Rhio, Raw Food Author and Educator Discusses Her Book 'Hooked on Raw'

Saturday, June 07, 2008 by: Kevin Gianni
Tags: raw foods, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Raw Summit which can be found at (http://rawsummitarchives.com) . In this excerpt, Rhio educates us regarding the mainstream media, the food industry and how it affects your health.

Raw Summit Excerpt with Rhio, author of Hooked on Raw, speaker, radio host, actress, singer, raw chef and eco-farmer.

Kevin: You are pretty much an innovator when it comes to passing along messages. I mean starting your own radio station, you're also a raw food chef and you had raw food potluck meals. Tell us about those potlucks.

Rhio: Okay. As I told you in the beginning, I became introduced to raw and living foods at that health juice bar that I worked at for the summer. Then when I went over to the other side, I had bought books from Ann Wigmore and read more about the raw foods. But at that time, I didn't really jump on it. What I did at that time is I transformed my diet in the sense that I eliminated all junk foods, white flour, white sugar, all of that. I went to whole foods. I went to lots of juices. I went to basically a really, really good diet, but not a raw food diet completely at that time. Then later on in my life, a few years after that, I had a situation where I was impacted negatively by an event that happened in my life. I use food, unfortunately; as most people do to assuage myself, to pacify myself, to keep myself sort of numb. Because I did that, I gained at that time 88 extra pounds. I'm only 5 feet tall. One hundred five, 110 pounds, that's my normal weight, but I had gained 88 extra pounds. I had that weight on for four years.

Before that happened, I have been singing and my career was going pretty good. But then after I gained the weight, I didn't feel like singing, of course. It just sort of stunted my whole life and my partner Lee, he saw that I was unhappy but he saw that... I kept telling Lee, you know I need an incentive. I knew I had to get the weight off, but I needed a really good incentive. One day, he did this wonderful thing for me. When I think of it now, I mean it just moves me to tears practically. He went to one of the clubs that we used to work at and he got us a booking, and it was six weeks ahead. He said, "Okay now you have a really strong incentive." Boy was he right because I didn't want to show up in that club 88 pounds over my weight.

Kevin: Sure.

Rhio: What I did is there is a spa in Upstate New York called the New Age Health Spa and they had juice fasting here. I went up to the spa and immediately and I started juice fasting and doing exercises, the whole spa thing. I was able to stick to it, and by the time that six weeks rolled
around, I had lost half the weight.

Kevin: Wow!

Rhio: Half the weight in 6 weeks. And then, we went -- we did the booking. It was a maybe 6- to 8-week booking and what happened is we worked like Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and then on Monday, I'd go back to the spa. So I kept working on it and working on it. It took me about, I would say 6 months or 8 months to lose the weight completely but I did lose it. And after that, that was a life-
changing situation for me because I saw how much better I looked and how much stronger I was and how this raw food was just such a healer and just so fantastic. I just couldn't go back.

Kevin: Alright.

Rhio: So then I told my partner... I said Lee, "I'm going on raw foods." And he said, "Well I'm not." Because he had become a vegetarian after he met me. Six months after he met me, he decided himself that he was going to become a vegetarian. So he figured he'd done his bit. That was it. He wasn't going to do anymore. So I'm telling you this long story by way of telling you how I came to have a book in the first place. I don't want to force anybody to my view. It doesn't work. So I've started looking at the kind of foods that Lee liked to eat. And I went to my kitchen. I started experimenting and I came up with substitutes to have the same flavor or similar flavors that he could enjoy. And so, I kept doing this and then through situations like, for example, if he was working late, I made dinner. He would come home. Is he going to start cooking now or is he going to eat this raw food?

Kevin: Right. Well that's extremely male.

Rhio: So you know he'd eat the raw food. So it went like that and after a period of let's say 2 or 3 years, I ended up with all these recipes and they were fantastic and I would be serving them at my raw food potlucks and people would go crazy for them. And Lee and the people would say you got to do a book, you got to do a book. And that's how I got my book. It wasn't something that I planned. It was something that just happened. I ended up with the recipes. But, also my book has a beginning section that is nothing about the recipes and I included that section in because I thought I needed to put all the things in there as to why it would be so important for people to think about adopting a raw food diet or at least incorporating more raw foods into their diet. You know what -- give them all the reasons why. And that beginning section of the book, and again, I'm talking about how it is out there when you're trying to get a book published. Two publishers came to me. They wanted the book, but they didn't want the beginning section.

Kevin: Yes.

Rhio: They just wanted the recipes. And I said no. I said, "no, this book has got to go with the reasons why".

Kevin: Yes.

Rhio: So that's another way. Now, somebody else, one of the publishers published a book from a friend of mine. She gave them what they wanted. What happened was the beginning part of my book, I think; it's about 130 pages if I'm not mistaken. And one time I was talking to the editor. They had already sent me the contract and everything. I was ready to sign. I was talking to the editor and he said to me, "Can you possibly cut the beginning part down to 20 pages?" And I started laughing. I mean, it was incredibly rude I know. But it just... something struck me as being funny. I mean I had spent so many nights researching and you know making meticulously sure about checking my facts and rechecking. I couldn't. I couldn't. Now, the other lady that they went with, she did, she did a good job. But I couldn't do it.

Kevin: Yes. It was similar to the theme of the media.

Rhio: Yes it is.

Kevin: That we discussed before. There are people who are sensing the information. And they may not be the health experts.

Rhio: Right. And then I had, when I was trying to get my book out to these publishers, there was like an agent, a literary agent that I had talked to. And I sent her the manuscript and she told me "Take all that personal stuff out of the book." And I said, "This shows my experience and it will
help people to understand." And she said, "If you want to write a book about a memoir or something, you know, write a different book." But she just didn't understand. And I know that she didn't understand because even though my book is self-published, I have had tremendous success with it and I have, you know, thousands of letters that people had sent me telling me how much that book has meant to them.

Kevin: It's incredible.

Rhio: It was like a baby coming, you know. Even my partner Lee, and I love him, you know, but he was like putting the pressure on me to accept that deal from that one publisher.

Kevin: Right.

Rhio: "Because you can write another book". And I said, "Look, this is like a baby coming. It's going to come the way it's going to come."

Kevin: What advice do you have to people out there who would listen to this, who have a book in them?

Rhio: Oh, I think they should write it. Because anything that you write from the heart, you know sometimes people tell me "well you know all of these raw food books that are coming out now, isn't it impinging on your sales?" I said "That doesn't matter." What matters is that this information gets out whether they pick it up from my book or from somebody else's book. I don't care. Just write it from the heart. Get a good editor. And then, you know, shop it around. I mean some books are being published now from publishing companies who are publishing raw food books. Try to get them not to meddle in what you what to say too much.

Kevin: Yeah. What are some of the issues that we're going to be facing in 5 to 10 years with our health, the media, and food industry? What are some of the main things that you think are coming?

Rhio: Well, I think it's already starting to happen now. Number one, on a positive side, there are numerous raw food, living food outlets, teachers, potlucks, restaurants, all kinds of information is coming forth. I just find that so, you know, empowering and this is what I see in the future. That cooked food restaurants are going to start incorporating some of this stuff. Just like in the past vegetarian offerings had been made available in regular restaurants. Now they are going to make raw food offerings available. So that's on the positive end. I just see the whole community growing by leaps and bounds.

The negative part that I see happening and starting to happen is that since the regular mainstream community doesn't understand what raw foods are about and doesn't understand how healthy they are, they look at it with some kind of trepidation. And so what happens is if a parent tries to raise their children on raw food some of these parents are losing their children to child services or because those organizations don't understand what the raw food diet is about and so they think that the parents are like depriving or abusing their children in some way when they really are not. So this is a major problem that's happening. I know a lot of families who have lost their children and other families that could come to their aide aren't coming to their aide because they are afraid of losing their children.

So because of this problem, myself and another lady called Karen Ramsey who is writing a book now called Creating Healthy Children, and she is very involved with children and she raised her children on the raw food diet, her and I are trying to form an organization that will have two major goals. The first goal is like long term. It's really big. It's like something we need to have in this country; a constitutional amendment that guarantees us freedom of choice in health matters -- freedom of choice in choosing how, if we have a disease, how we want to proceed with it? Not something that is forced on us like, for example, in California and many other states, there is only certain sanctions like if you have cancer, there are only certain methods that are sanctioned. And if you go to a naturopathic doctor or any kind of alternative doctor and he gives you a different method that does not encompass radiation, drugs and chemotherapy and surgery, if you go to try to do a natural system, it's not sanctioned and it's not legal.

Kevin: Yes.

Rhio: So, the doctor can get in trouble. Even the patient can get in trouble. So, I see that as a problem because as I said originally in the earlier of part of this tape is that we have to create within our community an understanding of what really constitutes and creates health. And once that idea is out there, and then more doctors, even more allopathic doctors are going to come over and understand that that creates health and there is nothing weird about it. And then they're not going to report parents that are feeding their children what they consider strange, you know.

Kevin: Yes.

Rhio: And so, that's one part of this organization that we want to develop. We want to have this constitutional amendment. It should have been there originally, but it wasn't. But, you know many of the amendments were added later anyway. We want to create a coalition of people, doctors, nurses, social workers, scientists, and researchers that will come to the aid of these families in trouble -- these families that have lost their children. So, when a family is struggling, there will be a coalition of people that will come to their aid whether it's in court, whether it's in filing papers, whether it's in backing up what they're doing, you know to extract these families from this problem.

Kevin: Wow! It's a pretty powerful mission.

Rhio: It is. It is, probably more than I can chew but I always seem to do that anyway.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access more information on health and raw foods just like Rhio, please visit (http://rawsummitarchives.com) .

About the author

Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.


His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.