I remember reading in one of your articles that you do not recommend raw chocolate. I was surprised, as everything else I had read says it is good for you. Can you please tell me why you do not think of it as good?
Raw chocolate is a recreational food that has a downside. Enthusiasts and people who are selling chocolate obviously are going to tell you how good it is for you.
If you went to the Hippocrates Institute’s website at www.hippocratesinst.org, you would see the magazine article I wrote a couple of years ago called “False Foods and Harmful Substances.” In that magazine, I pointed out many of these pop-culture trends within the living-food community.
The pop-culture trend of chocolate is one of the most dangerous because chocolate, raw or not, has a high amount of stimulant that acts exactly like caffeine in the human body. When I talked to a scientist at Florida Atlantic University, he said it would be equivalent to consuming approximately one coffee bean. You’re taking about 1 gram of caffeine.
We like these recreational foods because we’re not really ready to do what’s right. We’re not ready to eat what’s going to build our bodies. We still want to have fun and pacify our addictions. Nobody I know just eats raw chocolate. They eat ungodly things that are high in sugar, like agave syrup, with it.
Those same people who tell you chocolate is good will tell you agave syrup has a low glycemic index and not a real sugar. The real scientific community has tested agave syrup and has found that it acts very much the same way corn syrup acts in the body. You like it because it’s stimulating you, giving you a high and feeding your sugar monster. Just because somebody who’s not a scientist tells you that it’s good for you, you want to be pacified and do it.
My hope is that everyone gets to the point where food is no longer a recreational activity but a fuel. Then you can have fun in your life because you have a real life. Food will no longer be the ritual that gives you a high, gives you a kick or pacifies the monster. You will eat food and have life, fun and true recreation. You’ll do sports, be outside with nature, fall in love and have good friendships.
That’s what life is all about. It’s not food-focused. Food-focused is what I was at one point. I was trained by culture, which all of us live in and reside within, that food was a social norm, something you did to pacify your emotional state. I became 240-pounds-good at it.
The fact of the matter is, until you develop confidence and security within yourself, honor yourself, understand yourself a little bit and have the joy of life, you’ll use addictive substances, like food. If food is not enough for you, you’ll go right on to booze, which is a drug, or even worse.
All of us today seemingly want sedatives, including raw chocolate and agave syrup, rather than becoming conscious enough so we don’t need any of that and just enjoying ourselves because we see the goodness in life.