So, from being desperately ill, in January 21 1994, three and half months later on memorial day weekend we ran bolder, bolder rate with 40,000 other athletes and Valya was only eight, Sergei was only nine, and we did it. At that point, we felt that the health – our health is now enhance and next morning I called my insurance and I canceled my medical insurance because now I knew that I could manage. I could monitor my health. And I was thinking I paid $550 every month. How many organic mangoes can I buy for that $550? And so since then, we’ve been on a raw food diet.

Kevin:

Transitioning is such an incredible task. How - a lot of people that are going to be on this call either have family members that they want, who would like to see eat healthier and even they are the mother in the family, the father in the family they just want the health of their children to be better. How did you approach your family?

Victoria:

It took the longest to talk with my husband in to that. He – at first, he told I am Russian man and I cannot live or eat raw food and he said, “I love my Russian borscht with pork,” and he said, “If you go on the raw food diet, I am going to divorce you.” But when the doctor really scares you, when the doctor actually told him this words that, “You’re going to die from hyperthyroid if you are not going to do the surgery right now.” And my husband said, “How soon will I die?” She said, “In less than two months.”

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

Then he said - then he replied to the doctor, “I am going to go on raw food diet.” He was ready to do whatever but his imagination was that he was just go on that diet for two weeks. It was like a fasting for him and then he will get better and then he shouldn’t have to this diet.

Kevin:

Right.

Victoria:

But whenever – when went on raw food diet and two weeks later, we already didn’t think about eating cooked food because we suddenly felt so great. We didn’t want to go back. Then my children they also throw a fit. Sergei told me, “Mommy, you should go to the school and look at the pyramid on the wall. I’m a growing organism. I need to use protein. Talk to my teacher. She will explain to you that. We really need to have grains and dairy and meat.” And so, they really didn’t want to do it and so I had to do lots of talking and lots of explanation and exploring to get in. And I have to use some tricks.

Kevin:

What are some of the tricks?


Victoria:

Yes. One trick that is my favorite that worked truly well, I started to put around house especially in the bathroom, I started to put cartoons and I got everybody used to I have new cartoons every single day. And then I started to replace some of the cartoons with some quotes from raw food books. For example, each can of Mountain Dew has 11 teaspoons of sugar. And sugar is the empty calorie and it could do this and this damage. Just a small quote so that eight-year-old kid could manage to read and understand. And then my kids read them because they had the habit reading those. And they would come back to me and they would say, like I remember when I put, 80% of morning cereals is sugar and they already knew how bad is sugar and then my daughter just run to me said, “Mom did you know that 80% of morning cereals was sugar and how did you put me on them. How did you feed me those? I don’t want ever have them in my mouth.” And that was something that really works because they got information. And I know that children are smart and they do not want to hurt. They do not want to get sick. And, I tried to never push anything on them. I never said that, “You have to do this. You cannot eat that.” I tried to give them an option. It was not very easy. Sometimes, my heart was bleeding when I send them to the birthday and I was afraid that they will eat something there and they will become hurt. But as soon as they saw the difference in how they feel, at the age of eight and nine they were able to make their own decisions and they saw obviously that it’s a big change. It’s like night and day. For example, Valya was never able to run because she would cough.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

She couldn’t breath. And suddenly she ran a quarter mile at school at the second grade and she was not the last, and she came home and said, “Mom I could run!” She was so thrilled that she could run and she was just like normal. And now, she was able to go to the swimming pool and before she couldn’t and she was even able to play wind instruments, which she couldn’t do before. So she benefited. And Sergei, he did not have to poke his fingers and measure his blood sugar and that was a big advantage to him because his blood sugar was now in normal frame.

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

So easily. I think he actually had type 2 diabetes, not type 1. But how many more kids are misdiagnosed and placed on insulin unnecessarily? And insulin is such a threat. It causes such damage to health and whoever is placed on insulin almost never could go back, you know, off it.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And my husband never had to do another surgery and he became so strong. He started to become a runner, and I lost 120 pounds.

Kevin:

Amazing, isn’t it?

Victoria:

Yes.


Kevin:

You talked about the kids going to school and going to parties and going to birthday parties, how did you prepare them? You know, what did you give them for school? Do you pack their lunches? When they went to parties, you know, what did you say to them?

Victoria:

I didn’t know how to do everything and I was learning with them and I was learning from them. When they came from school and they told me and I sensed from them that they felt inferior to other kids who had bright packages. I said, “We’ll do a great job packaging now.” We went to the store, we bought some nice cute zip lock bags like tiny ones and with colorful stripes on them and I started to package bright colored packages. For example, I will peel the mandarin and I put mandarin pieces mixed with the almonds, walnuts, and raisins. And then I would slice kiwi in certain way then I will slice the star fruit and it looks spectacular. And then I would put the seeds of pomegranate in between and then I would just go and buy some cute water bottles because we were not drinking anything but water. And the water could come in all kind of triangular, whatever, square bottles with different pictures and moving mountains inside. And so I made sure that their packages looked spectacular and unusual and nobody else has them. I am pretty sure Sergei became very popular and cool. He started to be called fruit boy. People from the whole school would come to see the mango that he pulls out of his backpack or pomegranate and there were kids who never saw those things in their life and they didn’t taste it. In a couple of weeks he said, “Mom you have to send me with two mangoes and two pomegranates because my friends eat it for me.” He says, “I should have one for friends and one for myself.” So instead of being suppressed and inferior, they turned to be cool, special, and it was really good for them because they have learned how to be different because they didn’t have a choice. They have learned how to be different, they wanted to be different. And when the time came for the peer pressure when they were 11, 12, 13, 14, when their friends started to offer them drugs and alcohol and smoking, tobacco, they didn’t have any problems saying no. Because they were not afraid to be different and they told me many times how much they appreciate it, the chance to be different. And not only this, in other ways like in any kind of political questions or any kind of social questions, they always have their own opinion. And very often they have different opinion from me and sometimes it was difficult and challenging but I respect it. Now I see that I cannot manipulate them, I cannot control my children but they are self-reliable and I understand that nobody will be able to manipulate or control them in their life. Not their bosses, or spouses, or anybody in the world. They have their own opinion, their own will, and they are much more mature at their age that I was at their age, for example.


Kevin:

Wow, most kids like french fries and chicken nuggets. Did you give them mostly fruit or what other things did you give to them that they liked?

Victoria:

When we went on raw food diet, there were no gourmet raw food restaurants or recipes or even books available. There were just like five or six books that had some kind of an idea. And in the beginning, we were eating only salad for a long time until my husband finally said, “Enough, I cannot eat salads anymore. Can you come up with something that has different texture and is tasty? Do you mean that I will never have any entrée in my life? Will I never have anything sweet?” And at first I cried, but then I decided…I started thinking and I decided to make something that I will substitute, for example egg yolks with walnuts or meat with some almonds and just kind of come up with raw cutlets or a raw pizza or something, bread, crackers. And then I started practicing with this plan and I came up with some dishes and I remember how my very first thing that I called “cake” was actually liquid that we ate from the bowl with a spoon and was liquid but we called it apricot cake and my children were very excited because it was something sweet. It was different from just eating fruits. But mine was not really that good and then Sergei and Valya kept begging me for more so I went to the garage sale and I bought them cheap blender and cheap processor and cheap dryer, spent like I don’t know, few dollars. And then I told them, “Okay here is your equipment. Be careful. Don’t stick your fingers in there but you can do whatever you want and I will just buy ingredients. But one condition, whatever you make you have to consume, .you or your friends, but it has to be eaten. You don’t want to waste it” And I was really surprised that my children, they started to burst into creativity, recipes, and very quickly they started to make all kinds of chips and things that I would never think to do. All kinds of crackers and pizzas, and smoothies and popsicles and they actually do a much better raw chefs than I am or my husband. And then very soon they had so many recipes that they published the book, Eating without Heating. That is their teenagers’ recipe book and they know how to do anything. Very often, I come to my home and there was a surprise. All kinds of sticks they make in the dehydrator or in the refrigerator. Just yesterday, Valya made mango popsicle that was out of this world.

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

And I was feeding that to several of my friends who are not raw fooders, not at all, not even vegetarians. And they said, “Wow! What is that? Where can we get those? They’re really compatible, really good. She would put some cinnamon in there for flavor or something else and they are very, very nice.

Kevin:

Yes, that’s fantastic. So how old were they when they started experimenting when you got them…


Victoria:

They were eight and nine and now they are 21 and 22.

Kevin:

Okay. So you just had them at eight and nine you said, “Here start experimenting.”

Victoria:

Yes and they experimented because they had more free time and they probably were not hooked on any ideas. I had some preconceived ideas of what could be done, what cannot be done, and they didn’t have any limits or barriers. They just started making things, and they would go to this store and I say “This, this, and that. I would buy this for them and they would make food and they ate it.” And they became much stricter even in raw foods than I was. For example they would say, “Well, mom, you cannot use vanilla extract it is not raw.” So they were for a while like almost fanatical about it. It has to be raw.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

But then we’ve learned that if there is a small amount like you know…like half percent of a cooked food, it’s not going to really turn you back and once you’ve craved cooked food unless it is something that is nostalgic. Like you cannot play with this and fool with these pieces of chocolate or anything that’s definitely used to be a favorite. But if it’s something like you know, some minute amount of cooked food like for example extract of vanilla or something that is cooked that you cannot really notice the taste or flavor, it’s not going to do anything really.

Kevin:

Yes. Do you feel that’s a good approach for people not to be, you know, a hundred percent fanatical about it?

Victoria:

I have made my research after I’ve been many years on raw foods and I’ve been fanatical in the beginning myself because I was afraid because I realized I was addicted to cooked food.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

And I do believe that cooked food is addictive, and I came out with this conclusion that there are two kinds of people. There are normal eaters that are very rare and there are compulsive eaters. Compulsive eaters are those people who do not stop eating when they are not hungry but they stop when their stomach is full.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

And even if they are not hungry, if they see food, they begin to salivate. Those are compulsive eaters and this is like majority of people are. Normal eaters are those who don't care, who will stop eating in the middle of the plate and they don't care if it’s going to be wasted. They just don't want to eat anymore. Those are really likely ones. So for compulsive eaters, I believe it’s very important to go 100% raw because they will probably fail very quickly if they try something cooked, but for normal


eaters, they could even stay on track and they still could manage it because they really have really good healthy habits. Kevin:

Right. What do you think causes that compulsive eating?

Victoria:

The childhood. How the children are introduced to the food. I made another research about when the first eating habits formed, and I found out the books about imprints, imprinting. Imprint is the instinct, that is, reflexes that form in the early childhood. For example, the first imprint that the child received is his mother. While still in the womb, he begins to smell, hear, and touch and sense his mother. And so, the imprint for food preferences forms at the time when the teeth begin to come out, and when the children become mostly begin to get weaned of the milk, the breast milk. That is from nine months old to one and a half years old. At that time, the food preferences form for their lifetime. And those are so hard to change. It’s almost impossible. Whatever a child is seeing his mother holding in her hands, whatever the child sees around him on the table, on the counter, even pictures on the wall, in the children’s book, whatever the child is given to, and I remember how my oldest son who is now 33, whenever he was eight months old and nine months old, I would give him a potato chip and take a picture of him, and I thought, “Wow, he looks like a little gentleman. He is so cute,” and then, later I was so regretting about it. We should never play with that. And, I would say to those who even don’t want to go on raw food diet and don't want to change their diet, place in your baby’s room in your house the pictures of fruit on the wall. Buy lots of books with fruits in them even any kind of fruit books or garden books. And just, you know pretend that you’re eating this. Make an imprint on your child that will last a lifetime, then you’ll never have to tell your child you have to eat your greens. There will be an imprint.

Kevin:

Wow! That’s a fantastic way to do it. I think that a lot of people don’t recognize that maybe it’s in their childhood when this happened, I think, you know when we’re sitting by our meal we hear a voice. You have to eat all these or it’s going to be wasted. Did you grow up with that or no?

Victoria:

I grew up with this, yes. If I don't finish my plate, the children in China will starve to death.

Kevin:

Yes. Okay it’s a strange place to be in.

Victoria:

Yes.

Kevin:

What advice can you give to a family who wants to incorporate more of a raw food lifestyle into their day-to-day meal?

Victoria:

I would give advice to people who want to incorporate more raw food diet in their family members’ diet to be a good example. We always start with our self because if I believe in something within myself, if I really believe that is good, somehow the other members of my family would sense it from me. They’ll sense that I’m honest. Then my vibration will be


different. They will never see me cheating or doing something. But on the other hand, if I will cheat, if I will go eat somewhere and come home and pretend that I’m eating something, first of all I wouldn’t be really eating with the appetite and excitement, and then, I wouldn’t look as healthy. My breath wouldn’t be fresh, and they would recognize it right away. So the first thing is to be example. If children…doesn’t have to be real children in a certain way. When your loved ones will see how important that is for you, they will respect it. And sometimes, we could even ask for support. I don't think we could say, well you are all carnivores here, you know, how would I say it? “Don't eat that crap in front of me anymore. I’m a raw foodist here.” That’s very insulting, but we could ask for support. We could say, “Can you please not, can you please not indulge me in any chocolate eating because whenever I eat it, I later really regret and I have headache.” That’s okay, to ask for help, to ask for support is okay, but not demanding, not criticizing people, and I don't even like when other people say cold food - other people with junk food, I think it’s insulting. Even if we know really scientifically that it is junk food, we can’t really call it names because a while ago, I was eating this food and I was innocently believing that it was good for me in a certain way. So we could say just something - we could say, “I don't want to have unhealthy cravings.” Or we could say not the best choice, but we cannot really say, give names to the food, and I don't like even when people say sad diet because some people could be really insulted by this and that will create resistance in them. And it will really do the opposite from what we want them to do because I think that we really want to be inviting not criticizing. That’s very important. Kevin:

Yes. When you started, I mean do you suggested someone to clean it out all of the cabinets that looks all - looks at all the ingredients?

Victoria:

I cleaned it myself, and I did it all in one day. I turned off the pilot. I had covered the cooking stove with a big cutting board, and I read all the labels and everything had to go – the whip cream, the old cheeses I had, and beans, and rice and everything, the cereals. My cabinets were empty. Not only the food I had to throw, the toast maker and coffeemaker and I had to crack the window of the microwave because I would be tempted. As soon as I get hungry, I cannot manage myself. I couldn’t.

Kevin:

So that was the compulsiveness? If you have any...

Victoria:

Yes, I ‘m a compulsive eater, yes.

Kevin:

If you had any remnants of it you...

Victoria:

Yes, yes. And then, I also, I just purchased two month’s ago, Martha Stewart pots and pans so I had to put them out. I put them on the sidewalk. They’ve disappeared in a minute. It’s still brand new. So I had nothing. And that was good because at night, very often I heard somebody walked in the kitchen. If I could only guess who, I opened in the cupboard looking for something - dry piece of bread or something, and I remember how my husband said, “Oh, I thought I was just going to


some place and buy myself a dozen of egg,” but there’s nothing to fry them in, and this is just a pain in the neck to go and get the pilot in the middle of burns in the middle of the night so he would give up. And in the morning, he will say, “Oh good.” Kevin:

Right. Right. Were you guys never hungry, you know just craving that food?

Victoria:

Oh yes. Oh yes, that’s for sure. Not only hungry. We have that urge to eat.

Kevin:

Then what were some of the discussions that you had about that? Was it just like, I’m going to…your husband said, “I’m going to go and get eggs,” but…

Victoria:

Well, in the beginning we were hiding it from each other, but then we have learned that we actually speak out, it literally instantly get health and we support each other, we talk about this. It’s the only way to manage. When I found in my husband’s pocket once when I was doing laundry, there are receipt for pizza, I just didn’t know what to do and I came to him and I said, “Why is your face so red?” And he wouldn’t say anything. I’d say, “You kind of smell...you look like, you know not healthy,” and then finally he said, “Well, I ate a piece of pizza and I feel really sick.”

Kevin:

Oh yes.

Victoria:

And I said, “Well, honey when next time you would want to go, why don't you talk to me before and maybe I could help you to overcome it. Maybe we could do something together. Maybe we walk or maybe we could just go swimming or do something” just you know go sit down and talk just hug or just anything so that you don't have to suffer. And from then, we were like one AA group altogether. We would support each other. If one person begins to think into temptation, then the rest of the family begins to talk and I remember how children, they were really, really good at that. They would say, “Mom, I like how you look now. I was so ashamed of you when you look so old and so fat.”

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

Or something like, “Mommy, I don't want to die. You too die because I understand you could have died. Doctors said you could have died.” And that would be the like the best remedy right away like bring me back to the surface.

Kevin:

Yes, just a reality check.

Victoria:

But also, because we were doing it on our own, we were kind of pioneer. We did lots of hardships. We went through a lot of pitfalls.

Kevin:

Okay, what were some of those?


Victoria:

About seven years into raw food, we reached the plateau when we stopped feeling better, and better and better and within several months, we started to go backwards and we started to experience unwanted not positive symptoms of not perfect health. And it’s not like we got bad diabetes and arrhythmia but we started to develop some symptoms of not perfect health. For example, every one of us developed at least one wart, which is the symptom of low immunity, and I remembered how I was thinking how could it be? We are in the best in the world diet, which we know from the first hand that we cured ourselves on that diet only now we eat all organic, and we’ve combined the food better. How could it be that we develop warts?

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

And then we started to develop cravings – so strong cravings that we didn’t have for so many years. We just started to have cravings especially in the evening, the urge to eat and we couldn’t even find out what exactly we wanted to eat, but it was definitely something we didn’t have in our fridge.

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

And then my hair started to fall and our nails became brittle, and then I started to gain weight again. I was exercising and I started to gain weight in a raw food diet. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Oh no!” And then finally, our teeth began to fall apart so quickly. Like for eight years, our teeth were in such a good shape. We would go to see the dentist. The dentist will look and they will say, “Go home. You don’t have anything to do here.” And suddenly, we started to develop cavities like by the month. New cavity, new cavity, new cavity – painful! So something was happening. And first what I did, I wrote an e-mail to all raw food experts that I was aware of in the world and I asked them, “If you know anything about the plateau, I’m going backwards.” And I got answers from most of the doctors or experts, and they said yes. But I reached my plateau two into raw food and…I reached my plateau four years into raw food. And then I said, “What do you do?” And everybody sent me different responses.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

One person said, “You need to now drink goat’s milk.” Another person said, “You need to eat 20% cooked food.” Another person said, “You need to start taking supplements.” But then they say…it’s very interesting they say, but it doesn’t really work for me. I go yo-yo all the time. I’m still looking for a solution.

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

So, I didn’t get any solution. Then, I decided I’m just going to sit down and make my own research. One day, I took the list of nutrition that is


recommended by USDA, and then I wrote down the list of all food, nutrition…nutrients in all foods that exist including meat, dairy and everything – shellfish, whatever. And I started to play with this, combining the diet that will cover all the nutrients that humans need to have according to USDA, and I discovered that it just couldn’t be possible. It just doesn’t work this way. We eat a lot of food even and then it doesn’t cover what we need. Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

Even we use in fruits and vegetables, until I found one food group that is not listed anywhere. It’s not listed by USDA. It is called greens.

Kevin:

Uh-huh.

Victoria:

And when I looked at greens and I did a kind of initiative on my own, the nutrition content of greens perfectly matches human body nutrition. I saw instantly that it’s like prime food, prime source of nutrients for humans. It has absolutely everything except one thing, vitamin B12. It has all the essential minerals. It has all the essential fatty acids. It has all essential vitamins and all essential amino acids in them in exact quantities that the human body needs. For example, calcium. USDA recommends that we have 1000 milligrams of calcium per day, which is huge. It’s like a brick. And lamb’s quarter, which is the name of the weed. It’s a green weed, has 1403 milligrams. So, it has even more than what’s recommended.

Kevin:

Wow!

Victoria:

And the essential amino acids. And why they are called essential is because they…out of 21 amino acids, nine cannot be produced by the body and has to come with the food through the mouth. So, if I take all these nine amino acids and I list them, and then I list across from them kale and what amino acid it has, so this is almost match - almost like identical. And for comparison, I took a carrot and I took apple and I put it down, and carrots and apple have only two or one digit when USDA says we need three or four digits, when greens have exactly the same digits. So, it’s like it’s made for us. And then I saw it makes sense because that’s where a cow gets her protein, and a cow is just a middle man.

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

There’s no way that the cow could have more essential amino acids than the grass, than the greens. And so when I just - I realized that, I thought that was amazing because I’d…in my family, we did not really put emphasis on greens. We were just kind of trying to eat them, but we didn’t really consume them on a regular basis plus we really surprisingly never developed a taste for greens. We would eat some tender greens


once in a while like we put them in salad, but we prefer to have salad made out of beets, carrots or some other things. Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

And then I wanted to know how much greens humans have to have, and I read lots of books of experts and I could not find how much because everybody says as much as you can, but nobody says one cup, five cups, 10 cups – how many?

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

At that point, I decided to compare humans to the most close to humans animal, which is a chimpanzee, and see how much greens a chimpanzee consume if she does consume at all because chimpanzees share with humans 99.4% of the same sequence of genes. They have the same three types of blood that could be transferred to humans. They have the same heart, liver and kidneys that could be transplanted into humans, but they’re not economical to grow because chimpanzees are very expensive to grow.

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

But they are so close to us that in America, there are 200,000 of those poor animals in medical lab where medical doctors – they’re experimenting with them because they are so close to humans, and they try to put human ailments on them like AIDS, hepatitis C and cancer. But chimpanzees have such a strong immunity that they cannot contract AIDS, hepatitis C, cancer and other diseases. And wow! When I read all of these, I thought, “Instead of putting our illnesses on them, why don’t we rub some of their immunity on us?”

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

At this point, I went to the library and I looked at these books by Jane Goodall.

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

And as you know, Kevin, Jane Goodall is the woman who spent 30 years living in the jungle alone among chimpanzees, studying their lives and seeing what they eat and what they do, and she’d written volumes of books. And from her books, I’ve learned that chimpanzees consume…half of their diet are fruit – only half of the diet are fruit. Almost completely the second half are green leaves. Wow! I was onto something. When I saw that, I was really, really shocked. And then they eat a little bit of seeds, a little bit of bark and a little bit of insects, but majority of the second half is…like 45% of it is greens.


And I was consuming 8 to 12 pounds of fruits per day all my…before that discovery all my raw food life, and I thought if I ate 8 to 12 pounds, which is…if you think that it’s nothing else, during the day it’s like a bag of apples. It’s really not that much for the day. Then I thought volume-wise that will be two big bunches of kale or chard per day. Just think about this. There are four people in my family. That means eight bunches of greens per day, seven days a week – 56 bunches per week? Wow! I thought they’d probably don’t even have that much in the produce department. Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

So then next morning, I bought two bunches of greens, and I came to my office and I was thinking, “I’m going to sit down and eat these two bunches. This is my job today.” I’m committed. I turned off the phone and answering machine and I thought, “I’m going to sit down and eat those greens here today no matter how long it will take me!” My surprise was, after three and a half leaves, I became so nauseous. I started to feel so nauseous. I couldn’t even sense the look and the smell of those greens, and I remember how I took this leaf in my hand and I was looking at it and I was asking…I was talking to it. I was thinking, “What is going on? I am lacking those nutrients that you posses, and why do I behave in such a way that I feel nauseous?”

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

I don’t understand that because I believe that the human body never makes mistakes. I need it and I cannot eat it. So, I went back to the library and I started making more research, and I found out that greens are amazing things. Greens are the only part of living things that could convert sunshine, sun energy, into carbohydrates because of photosynthesis. The sunshine converts into chlorophyll, which is the base for the future molecule of carbohydrates.

Kevin:

Um hum.

Victoria:

And all carbohydrates that exist in the world came originally from sunshine, from photosynthesis. It blew my mind!

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And so, what happens then? I’ve read this botany book like it was a detective story. Then the plant sends this carbohydrate into the root. Why to the root? To feed the 2000 microorganisms in the soil with this sugar. Why is that so important that the plant sends all the sugar to the roots? And do you know, have you ever noticed what the roots look like in wild nature? They look like hair and they all look sweet because it’s called rootlet, because it’s the easiest way to feed microorganisms in the soil, because it is crucially important for the plant to feed the


microorganisms in the soil, because these microorganisms, they consume this sugar, instead they produce a wide array of nutrition. That’s where all nutrition comes from. And then when the plant begins to drink water from the soil, it sucks back all these nutrients into the plant and the plant accumulates nutrition for future seeds and the plant stores this nutrition inside of the green leaves like in the storage. And so the conclusion is that before the blooming, the plant has the most nutrition in green leaves more than you can imagine in the world on this planet Earth. Wow, overwhelming. And then I started reading books about human anatomy and I found out that in order to consume and digest green leaves our body has to have two conditions. First condition is, the body has to be able to chew it to creamy consistency and for this season we have to have all our molars including wisdom teeth that are the major to really chew the green, which we - most of us don’t have. Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

So, I took the green leaf, I put it in my mouth, I chewed it for 20 minutes, I spit it on my palm and it was not creamy consistency because many of my teeth have fillings, crowns, compromised. Well, I failed in this one. The second condition is that we’re supposed to have normal hydrochloric acid, adequate hydrochloric acid level. As you know, our stomach produces all different juices for different foods. For greens specifically, the body has there – the stomach has to produce 1.0 to 2.0 hydrochloric acid solution which is very high, it’s very acid. However, those people who are deficient in certain things, for example, those who have been eating lots of processed foods and especially fat, they lose their ability to produce hydrochloric acid. Why we need to produce hydrochloric acid? Because with hydrochloric acid in the stomach, it further liquefies this paste, the creamy consistency paste because only then the nutrition, the nutrients can be absorbed in the small intestines. When it goes to the small intestines and are liquefied, then the small intestines could absorb calcium, potassium, copper, folic acid, you name it. And if it’s not liquefied, we begin to develop deficiency, like our hair begins to become gray and we begin to have different ailments. Wow! Suddenly, I realized how important is that to have normal hydrochloric acid level and I wondered why the doctors always will check my blood pressure and my temperature. They never ask me about my hydrochloric acid level. I immediately made an appointment and went to a gastroenterologist and they gave me the free tests, which was 99% accurate and I did this test and I have this test in my book and you can find it in any gastroenterology and when I did the test they told me, “Victoria, you probably don’t have any hydrochloric acid.” Hey! I got this puzzle solved. I was thinking my body true - my body truly indeed doesn’t make mistakes because if it cannot digest these greens, why bother? It makes me noxious, so I don’t even try. However, I’m a Russian woman, I’m really persistent and committed and I want to help my family. I see


how my children suffer when they’re teeth are hurting. So, in a raw food kitchen, we have one piece of equipment that we called liquefier and that is precisely Vita-Mix blender. I thought if I cannot liquefy it in my body, I’ll liquefy it in the Vita-Mix blender. Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And next morning, it was September 2004, I showed up to my office with two bunches of dinosaur kale, dark green leafy vegetables and I put this in the blender and put some water and I pushed the button and I opened the lid and I quickly closed it back. The smell was like chlorella, bluegreen algae and quadruple of wheat grass juice and sludge all together. Wow! I could never drink that almost black solution-like sludge. Oh! I’m so close, I’m just hair close to solution and I cannot make it. I couldn’t believe it. I started to look through the books of Jane Goodall and I found, I highlighted that sometimes chimpanzees would take a piece of fruit and roll it in a leaf and eat it as a sandwich and I highlighted it because I was thinking fruits and vegetables cannot be combined, and I highlighted it. And now, I was thinking well, chimpanzees know better because we cannot combine fruit and vegetable because vegetables normally contain starch and starch and fruit will cause gas, fermentation. But the greens do not contain starch or almost do not contain starch, and so greens are the separate food group, they’re not vegetables. These are not vegetables. They can be combined with anything and even chimpanzees know that. So, what I did next, I peeled some bananas and I put them in that blender in my sludge and I pushed the button and I blended it again and now with trepidation, I opened the lid and the smell was really nice. It smelled like banana smoothie. The bananas totally dominated and took away the smell of whatever, wheat grass chlorophyll. And then I tried it and these couple of bananas totally took care of the taste of chlorophyll, they totally dominated it, and I drank it all and I made more and I drank it all. And in four hours, I consumed two gallons of green smoothie or two big bunches of green kale and I didn’t feel nauseous, I felt great and I was so excited. I knew that I did something that was very, very big because I could never consume greens and now I consumed a lot of it and I felt great. And I instantly thought of my friends in Russia who cannot consume greens and they have lots of dandelions in the fields. And I thought of people in the Philippines, and I though of people in Africa and I thought of all the people who now could blend greens and consume them and become healthy because I know how nutritious the greens are. And this green smoothie is so delicious and that is like so important. And then I started drinking them everyday, but then I was thinking first that I have to consume two galloons of green smoothie a day. But after just a week, I couldn’t do it anymore. At 10 o’clock in the evening, I was still - was sitting there in the couch with a half more gallon to go and I was already like, “Uh!” And I couldn’t eat anything else because I simply didn’t have space in my stomach.


I started thinking again and I figured out that when it’s blended especially in a powerful blender, it would insinuate a lot more completely and I probably would just get enough nutrition from just one or two quarts of it instead of two gallons. So, I came to the conclusion that when you chew it, you have to consume two bunches of greens per day. But if you blend it, one or two quarts are enough. Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

Okay. And so, since then, I have been drinking green smoothies and yesterday I visited my dentist. It’s just like coincidence. Yesterday, I visited my dentist for minor dental problems, little teeth broke and he just shocked me with what he told me. Because I am - personally in my dental history, in my 20th, by error, some of my molars we’re taken out without really being necessary. So, I missed my molars most of my life. And because for many years there were no teeth there, my jawbone melted away and I couldn’t do any dental work there and I just looked like living without those teeth. So, my dentist told me that my jawbone increased in density and now I could have the dental work done and I could actually have those tooth now.

Kevin:

Really.

Victoria:

Have those dentures made because he just said, “Wow! You have beautiful, wonderful, like a young woman.” You have this - and I’m 53. He said, “You, at this age, it’s unbelievable that you got bone density improved tremendously.” And what have I been doing in the last two years, I have been drinking green smoothies every single day with the emphasis on dandelion. Dandelions are the richest in calcium in the world that’s why they are called “Dandelion,” dent-de-lion is French, the tooth of a lion.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

And also I have been massaging and stimulating and exercising in my job to create some pressure. So, green smoothies are a wonderful thing and I’m going to do more research. I’ve done several pilot studies. I’ve written a book, Green for Life.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

Which you can buy at any store.

Kevin:

What are some of the – when you make a green smoothie now, do you have to chew that?

Victoria:

Really, you have to chew everything just to mix it with saliva. I don’t think you can gulp anything at all.


Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And you put even water, you have to kind of drink slowly, that’s more natural. Yes, that’s the answer.

Kevin:

And how much -- are you still drinking two quarts a day of green smoothie?

Victoria:

Yes. I do. I have it next to my computer and I sip it all through the time.

Kevin:

What’s your favorite one? What’s your favorite?

Victoria:

I don’t have a favorite one. I constantly rotate.

Kevin:

What do you rotate from?

Victoria:

I follow my instincts. Today, my favorite is dandelion and white nectarine.

Kevin:

Okay. And, white nectarine. So, you always mix a fruit and a green?

Victoria:

Yes. And, water and I’ve noticed that in the very beginning I put 60% of fruit and 40% of greens, simply because I couldn’t tolerate greens because my body didn’t like them. But, now I put 80% greens and 20% fruit because I like it this way. My body has known that it’s okay to eat greens. My body changed its attitude towards it. And I even now like greens to such an extent that when I walk on a path and I see plantain, clover and stinging nettles, especially in the morning when they’re covered with dew. I salivate as if they are cherries or peaches, I salivate.

Kevin:

Wow!

Victoria:

And if I’m in the woods, if it’s pretty clean, after the rain, I pick them up and I eat them, and they taste to me like the most tastiest dish in the world. Amazing transformation and the same happened to my daughter, to my son, and to my husband. They could now sit down to the full bag of nice greens and they just eat them plain and they say, “It’s like bread for me mommy.”

Kevin:

Wow!

Victoria:

And then I started to make research about the human – what the humans have been eating and I discovered, and I placed that in my latest book that’s called, 12 Steps to Raw Foods, the 2nd Edition. The discovery that we actually stopped eating greens like a main dish only for 180 years as humanity. One hundred eighty (180) years ago, we were eating lots of greens every single day. What happened 180 years ago was the industrial progress started and there were several inventions 180 years ago, right at the same time, the refined - refining of sugar was invented by an English chemist. And then a Swiss miller at the same time invented metal grinder for the mill and he was able to make white bread, white


pasta and this was so easy and so cheap that those factories started to grow like mushrooms everywhere. And then Napoleon decided to go on a war and conquer the world, but his soldiers had to have food. And I have read lots of anthropological books and historical research and I found out that 180 years, like 200 years ago people were really hungry. There was not enough food and everybody was working all summer long collecting, gathering, preparing food for the winter. There was no refrigeration. They would just dig a cellar and put there whatever they can, dried fish, dried grapes, dried whatever mushrooms, dried apples. And people were in the winter eating every other day because they didn’t have enough food. And they would eat molded, spoiled, fermented, it doesn’t matter. There was just not enough food and lots of people died in the winter. So, imagine when Napoleon went to the war, his soldiers didn’t have food and he announced a huge sum of money as a reward to somebody who will come up with the idea how to survive without food. And so, then the French chef came out with the canning process, the very first cans took six hours to make and they would last for over a year. That was such a big invention that was embraced by everybody. Within several years, the process of canning reduced from six hours to 30 minutes. Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And now these new cans – the tin foil cans were able to stay more than two years - could be fish, could be meat, and could be vegetables. That was a revolution in food industry. Everybody was happy. The government was happy. There were no more dead people in the street in the winter. The people were happy they didn’t have to dig cellars and prepare food and they had a backup plan.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

The merchants were happy. They were making tons of money and at that time there was a turning point. Before that, the humanity was mostly eating raw food and I have lots of proof of that – mostly raw food because they were scarce of fuel. Their only fuel was wood and there was - not everybody could afford to have the stone house. Or not everybody could even afford to have a pot to boil and they just really didn’t care. They were hungry. They were not eating for pleasure. They were eating for survival.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

But at this time, as long as you have a can opener and a few pennies, you could just buy a food.

Kevin:

Yes.


Victoria:

So, people stopped eating what they were eating before and they were eating now white bread preserved confection. Instantly, there were four diseases formed that never existed in such quantities before that resulted from eating predominantly cooked food. There were rickets, scurvy, pellagra, and beriberi.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

Beriberi and pellagra are polyvitamin deficiency. And if cancer, you can find descriptions before like single cases in history. In 1900, huge number of people died from cancer. Sixty-four (64) people per 100,000 that’s a huge number. Suddenly, and then in 100 years it tripled. The number tripled in 100 years. That never happened before in humanity that degenerative disease resulted from lacking of nutrition. So, what happened, the malnourished mothers gave birth to malnourished children – the whole generation and these children were never even introduced to dandelions and plantain, or any of greens. They were introduced to the can opener.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And so, now we could see with our own eyes, you and I, we could observe how the health is really falling apart. Like, when I was in school we had only one girl who had glasses and we had only girl who was obese. And now you go to school, you see that half of the children in the class wear glasses, they have pimples, they have braces, they are obese and some of them have asthma, some of them have arthritis, some of them have cancer.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

So, what can we do to undo the damage? I personally think it’s obvious that nothing could be better than consuming greens and nothing could be faster than consume blended greens because this way the body stimulates the most. And as people begin to consume blended greens that Ann Wigmore discovered years ago, the only downfall of her blended greens were that they were not very palatable.

Kevin:

Okay.

Victoria:

Yes. But, they worked.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

She was able to reverse cancer. She was the first one who really would major in that, that’s really a tribute - you have to pay tribute for that. So, there could be nothing than blended greens and whoever is doing this, they do have results. And this is wonderful. Isn’t this great?

Kevin:

Talk’s amazing.


Victoria:

Yes. And like here in Ashland, Oregon where I live now, they sell blended greens in every household store, every juice bar, in some restaurants. You can just go and buy different smoothies.

Kevin:

Wow!

Victoria:

And, it’s so easy.

Kevin:

It’s just an amazing concept and actually pretty easy to add into your diet as long as you have a blender, right?

Victoria:

Yes. We actually did one study which we called, Roseburg Study. Well, for one month Dr. Paul Fieber was prescribing to 27 of his patients who were low on hydrochloric acid and they have been taking hydrochloric acid pills for years with every snack. From 16 years old to 80 plus years old for one month they were adding one quart of freshly made green smoothies that my family delivered to them everyday fresh. To their existing diet, we specifically emphasized they do not change their diet to raw food diet. We didn’t want to see what raw food diet makes to that. We wanted just to see green smoothie. And after one month, they improved. Their hydrochloric acid recovered 68.6%.

Kevin:

Wow!

Victoria:

Which allowed them to absorb better nutrition and in addition to recovering their hydrochloric acid - and the younger ones in that group didn’t have to take hydrochloric acid ever.

Kevin:

Really?

Victoria:

In addition to that, they reported that they also have taken the hypertension medication and headache medication, and insomnia pills, and some of them lost weight, some who wanted to gain, gained weight. Seven out of 27 reported improved sexual performance, and other things. Amazing! Like, one woman, for example, she prays that she stopped craving coffee because now she had so much nutrition in her diet because of the green smoothie that she didn’t really want – she lost craving to unhealthy foods.

Kevin:

Wow!

Victoria:

And this could be another topic because I made a big research on that.

Kevin:

Yes. This is incredible. Now is that what you’re writing in your book about?

Victoria:

I am writing several books now. This is so exciting. The more I dig into that, the more I discover. For example, I discovered that the science of nutrition itself was only discovered and founded - I mean it only was founded in1931 with the discovery of vitamin C. So, it is less than a hundred years old.


Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

And the first textbook of nutrition said very many times and throughout the textbook, “Access is preferable to imitation which means that you can eat more of everything and that’s great.” That was the recommendation of nutrition. Then, during the Second World War, that changed. There was a shock because Moscow’s first medical university, they needed one patient with ulcerative colitis during the Second World War and they couldn’t find one because there was scarce food especially meat and the people just cured themselves from that, from lack of food. So, the nutritionist then made some conclusions from that and from that they started to form the groups; fats, proteins, whatever carbohydrates but actually the development, the real development of science of nutrition started in the 90s of the 20th century when the computer technology developed. And it allowed them to look deeper into the cell, into the nutrition and that’s when they discovered phytonutrients. That’s number one.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

There are 5,000 plus phytonutrients that every one of them is crucial to have in our diet. And those nutrients could be destroyed even by blanching, even by dehydrating sometimes. Those are really important.

Kevin:

Yes.

Victoria:

And we could talk about this more, but the antioxidants and there are bioflavonoids, and there is different nutrition and we are deficient in almost all of it. Raw nutrition, for example, I have a sort in my book, Twelve Steps to Raw Foods, for 88% of American people both adult and children so low in vitamin C that they have like 10 milligrams a day or less which is barely enough not to develop scurvy. When we need something like 40 to 80 milligrams of vitamin C and where do we get vitamin C from. Like, for example, one average size lemon has 35 to 45 milligrams of vitamin C and we need to consume like two lemons a day or one bell pepper is like 60. But the greens have, for example, 100 grams of miner’s lettuce. Do you know this weed called miner’s lettuce? Hundred (100) grams of miner’s lettuce contains 850 milligrams of vitamin C.

Kevin:

Wow.

Victoria:

So, this - the greens really is the answer. And, for example, in Germany, they grow miner’s lettuce commercially and sell them in a store as a green. And here, in Oregon, we are still enjoying it. And we are deficient in vitamin C, even vitamin C like the first one discovered, out of all nutrition.

Kevin:

Out of all…yes.


Victoria:

I mean this is just like we really need to, you know, pay attention to how we eat and we need to consume more plant food, more greens and consume it raw, it’s so obvious.

Kevin:

This has been an incredible interview. I am sure we could probably talk for another three hours - and maybe we can do something moving forward. Victoria, we have set up a page where…and this is for everyone out there, we have set up a page for everyone to go to get more information about Victoria and her family and that is rawsummit.com/Victoria, which is V-I-C-T-O-R-I-A and on that page, we are going to direct everyone to your website with all your books, so someone could take a look and see what all this great information is. Anyway, thank you so much for your time. It has just been an awesome interview. There’s been so much information there.

Victoria:

Thank you so much for having me.

Kevin:

And again, this is Kevin Gianni from the rawsummit.com and thank you so much for listening and see you next time.
