From Bananas to Bloodwork Tips on a Raw Food Lifestyle by Raw Food Author and Chef Paul Nison

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Renegade Health Inner Circle, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeHealth.com. In this excerpt, Paul Nison shares on factors of raw food living from bananas to blood work.

Renegade Health Inner Circle with Paul Nison. Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He is also the author of seven books including “The Raw Life.”

Kevin: Great. One of the questions asked was, “Is it bad to eat six or seven bananas in a day?” A lot of the questions were about high fruit. You mentioned that high fruit might not be the best idea but if you are eating some fruit, what are better fruits to be eating?

Paul: Well, it depends on each person’s situation, each person’s occupation and so on and also what else they’re eating throughout the day. If somebody is not on an all-raw diet and a lot of their diet is processed sugar, well fruit could put them over the top. But if somebody is eating a pretty good diet like a Hippocrates lifestyle, with many greens in their diet, having a meal of fruit is going to be fine. Obviously a desk-job worker is going to need less than somebody who is athletic. There’s not one answer for everyone, that’s the big problem out there. A lot of people are saying there’s one answer for everyone.

I do have to warn people that there’s a lot of people out there today on this 80/10/10 diet. The problem with the 80/10/10 diet... I actually think it’s a great balance but the problem is the amount the people are using in it. They’re using a lot more than we need to. If somebody was eating small amounts of fruit and very small amounts of fat, that’s fine. But people, I believe, are overeating. They’re eating a lot more than they need. They don’t understand that when the body gets cleaner you can get by on even less. I’m not into calorie-counting but if we do this the right way we do not need to eat 8, 9, 10 bananas a day, no matter who we are and no matter what our lifestyle is.

Somebody could certainly enjoy fruit. I’m not against fruit. I’m against overeating. That’s the problem that people are having today. They consistently overeat. Nobody likes the taste of fruit more than I do but I know overeating on fruit isn’t good. Fred Bisci told me about all the natural hygienists of the past, that he knows, when I first met him. He told me how much fruit they ate and how it wasn’t good. I said, “I’d like to interview them,” because I was interviewing people for my book. He said, “You can’t interview them because they’re all dead now.” I said, “Did they live a long life?” He said, “No.”

Then I met William Esther, who is a great man who practiced temperance and a lot things. I met him and asked him, “Do you ever fast?” He said, “No.” I asked why and he said, “I don’t need to. I don’t overeat.” I said, “What do you eat?” He told me what he eats and it wasn’t a lot. It was a great interview. He was a hygienist that ate fruit, believed in fruit, but he didn’t overindulge in it. That’s the bigger problem and the problem I address in my new book “The Daylight Diet.” People can’t stop and they go all throughout the night eating.

Kevin: Right, got you. What about the complete opposite - high fat?

Paul: The same answer - all individual situations. An Eskimo living in an igloo is going to need a different diet than somebody living in the tropics where I am. Too much is too much no matter where you are in the world. It depends on our situation. I do think working out and exercising more just so you can eat more, I believe that’s another type of eating disorder. We don’t need that much and high fat is another problem in the raw food movement. A lot of raw food meals are made with nuts and seeds and all these other fats now. A raw, plant-based fat will digest much better than a cooked fat of any type, but people are still over-doing the fats. We do have to find what works for us on an individual level. The problem I find is too many people are looking at raw foods and saying, “This guy said this,” and “this guy said that.”

There’s only one true way to tell if something’s working for us or not, from a physical standpoint. That is to monitor our blood work. I think people neglect this too much in the raw food movement. They talk about what they think is best but they don’t look at their own blood work, which really tells us what’s working and what’s not working for us. There’s many different variables out there that come into play other than diet that can affect our chemistry and everything else. But if our blood work is checked and things are working fine, what we’re doing is working for us. Now is that going to work for the next person? It might not. But the best way to keep monitoring it is by looking at our blood work.

Kevin: That’s a great point Paul. I never usually interject my opinions in interviews but I recommend anyone listening to listen to what Paul just said in the last minute or so. It’s so important. Now how do you recommend someone would test their blood? What’s the best way do you think?

Paul: Well doctors, believe it or not, they have a great way to take blood tests but the problem is they don’t know how to read the blood tests. Everyone might be too high in something and you might be perfectly fine but a doctor will say you’re low because the average person is too high. So you really have to go to somebody who knows how to read and understand these tests.

I’ve been very blessed to find Dr. Shandel, here in Hollywood, Florida. His website is caprofile.net. He has an extensive longevity blood profile test and a cancer blood profile test. He has his laboratory right on his premises. He has a whole set of tests that I think are important for everyone to monitor. But for everyone to start out with, you take the basic chemical blood profile tests and that’ll tell you the basics. Then if there’s anything suspect in there then you can start getting more of the expensive tests. My best advice to everyone is if you have drug insurance - I don’t call it health insurance, I call it drug insurance because it pays for drugs not for health - go to your doctor and say, “I want to get tested for every possible thing my insurance will cover.” If something is deficient in your body some warning signs will show up on those tests.
Another way is if you’re getting a sign that something might be wrong, like if you’re low in a certain nutrient you might get cracked lips or rashes or something else, poor memory. If you know that that has something to do with a deficiency in something, well get tested for that particular nutrient and see if your levels are okay.

You also have to understand, all vitamins and minerals and nutrients work synergistically. So just because one thing is perfect, we have to look at both sides of the spectrum here. For example, with vitamin B12 some people might be okay but homocystine might be too high and we’d have to address that. If we have low vitamin B12 the homocystine might go up. A good person who knows how to read this, Brian Clement, Gabriel Cousins, Dr. T at Equalpolitan in Minnesota and Dr. Shandel, these are people that know how to read these. Anyone can get their blood work and mail it to these people and do a consultation over the phone. So I recommend you monitor your blood work once or twice a year and then you make the appropriate steps.

Kevin: What do you think about vitamin D?

Paul: I see the biggest problem, from a nutrient or clinical standpoint today - and Hippocrates confirms this. I worked very closely with Hippocrates Health Institute. I’m very blessed to be great friends with Brian Clement and I teach at the Institute now. They have more testing and studies and results and information than anyone else in the world. They’ve been doing this for over 50 years. They have found, and all the other raw food doctors have confirmed, that vitamin B12 and vitamin D, there’s a big problem in the raw food movement, or even in any movement today, when it comes to nutrition. People are suffering from deficiencies. So we need to definitely address these.

I definitely would recommend supplementing in both these areas and monitoring both of these closely. I have to also say I was just blessed, my friend Rick Dina and Karen Dina, they were staying with me because they were in town with me for the Raw Summit. They’re two doctors that I would recommend people go to in a heartbeat. Not only do they know just as much as though other people I mentioned, about the clinical tests and how to read them, but they’re probably easier to get in touch with. They have great information out there and they’re going to come out with a book next year. They teach at the Living Light Culinary School in Fort Bragg. Rick Dina and Karen Dina are excellent sources to find the blood tests. I’ve had great conversations with them. I wouldn’t give somebody a high recommendation unless I know that to be true. These people I’m mentioning are definitely people I recommend people get in touch with.

I wouldn’t listen to people that are very charismatic but really have no idea about this. There are a lot of people out there promoting raw junk food, claiming to be the world’s brightest and smartest raw food leaders but they wouldn’t know how to read a blood test if somebody gave them the information right in front of them. They just don’t know what they’re doing and they get a lot of people in trouble. So we really have to show discernment on who we go to and what we do.