MAKE RAW NOT WAR - 'RAW FOOD' LIFESTYLE AS A POLITICAL STATEMENT
PHOTO FROM TRANSFORMING LIVES INAUGURATION, MY TALK ON CRYSTALS AND RAW FOOD YAY 24 MARCH 2012
Many wonder about my raw food lifestyle .... even myself! I have had a very amazing and fulfilling journey of living, experiencing and experimenting with raw foods - but why do I do it and what does a ‘raw food’ lifestyle mean to me?
I have mostly been vegetarian/vegan all my life. Raw foods called to me because it is very healthy indeed, but you can imagine that living this kind of lifestyle is not only about health. It is an artistic and political statement as far as I am concerned!
During the first 2 tremendously busy years of being a first time mother, not only did I want to loose some pregnancy weight and become in better health, but I thought ... how will I remain artistically and politically active without running around everywhere, making exhibitions and speaking at conferences as I usually did before.
It dawned to me how simple this task would be by simply starting with what I put in my mouth with the food I ate! The rise of GMO foods, Monsantos and the obvious monopoly of control over the public by desensitizing the mass with artificial preservatives, chemicals and whatever else they are putting in the food is everywhere. I have even been quite shocked to see the ‘BIO’ labels in the ‘BIO’ stores around town with these things in them recently!
This is where I would continue my ‘Artistic’ statement throughout my busy motherhood moments, which I also already began to speak about in my last installation ‘Upon a Time’, where I reflect about my experience in Migro wondering why the vegetables look a little more colorful and plastic then usual.
Having graduated from a Theoretical Research Program, if I could voice a few things - would be that as far as Cybermedia Theory, it is incredibly amazing the American and other International Activists on food in general, but also in particular on raw foods, which is basically now termed as ‘the raw food movement’. The information that is available for people from videos, social networks, blogs, websites, participative platforms and forums are so vast!
As I continue to teach my most basic raw food workshop, I am surprising myself and my guests the amount of cross-cultural critical discourse and lectures I am able to speak about connecting food, culture, healing, art, music, science, physics, metaphyics and more! (Laughs) I have actually even been told to calm down as most people show up for a cooking class and the first hour of the workshop I am going on and on about Theory and Science! Yes, I know intense, but again like I say, its so much more then just carrots and bananas isn’t it?!
Another note - is that our studies in that program was about the origin of ‘Critical Theory’ of course, one of the lines of critical thought is the idea of the ‘radical’ one as a critical means for change. I thought well okay, eating only raw food this is as radical as it gets! (Laughs) And even more so because how funny is it that, something so practical as eating something straight from nature has become ‘radical’?! In essence, its quite normal more then radical!
Fortunately, Switzerland has a long reverence for eating healthy, many people who live near, in the mountains or nature are accustom to picking wild foods. There are also many spaces dedicated to communal gardening in the city. I explained in one of my workshops about Maximilian Bircher for example, to which you might recognize the name “Bircher’ probably one of your favorite Swiss breakfast options, was a very important advocate of raw foods in Switzerland.
For a little more then 2 years straight I had the opportunity to be strictly 99-100% raw vegan! Very radical and political (of course this is short in comparison to my comrades who are going on their 20th year on raw)! That was a very good detoxing and the end of my ‘subconscious transition’ as I put it, through my spouts of raw excursions throughout my life (that is for another article). Now I enjoy to be a raw vegetarian, which to me means eating mostly a high raw diet and cooked food when I feel like it (not very frequent). I decided to incorporate bee products sparingly, I have also discovered local raw cheese artisans, which I find delicious, but I naturally prefer to eat no dairy.
Perhaps, I will be stoned by radical raw foodists and more appreciated by my cooked food friends, but my point is to just try to eat naturally and wild as possible so that we do not become so removed from the planet we are obviously living on. AND that taking political action can start peacefully in your mouth by eating a salad! Even better if you picked it from your garden or the forest!
As I said I have been incorporating cooked foods into my raw food lifestyle recently especially with that sudden cold spell in Europe, however I did experiment on a lot of recipes in order to remain a good balance in my ‘raw life’, espeically for those of you living the lifestyle know very well that eating something cooked, after you have been eating mostly raw will leave you with that ‘cooked-food hang over’. The result of shock to the body because it had to begin producing more digestive enzymes again and rehabilitating the body, just like the depletion and dehydration you get after getting a little too drunk the night before.
At my next workshop 9th of March, I will be introducing some very ancient cooked food techniques with a Raw twist. Learn how to cook your favorite grain in a sprouted and easy to digest method especially if you are mostly raw and are interested to delicately re-introduce cooked foods into your diet, are transitioning or just curious! I will further speak about Chinese and Ayurvedic Medicine in relationship to raw foods. As I type this I am getting channeled about more interesting historical political context of Alternative Medicine in correlation to contemporary culture! So, I better leave that also for the next article.