Social Issues, Guruism, A Full-time Job

by Ela Harrison Gordon
(Alaska)

I was vegetarian and mostly vegan from the age of 7 until 30. From age 25-30 I was raw vegan, mostly fruitarian and very low-fat. At 30, in response to a health crisis, I introduced raw eggs with great benefit. It was from this background that I conducted a brief experiment with AV's Primal Diet 2 1/2 years ago, and would like to share some thoughts.

As a raw vegan, I was aware of the potential social isolation issues. However, I had been anorexic for a long time (and now believe that my choice of the 801010/fruitarian approach to rawfoodism, while it smoothed my transition into recovery, also may have helped to exacerbate some of the deficiencies I ended up with from anorexia) and was kind of used to that. I also was able to surround myself with supportive friends, ran potlucks, etc. And mostly people were just delighted that I was eating at all!

The paradox of my experiment with the Primal Diet is that while it was undoubtedly triggered, at least in part, by the fact that I was living surrounded by people who were pursuing it to one degree or another with some degree of success, the most dedicated and extreme practitioners were definitely socially isolative to a degree even beyond the dysfunctional raw vegan. There was a high degree of paranoia about anything to do with the toxins of modern life, sometimes a bravado'd machismo of exhibitionist consumption of raw meat (which grosses out a lot of people who eat meat themselves)and a general intense avoidance of anything that might be 'toxic,' from soap to high-powered blenders (AV recommends the osterizer-type with a narrow mouth jar screwed on, which he says reduces oxidation.) This is certainly one way to deal with the problem of a toxic world, but it sharply curtails one's active participation in life and compassion for other people.

A problem that I see with the approach is that it is so entirely reliant upon Aajonus. I applaud Aajonus' efforts to promote the availability of raw dairy products and awareness of environmental toxins in conventional foods, but perhaps because he hardly sells any products, his consultations are very pricey indeed. Whilst he claims that each individual's consultation is finely geared to their own specific needs (which he discerns partly by taking a history, partly by iridology and partly by intuition), comparing different people's recommendations with what I received myself showed me rather little difference, which diminishes the credibility.

It should also be noted that dramatic healing crises are often experienced in response to the heavy onslaught of raw animal products and green juices. I knew people who were sick for months at a time. In some cases, there was an official diagnosis of parasitic infection associated with raw meat, but Aajonus would tell the person that in fact they were working toxic mercury out through their system and needed to keep doing what they were doing and were getting cleaner and healthier. Starts to sound like 'justification by faith.'

Whilst a healing crisis can be a powerful thing, practitioners of the diet can expect to be laid out for months to achieve it, and are so thoroughly warned off any other form of medical intervention that they are solely dependent on Aajonus for what to do. In other ways, too, the diet can become pretty much a full time job, between sourcing and preparing all the foods, being sick a lot and actually eating them! He has you eating every 2-3 hours (which actually turns out to be good for me, just not in the quantities that he prescribes) and often the food that you eat needs to be prepared right then.

To speak a little of my personal physical experience, my experiment was pretty brief: I entered a relationship with someone who is not interested in special diets or remotely into raw foods, and moved far away from the area. I ended up eating cooked food again, including some animal products, and am gradually finding my way back to live foods through my experiences.

In some ways, it has been very useful for me to have this experience, to see how my body really does respond to certain products rather than just ruling stuff out arbitrarily (as I had been doing before). I discovered that raw eggs and raw goat dairy felt good to me, but cow dairy, even raw, does not at all. I discovered that I am drawn to organ meats but not muscle meats (and now, heading back towards live foods and seeing that I'm a 'fast oxidizer,' that makes sense because of the need for purines). When I was doing the diet initially, I had a huge upsurge in energy, and built muscle in a way that I had never been able to do in my life. I put on weight, some of which was probably a good thing, having been emaciated for many years (although I'm no longer sure I buy AV's contention that everyone needs to carry excess weight in order to be shielded from toxins), but more than I needed to or was comfortable with, and had a hard time (and an unwelcome return to anorexic thinking) losing it.

The most valuable thing about being inducted into omnivory in this way was the converse of what I mentioned at the beginning about social isolation and lack of compassion. I feel much more connected to animals now - and even to plants too - and have much more genuine compassion and understanding of why other people choose to eat the ways that they choose, which makes social interactions where food is involved easier, no matter what I'm choosing to eat.

As far as AV's diet goes, though, grateful as I am to him for his work on environmental/ecological issues, I am not ready to join the cult, nor to take on the kind of full-time job of feeding myself that he offers.