Interview with Dr. Gabriel Cousens, raw foods pioneer and founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center

Interview with Dr. Gabriel Cousens, raw foods pioneer and founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center:

"Why is it worth the effort to pursue a raw foods lifestyle?

Cousens: That's a very good question. The bottom line is: Because it feels good. We don't know how long we're going to live, but if we're going to live, we should be in a totally healthy place. I've been on live foods since 1983. It's a very long time, and I'm in my sixty-third year, and the result of that is I'm more flexible than I was when I was captain of an undefeated football team at Amherst College, in the National Football Hall of Fame, and I'm stronger. I could do 70 push-ups then, and on my sixtieth birthday I could do 601.

...Mike: When people say organic foods look expensive, they need to do all the math – the 10-year equations, not this week's equation.

Cousens: That's kind of really the point. There's a picture in my book, Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, and it contrasts two sets of children who are in Mexico – some are living in the mountaintop and some are living in the valley, everything else is the same. The kids in the valley couldn't even draw a picture. They had more pesticides because of the way pesticides are going downhill; they're not going uphill. They had lower reflexes, poor memories, poor social interaction and poor gross motor function. Literally, the kids in the mountaintop could draw pictures, you know, whereas the five and six year olds in the valley could barely squiggle, so that's the difference. That's the price people are paying to poison their kids for a few bucks, and it isn't a long-running question much more. In fact, I think it was the Philippines but I'm not sure, that they stopped doing pesticides and herbicides on the rice because the medical costs of treating the workers from the poisoning was greater than any profit they would make from the yield, so it's bigger mathematics.

...It starts with the individual. It starts with an individual eating a healthy way, living a healthy way and thinking healthy thoughts. Then, as the mind gets clear, being able to create what I'm calling the global brain. The global brain already exists. We can fill it with TV, fear, misery, cruelty and greed, or we can fill it with love, sharing and compassion. I believe that the more we fill it with love, sharing, compassion and peace, in time, everybody will get it, and it doesn't take that many people, you know, maybe one percent of the population."