Challenging Aging Myths: Axay Shah's Insights on Raw Food, Mental Health, and Thriving Beyond 50 | The Zhen Podcast

Description

What if the secret to thriving well into your later years lies not in age, but in the food you consume? Join us in this enlightening episode of The Zhen Podcast as host Zhen welcomes Axay Shah, the inspiring author of "In Nature We Trust" and a passionate advocate for raw food diets. Axay' s incredible journey from feeling fatigued at 50 to radiating vitality at 67 is a testament to the power of nutrition and self-care. He challenges the conventional beliefs surrounding aging and chronic diseases, revealing that many health issues stem from poor dietary choices rather than the number of candles on your birthday cake.

As we dive deep into the transformative benefits of a raw food lifestyle, Axay shares his personal story of how embracing raw foods revitalized his health, enabling him to run marathons and live medication-free. This episode is not just about food; it’s about mental health, healing, and personal growth. Axay addresses common obstacles people face when transitioning to a raw food diet, including addiction to cooked foods and the societal norms that often discourage such changes. By exploring the science behind raw versus cooked foods, he sheds light on the importance of enzymes and the body's energy needs, connecting it all back to wellness and emotional intelligence.

Listeners will find practical tips for incorporating raw foods into their daily lives, encouraging a journey towards mindfulness and self-love. Axay’s insights will resonate with anyone interested in self-improvement and overcoming challenges such as anxiety, depression, and even trauma. He invites you to challenge the status quo and consider the profound impact of your food choices on overall health and happiness.

This episode is a treasure trove for those seeking motivation and purpose in their lives. Whether you’re grappling with personal trauma, navigating complex relationships, or simply looking to boost your mental health,Axay’s perspective on raw food diets offers a refreshing approach to healing. Discover how to rewire your brain, embrace habit change, and foster emotional regulation through mindful eating. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from Axay's journey and gain valuable insights into the mind-body connection that can lead to a thriving, fulfilling life.

Join us for a transformative conversation that will inspire you to take charge of your health and well-being. Tune in to The Zhen Podcast, and let’s explore how the choices we make today can lead to a healthier, happier tomorrow.

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Doctor said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old, now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously, but seriously I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of clues, and that gave me the total new life. Today I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero... chronic disease. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
Welcome back everybody to the show. Today we have Akshay Shah, who is the author of the book In Nature We Trust, who himself has been eating raw food for the past 16 years and have seen significant health results as well as a elevation in lifestyle. Today we have him joining us to talk about the benefits of eating raw food, as well as sharing a little insight about how has this impact his life positively. So welcome to the show, Akshay.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Zen, for inviting me to on your show. Let me give you a little bit of my background. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm a businessman and I'm working in health and wellness. That's my passion. How I get into it is like 16 years back, I was noticing lack of energy in my body. I tried to start investigating it. Doctors said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old. Now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously. But seriously, I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of... clues. And that gave me the total new life. Today, I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero chronic disease, marathon completed, training for ninth. I'm going to run with my son and daughter-in-law next year. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. marathons. I was going to train for a half marathon and in the middle of it, I was just like, no, I'm too tired. I don't want to do this. I know, I know. I wanted to challenge myself, but I just don't think this year is the year. Maybe we'll try again next year. But that's actually what I said last year. So we'll try to make a change. But when we talk about vegetables, we all know it's good for you. You know, fruits, raw food. We know that in general, those are much better than processed food. However, when it comes down to making the daily choices, it is always harder to choose the healthier option over something that can give us instant gratification. And in your case, your lack of energy pushed you to make this lifestyle. What was the biggest challenge in making this lifestyle change?
Speaker #0
For me. I didn't have that big challenge, but I am not the normal person, you know. I did this experiment even in my teenage life. I did one whole month, nothing but salad when I was around 15, 17. A whole one month, nothing but mung beans. Even though it was cooked, but the whole month, nothing but mung beans is challenging. Tested myself back then, and even here in Los Angeles, I tried one month, nothing but salad. couple of times. So it gave me kind of courage and confidence. I can do something different also. So for me, it was easy since I had a background of testing myself. But most of the people have the issue because we all, including me, we all are hooked up. I can say in a little stronger word, addicted. to cook food. And that is the biggest challenge.
Speaker #1
How does your diet look like right now? Give us a eat with you for one day. What do you consume?
Speaker #0
Morning, I start my day with the green tea with a little bit of almond and walnut. Afternoon, I take a couple of fruits, maybe three fruits. depends upon how hungry I am. In between, if I want to snack, you can go for, I keep in my car, almond and walnut. Nuts are there, so if I'm getting hungry or if I go somewhere and they don't have any food, I carry my own food for a while so I can... survive for a few hours without any issue. Coming back home around seven o'clock, eight o'clock, I take dinner with vegetables. So vegetables can be anything, sweet, raw potato, broccoli, avocado, whatever you like it. So I take it this because it is more nutritional and it is much more fulfilling when you eat those solid. It is not just a salad. It is a real, a good vegetable portion. When you eat, you feel that, yeah, you ate something and it is good. So this is my normal day.
Speaker #1
Did you say raw potato?
Speaker #0
Of course.
Speaker #1
Fine, add the edible.
Speaker #0
Okay, so let me ask you then. Can you eat raw carrot?
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Why you cannot eat raw potato?
Speaker #1
I don't think I've ever seen anybody or you.
Speaker #0
That's the thing. We keep ourselves within the box because your mom, my mom, and their mom never taught us to eat raw food. And there is a good reason. So we are victim of culture, trend, tradition, whatever you name it. We learn from our parents, eating habit at least. So first. let's say, 10, 15 years, you build your habit. Whatever your family is eating, that's exactly what you are eating. Once you become adult, then you have more options and you go out and you eat whatever you want. But till then, our family is giving us a guideline what to eat, what not to eat. In my case, being born in Indian Hindu family, meat eating was taboo. So it was like you cannot eat meat by culture, by religion. So that was who I was before. But being a rebellious person, when I started going to college, I started eating meat. I want to break the rule, the family rule, don't eat. Okay, so eat and taste it. What is wrong? And I ate for those four years of my college, eating meat. chicken, fish, everything. Then I quit. Nobody told me to start. Nobody told me to quit. So I made that decision at that time to eat and then it didn't appeal to me that much. It was good for tasting, but then I didn't see any value in there. So I came back to vegetarian lifestyle and that was good because that's everybody in our family is eating. So I never had any issue. But at the age 50, fast forward, I started seeing that I don't have the same energy what I used to have at 20, 30, 40. So that is the thing, you know, it's like we have to, you know, we have to think outside the box. So your question is good. How you can eat potato? How you can eat sweet potato, raw, with the skin? And I see this way. Why not? My question is, if you, if anybody tells me that, hey, this is the issue, eating raw food, and I will listen to them and then I will challenge also. But so far, I have not got any person who can give me a satisfactory answer not to it.
Speaker #1
Does your family also eat the same style or they have their own?
Speaker #0
I am the only crazy person in my family.
Speaker #1
And you don't feel you're missing out on...
Speaker #0
No, actually, my wife, she is a professional cook. She used to do catering business. Her food is so tasty that anytime when we have party, I help her to cook. I don't eat, but I help her to cook. My nephew, my niece, my sister-in-law, my sister, brother, everybody who comes there, they pack it up. Nothing stay behind, you know. So they love her food. But that the thing that gave me one bigger challenge. People calls me idiot. They say, what? Your wife is such a, you know, she's a wonderful cook and you are not eating her food. Well, that's my decision. What I understand, and today everybody appreciate that, today. When I started, they were cursing me. They were saying, you are crazy, you are idiot, you are this and you are that. All those people who made the fun out of me 16 years back, they all are saying today. Akshay, we wish we can do the same thing what you are doing. The reason is all of them facing some kind of health issue. Some kind. Somebody have blood pressure. Somebody have diabetes. Somebody went to ER for heart attack. Knee replacement. Fatigue. They don't have much now. They cannot take stairs. Limited mobility. All those thing is coming. And they are all something same age. Even my nephew is younger than me. And he said, uncle, now he's going to be 50. And he says, I'm getting tired. So this is what I'm saying. It is like, it is a challenge. Because we, you all are addicted to certain food because of our lifestyle right from the childhood. And we never started thinking outside the box. That was my craziness. That, hey, what is wrong in eating raw food? And not only is the thinking, but when I started, my elder sister, six years older than me, she said, Akshay, you cannot eat raw food because you are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Our mom said that. Yeah, I said that you are right. I'm not saying you're wrong. But eating raw food, if I fall sick, I will quit. You don't have first-hand information. You just repeating the same information what our mom said. So I want to challenge that information and I want to go forward and try on my, I'm not asking anybody to do the same thing. I'm doing this experiment on myself. I'm putting myself on the line. I'm walking on the fire myself. So anything happens, okay, I'm ready to face the consequences. At the same time in time. My nephew, he was a valedictorian, seven years scholarship to go into the medical field. And he sent me so many medical articles. Uncle, you cannot eat raw food. You are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Okay, here the medical industry says that. And he sent me lots of articles, not just one or two. And still being a stubborn person, I said, okay, be it. I understand. I don't know who wrote this. And I was not. doing that research at that time. I read and I kept aside being again, stubborn person, want to try. And I tried. Same guy, same my nephew, he become oncologist today. And he says, uncle, keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker #1
Scientifically, what is the difference between raw food and cooked food? What is, how does the food get, how does the nature of the get changed while we're cooking.
Speaker #0
So when you cook any food, you are killing most of the enzyme, not all, but most. Any enzymes in the food is getting depleted over 40 degrees. Now, that is the science. Don't have to believe me. Check it out. And that's what science is. Now, we need enzymes. Our body produces enzymes. But if you are getting the enzymes from the food, that will help to digest the food, to make that food more valuable. If the enzyme comes with it. Now, to answer your question even in deeper sense, then why we eat any food? Forget about it. Cook, non-cook, raw, whatever. Why we eat food? We are eating food to produce energy in our body. Food is fuel for our body. Till age 50, I was not knowing that. I was pleasing my palate. I was pleasing my tongue. I was eating for pleasure. I was just eating because the food is in front of me. That was my mindset at that time. But when I understood the food is fuel and the whole, if you see on this planet, every species is eating only for fuel. You keep no matter how much food in front of any other creature. They will eat as much as they want. And they know their sensor is so good. They are not obese. Even in the wild, if you see the horse or the deer, the grass is so much there, but then they know where to stop. And they know we have to keep ourselves in the shape. So when the tiger comes or cheetah comes, they have to run to keep themselves in the shape. They know exactly what to eat. How much to eat? They don't have to have a PhD. They don't have to go to doctors. They don't even ask their parents. Right from the birth, all the other creature except human knows what to eat. And more important, they know what not to eat. You keep and they smell and they walk out if it is not their food. They have that hardwired intelligence. We lost it. And we lost it. I'm not blaming anybody. We as a human, as a species, we lost it for a reason. Our evolution. played the role. What was good at that time? Let's say just for cook food, they said we started using fire around 50,000 years back. Before that, we started using fire around half a million years back. And that's all the numbers somebody says. I'm not going to argue plus minus many thousand years. Who cares? But when we started using fire for cook food. We came ahead of chimpanzee. Between us and chimpanzee, 96-98% DNA is same. Because of the cooked food, our brain started getting bigger, better, smarter, faster because of the cooked food. I give that credit to the cooked food at that time. But one has to understand that at that time, any food was in scarcity. You don't have built house. You cannot conserve the food because anywhere you keep it, somebody else is going to eat. So you have to eat as much as possible. And you don't know how many hours you are going to stay without eating any other food because food was in scarcity. You get new food in 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours. Who knows? So at that time, cooked food was a boon. It was a blessing. that we came ahead during our evolution better than other species. Very close relative is chimpanzee. Now, that same cooked food which was blessing then, it is the curse now because we don't have food scarcity. Every house have refrigerator filled with the food. You can have the food 24-7, 365 on demand. whenever you want. Now you just keep eating, eating, eating for what? So our evolution allow us to eat as much as possible. But that was a smart choice at that time. I see that that's a dumb choice today. If we use our rational mind, why we are eating food and if we see that the food is a fuel. Now you want to see which fuel you want to put in your body. Because if you have the car and if it takes electric, you cannot give gasoline. And if it is gasoline, you cannot give diesel. You give the proper fuel to your car. Why not to this body?
Speaker #1
Earlier, you mentioned that cooked food also has its benefits. Wouldn't it be safer to say, in this case, moderation is key where we can do both? Or do you believe that cooked food at this moment no longer have any benefits and raw food is the way to go?
Speaker #0
So I come across this kind of question most of the time. And I say this, OK, this raw food is not a punishment. OK, if this is not something you have to feel that, OK, you are not getting something, whatever you are eating. keep eating, you know, and then add more raw food. Having said that, this moderation is the bad word. That is the one allows people to stay within the box. Now you have to think out, it's like this. If you know that cigarette smoking is dangerous, is bad for health. So somebody say, okay, smoke in moderation. Don't smoke a whole pack in a day. Smoke only three cigarette. Still, it is a poison. Poison is a poison. No matter, you know, some moderation, poison is good. Who said that? So according to me, cooked food is a dead food. It is not giving you enough energy. You are eating so much. So what I used to eat, I'm eating right now only 25% of what I used to eat before. And I'm producing 200% of energy. That's what I can say. The reason is I'm always energetic. I do physical work. I run marathons. I go camping. I go hiking, backpacking, regular work. And still mentally and physically, I'm fit. My colleagues, they get tired by six o'clock in the evening. I said, I can go another three, four hours, no problem. So those are all the stuff. Yesterday, I was fasting and I went somewhere and they said, how can you leave 24 hours without food? I said, well, that is your problem. You cannot, I can, because my battery is charged. But this is tweaking the body. It is not that easy. It comes with the practice. It comes with the continuation, consistency. Now your body, every cell is understanding. We are not just the hand and legs and stomach and head. No, this is one body. Every cell is communicating with another cell. What is happening? So if you see this holistically, then you understand, hey, no, you know what? If it is not good. Even if it is not, I mean, one cigarette or one cup of, I mean, one shot of liquor or any alcohol. If you think it is bad, quit. I know you, one cannot because we are addicted. So first thing is, you know, you have to accept this. Hey, this is the addiction. I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, as much as possible. Nobody's forcing you. You have to force yourself.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about your book a little bit. I read some of it. And one thing I found fascinating is that you mentioned the Western medicine system is treating the symptom rather than the fundamental cause. And you went so far to say that a lot of diseases and chronical inflammations have one cause. And so if we address the root cause, a lot of those systems will go away. Can you share a little bit more? your research as well as why do you think they're all under one root cause?
Speaker #0
Sure, sure. I will. But let me ask you one question. How you like the book so far, whatever you read?
Speaker #1
I would say I was having a drink with a friend on two days ago. And I said to this person, I was like, this book actually is the first book that helped me understand food's impact on our body. You know, I obviously we all know eat your vegetables. We all know the right thing to do. But I don't really think I ever understood the impact. I don't even think I ever thought about it. But this book was really easy to understand. I think that even with somebody who hated science and biology so much, I understood what you're talking about. And also almost like I can visually see when I consume something, how is it? how it transpires in my body. Like, how does it work? So I thought it was really, it was a pretty easy read and very easy to understand.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because it is not written by somebody in the medical field. I am a businessman. And I understand as a common man, you know, what is, how easily one can give the information to digest. Coming back to your question, I see this, this is any disease. Let's say somebody have diabetes. Whatever the disease is, really this is disease. I don't see it as a disease. It is a symptom. The root cause of that situation is something else. And let me give you an analogy. Let's say whatever city you are living in, that city has a problem, a lot of problem. The roads are not good. There is a lot of holes on the road. There is not the... cleanliness, a lot of garbage. There is a lot of crime. Traffic is bad. Parking situation is bad. There is no playground. There is no hospitals. All, all, all, everything is bad. Now living in that city is not very, is not the good situation. But think now, flip the coin and see if the city have lots of money. Now the roads are good. The gardens are good. The hospital is good. School is good. Traffic situation is not bad. Parking is good. Everything is wonderful. No crime. Enough police. What happened? So when you have more currency, the revenue, you can cope with the situation. That is the bottom line. As a businessman, I also see that when you have a lot of money, you can cope with any kind of situation. That same analogy applies to our body. When your body produces enough energy. Now you can deal with any situation. So diabetes is not the disease, it's the symptoms. Because of the lack of energy, now your system is so screwed up, it is either not absorbing the extra sugar in the blood, there is no hormone, the insulin is a hormone, the production of the hormone is less, whatever the situation is. but individually have different situation. I'm not just going to generalize it. But if you have generalizing in this sense, that if you have a lot of energy as a currency, which is in our body known as ATP, adenosine triphosphate, that is the universal currency, regardless whether you are in USA, in Japan, in Australia, in India, China, wherever you are. We humans have only one currency and that currency is ATP. Once your production, when the food is your intake of food, the fuel, you are taking in a good shape. Now your body is producing lots of energy. So it is another problem of lack of energy is our brain is consuming around 20 to 25 percent of the energy. That's what science says. OK. And I believe so. Percentage can be more or less, whatever. I don't know. But whatever the highest percentage of the energy goes to your brain. Then second preference is your heart. So your heart needs to pump and to breathe. So that is second preference. And then rest goes to all other organs and skin and everything everywhere. Okay. So if you have lack of energy, now what happens? Your body is going to start rationing it. It's now, okay, you brain, hey, calm down. You are not going to get 100% what you are demanding. You are going to get only 80%. There's a lack of energy. Heart, calm down, only 80% or whatever. I'm just giving you analogy. Now what is happening? Now rationing of energy is creating all kind of malfunction. And that is creating now, there is no clear communications. between the organs and the brain and the cells and everything is now in chaos. That chaos creates the disease. So once you have enough energy, our body is designed to heal itself. So if there is a problem, if I run 10 miles and my body needs to recoup, if I have enough energy, my knee is hurting. but is going to recoup to run after another three days. Because of the energy, our cells are dying every day. Millions of cells are dying. Now that cells has to replenish. But if you don't have enough energy, who is going to do that? See, this factory, this body as a factory, every cell need nourishment and reproduction also. Same time. So if you don't have that, I mean, everything else is superficial. You take medicine after medicine after medicine. It's hurting your other organs. And it is a makeshift kind of solution, which I believe is not the real solution.
Speaker #1
Where does supplements come into this conversation? I don't even eat cooked vegetables. So I think that is going to be such a hard jump for me to go from mainly carb and... protein-based meals to a raw food diet. Maybe the next step will be like try to eat a little bit of cooked vegetables. But I take a bunch of supplements. I take this supplement that, you know, I can feel a energy surge after taking it and there's no caffeine in the supplement. Do supplements work or I have to change?
Speaker #0
Supplement, if you're taking without doctor's recommendation. it is dangerous. I was not taking any supplement and I was, I'm taking back my word, sorry. I was taking, let's say supplement, joint supplement when I'm running marathons. But that time, you know, as a 60, 65, 67 year old person, younger person, not 60, need to recoup. So I don't want to injure myself. So I started taking, let's say supplement, but then I'm stopping it when I don't need it. When I'm not running, let's say every other year I used to run. Now I'm running every year now. So that's a different story. But so take the supplement if your doctor says you should take it. Don't take it just because you saw some advertisement or you read somewhere and because you went to Costco and it is very cheap. Just take it. No, don't do that. I am taking now supplement B12 and D3. Just started two couple of months back. And that's not, I just asked my doctor before I finished, I ran my last marathon in March. I went to doctor in February. Check me out. Every year I do that. Before running, I go to doctor. Just in case, you know. They have to see my numbers and everything. So what happened? I said, doctor. And my another doctor friend who wrote this, the foreword for this book, he said, Akshay, you should check your D3 and B12. I said, okay. I went and I asked the doctor this time run test for D3 and B12 also. And he ran and he said, okay, you know what? You're not bad, but it will help if you take the booster. And he recommended and I took it. That kind of proactive, what you need, if you take it, it is going to work for you long run. Now, what you are taking and it giving you boost of energy, the spike, you are going to face big problem later on. You are very young. So what happens? Our body, our brain is designed something which happens every day. So let's say if somebody is taking. sugar substitute. Sugar substitute is very dangerous, very bad. Why? So when you take any sugary stuff, your brain knows now the sugar came in. Now in our factory, let's that convert into energy, but you're faking it. Now, instead of giving real sugar, you are doing a sugar substitute. Now your brain is sending to collect that sugar and convert into energy. They fail. So you failed one time, second time, third time. Now your brain says, you know what? This is happening many times. I'm not going to go ever now. If there is a sugar, there is no sugar. I'm going to not listen any signal of sugar once, you know, anybody, I mean, the person is taking sugar substitute. So now you are going against the design of your body. What is happening now? Because you fooled yourself so many times, now your brain gave up. And that happens to everything else also. So whether it is a caffeine, whether it is the energy drink or energy supplement or anything, because it's artificial, that artificial thing is going to work for a while. But then what happens? You are diminishing the whole system. You are right now, you are polluting the system. Whole system is going to get screwed up. because now a lot of information, it's like this. Right now you understand what I'm talking. But if I start talking in my Gujarati language, Indian language, you are not going to understand what is happening. You are, what is, so same thing, exactly thing happens because our whole system works on information. You are not only eating the fruit. You are eating with the fruit information you are eating. And that information, yeah, it is, I know, it's like, what, why, how, yeah. When you eat the fruit, when you eat the vegetable, when you eat any nuts, your brain understands exactly what is happening. Okay, let's say if you're eating, okay, now it is the morning and it is the time for snack and it is the breakfast or this is what is coming. So when the consistency comes, everything works with it in harmony. So when the sun rise, the whole world is now waking up. It is in harmony. The birds and the whole, every species understand now it is now time to go work, time to go and search for food, whatever it is, you know, the nature, it happens. It goes down when sunset. So this is how the cycle is. If you screwed up your cycle, if you take night job, now your whole circadian rhythm is changed. There's more chances of getting heart attack. There are more chances of getting a blood pressure issue. Why? Because you are now breaking the cycle. The mother nature made it. The circadian rhythm is that's how our body works. Now, everything else is also same thing. So when you take any synthetic thing, including any kind of supplement or substitute or whatever, be careful.
Speaker #1
Are you getting enough? protein. I know that majority, well, according to the society, majority of the protein comes from animal products. And I know that in recent years, vegan protein or vegetarian protein kind of made a comeback. Do you take protein powders, either just, you know, vegetarian version of it and just to be able to make sure your body gets enough protein or that's not part of the consideration?
Speaker #0
Then good question. Let me ask you a question. How much protein we need?
Speaker #1
Well, isn't that they say 0.8 of every pound that you weigh?
Speaker #0
So there is so many formula. There's one, somebody says one is to one. So if you are 150 pound, you need 150 gram. Somebody says one is to half, you know, so half of it. So 75 gram. If you ask Dr. Google, he says, okay, 56 gram for men, 50 gram for women. There are so many things out there. And everybody is pushing their own agenda. If you see in the wild, the horse is eating grass. non-vegetarian and full of muscles can run for many miles carrying the another guy on the even body and still they can run from where they get protein so it is it is again lots of myth out there so just to answer the horse get protein because they have an in system which the grass get fermented. They have another system to ferment and that creates the protein. Now, every creature have different system. Our system is also different, not same as the horse. So if we start eating grass, we will not get protein. They get. So to answer, I'm not taking any substitute, any shake, any protein powder, nothing, nada, zip. That's not what I'm accepting. I do have enough protein. I can prove that since I'm running marathons. Without good tone muscles, you cannot. My son is 175 pounds. I lift him up on my shoulder during his wedding and I dance on the street for maybe four or five minutes. I'm only 145 pounds. So I carried more than my weight and dancing, not just walking even. On the rhythm, I was dancing. People were amazed. Why? How can you do that? So it proves that I have enough protein to lift up even that kind of weight. I see this protein. No protein is animal-based. Every protein is even plant-based. Even animal gets from the plant. So cow gets protein and you eat beef and that's protein. But from where they get? So I see this. This is lots of myth around in the market. And I... My strong word, this is the food mafia. They spread this thing. I'm sorry, but I'm not against it. I am a businessman. I know they have to do this to survive, to make their bank balance, you know, fat and to please their shareholder. So they have to do it. But it is up to us how gullible we are. If they say something and we believe, who did this study? Sponsored by who? It's the same people who are selling the stuff. They are sponsoring the study and whatever the outcome comes. And they do it in such a way that they do it in ethical way, but still it is totally immoral. It's what? You are fooling people saying this and people understand this. Okay. And they become the victim of this. I say this very openly and even in the book. There is a three mafia, food mafia, medical mafia, and drug mafia. They are taking advantage of the people in general, no matter where you are, not only in Western culture, even Eastern culture, everywhere in the world, in Africa, in India, in US, in Japan, everywhere there's an issue. So that issue, because we forgot what to accept. If you give your food, to even your pets, your dog or cat. They will come, they will smell, and if it is not for them, they will walk out. And we forgot about it.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about food quality. I know that, you know, in America, a lot of people complain about the amount of chemicals that we put in the food and the hormones. And from my understanding is that if you cook the food, you can eliminate some of its harm. And you earlier also did say... that you've been eating raw food for 16 years, you have not got sick just yet. Well, have not. I hope you never get sick. When you are choosing raw food... Do you have certain standards? Meaning if you go to a certain type of a grocery store and you know at least the quality of the rough that you're eating is up to your standard.
Speaker #0
Again, this is all myth. I travel. Forget about in my house. I travel. I don't carry my food. I travel and I survive everywhere. And even dangerous place, you know, the dangerous place like India. They said, what? Don't, don't, you're going to die. I said, forget it. Nothing happened. And I stayed there for one month and nothing happened. So when you're careful of what you are eating, what you're putting in your mouth, when you're aware, everything becomes so easy. You don't have to go into all this thing. Of course, you don't want to eat pesticide. That is true. So what do you do? You wash well, you wash with vinegar, you wash with warm water, whatever way it is, you keep it, dip it in the water for a while, you eat. I have not seen that anybody, any person died because of eating raw food. I have seen millions of people dying every day because of eating cooked food. And so it is a myth and this is, they have to do it. This is the fear they have to put on. to everybody, hey, if you eat raw food, you're going to die or you're going to have this or that. And to prove that, to prove that they are wrong, I did that experiment on myself, putting myself on the fire. OK, if that is the case, I should be in the hospital 10 years back, 15 years back even when I started. So, no, that is that is all all goofy thing. They won't. So only way, you know what? I can beat you. Let's say you and your brother or you and your friend, and I'm jealous of your friendship, your affection, you know. But all I have to do, I have to put in one of the mind some kind of doubt. Hey, you know what? Zain is stealing money from your account. What? I trust him so good. So now that doubt is going to make everything so bad between you. And that exactly these people are doing it. All they are doing is putting the point of doubt now, you know, and they cut it loose then. Okay, hey, whoever the PhD or whoever are writing this article or that article, all they get money for that to write those things. And whoever is sponsoring it, they say, okay, wow, we made another home run. You know, because this is now gone to the public. Public is so scared eating raw food. That exactly they want. But thinking naturally, you know, rational mind, naturally. If that is the case, I supposed to be dead by now. 16 years of eating raw food. Why I'm not falling sick? I'm also an ordinary person like you and everybody else. Only thing is I'm older now. You are younger. So this is a wrong thing. Of course, you have to be careful. Don't eat something with the pesticide. It's going to hurt you. But if you become aware, if you, when you clean your food, you take care of it. And I'm eating a lot of food with the skin. Even I'm not peeling the skin of the raw potato or sweet potato. So what I do, I wash it well. And I, there is nothing. I don't see there's a big problem. No.
Speaker #1
So I'm drinking a coconut water and this is obviously coconut juice. Well, coconut water. juice. What's your thoughts on juices and, you know, certain things being a lighty process, but they're still raw?
Speaker #0
I'm also taking coconut water.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
And I'm making kombucha out of it. I prefer I get real natural coconut water. When I'm visiting other country, you know, especially in India or Punta Cana or Bahamas, I drink a lot of coconut water. It's available. But it's loss hindrance, not available. So I take it. I want to see that there is no preservative. There is no other bad substance there. And if it is in natural form, take it. It's fine. I don't want to make my life miserable. I want to make my life easy. I'm not making any rules for anybody. I make rules for myself that, hey, this is I find here in my situation. I have to take that coconut water. I'm taking it. But so if you. At least you are aware. Now you are reading the labels. If there is any kind of bad, harmful elements are there, avoid it. Don't take it. Or even if it is there. And now you are going to your friend's house and they offer you this. Drink once. It's nothing, nothing going to, it's not going to kill you. It is now something is like, okay, avoid if there is nothing, then you have to take that. But otherwise, take something which is not going to hurt you, not going to harm you. But again, it is not about the moderation, but it is about the practicality. So when you go out, you don't want to be a pain guest anywhere you go. People love me. They are inviting, everybody is inviting me for lunch and dinner because it costs nothing to them. It's like, okay, all you have to give me one avocado and I'm done. Or all you have to give me one apple and banana and I'm done. It's that easy for me. And I'm not checking, you know, let's say if I come from where you got your avocado or from where you got your apple, from wherever you got, okay, wash it well. or even don't do anything, bring it in a hole. I will cut myself. I do that to keep it more hygienic. And I eat right away when I cut. I don't keep it for a minute. So even when I eat mango and I'm getting mango from my backyard, I eat with the skin. I'm not putting pasties, right? It's all organic. And the skin has a much more valuable nutrition. People are throwing out. I used to throw out. But now I understand the value of nutrition. I understand what we should eat. Even I ate avocado with the skin from my backyard. And I put it on the video out there. So, and I searched, eating skin is dangerous or you can eat. So I found out, no, the avocado skin has a lot of nutrition. And I ate. So it is. It depends. If you are getting avocado from market, you don't know whether what kind of pesticide or something. Generally, they don't put on avocado. But again, what I'm saying, you have to be very practical. You have to aware your situation. You are responsible for what you're putting in your mouth.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. I know that people can buy your book on Amazon. The book is called In Nature We Trust. How else can the listeners get in touch with you?
Speaker #0
So, of course, yeah, as you said, on Amazon, all three formats are available, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. They can get in touch with me going on my site. And website name is rawfoodist.com. Extra E there for education. I have a lot of blogs, a lot of videos. They can send me email if they have. let's say you you being a you know non-vegetarian person you want to start and you got stuck somewhere and something is bothering send me email call me you know what it is i'm i'm here to help you uh i'm not selling anything so no substitute no no supplement you you get whatever you want to get get it from market make sure you're getting right thing and this book We'll give you the guideline. As you said, you know, you just went maybe halfway and you understood a lot of stuff which was not in your vocabulary or not in even your understanding. Now you understand. After understanding, don't start. Analyze it. Challenge it. Challenge me that, hey, Akshay, what you are saying is maybe is not right. Okay. Let's let discuss. If it is not right, I'm here to... Because I am... I'm not a medical field person. I'm open for any kind of discussion. And I'm not claiming anything that it worked for me, it is going to work for you. But knowing the nature, you are also human like me. Doesn't matter where you live. We have same DNA. We have, you know, same, your blood is 7.4 on pH level. My blood is 7.4. Our body is regulating that. See how wonderful the system is. And we screwed it up royally so bad that now we don't know. So yeah, this book will give you the guideline. And yeah, my website is another way one can contact me.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay, for joining us today. I have learned a lot. And I think that when I think of raw food, I'm still worried. about my life quality, but we'll have you back onto the show and talk about how to. power, I guess power through is the wrong way to say, how to deal with day-to-day interactions, each meal, how to make it more practical for listeners to understand how they can start implement this practice into their daily life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's like, okay, same way like you are, we are doing podcast and you're getting answer from me. I was doing something similar with one lady from Florida Her name is Jackie and she is, after talking, you know, for me preliminary before even starting taking a podcast interview, she got a lot of information and she bought the book. She started, she quit the meat first. After three months, we had the podcast and she said, I ran marathon with the raw food. And it's not 100% okay, raw food. She quit meat, but still, you know, cooked food was the part of her portion. I didn't ask her to do. I'm not asking any. I'm not asking even my wife to be a raw foodist. No, this is a crazy thing. You have to convince yourself. So once you read the book, if you think this is OK, this this is the harmless and helpful information. Let me try. Nothing is wrong trying something. And once you try, if you get success, go for more. If you go, let's say, if you made some venture and you made a lot of money. Now you understood that venture. You want to go for in a bigger way so you can make more money. Same way. This is a venture. Don't know. Do it with the, you know, understanding that this is not just you are hitting in the dark. This is very informative. decision you take, your informed decision, once you take it, then you are confident. Now you are analyzing it. Make a journal, you know, make a note what happened. You started getting better. Even the background is celebrating.
Speaker #1
I've never seen that before.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you started getting a better sleep. You started getting better bowel movement. Your energy level is better. or whatever is getting negative way. So everybody have different, you know, problem. I cannot take legumes, you know, it giving me gastric trouble. So I am avoiding it. But somebody likes it, take that. It gives you a lot of protein. This is how you have to, anybody starting, become proactive, monitor it. This is like, if you start any business, you have to understand what is going on in the business. Who is doing what? Where is the money? And how you can make more money. Exactly same way. Where is the energy? How you can make more energy.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay. And we'll have you back on the show very soon.
Speaker #0
Please reach out anytime and I'm ready.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
Thank you.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much for being here with me today on The Zen Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, make sure you're subscribed and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway. That's how we grow this community and get these conversations in front of more people who need them. And if somebody came to mind while you're listening, please do make sure to send this episode to them. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All linked below. Until next time, stay sharp, stay intentional, and be good.

About The Zhen Podcast

You’re listening to The Zhen Podcast - a show focused on mental health, physical health, relationship health, and the daily practices that support real, lasting change. Each episode features thoughtful conversations with guests who share real-life experiences — from their own journeys to the work they’ve done with clients - offering practical examples of healing, learning, and growth. We explore what actually helps people move forward, whether that comes from science, health, psychology, spirituality, or simple habits that make a meaningful difference. The goal is clarity, self-awareness, and tools you can apply to your own life — now let's begin the conversation Disclaimer: "The information provided in this Podcast Channel (the "Channel") does not, and is not intended to, constitute professional advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this Channel are for general informational purposes only. This Channel contains information provided by interviewees and/or links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser. The views expressed at, or through, this site are those of the individual interviewees in their individual capacities only – not those of the Channel. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this Channel are hereby expressly disclaimed. The content on this posting is provided "as is;" no representations are made that the content is error-free."

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About The Zhen Podcast

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Doctor said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old, now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously, but seriously I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of clues, and that gave me the total new life. Today I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero... chronic disease. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
Welcome back everybody to the show. Today we have Akshay Shah, who is the author of the book In Nature We Trust, who himself has been eating raw food for the past 16 years and have seen significant health results as well as a elevation in lifestyle. Today we have him joining us to talk about the benefits of eating raw food, as well as sharing a little insight about how has this impact his life positively. So welcome to the show, Akshay.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Zen, for inviting me to on your show. Let me give you a little bit of my background. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm a businessman and I'm working in health and wellness. That's my passion. How I get into it is like 16 years back, I was noticing lack of energy in my body. I tried to start investigating it. Doctors said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old. Now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously. But seriously, I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of... clues. And that gave me the total new life. Today, I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero chronic disease, marathon completed, training for ninth. I'm going to run with my son and daughter-in-law next year. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. marathons. I was going to train for a half marathon and in the middle of it, I was just like, no, I'm too tired. I don't want to do this. I know, I know. I wanted to challenge myself, but I just don't think this year is the year. Maybe we'll try again next year. But that's actually what I said last year. So we'll try to make a change. But when we talk about vegetables, we all know it's good for you. You know, fruits, raw food. We know that in general, those are much better than processed food. However, when it comes down to making the daily choices, it is always harder to choose the healthier option over something that can give us instant gratification. And in your case, your lack of energy pushed you to make this lifestyle. What was the biggest challenge in making this lifestyle change?
Speaker #0
For me. I didn't have that big challenge, but I am not the normal person, you know. I did this experiment even in my teenage life. I did one whole month, nothing but salad when I was around 15, 17. A whole one month, nothing but mung beans. Even though it was cooked, but the whole month, nothing but mung beans is challenging. Tested myself back then, and even here in Los Angeles, I tried one month, nothing but salad. couple of times. So it gave me kind of courage and confidence. I can do something different also. So for me, it was easy since I had a background of testing myself. But most of the people have the issue because we all, including me, we all are hooked up. I can say in a little stronger word, addicted. to cook food. And that is the biggest challenge.
Speaker #1
How does your diet look like right now? Give us a eat with you for one day. What do you consume?
Speaker #0
Morning, I start my day with the green tea with a little bit of almond and walnut. Afternoon, I take a couple of fruits, maybe three fruits. depends upon how hungry I am. In between, if I want to snack, you can go for, I keep in my car, almond and walnut. Nuts are there, so if I'm getting hungry or if I go somewhere and they don't have any food, I carry my own food for a while so I can... survive for a few hours without any issue. Coming back home around seven o'clock, eight o'clock, I take dinner with vegetables. So vegetables can be anything, sweet, raw potato, broccoli, avocado, whatever you like it. So I take it this because it is more nutritional and it is much more fulfilling when you eat those solid. It is not just a salad. It is a real, a good vegetable portion. When you eat, you feel that, yeah, you ate something and it is good. So this is my normal day.
Speaker #1
Did you say raw potato?
Speaker #0
Of course.
Speaker #1
Fine, add the edible.
Speaker #0
Okay, so let me ask you then. Can you eat raw carrot?
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Why you cannot eat raw potato?
Speaker #1
I don't think I've ever seen anybody or you.
Speaker #0
That's the thing. We keep ourselves within the box because your mom, my mom, and their mom never taught us to eat raw food. And there is a good reason. So we are victim of culture, trend, tradition, whatever you name it. We learn from our parents, eating habit at least. So first. let's say, 10, 15 years, you build your habit. Whatever your family is eating, that's exactly what you are eating. Once you become adult, then you have more options and you go out and you eat whatever you want. But till then, our family is giving us a guideline what to eat, what not to eat. In my case, being born in Indian Hindu family, meat eating was taboo. So it was like you cannot eat meat by culture, by religion. So that was who I was before. But being a rebellious person, when I started going to college, I started eating meat. I want to break the rule, the family rule, don't eat. Okay, so eat and taste it. What is wrong? And I ate for those four years of my college, eating meat. chicken, fish, everything. Then I quit. Nobody told me to start. Nobody told me to quit. So I made that decision at that time to eat and then it didn't appeal to me that much. It was good for tasting, but then I didn't see any value in there. So I came back to vegetarian lifestyle and that was good because that's everybody in our family is eating. So I never had any issue. But at the age 50, fast forward, I started seeing that I don't have the same energy what I used to have at 20, 30, 40. So that is the thing, you know, it's like we have to, you know, we have to think outside the box. So your question is good. How you can eat potato? How you can eat sweet potato, raw, with the skin? And I see this way. Why not? My question is, if you, if anybody tells me that, hey, this is the issue, eating raw food, and I will listen to them and then I will challenge also. But so far, I have not got any person who can give me a satisfactory answer not to it.
Speaker #1
Does your family also eat the same style or they have their own?
Speaker #0
I am the only crazy person in my family.
Speaker #1
And you don't feel you're missing out on...
Speaker #0
No, actually, my wife, she is a professional cook. She used to do catering business. Her food is so tasty that anytime when we have party, I help her to cook. I don't eat, but I help her to cook. My nephew, my niece, my sister-in-law, my sister, brother, everybody who comes there, they pack it up. Nothing stay behind, you know. So they love her food. But that the thing that gave me one bigger challenge. People calls me idiot. They say, what? Your wife is such a, you know, she's a wonderful cook and you are not eating her food. Well, that's my decision. What I understand, and today everybody appreciate that, today. When I started, they were cursing me. They were saying, you are crazy, you are idiot, you are this and you are that. All those people who made the fun out of me 16 years back, they all are saying today. Akshay, we wish we can do the same thing what you are doing. The reason is all of them facing some kind of health issue. Some kind. Somebody have blood pressure. Somebody have diabetes. Somebody went to ER for heart attack. Knee replacement. Fatigue. They don't have much now. They cannot take stairs. Limited mobility. All those thing is coming. And they are all something same age. Even my nephew is younger than me. And he said, uncle, now he's going to be 50. And he says, I'm getting tired. So this is what I'm saying. It is like, it is a challenge. Because we, you all are addicted to certain food because of our lifestyle right from the childhood. And we never started thinking outside the box. That was my craziness. That, hey, what is wrong in eating raw food? And not only is the thinking, but when I started, my elder sister, six years older than me, she said, Akshay, you cannot eat raw food because you are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Our mom said that. Yeah, I said that you are right. I'm not saying you're wrong. But eating raw food, if I fall sick, I will quit. You don't have first-hand information. You just repeating the same information what our mom said. So I want to challenge that information and I want to go forward and try on my, I'm not asking anybody to do the same thing. I'm doing this experiment on myself. I'm putting myself on the line. I'm walking on the fire myself. So anything happens, okay, I'm ready to face the consequences. At the same time in time. My nephew, he was a valedictorian, seven years scholarship to go into the medical field. And he sent me so many medical articles. Uncle, you cannot eat raw food. You are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Okay, here the medical industry says that. And he sent me lots of articles, not just one or two. And still being a stubborn person, I said, okay, be it. I understand. I don't know who wrote this. And I was not. doing that research at that time. I read and I kept aside being again, stubborn person, want to try. And I tried. Same guy, same my nephew, he become oncologist today. And he says, uncle, keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker #1
Scientifically, what is the difference between raw food and cooked food? What is, how does the food get, how does the nature of the get changed while we're cooking.
Speaker #0
So when you cook any food, you are killing most of the enzyme, not all, but most. Any enzymes in the food is getting depleted over 40 degrees. Now, that is the science. Don't have to believe me. Check it out. And that's what science is. Now, we need enzymes. Our body produces enzymes. But if you are getting the enzymes from the food, that will help to digest the food, to make that food more valuable. If the enzyme comes with it. Now, to answer your question even in deeper sense, then why we eat any food? Forget about it. Cook, non-cook, raw, whatever. Why we eat food? We are eating food to produce energy in our body. Food is fuel for our body. Till age 50, I was not knowing that. I was pleasing my palate. I was pleasing my tongue. I was eating for pleasure. I was just eating because the food is in front of me. That was my mindset at that time. But when I understood the food is fuel and the whole, if you see on this planet, every species is eating only for fuel. You keep no matter how much food in front of any other creature. They will eat as much as they want. And they know their sensor is so good. They are not obese. Even in the wild, if you see the horse or the deer, the grass is so much there, but then they know where to stop. And they know we have to keep ourselves in the shape. So when the tiger comes or cheetah comes, they have to run to keep themselves in the shape. They know exactly what to eat. How much to eat? They don't have to have a PhD. They don't have to go to doctors. They don't even ask their parents. Right from the birth, all the other creature except human knows what to eat. And more important, they know what not to eat. You keep and they smell and they walk out if it is not their food. They have that hardwired intelligence. We lost it. And we lost it. I'm not blaming anybody. We as a human, as a species, we lost it for a reason. Our evolution. played the role. What was good at that time? Let's say just for cook food, they said we started using fire around 50,000 years back. Before that, we started using fire around half a million years back. And that's all the numbers somebody says. I'm not going to argue plus minus many thousand years. Who cares? But when we started using fire for cook food. We came ahead of chimpanzee. Between us and chimpanzee, 96-98% DNA is same. Because of the cooked food, our brain started getting bigger, better, smarter, faster because of the cooked food. I give that credit to the cooked food at that time. But one has to understand that at that time, any food was in scarcity. You don't have built house. You cannot conserve the food because anywhere you keep it, somebody else is going to eat. So you have to eat as much as possible. And you don't know how many hours you are going to stay without eating any other food because food was in scarcity. You get new food in 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours. Who knows? So at that time, cooked food was a boon. It was a blessing. that we came ahead during our evolution better than other species. Very close relative is chimpanzee. Now, that same cooked food which was blessing then, it is the curse now because we don't have food scarcity. Every house have refrigerator filled with the food. You can have the food 24-7, 365 on demand. whenever you want. Now you just keep eating, eating, eating for what? So our evolution allow us to eat as much as possible. But that was a smart choice at that time. I see that that's a dumb choice today. If we use our rational mind, why we are eating food and if we see that the food is a fuel. Now you want to see which fuel you want to put in your body. Because if you have the car and if it takes electric, you cannot give gasoline. And if it is gasoline, you cannot give diesel. You give the proper fuel to your car. Why not to this body?
Speaker #1
Earlier, you mentioned that cooked food also has its benefits. Wouldn't it be safer to say, in this case, moderation is key where we can do both? Or do you believe that cooked food at this moment no longer have any benefits and raw food is the way to go?
Speaker #0
So I come across this kind of question most of the time. And I say this, OK, this raw food is not a punishment. OK, if this is not something you have to feel that, OK, you are not getting something, whatever you are eating. keep eating, you know, and then add more raw food. Having said that, this moderation is the bad word. That is the one allows people to stay within the box. Now you have to think out, it's like this. If you know that cigarette smoking is dangerous, is bad for health. So somebody say, okay, smoke in moderation. Don't smoke a whole pack in a day. Smoke only three cigarette. Still, it is a poison. Poison is a poison. No matter, you know, some moderation, poison is good. Who said that? So according to me, cooked food is a dead food. It is not giving you enough energy. You are eating so much. So what I used to eat, I'm eating right now only 25% of what I used to eat before. And I'm producing 200% of energy. That's what I can say. The reason is I'm always energetic. I do physical work. I run marathons. I go camping. I go hiking, backpacking, regular work. And still mentally and physically, I'm fit. My colleagues, they get tired by six o'clock in the evening. I said, I can go another three, four hours, no problem. So those are all the stuff. Yesterday, I was fasting and I went somewhere and they said, how can you leave 24 hours without food? I said, well, that is your problem. You cannot, I can, because my battery is charged. But this is tweaking the body. It is not that easy. It comes with the practice. It comes with the continuation, consistency. Now your body, every cell is understanding. We are not just the hand and legs and stomach and head. No, this is one body. Every cell is communicating with another cell. What is happening? So if you see this holistically, then you understand, hey, no, you know what? If it is not good. Even if it is not, I mean, one cigarette or one cup of, I mean, one shot of liquor or any alcohol. If you think it is bad, quit. I know you, one cannot because we are addicted. So first thing is, you know, you have to accept this. Hey, this is the addiction. I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, as much as possible. Nobody's forcing you. You have to force yourself.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about your book a little bit. I read some of it. And one thing I found fascinating is that you mentioned the Western medicine system is treating the symptom rather than the fundamental cause. And you went so far to say that a lot of diseases and chronical inflammations have one cause. And so if we address the root cause, a lot of those systems will go away. Can you share a little bit more? your research as well as why do you think they're all under one root cause?
Speaker #0
Sure, sure. I will. But let me ask you one question. How you like the book so far, whatever you read?
Speaker #1
I would say I was having a drink with a friend on two days ago. And I said to this person, I was like, this book actually is the first book that helped me understand food's impact on our body. You know, I obviously we all know eat your vegetables. We all know the right thing to do. But I don't really think I ever understood the impact. I don't even think I ever thought about it. But this book was really easy to understand. I think that even with somebody who hated science and biology so much, I understood what you're talking about. And also almost like I can visually see when I consume something, how is it? how it transpires in my body. Like, how does it work? So I thought it was really, it was a pretty easy read and very easy to understand.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because it is not written by somebody in the medical field. I am a businessman. And I understand as a common man, you know, what is, how easily one can give the information to digest. Coming back to your question, I see this, this is any disease. Let's say somebody have diabetes. Whatever the disease is, really this is disease. I don't see it as a disease. It is a symptom. The root cause of that situation is something else. And let me give you an analogy. Let's say whatever city you are living in, that city has a problem, a lot of problem. The roads are not good. There is a lot of holes on the road. There is not the... cleanliness, a lot of garbage. There is a lot of crime. Traffic is bad. Parking situation is bad. There is no playground. There is no hospitals. All, all, all, everything is bad. Now living in that city is not very, is not the good situation. But think now, flip the coin and see if the city have lots of money. Now the roads are good. The gardens are good. The hospital is good. School is good. Traffic situation is not bad. Parking is good. Everything is wonderful. No crime. Enough police. What happened? So when you have more currency, the revenue, you can cope with the situation. That is the bottom line. As a businessman, I also see that when you have a lot of money, you can cope with any kind of situation. That same analogy applies to our body. When your body produces enough energy. Now you can deal with any situation. So diabetes is not the disease, it's the symptoms. Because of the lack of energy, now your system is so screwed up, it is either not absorbing the extra sugar in the blood, there is no hormone, the insulin is a hormone, the production of the hormone is less, whatever the situation is. but individually have different situation. I'm not just going to generalize it. But if you have generalizing in this sense, that if you have a lot of energy as a currency, which is in our body known as ATP, adenosine triphosphate, that is the universal currency, regardless whether you are in USA, in Japan, in Australia, in India, China, wherever you are. We humans have only one currency and that currency is ATP. Once your production, when the food is your intake of food, the fuel, you are taking in a good shape. Now your body is producing lots of energy. So it is another problem of lack of energy is our brain is consuming around 20 to 25 percent of the energy. That's what science says. OK. And I believe so. Percentage can be more or less, whatever. I don't know. But whatever the highest percentage of the energy goes to your brain. Then second preference is your heart. So your heart needs to pump and to breathe. So that is second preference. And then rest goes to all other organs and skin and everything everywhere. Okay. So if you have lack of energy, now what happens? Your body is going to start rationing it. It's now, okay, you brain, hey, calm down. You are not going to get 100% what you are demanding. You are going to get only 80%. There's a lack of energy. Heart, calm down, only 80% or whatever. I'm just giving you analogy. Now what is happening? Now rationing of energy is creating all kind of malfunction. And that is creating now, there is no clear communications. between the organs and the brain and the cells and everything is now in chaos. That chaos creates the disease. So once you have enough energy, our body is designed to heal itself. So if there is a problem, if I run 10 miles and my body needs to recoup, if I have enough energy, my knee is hurting. but is going to recoup to run after another three days. Because of the energy, our cells are dying every day. Millions of cells are dying. Now that cells has to replenish. But if you don't have enough energy, who is going to do that? See, this factory, this body as a factory, every cell need nourishment and reproduction also. Same time. So if you don't have that, I mean, everything else is superficial. You take medicine after medicine after medicine. It's hurting your other organs. And it is a makeshift kind of solution, which I believe is not the real solution.
Speaker #1
Where does supplements come into this conversation? I don't even eat cooked vegetables. So I think that is going to be such a hard jump for me to go from mainly carb and... protein-based meals to a raw food diet. Maybe the next step will be like try to eat a little bit of cooked vegetables. But I take a bunch of supplements. I take this supplement that, you know, I can feel a energy surge after taking it and there's no caffeine in the supplement. Do supplements work or I have to change?
Speaker #0
Supplement, if you're taking without doctor's recommendation. it is dangerous. I was not taking any supplement and I was, I'm taking back my word, sorry. I was taking, let's say supplement, joint supplement when I'm running marathons. But that time, you know, as a 60, 65, 67 year old person, younger person, not 60, need to recoup. So I don't want to injure myself. So I started taking, let's say supplement, but then I'm stopping it when I don't need it. When I'm not running, let's say every other year I used to run. Now I'm running every year now. So that's a different story. But so take the supplement if your doctor says you should take it. Don't take it just because you saw some advertisement or you read somewhere and because you went to Costco and it is very cheap. Just take it. No, don't do that. I am taking now supplement B12 and D3. Just started two couple of months back. And that's not, I just asked my doctor before I finished, I ran my last marathon in March. I went to doctor in February. Check me out. Every year I do that. Before running, I go to doctor. Just in case, you know. They have to see my numbers and everything. So what happened? I said, doctor. And my another doctor friend who wrote this, the foreword for this book, he said, Akshay, you should check your D3 and B12. I said, okay. I went and I asked the doctor this time run test for D3 and B12 also. And he ran and he said, okay, you know what? You're not bad, but it will help if you take the booster. And he recommended and I took it. That kind of proactive, what you need, if you take it, it is going to work for you long run. Now, what you are taking and it giving you boost of energy, the spike, you are going to face big problem later on. You are very young. So what happens? Our body, our brain is designed something which happens every day. So let's say if somebody is taking. sugar substitute. Sugar substitute is very dangerous, very bad. Why? So when you take any sugary stuff, your brain knows now the sugar came in. Now in our factory, let's that convert into energy, but you're faking it. Now, instead of giving real sugar, you are doing a sugar substitute. Now your brain is sending to collect that sugar and convert into energy. They fail. So you failed one time, second time, third time. Now your brain says, you know what? This is happening many times. I'm not going to go ever now. If there is a sugar, there is no sugar. I'm going to not listen any signal of sugar once, you know, anybody, I mean, the person is taking sugar substitute. So now you are going against the design of your body. What is happening now? Because you fooled yourself so many times, now your brain gave up. And that happens to everything else also. So whether it is a caffeine, whether it is the energy drink or energy supplement or anything, because it's artificial, that artificial thing is going to work for a while. But then what happens? You are diminishing the whole system. You are right now, you are polluting the system. Whole system is going to get screwed up. because now a lot of information, it's like this. Right now you understand what I'm talking. But if I start talking in my Gujarati language, Indian language, you are not going to understand what is happening. You are, what is, so same thing, exactly thing happens because our whole system works on information. You are not only eating the fruit. You are eating with the fruit information you are eating. And that information, yeah, it is, I know, it's like, what, why, how, yeah. When you eat the fruit, when you eat the vegetable, when you eat any nuts, your brain understands exactly what is happening. Okay, let's say if you're eating, okay, now it is the morning and it is the time for snack and it is the breakfast or this is what is coming. So when the consistency comes, everything works with it in harmony. So when the sun rise, the whole world is now waking up. It is in harmony. The birds and the whole, every species understand now it is now time to go work, time to go and search for food, whatever it is, you know, the nature, it happens. It goes down when sunset. So this is how the cycle is. If you screwed up your cycle, if you take night job, now your whole circadian rhythm is changed. There's more chances of getting heart attack. There are more chances of getting a blood pressure issue. Why? Because you are now breaking the cycle. The mother nature made it. The circadian rhythm is that's how our body works. Now, everything else is also same thing. So when you take any synthetic thing, including any kind of supplement or substitute or whatever, be careful.
Speaker #1
Are you getting enough? protein. I know that majority, well, according to the society, majority of the protein comes from animal products. And I know that in recent years, vegan protein or vegetarian protein kind of made a comeback. Do you take protein powders, either just, you know, vegetarian version of it and just to be able to make sure your body gets enough protein or that's not part of the consideration?
Speaker #0
Then good question. Let me ask you a question. How much protein we need?
Speaker #1
Well, isn't that they say 0.8 of every pound that you weigh?
Speaker #0
So there is so many formula. There's one, somebody says one is to one. So if you are 150 pound, you need 150 gram. Somebody says one is to half, you know, so half of it. So 75 gram. If you ask Dr. Google, he says, okay, 56 gram for men, 50 gram for women. There are so many things out there. And everybody is pushing their own agenda. If you see in the wild, the horse is eating grass. non-vegetarian and full of muscles can run for many miles carrying the another guy on the even body and still they can run from where they get protein so it is it is again lots of myth out there so just to answer the horse get protein because they have an in system which the grass get fermented. They have another system to ferment and that creates the protein. Now, every creature have different system. Our system is also different, not same as the horse. So if we start eating grass, we will not get protein. They get. So to answer, I'm not taking any substitute, any shake, any protein powder, nothing, nada, zip. That's not what I'm accepting. I do have enough protein. I can prove that since I'm running marathons. Without good tone muscles, you cannot. My son is 175 pounds. I lift him up on my shoulder during his wedding and I dance on the street for maybe four or five minutes. I'm only 145 pounds. So I carried more than my weight and dancing, not just walking even. On the rhythm, I was dancing. People were amazed. Why? How can you do that? So it proves that I have enough protein to lift up even that kind of weight. I see this protein. No protein is animal-based. Every protein is even plant-based. Even animal gets from the plant. So cow gets protein and you eat beef and that's protein. But from where they get? So I see this. This is lots of myth around in the market. And I... My strong word, this is the food mafia. They spread this thing. I'm sorry, but I'm not against it. I am a businessman. I know they have to do this to survive, to make their bank balance, you know, fat and to please their shareholder. So they have to do it. But it is up to us how gullible we are. If they say something and we believe, who did this study? Sponsored by who? It's the same people who are selling the stuff. They are sponsoring the study and whatever the outcome comes. And they do it in such a way that they do it in ethical way, but still it is totally immoral. It's what? You are fooling people saying this and people understand this. Okay. And they become the victim of this. I say this very openly and even in the book. There is a three mafia, food mafia, medical mafia, and drug mafia. They are taking advantage of the people in general, no matter where you are, not only in Western culture, even Eastern culture, everywhere in the world, in Africa, in India, in US, in Japan, everywhere there's an issue. So that issue, because we forgot what to accept. If you give your food, to even your pets, your dog or cat. They will come, they will smell, and if it is not for them, they will walk out. And we forgot about it.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about food quality. I know that, you know, in America, a lot of people complain about the amount of chemicals that we put in the food and the hormones. And from my understanding is that if you cook the food, you can eliminate some of its harm. And you earlier also did say... that you've been eating raw food for 16 years, you have not got sick just yet. Well, have not. I hope you never get sick. When you are choosing raw food... Do you have certain standards? Meaning if you go to a certain type of a grocery store and you know at least the quality of the rough that you're eating is up to your standard.
Speaker #0
Again, this is all myth. I travel. Forget about in my house. I travel. I don't carry my food. I travel and I survive everywhere. And even dangerous place, you know, the dangerous place like India. They said, what? Don't, don't, you're going to die. I said, forget it. Nothing happened. And I stayed there for one month and nothing happened. So when you're careful of what you are eating, what you're putting in your mouth, when you're aware, everything becomes so easy. You don't have to go into all this thing. Of course, you don't want to eat pesticide. That is true. So what do you do? You wash well, you wash with vinegar, you wash with warm water, whatever way it is, you keep it, dip it in the water for a while, you eat. I have not seen that anybody, any person died because of eating raw food. I have seen millions of people dying every day because of eating cooked food. And so it is a myth and this is, they have to do it. This is the fear they have to put on. to everybody, hey, if you eat raw food, you're going to die or you're going to have this or that. And to prove that, to prove that they are wrong, I did that experiment on myself, putting myself on the fire. OK, if that is the case, I should be in the hospital 10 years back, 15 years back even when I started. So, no, that is that is all all goofy thing. They won't. So only way, you know what? I can beat you. Let's say you and your brother or you and your friend, and I'm jealous of your friendship, your affection, you know. But all I have to do, I have to put in one of the mind some kind of doubt. Hey, you know what? Zain is stealing money from your account. What? I trust him so good. So now that doubt is going to make everything so bad between you. And that exactly these people are doing it. All they are doing is putting the point of doubt now, you know, and they cut it loose then. Okay, hey, whoever the PhD or whoever are writing this article or that article, all they get money for that to write those things. And whoever is sponsoring it, they say, okay, wow, we made another home run. You know, because this is now gone to the public. Public is so scared eating raw food. That exactly they want. But thinking naturally, you know, rational mind, naturally. If that is the case, I supposed to be dead by now. 16 years of eating raw food. Why I'm not falling sick? I'm also an ordinary person like you and everybody else. Only thing is I'm older now. You are younger. So this is a wrong thing. Of course, you have to be careful. Don't eat something with the pesticide. It's going to hurt you. But if you become aware, if you, when you clean your food, you take care of it. And I'm eating a lot of food with the skin. Even I'm not peeling the skin of the raw potato or sweet potato. So what I do, I wash it well. And I, there is nothing. I don't see there's a big problem. No.
Speaker #1
So I'm drinking a coconut water and this is obviously coconut juice. Well, coconut water. juice. What's your thoughts on juices and, you know, certain things being a lighty process, but they're still raw?
Speaker #0
I'm also taking coconut water.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
And I'm making kombucha out of it. I prefer I get real natural coconut water. When I'm visiting other country, you know, especially in India or Punta Cana or Bahamas, I drink a lot of coconut water. It's available. But it's loss hindrance, not available. So I take it. I want to see that there is no preservative. There is no other bad substance there. And if it is in natural form, take it. It's fine. I don't want to make my life miserable. I want to make my life easy. I'm not making any rules for anybody. I make rules for myself that, hey, this is I find here in my situation. I have to take that coconut water. I'm taking it. But so if you. At least you are aware. Now you are reading the labels. If there is any kind of bad, harmful elements are there, avoid it. Don't take it. Or even if it is there. And now you are going to your friend's house and they offer you this. Drink once. It's nothing, nothing going to, it's not going to kill you. It is now something is like, okay, avoid if there is nothing, then you have to take that. But otherwise, take something which is not going to hurt you, not going to harm you. But again, it is not about the moderation, but it is about the practicality. So when you go out, you don't want to be a pain guest anywhere you go. People love me. They are inviting, everybody is inviting me for lunch and dinner because it costs nothing to them. It's like, okay, all you have to give me one avocado and I'm done. Or all you have to give me one apple and banana and I'm done. It's that easy for me. And I'm not checking, you know, let's say if I come from where you got your avocado or from where you got your apple, from wherever you got, okay, wash it well. or even don't do anything, bring it in a hole. I will cut myself. I do that to keep it more hygienic. And I eat right away when I cut. I don't keep it for a minute. So even when I eat mango and I'm getting mango from my backyard, I eat with the skin. I'm not putting pasties, right? It's all organic. And the skin has a much more valuable nutrition. People are throwing out. I used to throw out. But now I understand the value of nutrition. I understand what we should eat. Even I ate avocado with the skin from my backyard. And I put it on the video out there. So, and I searched, eating skin is dangerous or you can eat. So I found out, no, the avocado skin has a lot of nutrition. And I ate. So it is. It depends. If you are getting avocado from market, you don't know whether what kind of pesticide or something. Generally, they don't put on avocado. But again, what I'm saying, you have to be very practical. You have to aware your situation. You are responsible for what you're putting in your mouth.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. I know that people can buy your book on Amazon. The book is called In Nature We Trust. How else can the listeners get in touch with you?
Speaker #0
So, of course, yeah, as you said, on Amazon, all three formats are available, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. They can get in touch with me going on my site. And website name is rawfoodist.com. Extra E there for education. I have a lot of blogs, a lot of videos. They can send me email if they have. let's say you you being a you know non-vegetarian person you want to start and you got stuck somewhere and something is bothering send me email call me you know what it is i'm i'm here to help you uh i'm not selling anything so no substitute no no supplement you you get whatever you want to get get it from market make sure you're getting right thing and this book We'll give you the guideline. As you said, you know, you just went maybe halfway and you understood a lot of stuff which was not in your vocabulary or not in even your understanding. Now you understand. After understanding, don't start. Analyze it. Challenge it. Challenge me that, hey, Akshay, what you are saying is maybe is not right. Okay. Let's let discuss. If it is not right, I'm here to... Because I am... I'm not a medical field person. I'm open for any kind of discussion. And I'm not claiming anything that it worked for me, it is going to work for you. But knowing the nature, you are also human like me. Doesn't matter where you live. We have same DNA. We have, you know, same, your blood is 7.4 on pH level. My blood is 7.4. Our body is regulating that. See how wonderful the system is. And we screwed it up royally so bad that now we don't know. So yeah, this book will give you the guideline. And yeah, my website is another way one can contact me.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay, for joining us today. I have learned a lot. And I think that when I think of raw food, I'm still worried. about my life quality, but we'll have you back onto the show and talk about how to. power, I guess power through is the wrong way to say, how to deal with day-to-day interactions, each meal, how to make it more practical for listeners to understand how they can start implement this practice into their daily life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's like, okay, same way like you are, we are doing podcast and you're getting answer from me. I was doing something similar with one lady from Florida Her name is Jackie and she is, after talking, you know, for me preliminary before even starting taking a podcast interview, she got a lot of information and she bought the book. She started, she quit the meat first. After three months, we had the podcast and she said, I ran marathon with the raw food. And it's not 100% okay, raw food. She quit meat, but still, you know, cooked food was the part of her portion. I didn't ask her to do. I'm not asking any. I'm not asking even my wife to be a raw foodist. No, this is a crazy thing. You have to convince yourself. So once you read the book, if you think this is OK, this this is the harmless and helpful information. Let me try. Nothing is wrong trying something. And once you try, if you get success, go for more. If you go, let's say, if you made some venture and you made a lot of money. Now you understood that venture. You want to go for in a bigger way so you can make more money. Same way. This is a venture. Don't know. Do it with the, you know, understanding that this is not just you are hitting in the dark. This is very informative. decision you take, your informed decision, once you take it, then you are confident. Now you are analyzing it. Make a journal, you know, make a note what happened. You started getting better. Even the background is celebrating.
Speaker #1
I've never seen that before.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you started getting a better sleep. You started getting better bowel movement. Your energy level is better. or whatever is getting negative way. So everybody have different, you know, problem. I cannot take legumes, you know, it giving me gastric trouble. So I am avoiding it. But somebody likes it, take that. It gives you a lot of protein. This is how you have to, anybody starting, become proactive, monitor it. This is like, if you start any business, you have to understand what is going on in the business. Who is doing what? Where is the money? And how you can make more money. Exactly same way. Where is the energy? How you can make more energy.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay. And we'll have you back on the show very soon.
Speaker #0
Please reach out anytime and I'm ready.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
Thank you.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much for being here with me today on The Zen Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, make sure you're subscribed and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway. That's how we grow this community and get these conversations in front of more people who need them. And if somebody came to mind while you're listening, please do make sure to send this episode to them. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All linked below. Until next time, stay sharp, stay intentional, and be good.

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Speaker #0
Doctor said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old, now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously, but seriously I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of clues, and that gave me the total new life. Today I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero... chronic disease. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
Welcome back everybody to the show. Today we have Akshay Shah, who is the author of the book In Nature We Trust, who himself has been eating raw food for the past 16 years and have seen significant health results as well as a elevation in lifestyle. Today we have him joining us to talk about the benefits of eating raw food, as well as sharing a little insight about how has this impact his life positively. So welcome to the show, Akshay.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Zen, for inviting me to on your show. Let me give you a little bit of my background. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm a businessman and I'm working in health and wellness. That's my passion. How I get into it is like 16 years back, I was noticing lack of energy in my body. I tried to start investigating it. Doctors said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old. Now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously. But seriously, I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of... clues. And that gave me the total new life. Today, I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero chronic disease, marathon completed, training for ninth. I'm going to run with my son and daughter-in-law next year. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. marathons. I was going to train for a half marathon and in the middle of it, I was just like, no, I'm too tired. I don't want to do this. I know, I know. I wanted to challenge myself, but I just don't think this year is the year. Maybe we'll try again next year. But that's actually what I said last year. So we'll try to make a change. But when we talk about vegetables, we all know it's good for you. You know, fruits, raw food. We know that in general, those are much better than processed food. However, when it comes down to making the daily choices, it is always harder to choose the healthier option over something that can give us instant gratification. And in your case, your lack of energy pushed you to make this lifestyle. What was the biggest challenge in making this lifestyle change?
Speaker #0
For me. I didn't have that big challenge, but I am not the normal person, you know. I did this experiment even in my teenage life. I did one whole month, nothing but salad when I was around 15, 17. A whole one month, nothing but mung beans. Even though it was cooked, but the whole month, nothing but mung beans is challenging. Tested myself back then, and even here in Los Angeles, I tried one month, nothing but salad. couple of times. So it gave me kind of courage and confidence. I can do something different also. So for me, it was easy since I had a background of testing myself. But most of the people have the issue because we all, including me, we all are hooked up. I can say in a little stronger word, addicted. to cook food. And that is the biggest challenge.
Speaker #1
How does your diet look like right now? Give us a eat with you for one day. What do you consume?
Speaker #0
Morning, I start my day with the green tea with a little bit of almond and walnut. Afternoon, I take a couple of fruits, maybe three fruits. depends upon how hungry I am. In between, if I want to snack, you can go for, I keep in my car, almond and walnut. Nuts are there, so if I'm getting hungry or if I go somewhere and they don't have any food, I carry my own food for a while so I can... survive for a few hours without any issue. Coming back home around seven o'clock, eight o'clock, I take dinner with vegetables. So vegetables can be anything, sweet, raw potato, broccoli, avocado, whatever you like it. So I take it this because it is more nutritional and it is much more fulfilling when you eat those solid. It is not just a salad. It is a real, a good vegetable portion. When you eat, you feel that, yeah, you ate something and it is good. So this is my normal day.
Speaker #1
Did you say raw potato?
Speaker #0
Of course.
Speaker #1
Fine, add the edible.
Speaker #0
Okay, so let me ask you then. Can you eat raw carrot?
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Why you cannot eat raw potato?
Speaker #1
I don't think I've ever seen anybody or you.
Speaker #0
That's the thing. We keep ourselves within the box because your mom, my mom, and their mom never taught us to eat raw food. And there is a good reason. So we are victim of culture, trend, tradition, whatever you name it. We learn from our parents, eating habit at least. So first. let's say, 10, 15 years, you build your habit. Whatever your family is eating, that's exactly what you are eating. Once you become adult, then you have more options and you go out and you eat whatever you want. But till then, our family is giving us a guideline what to eat, what not to eat. In my case, being born in Indian Hindu family, meat eating was taboo. So it was like you cannot eat meat by culture, by religion. So that was who I was before. But being a rebellious person, when I started going to college, I started eating meat. I want to break the rule, the family rule, don't eat. Okay, so eat and taste it. What is wrong? And I ate for those four years of my college, eating meat. chicken, fish, everything. Then I quit. Nobody told me to start. Nobody told me to quit. So I made that decision at that time to eat and then it didn't appeal to me that much. It was good for tasting, but then I didn't see any value in there. So I came back to vegetarian lifestyle and that was good because that's everybody in our family is eating. So I never had any issue. But at the age 50, fast forward, I started seeing that I don't have the same energy what I used to have at 20, 30, 40. So that is the thing, you know, it's like we have to, you know, we have to think outside the box. So your question is good. How you can eat potato? How you can eat sweet potato, raw, with the skin? And I see this way. Why not? My question is, if you, if anybody tells me that, hey, this is the issue, eating raw food, and I will listen to them and then I will challenge also. But so far, I have not got any person who can give me a satisfactory answer not to it.
Speaker #1
Does your family also eat the same style or they have their own?
Speaker #0
I am the only crazy person in my family.
Speaker #1
And you don't feel you're missing out on...
Speaker #0
No, actually, my wife, she is a professional cook. She used to do catering business. Her food is so tasty that anytime when we have party, I help her to cook. I don't eat, but I help her to cook. My nephew, my niece, my sister-in-law, my sister, brother, everybody who comes there, they pack it up. Nothing stay behind, you know. So they love her food. But that the thing that gave me one bigger challenge. People calls me idiot. They say, what? Your wife is such a, you know, she's a wonderful cook and you are not eating her food. Well, that's my decision. What I understand, and today everybody appreciate that, today. When I started, they were cursing me. They were saying, you are crazy, you are idiot, you are this and you are that. All those people who made the fun out of me 16 years back, they all are saying today. Akshay, we wish we can do the same thing what you are doing. The reason is all of them facing some kind of health issue. Some kind. Somebody have blood pressure. Somebody have diabetes. Somebody went to ER for heart attack. Knee replacement. Fatigue. They don't have much now. They cannot take stairs. Limited mobility. All those thing is coming. And they are all something same age. Even my nephew is younger than me. And he said, uncle, now he's going to be 50. And he says, I'm getting tired. So this is what I'm saying. It is like, it is a challenge. Because we, you all are addicted to certain food because of our lifestyle right from the childhood. And we never started thinking outside the box. That was my craziness. That, hey, what is wrong in eating raw food? And not only is the thinking, but when I started, my elder sister, six years older than me, she said, Akshay, you cannot eat raw food because you are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Our mom said that. Yeah, I said that you are right. I'm not saying you're wrong. But eating raw food, if I fall sick, I will quit. You don't have first-hand information. You just repeating the same information what our mom said. So I want to challenge that information and I want to go forward and try on my, I'm not asking anybody to do the same thing. I'm doing this experiment on myself. I'm putting myself on the line. I'm walking on the fire myself. So anything happens, okay, I'm ready to face the consequences. At the same time in time. My nephew, he was a valedictorian, seven years scholarship to go into the medical field. And he sent me so many medical articles. Uncle, you cannot eat raw food. You are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Okay, here the medical industry says that. And he sent me lots of articles, not just one or two. And still being a stubborn person, I said, okay, be it. I understand. I don't know who wrote this. And I was not. doing that research at that time. I read and I kept aside being again, stubborn person, want to try. And I tried. Same guy, same my nephew, he become oncologist today. And he says, uncle, keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker #1
Scientifically, what is the difference between raw food and cooked food? What is, how does the food get, how does the nature of the get changed while we're cooking.
Speaker #0
So when you cook any food, you are killing most of the enzyme, not all, but most. Any enzymes in the food is getting depleted over 40 degrees. Now, that is the science. Don't have to believe me. Check it out. And that's what science is. Now, we need enzymes. Our body produces enzymes. But if you are getting the enzymes from the food, that will help to digest the food, to make that food more valuable. If the enzyme comes with it. Now, to answer your question even in deeper sense, then why we eat any food? Forget about it. Cook, non-cook, raw, whatever. Why we eat food? We are eating food to produce energy in our body. Food is fuel for our body. Till age 50, I was not knowing that. I was pleasing my palate. I was pleasing my tongue. I was eating for pleasure. I was just eating because the food is in front of me. That was my mindset at that time. But when I understood the food is fuel and the whole, if you see on this planet, every species is eating only for fuel. You keep no matter how much food in front of any other creature. They will eat as much as they want. And they know their sensor is so good. They are not obese. Even in the wild, if you see the horse or the deer, the grass is so much there, but then they know where to stop. And they know we have to keep ourselves in the shape. So when the tiger comes or cheetah comes, they have to run to keep themselves in the shape. They know exactly what to eat. How much to eat? They don't have to have a PhD. They don't have to go to doctors. They don't even ask their parents. Right from the birth, all the other creature except human knows what to eat. And more important, they know what not to eat. You keep and they smell and they walk out if it is not their food. They have that hardwired intelligence. We lost it. And we lost it. I'm not blaming anybody. We as a human, as a species, we lost it for a reason. Our evolution. played the role. What was good at that time? Let's say just for cook food, they said we started using fire around 50,000 years back. Before that, we started using fire around half a million years back. And that's all the numbers somebody says. I'm not going to argue plus minus many thousand years. Who cares? But when we started using fire for cook food. We came ahead of chimpanzee. Between us and chimpanzee, 96-98% DNA is same. Because of the cooked food, our brain started getting bigger, better, smarter, faster because of the cooked food. I give that credit to the cooked food at that time. But one has to understand that at that time, any food was in scarcity. You don't have built house. You cannot conserve the food because anywhere you keep it, somebody else is going to eat. So you have to eat as much as possible. And you don't know how many hours you are going to stay without eating any other food because food was in scarcity. You get new food in 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours. Who knows? So at that time, cooked food was a boon. It was a blessing. that we came ahead during our evolution better than other species. Very close relative is chimpanzee. Now, that same cooked food which was blessing then, it is the curse now because we don't have food scarcity. Every house have refrigerator filled with the food. You can have the food 24-7, 365 on demand. whenever you want. Now you just keep eating, eating, eating for what? So our evolution allow us to eat as much as possible. But that was a smart choice at that time. I see that that's a dumb choice today. If we use our rational mind, why we are eating food and if we see that the food is a fuel. Now you want to see which fuel you want to put in your body. Because if you have the car and if it takes electric, you cannot give gasoline. And if it is gasoline, you cannot give diesel. You give the proper fuel to your car. Why not to this body?
Speaker #1
Earlier, you mentioned that cooked food also has its benefits. Wouldn't it be safer to say, in this case, moderation is key where we can do both? Or do you believe that cooked food at this moment no longer have any benefits and raw food is the way to go?
Speaker #0
So I come across this kind of question most of the time. And I say this, OK, this raw food is not a punishment. OK, if this is not something you have to feel that, OK, you are not getting something, whatever you are eating. keep eating, you know, and then add more raw food. Having said that, this moderation is the bad word. That is the one allows people to stay within the box. Now you have to think out, it's like this. If you know that cigarette smoking is dangerous, is bad for health. So somebody say, okay, smoke in moderation. Don't smoke a whole pack in a day. Smoke only three cigarette. Still, it is a poison. Poison is a poison. No matter, you know, some moderation, poison is good. Who said that? So according to me, cooked food is a dead food. It is not giving you enough energy. You are eating so much. So what I used to eat, I'm eating right now only 25% of what I used to eat before. And I'm producing 200% of energy. That's what I can say. The reason is I'm always energetic. I do physical work. I run marathons. I go camping. I go hiking, backpacking, regular work. And still mentally and physically, I'm fit. My colleagues, they get tired by six o'clock in the evening. I said, I can go another three, four hours, no problem. So those are all the stuff. Yesterday, I was fasting and I went somewhere and they said, how can you leave 24 hours without food? I said, well, that is your problem. You cannot, I can, because my battery is charged. But this is tweaking the body. It is not that easy. It comes with the practice. It comes with the continuation, consistency. Now your body, every cell is understanding. We are not just the hand and legs and stomach and head. No, this is one body. Every cell is communicating with another cell. What is happening? So if you see this holistically, then you understand, hey, no, you know what? If it is not good. Even if it is not, I mean, one cigarette or one cup of, I mean, one shot of liquor or any alcohol. If you think it is bad, quit. I know you, one cannot because we are addicted. So first thing is, you know, you have to accept this. Hey, this is the addiction. I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, as much as possible. Nobody's forcing you. You have to force yourself.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about your book a little bit. I read some of it. And one thing I found fascinating is that you mentioned the Western medicine system is treating the symptom rather than the fundamental cause. And you went so far to say that a lot of diseases and chronical inflammations have one cause. And so if we address the root cause, a lot of those systems will go away. Can you share a little bit more? your research as well as why do you think they're all under one root cause?
Speaker #0
Sure, sure. I will. But let me ask you one question. How you like the book so far, whatever you read?
Speaker #1
I would say I was having a drink with a friend on two days ago. And I said to this person, I was like, this book actually is the first book that helped me understand food's impact on our body. You know, I obviously we all know eat your vegetables. We all know the right thing to do. But I don't really think I ever understood the impact. I don't even think I ever thought about it. But this book was really easy to understand. I think that even with somebody who hated science and biology so much, I understood what you're talking about. And also almost like I can visually see when I consume something, how is it? how it transpires in my body. Like, how does it work? So I thought it was really, it was a pretty easy read and very easy to understand.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because it is not written by somebody in the medical field. I am a businessman. And I understand as a common man, you know, what is, how easily one can give the information to digest. Coming back to your question, I see this, this is any disease. Let's say somebody have diabetes. Whatever the disease is, really this is disease. I don't see it as a disease. It is a symptom. The root cause of that situation is something else. And let me give you an analogy. Let's say whatever city you are living in, that city has a problem, a lot of problem. The roads are not good. There is a lot of holes on the road. There is not the... cleanliness, a lot of garbage. There is a lot of crime. Traffic is bad. Parking situation is bad. There is no playground. There is no hospitals. All, all, all, everything is bad. Now living in that city is not very, is not the good situation. But think now, flip the coin and see if the city have lots of money. Now the roads are good. The gardens are good. The hospital is good. School is good. Traffic situation is not bad. Parking is good. Everything is wonderful. No crime. Enough police. What happened? So when you have more currency, the revenue, you can cope with the situation. That is the bottom line. As a businessman, I also see that when you have a lot of money, you can cope with any kind of situation. That same analogy applies to our body. When your body produces enough energy. Now you can deal with any situation. So diabetes is not the disease, it's the symptoms. Because of the lack of energy, now your system is so screwed up, it is either not absorbing the extra sugar in the blood, there is no hormone, the insulin is a hormone, the production of the hormone is less, whatever the situation is. but individually have different situation. I'm not just going to generalize it. But if you have generalizing in this sense, that if you have a lot of energy as a currency, which is in our body known as ATP, adenosine triphosphate, that is the universal currency, regardless whether you are in USA, in Japan, in Australia, in India, China, wherever you are. We humans have only one currency and that currency is ATP. Once your production, when the food is your intake of food, the fuel, you are taking in a good shape. Now your body is producing lots of energy. So it is another problem of lack of energy is our brain is consuming around 20 to 25 percent of the energy. That's what science says. OK. And I believe so. Percentage can be more or less, whatever. I don't know. But whatever the highest percentage of the energy goes to your brain. Then second preference is your heart. So your heart needs to pump and to breathe. So that is second preference. And then rest goes to all other organs and skin and everything everywhere. Okay. So if you have lack of energy, now what happens? Your body is going to start rationing it. It's now, okay, you brain, hey, calm down. You are not going to get 100% what you are demanding. You are going to get only 80%. There's a lack of energy. Heart, calm down, only 80% or whatever. I'm just giving you analogy. Now what is happening? Now rationing of energy is creating all kind of malfunction. And that is creating now, there is no clear communications. between the organs and the brain and the cells and everything is now in chaos. That chaos creates the disease. So once you have enough energy, our body is designed to heal itself. So if there is a problem, if I run 10 miles and my body needs to recoup, if I have enough energy, my knee is hurting. but is going to recoup to run after another three days. Because of the energy, our cells are dying every day. Millions of cells are dying. Now that cells has to replenish. But if you don't have enough energy, who is going to do that? See, this factory, this body as a factory, every cell need nourishment and reproduction also. Same time. So if you don't have that, I mean, everything else is superficial. You take medicine after medicine after medicine. It's hurting your other organs. And it is a makeshift kind of solution, which I believe is not the real solution.
Speaker #1
Where does supplements come into this conversation? I don't even eat cooked vegetables. So I think that is going to be such a hard jump for me to go from mainly carb and... protein-based meals to a raw food diet. Maybe the next step will be like try to eat a little bit of cooked vegetables. But I take a bunch of supplements. I take this supplement that, you know, I can feel a energy surge after taking it and there's no caffeine in the supplement. Do supplements work or I have to change?
Speaker #0
Supplement, if you're taking without doctor's recommendation. it is dangerous. I was not taking any supplement and I was, I'm taking back my word, sorry. I was taking, let's say supplement, joint supplement when I'm running marathons. But that time, you know, as a 60, 65, 67 year old person, younger person, not 60, need to recoup. So I don't want to injure myself. So I started taking, let's say supplement, but then I'm stopping it when I don't need it. When I'm not running, let's say every other year I used to run. Now I'm running every year now. So that's a different story. But so take the supplement if your doctor says you should take it. Don't take it just because you saw some advertisement or you read somewhere and because you went to Costco and it is very cheap. Just take it. No, don't do that. I am taking now supplement B12 and D3. Just started two couple of months back. And that's not, I just asked my doctor before I finished, I ran my last marathon in March. I went to doctor in February. Check me out. Every year I do that. Before running, I go to doctor. Just in case, you know. They have to see my numbers and everything. So what happened? I said, doctor. And my another doctor friend who wrote this, the foreword for this book, he said, Akshay, you should check your D3 and B12. I said, okay. I went and I asked the doctor this time run test for D3 and B12 also. And he ran and he said, okay, you know what? You're not bad, but it will help if you take the booster. And he recommended and I took it. That kind of proactive, what you need, if you take it, it is going to work for you long run. Now, what you are taking and it giving you boost of energy, the spike, you are going to face big problem later on. You are very young. So what happens? Our body, our brain is designed something which happens every day. So let's say if somebody is taking. sugar substitute. Sugar substitute is very dangerous, very bad. Why? So when you take any sugary stuff, your brain knows now the sugar came in. Now in our factory, let's that convert into energy, but you're faking it. Now, instead of giving real sugar, you are doing a sugar substitute. Now your brain is sending to collect that sugar and convert into energy. They fail. So you failed one time, second time, third time. Now your brain says, you know what? This is happening many times. I'm not going to go ever now. If there is a sugar, there is no sugar. I'm going to not listen any signal of sugar once, you know, anybody, I mean, the person is taking sugar substitute. So now you are going against the design of your body. What is happening now? Because you fooled yourself so many times, now your brain gave up. And that happens to everything else also. So whether it is a caffeine, whether it is the energy drink or energy supplement or anything, because it's artificial, that artificial thing is going to work for a while. But then what happens? You are diminishing the whole system. You are right now, you are polluting the system. Whole system is going to get screwed up. because now a lot of information, it's like this. Right now you understand what I'm talking. But if I start talking in my Gujarati language, Indian language, you are not going to understand what is happening. You are, what is, so same thing, exactly thing happens because our whole system works on information. You are not only eating the fruit. You are eating with the fruit information you are eating. And that information, yeah, it is, I know, it's like, what, why, how, yeah. When you eat the fruit, when you eat the vegetable, when you eat any nuts, your brain understands exactly what is happening. Okay, let's say if you're eating, okay, now it is the morning and it is the time for snack and it is the breakfast or this is what is coming. So when the consistency comes, everything works with it in harmony. So when the sun rise, the whole world is now waking up. It is in harmony. The birds and the whole, every species understand now it is now time to go work, time to go and search for food, whatever it is, you know, the nature, it happens. It goes down when sunset. So this is how the cycle is. If you screwed up your cycle, if you take night job, now your whole circadian rhythm is changed. There's more chances of getting heart attack. There are more chances of getting a blood pressure issue. Why? Because you are now breaking the cycle. The mother nature made it. The circadian rhythm is that's how our body works. Now, everything else is also same thing. So when you take any synthetic thing, including any kind of supplement or substitute or whatever, be careful.
Speaker #1
Are you getting enough? protein. I know that majority, well, according to the society, majority of the protein comes from animal products. And I know that in recent years, vegan protein or vegetarian protein kind of made a comeback. Do you take protein powders, either just, you know, vegetarian version of it and just to be able to make sure your body gets enough protein or that's not part of the consideration?
Speaker #0
Then good question. Let me ask you a question. How much protein we need?
Speaker #1
Well, isn't that they say 0.8 of every pound that you weigh?
Speaker #0
So there is so many formula. There's one, somebody says one is to one. So if you are 150 pound, you need 150 gram. Somebody says one is to half, you know, so half of it. So 75 gram. If you ask Dr. Google, he says, okay, 56 gram for men, 50 gram for women. There are so many things out there. And everybody is pushing their own agenda. If you see in the wild, the horse is eating grass. non-vegetarian and full of muscles can run for many miles carrying the another guy on the even body and still they can run from where they get protein so it is it is again lots of myth out there so just to answer the horse get protein because they have an in system which the grass get fermented. They have another system to ferment and that creates the protein. Now, every creature have different system. Our system is also different, not same as the horse. So if we start eating grass, we will not get protein. They get. So to answer, I'm not taking any substitute, any shake, any protein powder, nothing, nada, zip. That's not what I'm accepting. I do have enough protein. I can prove that since I'm running marathons. Without good tone muscles, you cannot. My son is 175 pounds. I lift him up on my shoulder during his wedding and I dance on the street for maybe four or five minutes. I'm only 145 pounds. So I carried more than my weight and dancing, not just walking even. On the rhythm, I was dancing. People were amazed. Why? How can you do that? So it proves that I have enough protein to lift up even that kind of weight. I see this protein. No protein is animal-based. Every protein is even plant-based. Even animal gets from the plant. So cow gets protein and you eat beef and that's protein. But from where they get? So I see this. This is lots of myth around in the market. And I... My strong word, this is the food mafia. They spread this thing. I'm sorry, but I'm not against it. I am a businessman. I know they have to do this to survive, to make their bank balance, you know, fat and to please their shareholder. So they have to do it. But it is up to us how gullible we are. If they say something and we believe, who did this study? Sponsored by who? It's the same people who are selling the stuff. They are sponsoring the study and whatever the outcome comes. And they do it in such a way that they do it in ethical way, but still it is totally immoral. It's what? You are fooling people saying this and people understand this. Okay. And they become the victim of this. I say this very openly and even in the book. There is a three mafia, food mafia, medical mafia, and drug mafia. They are taking advantage of the people in general, no matter where you are, not only in Western culture, even Eastern culture, everywhere in the world, in Africa, in India, in US, in Japan, everywhere there's an issue. So that issue, because we forgot what to accept. If you give your food, to even your pets, your dog or cat. They will come, they will smell, and if it is not for them, they will walk out. And we forgot about it.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about food quality. I know that, you know, in America, a lot of people complain about the amount of chemicals that we put in the food and the hormones. And from my understanding is that if you cook the food, you can eliminate some of its harm. And you earlier also did say... that you've been eating raw food for 16 years, you have not got sick just yet. Well, have not. I hope you never get sick. When you are choosing raw food... Do you have certain standards? Meaning if you go to a certain type of a grocery store and you know at least the quality of the rough that you're eating is up to your standard.
Speaker #0
Again, this is all myth. I travel. Forget about in my house. I travel. I don't carry my food. I travel and I survive everywhere. And even dangerous place, you know, the dangerous place like India. They said, what? Don't, don't, you're going to die. I said, forget it. Nothing happened. And I stayed there for one month and nothing happened. So when you're careful of what you are eating, what you're putting in your mouth, when you're aware, everything becomes so easy. You don't have to go into all this thing. Of course, you don't want to eat pesticide. That is true. So what do you do? You wash well, you wash with vinegar, you wash with warm water, whatever way it is, you keep it, dip it in the water for a while, you eat. I have not seen that anybody, any person died because of eating raw food. I have seen millions of people dying every day because of eating cooked food. And so it is a myth and this is, they have to do it. This is the fear they have to put on. to everybody, hey, if you eat raw food, you're going to die or you're going to have this or that. And to prove that, to prove that they are wrong, I did that experiment on myself, putting myself on the fire. OK, if that is the case, I should be in the hospital 10 years back, 15 years back even when I started. So, no, that is that is all all goofy thing. They won't. So only way, you know what? I can beat you. Let's say you and your brother or you and your friend, and I'm jealous of your friendship, your affection, you know. But all I have to do, I have to put in one of the mind some kind of doubt. Hey, you know what? Zain is stealing money from your account. What? I trust him so good. So now that doubt is going to make everything so bad between you. And that exactly these people are doing it. All they are doing is putting the point of doubt now, you know, and they cut it loose then. Okay, hey, whoever the PhD or whoever are writing this article or that article, all they get money for that to write those things. And whoever is sponsoring it, they say, okay, wow, we made another home run. You know, because this is now gone to the public. Public is so scared eating raw food. That exactly they want. But thinking naturally, you know, rational mind, naturally. If that is the case, I supposed to be dead by now. 16 years of eating raw food. Why I'm not falling sick? I'm also an ordinary person like you and everybody else. Only thing is I'm older now. You are younger. So this is a wrong thing. Of course, you have to be careful. Don't eat something with the pesticide. It's going to hurt you. But if you become aware, if you, when you clean your food, you take care of it. And I'm eating a lot of food with the skin. Even I'm not peeling the skin of the raw potato or sweet potato. So what I do, I wash it well. And I, there is nothing. I don't see there's a big problem. No.
Speaker #1
So I'm drinking a coconut water and this is obviously coconut juice. Well, coconut water. juice. What's your thoughts on juices and, you know, certain things being a lighty process, but they're still raw?
Speaker #0
I'm also taking coconut water.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
And I'm making kombucha out of it. I prefer I get real natural coconut water. When I'm visiting other country, you know, especially in India or Punta Cana or Bahamas, I drink a lot of coconut water. It's available. But it's loss hindrance, not available. So I take it. I want to see that there is no preservative. There is no other bad substance there. And if it is in natural form, take it. It's fine. I don't want to make my life miserable. I want to make my life easy. I'm not making any rules for anybody. I make rules for myself that, hey, this is I find here in my situation. I have to take that coconut water. I'm taking it. But so if you. At least you are aware. Now you are reading the labels. If there is any kind of bad, harmful elements are there, avoid it. Don't take it. Or even if it is there. And now you are going to your friend's house and they offer you this. Drink once. It's nothing, nothing going to, it's not going to kill you. It is now something is like, okay, avoid if there is nothing, then you have to take that. But otherwise, take something which is not going to hurt you, not going to harm you. But again, it is not about the moderation, but it is about the practicality. So when you go out, you don't want to be a pain guest anywhere you go. People love me. They are inviting, everybody is inviting me for lunch and dinner because it costs nothing to them. It's like, okay, all you have to give me one avocado and I'm done. Or all you have to give me one apple and banana and I'm done. It's that easy for me. And I'm not checking, you know, let's say if I come from where you got your avocado or from where you got your apple, from wherever you got, okay, wash it well. or even don't do anything, bring it in a hole. I will cut myself. I do that to keep it more hygienic. And I eat right away when I cut. I don't keep it for a minute. So even when I eat mango and I'm getting mango from my backyard, I eat with the skin. I'm not putting pasties, right? It's all organic. And the skin has a much more valuable nutrition. People are throwing out. I used to throw out. But now I understand the value of nutrition. I understand what we should eat. Even I ate avocado with the skin from my backyard. And I put it on the video out there. So, and I searched, eating skin is dangerous or you can eat. So I found out, no, the avocado skin has a lot of nutrition. And I ate. So it is. It depends. If you are getting avocado from market, you don't know whether what kind of pesticide or something. Generally, they don't put on avocado. But again, what I'm saying, you have to be very practical. You have to aware your situation. You are responsible for what you're putting in your mouth.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. I know that people can buy your book on Amazon. The book is called In Nature We Trust. How else can the listeners get in touch with you?
Speaker #0
So, of course, yeah, as you said, on Amazon, all three formats are available, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. They can get in touch with me going on my site. And website name is rawfoodist.com. Extra E there for education. I have a lot of blogs, a lot of videos. They can send me email if they have. let's say you you being a you know non-vegetarian person you want to start and you got stuck somewhere and something is bothering send me email call me you know what it is i'm i'm here to help you uh i'm not selling anything so no substitute no no supplement you you get whatever you want to get get it from market make sure you're getting right thing and this book We'll give you the guideline. As you said, you know, you just went maybe halfway and you understood a lot of stuff which was not in your vocabulary or not in even your understanding. Now you understand. After understanding, don't start. Analyze it. Challenge it. Challenge me that, hey, Akshay, what you are saying is maybe is not right. Okay. Let's let discuss. If it is not right, I'm here to... Because I am... I'm not a medical field person. I'm open for any kind of discussion. And I'm not claiming anything that it worked for me, it is going to work for you. But knowing the nature, you are also human like me. Doesn't matter where you live. We have same DNA. We have, you know, same, your blood is 7.4 on pH level. My blood is 7.4. Our body is regulating that. See how wonderful the system is. And we screwed it up royally so bad that now we don't know. So yeah, this book will give you the guideline. And yeah, my website is another way one can contact me.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay, for joining us today. I have learned a lot. And I think that when I think of raw food, I'm still worried. about my life quality, but we'll have you back onto the show and talk about how to. power, I guess power through is the wrong way to say, how to deal with day-to-day interactions, each meal, how to make it more practical for listeners to understand how they can start implement this practice into their daily life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's like, okay, same way like you are, we are doing podcast and you're getting answer from me. I was doing something similar with one lady from Florida Her name is Jackie and she is, after talking, you know, for me preliminary before even starting taking a podcast interview, she got a lot of information and she bought the book. She started, she quit the meat first. After three months, we had the podcast and she said, I ran marathon with the raw food. And it's not 100% okay, raw food. She quit meat, but still, you know, cooked food was the part of her portion. I didn't ask her to do. I'm not asking any. I'm not asking even my wife to be a raw foodist. No, this is a crazy thing. You have to convince yourself. So once you read the book, if you think this is OK, this this is the harmless and helpful information. Let me try. Nothing is wrong trying something. And once you try, if you get success, go for more. If you go, let's say, if you made some venture and you made a lot of money. Now you understood that venture. You want to go for in a bigger way so you can make more money. Same way. This is a venture. Don't know. Do it with the, you know, understanding that this is not just you are hitting in the dark. This is very informative. decision you take, your informed decision, once you take it, then you are confident. Now you are analyzing it. Make a journal, you know, make a note what happened. You started getting better. Even the background is celebrating.
Speaker #1
I've never seen that before.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you started getting a better sleep. You started getting better bowel movement. Your energy level is better. or whatever is getting negative way. So everybody have different, you know, problem. I cannot take legumes, you know, it giving me gastric trouble. So I am avoiding it. But somebody likes it, take that. It gives you a lot of protein. This is how you have to, anybody starting, become proactive, monitor it. This is like, if you start any business, you have to understand what is going on in the business. Who is doing what? Where is the money? And how you can make more money. Exactly same way. Where is the energy? How you can make more energy.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay. And we'll have you back on the show very soon.
Speaker #0
Please reach out anytime and I'm ready.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
Thank you.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much for being here with me today on The Zen Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, make sure you're subscribed and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway. That's how we grow this community and get these conversations in front of more people who need them. And if somebody came to mind while you're listening, please do make sure to send this episode to them. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All linked below. Until next time, stay sharp, stay intentional, and be good.

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About The Zhen Podcast

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Doctor said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old, now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously, but seriously I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of clues, and that gave me the total new life. Today I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero... chronic disease. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
Welcome back everybody to the show. Today we have Akshay Shah, who is the author of the book In Nature We Trust, who himself has been eating raw food for the past 16 years and have seen significant health results as well as a elevation in lifestyle. Today we have him joining us to talk about the benefits of eating raw food, as well as sharing a little insight about how has this impact his life positively. So welcome to the show, Akshay.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Zen, for inviting me to on your show. Let me give you a little bit of my background. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm a businessman and I'm working in health and wellness. That's my passion. How I get into it is like 16 years back, I was noticing lack of energy in my body. I tried to start investigating it. Doctors said, hell, this is the normal process of aging. You are getting old. Now you're 50. And I didn't take it that seriously. But seriously, I took it to investigate. And then I surrendered to Mother Nature. Mother Nature gave me lots of... clues. And that gave me the total new life. Today, I'm 67. I'm enjoying my life. Zero medication, zero chronic disease, marathon completed, training for ninth. I'm going to run with my son and daughter-in-law next year. So yes, I'm enjoying my life to the fullest.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. marathons. I was going to train for a half marathon and in the middle of it, I was just like, no, I'm too tired. I don't want to do this. I know, I know. I wanted to challenge myself, but I just don't think this year is the year. Maybe we'll try again next year. But that's actually what I said last year. So we'll try to make a change. But when we talk about vegetables, we all know it's good for you. You know, fruits, raw food. We know that in general, those are much better than processed food. However, when it comes down to making the daily choices, it is always harder to choose the healthier option over something that can give us instant gratification. And in your case, your lack of energy pushed you to make this lifestyle. What was the biggest challenge in making this lifestyle change?
Speaker #0
For me. I didn't have that big challenge, but I am not the normal person, you know. I did this experiment even in my teenage life. I did one whole month, nothing but salad when I was around 15, 17. A whole one month, nothing but mung beans. Even though it was cooked, but the whole month, nothing but mung beans is challenging. Tested myself back then, and even here in Los Angeles, I tried one month, nothing but salad. couple of times. So it gave me kind of courage and confidence. I can do something different also. So for me, it was easy since I had a background of testing myself. But most of the people have the issue because we all, including me, we all are hooked up. I can say in a little stronger word, addicted. to cook food. And that is the biggest challenge.
Speaker #1
How does your diet look like right now? Give us a eat with you for one day. What do you consume?
Speaker #0
Morning, I start my day with the green tea with a little bit of almond and walnut. Afternoon, I take a couple of fruits, maybe three fruits. depends upon how hungry I am. In between, if I want to snack, you can go for, I keep in my car, almond and walnut. Nuts are there, so if I'm getting hungry or if I go somewhere and they don't have any food, I carry my own food for a while so I can... survive for a few hours without any issue. Coming back home around seven o'clock, eight o'clock, I take dinner with vegetables. So vegetables can be anything, sweet, raw potato, broccoli, avocado, whatever you like it. So I take it this because it is more nutritional and it is much more fulfilling when you eat those solid. It is not just a salad. It is a real, a good vegetable portion. When you eat, you feel that, yeah, you ate something and it is good. So this is my normal day.
Speaker #1
Did you say raw potato?
Speaker #0
Of course.
Speaker #1
Fine, add the edible.
Speaker #0
Okay, so let me ask you then. Can you eat raw carrot?
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Why you cannot eat raw potato?
Speaker #1
I don't think I've ever seen anybody or you.
Speaker #0
That's the thing. We keep ourselves within the box because your mom, my mom, and their mom never taught us to eat raw food. And there is a good reason. So we are victim of culture, trend, tradition, whatever you name it. We learn from our parents, eating habit at least. So first. let's say, 10, 15 years, you build your habit. Whatever your family is eating, that's exactly what you are eating. Once you become adult, then you have more options and you go out and you eat whatever you want. But till then, our family is giving us a guideline what to eat, what not to eat. In my case, being born in Indian Hindu family, meat eating was taboo. So it was like you cannot eat meat by culture, by religion. So that was who I was before. But being a rebellious person, when I started going to college, I started eating meat. I want to break the rule, the family rule, don't eat. Okay, so eat and taste it. What is wrong? And I ate for those four years of my college, eating meat. chicken, fish, everything. Then I quit. Nobody told me to start. Nobody told me to quit. So I made that decision at that time to eat and then it didn't appeal to me that much. It was good for tasting, but then I didn't see any value in there. So I came back to vegetarian lifestyle and that was good because that's everybody in our family is eating. So I never had any issue. But at the age 50, fast forward, I started seeing that I don't have the same energy what I used to have at 20, 30, 40. So that is the thing, you know, it's like we have to, you know, we have to think outside the box. So your question is good. How you can eat potato? How you can eat sweet potato, raw, with the skin? And I see this way. Why not? My question is, if you, if anybody tells me that, hey, this is the issue, eating raw food, and I will listen to them and then I will challenge also. But so far, I have not got any person who can give me a satisfactory answer not to it.
Speaker #1
Does your family also eat the same style or they have their own?
Speaker #0
I am the only crazy person in my family.
Speaker #1
And you don't feel you're missing out on...
Speaker #0
No, actually, my wife, she is a professional cook. She used to do catering business. Her food is so tasty that anytime when we have party, I help her to cook. I don't eat, but I help her to cook. My nephew, my niece, my sister-in-law, my sister, brother, everybody who comes there, they pack it up. Nothing stay behind, you know. So they love her food. But that the thing that gave me one bigger challenge. People calls me idiot. They say, what? Your wife is such a, you know, she's a wonderful cook and you are not eating her food. Well, that's my decision. What I understand, and today everybody appreciate that, today. When I started, they were cursing me. They were saying, you are crazy, you are idiot, you are this and you are that. All those people who made the fun out of me 16 years back, they all are saying today. Akshay, we wish we can do the same thing what you are doing. The reason is all of them facing some kind of health issue. Some kind. Somebody have blood pressure. Somebody have diabetes. Somebody went to ER for heart attack. Knee replacement. Fatigue. They don't have much now. They cannot take stairs. Limited mobility. All those thing is coming. And they are all something same age. Even my nephew is younger than me. And he said, uncle, now he's going to be 50. And he says, I'm getting tired. So this is what I'm saying. It is like, it is a challenge. Because we, you all are addicted to certain food because of our lifestyle right from the childhood. And we never started thinking outside the box. That was my craziness. That, hey, what is wrong in eating raw food? And not only is the thinking, but when I started, my elder sister, six years older than me, she said, Akshay, you cannot eat raw food because you are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Our mom said that. Yeah, I said that you are right. I'm not saying you're wrong. But eating raw food, if I fall sick, I will quit. You don't have first-hand information. You just repeating the same information what our mom said. So I want to challenge that information and I want to go forward and try on my, I'm not asking anybody to do the same thing. I'm doing this experiment on myself. I'm putting myself on the line. I'm walking on the fire myself. So anything happens, okay, I'm ready to face the consequences. At the same time in time. My nephew, he was a valedictorian, seven years scholarship to go into the medical field. And he sent me so many medical articles. Uncle, you cannot eat raw food. You are going to fall sick. I said, who said that? Okay, here the medical industry says that. And he sent me lots of articles, not just one or two. And still being a stubborn person, I said, okay, be it. I understand. I don't know who wrote this. And I was not. doing that research at that time. I read and I kept aside being again, stubborn person, want to try. And I tried. Same guy, same my nephew, he become oncologist today. And he says, uncle, keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker #1
Scientifically, what is the difference between raw food and cooked food? What is, how does the food get, how does the nature of the get changed while we're cooking.
Speaker #0
So when you cook any food, you are killing most of the enzyme, not all, but most. Any enzymes in the food is getting depleted over 40 degrees. Now, that is the science. Don't have to believe me. Check it out. And that's what science is. Now, we need enzymes. Our body produces enzymes. But if you are getting the enzymes from the food, that will help to digest the food, to make that food more valuable. If the enzyme comes with it. Now, to answer your question even in deeper sense, then why we eat any food? Forget about it. Cook, non-cook, raw, whatever. Why we eat food? We are eating food to produce energy in our body. Food is fuel for our body. Till age 50, I was not knowing that. I was pleasing my palate. I was pleasing my tongue. I was eating for pleasure. I was just eating because the food is in front of me. That was my mindset at that time. But when I understood the food is fuel and the whole, if you see on this planet, every species is eating only for fuel. You keep no matter how much food in front of any other creature. They will eat as much as they want. And they know their sensor is so good. They are not obese. Even in the wild, if you see the horse or the deer, the grass is so much there, but then they know where to stop. And they know we have to keep ourselves in the shape. So when the tiger comes or cheetah comes, they have to run to keep themselves in the shape. They know exactly what to eat. How much to eat? They don't have to have a PhD. They don't have to go to doctors. They don't even ask their parents. Right from the birth, all the other creature except human knows what to eat. And more important, they know what not to eat. You keep and they smell and they walk out if it is not their food. They have that hardwired intelligence. We lost it. And we lost it. I'm not blaming anybody. We as a human, as a species, we lost it for a reason. Our evolution. played the role. What was good at that time? Let's say just for cook food, they said we started using fire around 50,000 years back. Before that, we started using fire around half a million years back. And that's all the numbers somebody says. I'm not going to argue plus minus many thousand years. Who cares? But when we started using fire for cook food. We came ahead of chimpanzee. Between us and chimpanzee, 96-98% DNA is same. Because of the cooked food, our brain started getting bigger, better, smarter, faster because of the cooked food. I give that credit to the cooked food at that time. But one has to understand that at that time, any food was in scarcity. You don't have built house. You cannot conserve the food because anywhere you keep it, somebody else is going to eat. So you have to eat as much as possible. And you don't know how many hours you are going to stay without eating any other food because food was in scarcity. You get new food in 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours. Who knows? So at that time, cooked food was a boon. It was a blessing. that we came ahead during our evolution better than other species. Very close relative is chimpanzee. Now, that same cooked food which was blessing then, it is the curse now because we don't have food scarcity. Every house have refrigerator filled with the food. You can have the food 24-7, 365 on demand. whenever you want. Now you just keep eating, eating, eating for what? So our evolution allow us to eat as much as possible. But that was a smart choice at that time. I see that that's a dumb choice today. If we use our rational mind, why we are eating food and if we see that the food is a fuel. Now you want to see which fuel you want to put in your body. Because if you have the car and if it takes electric, you cannot give gasoline. And if it is gasoline, you cannot give diesel. You give the proper fuel to your car. Why not to this body?
Speaker #1
Earlier, you mentioned that cooked food also has its benefits. Wouldn't it be safer to say, in this case, moderation is key where we can do both? Or do you believe that cooked food at this moment no longer have any benefits and raw food is the way to go?
Speaker #0
So I come across this kind of question most of the time. And I say this, OK, this raw food is not a punishment. OK, if this is not something you have to feel that, OK, you are not getting something, whatever you are eating. keep eating, you know, and then add more raw food. Having said that, this moderation is the bad word. That is the one allows people to stay within the box. Now you have to think out, it's like this. If you know that cigarette smoking is dangerous, is bad for health. So somebody say, okay, smoke in moderation. Don't smoke a whole pack in a day. Smoke only three cigarette. Still, it is a poison. Poison is a poison. No matter, you know, some moderation, poison is good. Who said that? So according to me, cooked food is a dead food. It is not giving you enough energy. You are eating so much. So what I used to eat, I'm eating right now only 25% of what I used to eat before. And I'm producing 200% of energy. That's what I can say. The reason is I'm always energetic. I do physical work. I run marathons. I go camping. I go hiking, backpacking, regular work. And still mentally and physically, I'm fit. My colleagues, they get tired by six o'clock in the evening. I said, I can go another three, four hours, no problem. So those are all the stuff. Yesterday, I was fasting and I went somewhere and they said, how can you leave 24 hours without food? I said, well, that is your problem. You cannot, I can, because my battery is charged. But this is tweaking the body. It is not that easy. It comes with the practice. It comes with the continuation, consistency. Now your body, every cell is understanding. We are not just the hand and legs and stomach and head. No, this is one body. Every cell is communicating with another cell. What is happening? So if you see this holistically, then you understand, hey, no, you know what? If it is not good. Even if it is not, I mean, one cigarette or one cup of, I mean, one shot of liquor or any alcohol. If you think it is bad, quit. I know you, one cannot because we are addicted. So first thing is, you know, you have to accept this. Hey, this is the addiction. I want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, as much as possible. Nobody's forcing you. You have to force yourself.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about your book a little bit. I read some of it. And one thing I found fascinating is that you mentioned the Western medicine system is treating the symptom rather than the fundamental cause. And you went so far to say that a lot of diseases and chronical inflammations have one cause. And so if we address the root cause, a lot of those systems will go away. Can you share a little bit more? your research as well as why do you think they're all under one root cause?
Speaker #0
Sure, sure. I will. But let me ask you one question. How you like the book so far, whatever you read?
Speaker #1
I would say I was having a drink with a friend on two days ago. And I said to this person, I was like, this book actually is the first book that helped me understand food's impact on our body. You know, I obviously we all know eat your vegetables. We all know the right thing to do. But I don't really think I ever understood the impact. I don't even think I ever thought about it. But this book was really easy to understand. I think that even with somebody who hated science and biology so much, I understood what you're talking about. And also almost like I can visually see when I consume something, how is it? how it transpires in my body. Like, how does it work? So I thought it was really, it was a pretty easy read and very easy to understand.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because it is not written by somebody in the medical field. I am a businessman. And I understand as a common man, you know, what is, how easily one can give the information to digest. Coming back to your question, I see this, this is any disease. Let's say somebody have diabetes. Whatever the disease is, really this is disease. I don't see it as a disease. It is a symptom. The root cause of that situation is something else. And let me give you an analogy. Let's say whatever city you are living in, that city has a problem, a lot of problem. The roads are not good. There is a lot of holes on the road. There is not the... cleanliness, a lot of garbage. There is a lot of crime. Traffic is bad. Parking situation is bad. There is no playground. There is no hospitals. All, all, all, everything is bad. Now living in that city is not very, is not the good situation. But think now, flip the coin and see if the city have lots of money. Now the roads are good. The gardens are good. The hospital is good. School is good. Traffic situation is not bad. Parking is good. Everything is wonderful. No crime. Enough police. What happened? So when you have more currency, the revenue, you can cope with the situation. That is the bottom line. As a businessman, I also see that when you have a lot of money, you can cope with any kind of situation. That same analogy applies to our body. When your body produces enough energy. Now you can deal with any situation. So diabetes is not the disease, it's the symptoms. Because of the lack of energy, now your system is so screwed up, it is either not absorbing the extra sugar in the blood, there is no hormone, the insulin is a hormone, the production of the hormone is less, whatever the situation is. but individually have different situation. I'm not just going to generalize it. But if you have generalizing in this sense, that if you have a lot of energy as a currency, which is in our body known as ATP, adenosine triphosphate, that is the universal currency, regardless whether you are in USA, in Japan, in Australia, in India, China, wherever you are. We humans have only one currency and that currency is ATP. Once your production, when the food is your intake of food, the fuel, you are taking in a good shape. Now your body is producing lots of energy. So it is another problem of lack of energy is our brain is consuming around 20 to 25 percent of the energy. That's what science says. OK. And I believe so. Percentage can be more or less, whatever. I don't know. But whatever the highest percentage of the energy goes to your brain. Then second preference is your heart. So your heart needs to pump and to breathe. So that is second preference. And then rest goes to all other organs and skin and everything everywhere. Okay. So if you have lack of energy, now what happens? Your body is going to start rationing it. It's now, okay, you brain, hey, calm down. You are not going to get 100% what you are demanding. You are going to get only 80%. There's a lack of energy. Heart, calm down, only 80% or whatever. I'm just giving you analogy. Now what is happening? Now rationing of energy is creating all kind of malfunction. And that is creating now, there is no clear communications. between the organs and the brain and the cells and everything is now in chaos. That chaos creates the disease. So once you have enough energy, our body is designed to heal itself. So if there is a problem, if I run 10 miles and my body needs to recoup, if I have enough energy, my knee is hurting. but is going to recoup to run after another three days. Because of the energy, our cells are dying every day. Millions of cells are dying. Now that cells has to replenish. But if you don't have enough energy, who is going to do that? See, this factory, this body as a factory, every cell need nourishment and reproduction also. Same time. So if you don't have that, I mean, everything else is superficial. You take medicine after medicine after medicine. It's hurting your other organs. And it is a makeshift kind of solution, which I believe is not the real solution.
Speaker #1
Where does supplements come into this conversation? I don't even eat cooked vegetables. So I think that is going to be such a hard jump for me to go from mainly carb and... protein-based meals to a raw food diet. Maybe the next step will be like try to eat a little bit of cooked vegetables. But I take a bunch of supplements. I take this supplement that, you know, I can feel a energy surge after taking it and there's no caffeine in the supplement. Do supplements work or I have to change?
Speaker #0
Supplement, if you're taking without doctor's recommendation. it is dangerous. I was not taking any supplement and I was, I'm taking back my word, sorry. I was taking, let's say supplement, joint supplement when I'm running marathons. But that time, you know, as a 60, 65, 67 year old person, younger person, not 60, need to recoup. So I don't want to injure myself. So I started taking, let's say supplement, but then I'm stopping it when I don't need it. When I'm not running, let's say every other year I used to run. Now I'm running every year now. So that's a different story. But so take the supplement if your doctor says you should take it. Don't take it just because you saw some advertisement or you read somewhere and because you went to Costco and it is very cheap. Just take it. No, don't do that. I am taking now supplement B12 and D3. Just started two couple of months back. And that's not, I just asked my doctor before I finished, I ran my last marathon in March. I went to doctor in February. Check me out. Every year I do that. Before running, I go to doctor. Just in case, you know. They have to see my numbers and everything. So what happened? I said, doctor. And my another doctor friend who wrote this, the foreword for this book, he said, Akshay, you should check your D3 and B12. I said, okay. I went and I asked the doctor this time run test for D3 and B12 also. And he ran and he said, okay, you know what? You're not bad, but it will help if you take the booster. And he recommended and I took it. That kind of proactive, what you need, if you take it, it is going to work for you long run. Now, what you are taking and it giving you boost of energy, the spike, you are going to face big problem later on. You are very young. So what happens? Our body, our brain is designed something which happens every day. So let's say if somebody is taking. sugar substitute. Sugar substitute is very dangerous, very bad. Why? So when you take any sugary stuff, your brain knows now the sugar came in. Now in our factory, let's that convert into energy, but you're faking it. Now, instead of giving real sugar, you are doing a sugar substitute. Now your brain is sending to collect that sugar and convert into energy. They fail. So you failed one time, second time, third time. Now your brain says, you know what? This is happening many times. I'm not going to go ever now. If there is a sugar, there is no sugar. I'm going to not listen any signal of sugar once, you know, anybody, I mean, the person is taking sugar substitute. So now you are going against the design of your body. What is happening now? Because you fooled yourself so many times, now your brain gave up. And that happens to everything else also. So whether it is a caffeine, whether it is the energy drink or energy supplement or anything, because it's artificial, that artificial thing is going to work for a while. But then what happens? You are diminishing the whole system. You are right now, you are polluting the system. Whole system is going to get screwed up. because now a lot of information, it's like this. Right now you understand what I'm talking. But if I start talking in my Gujarati language, Indian language, you are not going to understand what is happening. You are, what is, so same thing, exactly thing happens because our whole system works on information. You are not only eating the fruit. You are eating with the fruit information you are eating. And that information, yeah, it is, I know, it's like, what, why, how, yeah. When you eat the fruit, when you eat the vegetable, when you eat any nuts, your brain understands exactly what is happening. Okay, let's say if you're eating, okay, now it is the morning and it is the time for snack and it is the breakfast or this is what is coming. So when the consistency comes, everything works with it in harmony. So when the sun rise, the whole world is now waking up. It is in harmony. The birds and the whole, every species understand now it is now time to go work, time to go and search for food, whatever it is, you know, the nature, it happens. It goes down when sunset. So this is how the cycle is. If you screwed up your cycle, if you take night job, now your whole circadian rhythm is changed. There's more chances of getting heart attack. There are more chances of getting a blood pressure issue. Why? Because you are now breaking the cycle. The mother nature made it. The circadian rhythm is that's how our body works. Now, everything else is also same thing. So when you take any synthetic thing, including any kind of supplement or substitute or whatever, be careful.
Speaker #1
Are you getting enough? protein. I know that majority, well, according to the society, majority of the protein comes from animal products. And I know that in recent years, vegan protein or vegetarian protein kind of made a comeback. Do you take protein powders, either just, you know, vegetarian version of it and just to be able to make sure your body gets enough protein or that's not part of the consideration?
Speaker #0
Then good question. Let me ask you a question. How much protein we need?
Speaker #1
Well, isn't that they say 0.8 of every pound that you weigh?
Speaker #0
So there is so many formula. There's one, somebody says one is to one. So if you are 150 pound, you need 150 gram. Somebody says one is to half, you know, so half of it. So 75 gram. If you ask Dr. Google, he says, okay, 56 gram for men, 50 gram for women. There are so many things out there. And everybody is pushing their own agenda. If you see in the wild, the horse is eating grass. non-vegetarian and full of muscles can run for many miles carrying the another guy on the even body and still they can run from where they get protein so it is it is again lots of myth out there so just to answer the horse get protein because they have an in system which the grass get fermented. They have another system to ferment and that creates the protein. Now, every creature have different system. Our system is also different, not same as the horse. So if we start eating grass, we will not get protein. They get. So to answer, I'm not taking any substitute, any shake, any protein powder, nothing, nada, zip. That's not what I'm accepting. I do have enough protein. I can prove that since I'm running marathons. Without good tone muscles, you cannot. My son is 175 pounds. I lift him up on my shoulder during his wedding and I dance on the street for maybe four or five minutes. I'm only 145 pounds. So I carried more than my weight and dancing, not just walking even. On the rhythm, I was dancing. People were amazed. Why? How can you do that? So it proves that I have enough protein to lift up even that kind of weight. I see this protein. No protein is animal-based. Every protein is even plant-based. Even animal gets from the plant. So cow gets protein and you eat beef and that's protein. But from where they get? So I see this. This is lots of myth around in the market. And I... My strong word, this is the food mafia. They spread this thing. I'm sorry, but I'm not against it. I am a businessman. I know they have to do this to survive, to make their bank balance, you know, fat and to please their shareholder. So they have to do it. But it is up to us how gullible we are. If they say something and we believe, who did this study? Sponsored by who? It's the same people who are selling the stuff. They are sponsoring the study and whatever the outcome comes. And they do it in such a way that they do it in ethical way, but still it is totally immoral. It's what? You are fooling people saying this and people understand this. Okay. And they become the victim of this. I say this very openly and even in the book. There is a three mafia, food mafia, medical mafia, and drug mafia. They are taking advantage of the people in general, no matter where you are, not only in Western culture, even Eastern culture, everywhere in the world, in Africa, in India, in US, in Japan, everywhere there's an issue. So that issue, because we forgot what to accept. If you give your food, to even your pets, your dog or cat. They will come, they will smell, and if it is not for them, they will walk out. And we forgot about it.
Speaker #1
Let's talk about food quality. I know that, you know, in America, a lot of people complain about the amount of chemicals that we put in the food and the hormones. And from my understanding is that if you cook the food, you can eliminate some of its harm. And you earlier also did say... that you've been eating raw food for 16 years, you have not got sick just yet. Well, have not. I hope you never get sick. When you are choosing raw food... Do you have certain standards? Meaning if you go to a certain type of a grocery store and you know at least the quality of the rough that you're eating is up to your standard.
Speaker #0
Again, this is all myth. I travel. Forget about in my house. I travel. I don't carry my food. I travel and I survive everywhere. And even dangerous place, you know, the dangerous place like India. They said, what? Don't, don't, you're going to die. I said, forget it. Nothing happened. And I stayed there for one month and nothing happened. So when you're careful of what you are eating, what you're putting in your mouth, when you're aware, everything becomes so easy. You don't have to go into all this thing. Of course, you don't want to eat pesticide. That is true. So what do you do? You wash well, you wash with vinegar, you wash with warm water, whatever way it is, you keep it, dip it in the water for a while, you eat. I have not seen that anybody, any person died because of eating raw food. I have seen millions of people dying every day because of eating cooked food. And so it is a myth and this is, they have to do it. This is the fear they have to put on. to everybody, hey, if you eat raw food, you're going to die or you're going to have this or that. And to prove that, to prove that they are wrong, I did that experiment on myself, putting myself on the fire. OK, if that is the case, I should be in the hospital 10 years back, 15 years back even when I started. So, no, that is that is all all goofy thing. They won't. So only way, you know what? I can beat you. Let's say you and your brother or you and your friend, and I'm jealous of your friendship, your affection, you know. But all I have to do, I have to put in one of the mind some kind of doubt. Hey, you know what? Zain is stealing money from your account. What? I trust him so good. So now that doubt is going to make everything so bad between you. And that exactly these people are doing it. All they are doing is putting the point of doubt now, you know, and they cut it loose then. Okay, hey, whoever the PhD or whoever are writing this article or that article, all they get money for that to write those things. And whoever is sponsoring it, they say, okay, wow, we made another home run. You know, because this is now gone to the public. Public is so scared eating raw food. That exactly they want. But thinking naturally, you know, rational mind, naturally. If that is the case, I supposed to be dead by now. 16 years of eating raw food. Why I'm not falling sick? I'm also an ordinary person like you and everybody else. Only thing is I'm older now. You are younger. So this is a wrong thing. Of course, you have to be careful. Don't eat something with the pesticide. It's going to hurt you. But if you become aware, if you, when you clean your food, you take care of it. And I'm eating a lot of food with the skin. Even I'm not peeling the skin of the raw potato or sweet potato. So what I do, I wash it well. And I, there is nothing. I don't see there's a big problem. No.
Speaker #1
So I'm drinking a coconut water and this is obviously coconut juice. Well, coconut water. juice. What's your thoughts on juices and, you know, certain things being a lighty process, but they're still raw?
Speaker #0
I'm also taking coconut water.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
And I'm making kombucha out of it. I prefer I get real natural coconut water. When I'm visiting other country, you know, especially in India or Punta Cana or Bahamas, I drink a lot of coconut water. It's available. But it's loss hindrance, not available. So I take it. I want to see that there is no preservative. There is no other bad substance there. And if it is in natural form, take it. It's fine. I don't want to make my life miserable. I want to make my life easy. I'm not making any rules for anybody. I make rules for myself that, hey, this is I find here in my situation. I have to take that coconut water. I'm taking it. But so if you. At least you are aware. Now you are reading the labels. If there is any kind of bad, harmful elements are there, avoid it. Don't take it. Or even if it is there. And now you are going to your friend's house and they offer you this. Drink once. It's nothing, nothing going to, it's not going to kill you. It is now something is like, okay, avoid if there is nothing, then you have to take that. But otherwise, take something which is not going to hurt you, not going to harm you. But again, it is not about the moderation, but it is about the practicality. So when you go out, you don't want to be a pain guest anywhere you go. People love me. They are inviting, everybody is inviting me for lunch and dinner because it costs nothing to them. It's like, okay, all you have to give me one avocado and I'm done. Or all you have to give me one apple and banana and I'm done. It's that easy for me. And I'm not checking, you know, let's say if I come from where you got your avocado or from where you got your apple, from wherever you got, okay, wash it well. or even don't do anything, bring it in a hole. I will cut myself. I do that to keep it more hygienic. And I eat right away when I cut. I don't keep it for a minute. So even when I eat mango and I'm getting mango from my backyard, I eat with the skin. I'm not putting pasties, right? It's all organic. And the skin has a much more valuable nutrition. People are throwing out. I used to throw out. But now I understand the value of nutrition. I understand what we should eat. Even I ate avocado with the skin from my backyard. And I put it on the video out there. So, and I searched, eating skin is dangerous or you can eat. So I found out, no, the avocado skin has a lot of nutrition. And I ate. So it is. It depends. If you are getting avocado from market, you don't know whether what kind of pesticide or something. Generally, they don't put on avocado. But again, what I'm saying, you have to be very practical. You have to aware your situation. You are responsible for what you're putting in your mouth.
Speaker #1
That's incredible. I know that people can buy your book on Amazon. The book is called In Nature We Trust. How else can the listeners get in touch with you?
Speaker #0
So, of course, yeah, as you said, on Amazon, all three formats are available, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. They can get in touch with me going on my site. And website name is rawfoodist.com. Extra E there for education. I have a lot of blogs, a lot of videos. They can send me email if they have. let's say you you being a you know non-vegetarian person you want to start and you got stuck somewhere and something is bothering send me email call me you know what it is i'm i'm here to help you uh i'm not selling anything so no substitute no no supplement you you get whatever you want to get get it from market make sure you're getting right thing and this book We'll give you the guideline. As you said, you know, you just went maybe halfway and you understood a lot of stuff which was not in your vocabulary or not in even your understanding. Now you understand. After understanding, don't start. Analyze it. Challenge it. Challenge me that, hey, Akshay, what you are saying is maybe is not right. Okay. Let's let discuss. If it is not right, I'm here to... Because I am... I'm not a medical field person. I'm open for any kind of discussion. And I'm not claiming anything that it worked for me, it is going to work for you. But knowing the nature, you are also human like me. Doesn't matter where you live. We have same DNA. We have, you know, same, your blood is 7.4 on pH level. My blood is 7.4. Our body is regulating that. See how wonderful the system is. And we screwed it up royally so bad that now we don't know. So yeah, this book will give you the guideline. And yeah, my website is another way one can contact me.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay, for joining us today. I have learned a lot. And I think that when I think of raw food, I'm still worried. about my life quality, but we'll have you back onto the show and talk about how to. power, I guess power through is the wrong way to say, how to deal with day-to-day interactions, each meal, how to make it more practical for listeners to understand how they can start implement this practice into their daily life.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's like, okay, same way like you are, we are doing podcast and you're getting answer from me. I was doing something similar with one lady from Florida Her name is Jackie and she is, after talking, you know, for me preliminary before even starting taking a podcast interview, she got a lot of information and she bought the book. She started, she quit the meat first. After three months, we had the podcast and she said, I ran marathon with the raw food. And it's not 100% okay, raw food. She quit meat, but still, you know, cooked food was the part of her portion. I didn't ask her to do. I'm not asking any. I'm not asking even my wife to be a raw foodist. No, this is a crazy thing. You have to convince yourself. So once you read the book, if you think this is OK, this this is the harmless and helpful information. Let me try. Nothing is wrong trying something. And once you try, if you get success, go for more. If you go, let's say, if you made some venture and you made a lot of money. Now you understood that venture. You want to go for in a bigger way so you can make more money. Same way. This is a venture. Don't know. Do it with the, you know, understanding that this is not just you are hitting in the dark. This is very informative. decision you take, your informed decision, once you take it, then you are confident. Now you are analyzing it. Make a journal, you know, make a note what happened. You started getting better. Even the background is celebrating.
Speaker #1
I've never seen that before.
Speaker #0
Yeah, you started getting a better sleep. You started getting better bowel movement. Your energy level is better. or whatever is getting negative way. So everybody have different, you know, problem. I cannot take legumes, you know, it giving me gastric trouble. So I am avoiding it. But somebody likes it, take that. It gives you a lot of protein. This is how you have to, anybody starting, become proactive, monitor it. This is like, if you start any business, you have to understand what is going on in the business. Who is doing what? Where is the money? And how you can make more money. Exactly same way. Where is the energy? How you can make more energy.
Speaker #1
Love it. Thank you so much, Akshay. And we'll have you back on the show very soon.
Speaker #0
Please reach out anytime and I'm ready.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
Thank you.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much for being here with me today on The Zen Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, make sure you're subscribed and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway. That's how we grow this community and get these conversations in front of more people who need them. And if somebody came to mind while you're listening, please do make sure to send this episode to them. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All linked below. Until next time, stay sharp, stay intentional, and be good.

About The Zhen Podcast

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About The Zhen Podcast

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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