> Food and Nutrition > Diets > raw food

To the Boutenko family, uncooked food is now the norm. The immigrant family of four embraced an all-raw diet 10 years ago when they were suffering from various degenerative diseases. They’re grateful now that they all became sick at once because it precipitated a radical change in their lifestyle.

At the age of 39, Victoria was dying of heart disease; Igor, her husband, had crippling arthritis and an “incurable” hyperfunction of the thyroid. Son Sergei had juvenile diabetes and daughter Valya had asthma to the point where she could not breathe.

“I was devastated.” Victoria says. “I asked, ‘God, why is this happening to us?’”

Tears running down her face, she took solace in strong black coffee and dug into a warm bagel with her favourite cream cheese. But when the doctors threatened to report her to social services if she didn’t put Sergei on insulin, she was motivated to research natural alternatives.

Victoria began to ask questions of anyone who “looked healthy.” Fate put her in a bank line-up behind a “radiant and happy woman.”

“Of course, the body can heal itself,” the woman told her confidently. “I healed myself of colon cancer 15 years ago.”

When she heard that the woman ate only uncooked food, Victoria was shocked. “You eat everything raw?” she asked.

She learned that food in its natural raw state has all its enzymes, vitamins, and minerals intact; undamaged and unaltered by heat, raw food provides the nutrients needed to reverse disease and keep the body healthy.

“My heart told me it was right,” insists Victoria.

But Igor protested, “If it was this easy all the doctors would recommend raw food. But they don’t. And they are well educated. If you eat that crazy diet, eventually it will separate us. I grew up with good Russian borscht, pork, and rice pilaf with lamb! And chocolate cake for dessert.”

However, he was soon admitted to hospital, and a team of five proposed electric shock in an attempt to regulate his rising blood pressure and racing pulse, and, with no guarantee of success, the removal of his diseased thyroid gland.

Igor refused the treatments.

He said to Victoria, “I will go on the raw vegan diet-for two months only.”

Nine-year-old Sergei and his eight-year-old sister Valya agreed reluctantly to the “experiment,” determined to cheat at school.

Victoria went food shopping.

“I felt strange when I realized that I would now be entirely confined to the produce section of the supermarket, she said. But her heart whispered, “If you don’t do it now you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

She has no regrets about her decision, only gratitude. The family has never looked back. Ten years later they’re all healthy and energetic. They’ve learned the benefits of periodic fasts. They run, hike, and swim in all kinds of weather. In 1998, they hiked the 2,600-mile Pacific Coast Trail from Mexico to the Canadian border in five months. When they had nothing else to eat, they gathered food in the wild.

“Cooked food is addictive,” Victoria explains. “We desire the things we’re addicted to. The only way to break a food addiction is to go 100-per-cent raw. Food in its natural state is never addictive. You just eat until you’re satisfied, and eventually you discover that you are satisfied with very little. But drink lots of water, and get plenty of exercise.”

In order to help others stay on the raw path, she provides delicious raw recipes for them; but when they adapt to the diet and assimilate the nutrients, they are content to eat whole fruits and vegetables.

“A variety of foods is important. Parents don’t introduce children to enough variety in raw food when they’re young.”

Victoria advises a wide selection of foods: 18 different nuts, 12 seeds, about 300 fruits, and 200 vegetables. With this broad dietary background, the body learns to differentiate its nutritional requirements.

“We crave the nutrients our bodies need,” she explains. “But if we have a limited experience of food, we can’t identify those needs. That’s when kids keep opening the fridge, looking for something they can’t find.”

Victoria and Igor now give Raw Family seminars all over the world. (Sergei and Valya have elected to stay home and finish school.) The most enthusiastic audiences are in the US, Canada, the UK, and Iceland. In Canada, the audiences in British Columbia and Quebec are the most committed.

“We are pioneers,” she acknowledges, a little wearily. “We travel 320 days a year giving seminars, living out of our red, extended van, except when we go overseas. I get hundreds of letters and e-mails every day but answering them all is impossible, so I train people to do it. Sergei and Valya help.”

At home in Ashland, Oregon, they live modestly in a trailer, hiding from the public “because people come and camp in our yard to see how we live.”

So what’s her advice to those who are embarking on a raw lifestyle? “Make sure you want to do it.”

She warns there are many pitfalls and difficulties along the raw road, both physiological and social. “Remember that you are wonderfully and uniquely made,” Victoria says. “Everyone is different and each person has to follow his or her own body intuition. Listen to your body.”

The Boutenkos have told their remarkable story in three books: Raw Family, 12 Steps to Raw Foods (translated into nine languages), and Eating Without Heating, Sergei and Valya’s recipe book. [Published by Raw Family Publishing, Ashland, Oregon].

Victoria’s new video is titled, Is Raw Food For You? Visit the Raw Family Web site at rawfamily.com.

Rhody Lake is a freelance researcher and journalist, and former editor of alive.

Source: alive #254, December 2003