Question #1: What are some rawfood staples in your current diet. What are some of your "favorite" foods? And If you could eat "cooked" food....what would you eat?

Bananas, mangoes, and grapes qualify as staples. Other fruits, such as figs, persimmon, lychee, etc, I eat in abundance when they are in season. Almost all tropical sweet fruits are favorites: chicu, rolinea, panteen, lychee, jak, akee, durian, papaya, mamones, persimmon. I can eat cooked food, I simply choose not too. I do not believe that one was more of a favorite than another, as I rarely found that there were foods that I didn't like. Of course, my diet today is composed almost entirely of mono meals and there are extremely few cooked foods that can be eaten as a mono meal, as they are almost all combinations to begin with.

Question #2: Have you ever had any kind of symptoms of mental illness, and, if so, what did a raw food diet with supplements get rid of, and are all mental illnesses curable with a raw foods diet/supplements?

I have not, to my knowledge, suffered from any mental illness, no. I have, however, worked with a great many patients who suffered from mental illness. All got well on a supplement-free low fat raw vegan hygienic lifestyle. To this day, I do not recommend routine use of supplements, believing them to be, instead, nutritional detriments. Fruits and vegetables are the most nutritious foods we can eat, hence they are the true health foods. Supplements are less nutritious than fruits and vegetables, and as such are incorrectly called supplements, as they do not supplement the diet. In fact, they detriment the healthy diet, and should be correctly called food detriments. Probably not as many people would flock to consume them, however, simply because of the name change. I recommend that we correct rather than supplement the diet, and I recommend the same for the rest of our lifestyle.

Question #3: Can you describe to us what true hunger is? And how does one deal with vereating/binging on raw foods especially dry fruits and fats?

Hunger is a knowing that follows a feeling. Food becomes a mental priority. Like thirst, hunger is felt in the throat, though not as high in the throat as thirst. Few people in the western world ever truly experience hunger, as they succumb to appetite (the nice word for addiction) long before hunger sets in.

One removes the cause(s) of the problem, which is invariably the underconsumption of fresh raw fruit. Underconsume on the simple carbs derived from fruit and you will crave either simple carbs from dried fruit or elsewhere, complex carbs, or excess fats. Consume sufficient fresh fruit and most food cravings correct themselves. Still, the emotional issues behind the disordered eating must also be addressed.

Question #4: What are some of the most interesting and inspiring success stories you heard from others during your travels?

Every one of the hundreds of people who came to my fasting retreat during the ten years that I ran it left with an amazing and inspiring story. That is why I am again offering supervised fasts each January. The number of people who were told that they did not have long to live, who have now lived decades, is probably the most inspiring.

Question #5: Have you changed your eating patternt since going on the rawfood diet?

Many times. I tried some raw, mostly raw, and all raw most of the time. I tried one fruit meal and two veggie meals. I tried grazing. I tried no fruit. I tried supplements. I tried two fruit meals and one salad meal. Over a period of about 10 years, I think I tried it all. Then, almost 15 years ago, I allowed my fruit content to rise and my fat content to drop. I have not looked back. The low-fat-raw-vegan approach, what I have coined as the 8/1/1 diet (approximately 80% of calories from carbohydrates) has given me the best results of anything I have ever tried.

Question #6: What advice would you give to someone with cancer (esp. stomach) who is on a regular diet - less then 60% raw?

I would only give generic advice to anyone I don't know, regardless of their situation. Healthful living has no contraindications. 8/1/1 is the healthiest diet I know of, and I would recommend it to anyone. Low-fat-raw-vegan is the dietary ticket, imho. I have created a chart, "The Answer to Cancer" that offers 10 pieces of lifestyle advice to anyone wishing to decrease their risk of, or suffering from, cancer. It is available on my website.

Question #7: How do you feel about female menses? Is it a natural or unnatural thing and will it stop once healthy?

There are almost no examples of truly healthy humans. How can there be, in a world where the environment has been so compromised? No hemorrhaging can be considered "healthy", but "natural" is not synonymous with healthy. Most women notice a reduction of bleeding along with reduction of other symtoms related to menses when they improve their health regimen in any fashion. Food, however, is not the key to health, not all by itself. It is one of about 30 different lifestyle issues that must be addressed if one wishes to be truly and fully healthy.

Question #8: Is it possible to reverse facial bone structure to our genetic potential/what we were born to have? Have you seen startling examples, besides yourself. How long do these kind of changes take place, and whether or not it's just an illusion created by healthier skin, eyes, hair, not deeper structural changes. Are raw animal products required for this to happen?

No, I do not believe that bone structure in any part of the body changes in a visible way due to dietary modification. I see no reason for the inclusion of animal products in any human diet.

Question #9: How much sun do you think we need as vegans to get enough Vitamin D?

Different people need different amounts, depending upon the amount of melanin that is naturally found in their skin. A good guideline is for everyone to always have at least some tan to their skin, some darkening effect from the sun. BTW, sunlight's ultraviolet rays are the ONLY way that we can properly disinfect our blood, our lymph, and our skin.

Question #10: What diet advice do you have for the most common deficiency of a vegan diet? Vitamin D, A, B-12, B complex, DHA, Iron, calcium, zinc etc.?

I recommend healthful living as the method of correcting possible deficiencies. A diet that is too high in fat will always result in nutritional deficiencies. Fruits and vegetables are the most nutritious foods for humans because they most closely mimic human nutritional needs. Nutritional insufficiencies are generally caused by lifestyle, or as I mentioned, lipid oversufficiency. Funny that no one seems to be concerned by nutritional oversufficiencies, which are just as deadly as insuffficiencies. People have died of oversufficiency of Vitamin A, and most Americans and Europeans die of an oversufficiency of fat in their diet, an important nutrient.

Question #11: Do you have any plans to reforest the Earth with fruit trees? Plus, what do you think we should do about the environment and how can we help individually?

I have been planting fruit trees since 1980, yes. Everywhere that I possibly can, I keep planting fruit trees. It is up to each individual to make sure that trees are planted. After all, someone planted trees for them. When we realize that 90% of all wood burned is burned to cook food, it becomes immediately obvious what we can do to reforest the earth. Eat raw food.