Dr. Jameth Sheridan’s Journey to a Raw Food Lifestyle

In this article, Dr. Jameth Sheridan shares on his journey to and his passion for a raw food lifestyle.

Renegade Roundtable with Dr. Jameth Sheridan. Dr. Sheridan is a naturopath and nutritional consultant. He and his wife Kim co-authored “Uncooking with Jameth and Kim” and they co-own and operate Health Force Nutritional.

Kevin: Let me just say this, I’m excited to have you on the call because we have a ton of questions and people are really excited to have you on the call too. So First, before we get into that, for those that didn’t see the Rawkathon and don’t know who you are, can you just give a very quick introduction so everyone can kind of get a taste of who you are? Then we’ll jump right into these questions.

Jameth: Certainly. I’ve been a vegan for about 23 years. I’ve been into raw for about 22. I’m also the author of “Uncooking with Jameth and Kim,” which back in the early 90s introduced some concepts to the raw food world. It was the first book that ever had a flax cracker. In fact, we invented the flax cracker. Well, Mother Nature invented it and we just put it together. The original recipe is in there and it just took off because it’s such an awesome, awesome food to eat. Also we introduced sprouted, dehydrated nuts, seeds and grains to the industry, which makes a huge difference when you sprout things. Back in those days no one really recognized sprouting so much and enzyme inhibitors were not really well known.

For the past 18 or so years I’ve been designing nutritional superfoods. The reason being is that in the early days there was a big difference between a nutritional superfood and an isolated vitamin or mineral. I gave up all isolated vitamins and minerals a long time ago, in general. Early in the days of giving “Uncooking with Jameth and Kim” workshops, we would sell some products or things that seemed to be what I would consider should have been raw food approved, which are now. I was always on the phone with the manufacturers and the developers and the formulators of the products saying, “Hey, I think you could do this better. You could package it better. You could preserve the nutrients better. You could make this formula better. You could make this a better value for the people.” The reason I was always on the phone doing this, and I actually took some microbiology courses additionally, to do a lot of the testing, is that I saw people in regular medicine who I truly felt sorry for and still do, people that are just in that mindset of traditional medicine is the only option. I really think they have a much lower quality of life.

If I were in an accident, a car accident, and my limbs were hanging and some of them were maybe off, I would get myself to an educated, skilled surgeon who had the amazing miracle of modern medicine skills to put me back together. As soon as I was back together I would leave the hospital lest they kill me. Because that’s really the primary thing that traditional medicine is good for, and in some cases they’re very good at diagnoses. But their prognosis and what they tell you to do about the diagnosis, is usually abysmal. So when people got into alternative medicine I found that they had far better success. But I also saw that a lot of people that got into holistic and alternative medicine didn’t necessarily have success. Some of them didn’t have the success that I thought they could, or knew they could, and others would run out of money. Sometimes because insurance didn’t cover things like Spirulina or other stuff. I found that the quality and affordability of nutritional products could and often did mean the difference between lethargy and energy, sickness and health and literally life and death for people. I didn’t want people to die because they couldn’t afford high quality enough nutritional products. That was a long way of saying after I presented this information to manufacturers and formulators, I was met with lukewarm reception at that time, because they didn’t know who this crazy, long-haired, bearded raw foods guy was. If they didn’t know who I was they would see that. Some of them were interested a little bit but the ones that were interested, no one was interested in making any changes and that really bothered me because health business, people bank their health on it, they bank their life on it. To me, if someone isn’t passionately interested in kicking as much ass for people as possible, they should get into another business where it doesn’t matter if people live or die - luxury cars, art, painting, something else that’s not a life or death industry.

So 18 years ago I started making my own nutritional products and have constantly evolved them ever since. I make them not only under my own label but I’ve made some private labels and also custom formulas for some other raw foods-oriented company and I’ve been honored to do that. That’s the long version of who I am.

Kevin: That’s a great explanation. I love how you have passion when it comes to the products. You’re serious about this stuff.

Jameth: I am because since that time, 18 or so years ago, I’ve been to a huge amount of alternative medicine seminars and the actual clinics where they treat people for incurable diseases and of course, you don’t even have to go to a clinic, you can do things at home to save your life. I see who lives and I see who dies. I don’t want the people to die. I don’t want the same mistakes to be made. When making nutritional products formulators, marketers usually go through a lot of consideration of, “How are we going to market this?” What segment it’s going to go in. Sometimes they do market research to figure out if this is the best angle or the best sell. They figure out what are the stores going to like, what are the people who are going to market this going to like, what’s good for them. Then they tailor the product around that. I don’t tailor my products around any of that whatsoever. I don’t do any official market research as far as what’s going to sell. I do nutritional research as far as what’s going to kick ass for people’s health. That’s really my only criteria. I like to make nice labels and so forth and I like the marketers and the stores and so forth to be happy, but ultimately my loyalty is not to whole foods, for example. There’s nothing wrong with whole foods, they’ve done a lot of good for the world. But I don’t think, “What is the store going to like? What kind of margin are they going to like? What kind of angle are they going to like? What’s going to make them happy?” My loyalty is to the end user who wants to thrive or who’s life situation requires them to thrive. That’s who I work for as far as I’m concerned.

Kevin: What’s the drive behind that passion?

Jameth: I got into health and nutrition when I was 15. Officially, I went to a running camp and there was a nutritionist, that day, speaking and talking about things like white sugar, white flour, animal protein and hydrogenated oils and FD&C colorings and stuff like that. He talked about how that contributed to heart disease and cancer and lowered athletic performance and dying sooner. I looked on the back of my M&Ms or something that I had and I said, “Oh my god! It’s got like three of those things in there.” I started looking at all my food and I looked at the other people at that camp and I said, “Hey, can I see your candy bar or your this or that?” And I said, “This has got three of those things that guy talked about. Are you still going to eat this?” They’re like, “Yeah, I don’t really care.” I was like, “Were you not in the same lecture I was in? Are you crazy? Is there something wrong with you?” Few people had the same passion. The world changes slowly. From then I was pretty much on fire the rest of my life to learn more about how to not be sick and how to just live optimally.