Goals and Mission
I founded Raw Exuberance as a holistic, raw lifestyle community resource featuring products, services and community events relating to living foods, vegan living, natural health, permaculture, social nudity, intentional communities and other aspects of natural living.
My interest is in integrating various disciplines and collaborating and promoting groups working to support what I and others call the raw food/living plant food lifestyle.
-Daniel Johnson, founder, March 2008
(See company values at below right)
The Journey to Raw Exuberance (early draft)
by Daniel Johnson
At an early age I was beginning to question the SAD (standard american diet) regiment my parents had me on. Early on I decided I just could not stand red meat, especially steak. My veggies were cooked and smothered in butter. Eating was a chore at dinner. There were many times when I cried at the dinner table when I was forced to sit until I was finished with my plate of cooked, dead, denatured, microwaved, reheated food.
During a trip when I was twelve or so to Honduras I become much more directly aware of the process of killing an animal and consuming it. I had a real difficult time when a local villager presented us with a chicken, which I found out had just been freshly killed. I could not eat the food and I was made to feel guilty because I insulted the person who made it for us, who was very poor. Unfortunately as a child, we often aren't given adequate dietary choices to set up good habits for life.
I'm not sure how aware I was at the time of the conflict, but this reinforced how in life there can be fundamental cultural conflicts centered around food. When people offer you food it is often a gesture of love and nourishment and turning it down in the wrong way can often lead to hurt feelings. Victoria Boutenko talks about this issue in her book 12 Steps to Raw Food.
In my teen years I had such a disconnect between what I ate and my body that when I actually had a green stool one day, I freaked out and thought I had some kind of disease. For years and years I thought there was something wrong with me and I had this strange sense of shame from some unknown affliction. Most likely it was actually from just eating a good amount of green plant food, which up until that time was fairly foreign to me. I would have never suspected that some day I would have green poops all the time. Oddly enough, the constipation, painful bowel movements, acne and even heart problems, which the meat and dairy were giving me were just accepted as the way life was going to be for me. Little did I know going vegan and raw would clear ALL of that up.
In high school I become more disgusted with milk, while still occasionally enjoying cheese. I was slowly moving towards becoming a vegetarian, but I was still eating tons of refined sugars, ice cream, hydrogenated oil sweets, and processed cooked grain snacks and cereals.
In college I started drinking soy milk, but it did seem strangely odd. The soy fad was starting to go full bloom in this country.
After leaving Seattle after graduating from college I moved in with a friend in Los Angeles who was a die hard Atkins proponent. Our apartment always seemed to be filled with scents of bacon grease and barbequed steak.
In 2001 or 2002, I co-founded Body Freedom Collaborative with NAC Board Member Mark Storey, my first corporation. Part of the motivation was to form an organization that challenged the sedimentary lifestyle that we felt a lot of naturists and nudists had at clubs. We wanted to get more people enjoying the outdoors and being physically active. Shortly after the formation of BFC I also joined lobbying efforts for the Citizen's Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools, trying to get soda and candy -pushing corporations out of the school lunchrooms in Washington State.
In 2004/2005 or so I became vegan, going back and forth between that and vegetarian. About the same time I founded the Organic Living Party, partially promoting a healthy vegan lifestyle, with some minor connections to Vancouver BC's Work Less Party. About this time I dated a woman who was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington was absolutely emphatic that humans were meant to eat meat. I could see that wasn't going to last. Around this time I really felt that certain behaviors, aggressiveness, emotional characteristics of people, even how people looked to me told me if they consumed meat and/or dairy products. A very strange intuitive sense began to develop.
Going vegan I think may have been partly a response to reaching a point of critical mass from complete disgust from working at a retirement center (as a part of a groundskeeping team) where old people were being fed cooked vegetables, and disgusting mystery dairy and meat dishes. Almost as soon as I started eating with others who were eating cafeteria food, I went completely vegan. Enough was enough. I really started to feel that people were truly sending themselves to the grave early by eating the wrong foods and by having unhealthy lifestyles. I literally believed that the diets these older people were eating were going to send them to the grave. I believed I could see death in these people, despite their best efforts to live life in the best way they could. I believe they were being short changed at a critical time in their life. I figured it must be even worse at other retirement communities since many of these came in after handing over million dollar homes on Mercer Island to the retirement community.
At that exact same time my mystery chest pains, which I often worried felt like heart attacks, VANISHED! These, one nutritionist explained, were oddly enough probably caused by gas pains (they felt nothing like gas pains to me) brought on by dairy consumption. I noticed these episodes came on right after eating cheese, especially on pizza. Problem solved!
Finally, probably in 2005 or so I stumbled upon Gabriel Cousen's book Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine and that launched my interest into raw vegan and living plant food. Back then information available for raw food living was only a fifth or less of what we have in 2008. Amazing. About this time I completely went off all alcohol (only drank it socially up to this time anyway).
I am also the co-founder of two international ecologically-oriented and body-positive events: World Naked Bike Ride and World Naked Gardening Day. In 2005, WNBR Seattle started serving raw food to its volunteers with help of Franz Aromatherapy.
In 2005 and 2006, after eliminating or reducing cheese intake, many physical problems seemed to vanish and I lost some unwanted weight.
The Seattle Raw Food scene has exploded recently with Raw Food Network of Washington, Raw Vegan Source, Chaco Canyon Cafe and other vegan restaurants such as Araya's and stores carrying vegan and raw food items such as Madison Market, Whole Foods, and a 100% vegan store Sidecar for Pigs Peace.
Even in late 2006 and 2007 I would occasionally eat food with cheese in it, after going for long periods of time mostly all raw or all vegan. During one episode I had a gourmet pizza dinner with a friend and even ordered a rich Tiramisu and latte. I almost ended up going to the hospital, with a really strong and scary rapid heartbeat that lasted about two-three hours after. It was very scary and I vowed never again. This was one of the first times I noticed I was getting more sensitive to food.
2006 and 2007 also was a year I got more involved in permaculture. I lived in an intentional community for a while, Orca Landing, and discovered the Bcollective and the Seattle Permaculture Guild. I began my interest in composting toilet systems and humanure and set out to find a local group involved in that. Eventually I found the Picardo Farm Composting Toilet Committee and joined that effort by joining the board.
In summer of 2007 I started the Sustainability Arts Festival, a local permaculture event, and Hemp Ride, an industrial hemp advocacy bike ride, which was launched at Magnuson Park for the first year. The event also included Hemp Ride and Franz helped with Raw Food treats. A new realization came to me after having an after party for World Naked Bike Ride Seattle 2007 at a local bar, that many people who considered themselves environmentalists were still eating meat, consuming dairy, drinking alcohol, smoking and damaging their bodies. This became even more clear to me when suddenly I became aware of my own raw lifestyle versus a bike activist from Australia who ate processed meat, refined sugars, smoked and drank a lot. He just could not believe I had no microwave and I had disconnected my electric stove range.
A year later I would hear David Wolfe speak about how if we want to save the planet, we need to save the environmentalist. Apart from supporting the ravaging effects of the dairy and meat industries on the planet, so many earth conscious people were damaging their own inner ecological system with denatured food and a SAD diet. Their lifestyles are a big part of the problem, not the solution. That really began to resonate with me.
In September of 2007 I saw my first health consultant, Yashpal, to help me on my journey to better health and raw food. The same year I also provided some help to Raw Vegan Source, the west coast's largest Raw Vegan store, headed by Tom Armstrong and Susan Park. I also became an independent distributor of Waiora products, including their flagship product at the time, Natural Cellular Defense, an activated liquid zeolite product.
In late 2007 I founded Raw Wiki http://raw.wikia.com, a collaborative wiki for the living foods lifestyle community.
In December 2007 I began a seven day juice fast as a part of a 92/100 day juice feasting regiment.
One of my other projects is trying to get my mom off of milk and to convince her there is more to nutrition and health than what her allopathic doctor is willing to tell her.
More to come soon.
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Supporting the community
Raw Network of Washington:
Raw Exuberance was launched, as a business concept, just before Raw Network of Washington's 2nd Annual 2008 Silent Auction. Raw Network of Washington is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing education, support, and resources to raw foodists and others interested in learning about the raw foods lifestyle. They also work to increase public awareness of the raw foods lifestyle.
For that event we donated a "Remove & Replenish Kit" which included a basket of items including Waiora's Natural Cellular Defense & Essential Daily Nutrients and Victoria Boutenko's book Green For Life. Unfortunately, However, the website was not up until the week after that gala.
Picardo Farm / Humanure / Composting Toilets
Raw Exuberance is working with a long list of other community groups and individuals in the development of an exciting new composting toilet system at Picardo Farm in North Seattle, the original P-Patch and largest of Seattle's community gardens. Stay tuned for more information on this groundbreaking and revolutionary project.
Please contact us or the Picardo Farm Composting Toilet Committee to get involved!
Raw Vegan Source
Raw Vegan Source is THE best raw food store on the planet. Tom Armstrong and Susan Park are some of the most knowledgeable people to help guide people through the new and exciting world of raw food. Visit their store in Redmond, WA. You may never want to leave!
Daniel urges everybody to support their business as he has with his services, as well as other local businesses and organizations promoting raw food.
| NEW WAY |
OLD WAY |
| soil health, organic agriculture |
pesticides, synthetic fertilizers |
| culture of life |
culture of death |
| cacao drinks, Yerba Mate, Green smoothies |
coffee, caffeine refined sugar stimulant drinks |
| super food smoothies, fresh juices |
bottled fruit juices, canned beverages |
| Rainbow Green Live-food Cuisine |
vegan, vegetarian |
| getting your protein from amino acids from live green smoothies, superfoods, nuts and seeds |
protein from soy, protein isolates, animal flesh and dairy |
| body positive living |
body shame, swimsuits |
| permaculture and sustainability |
global warming, complacency |
| composting toilets, humanure as commodity, flushing toilets with harvested rainwater from rainwater catchment systems. |
flush toilets, humanure as waste, flushing toilets with tap water, moving feces and urine miles away with expensive plumbing infrastructures only to get "treated" and thrown away. |
| play |
live to work |
| nut mylk, coconut water, lemon water, green smoothies |
homogenized, pasteurized cow's milk |
| heal self with food, super foods, juicing, fasting, exercise |
allopathic medicine, take pills, antibiotics, mercury-laced immunizations and fillings |
| raw chocolate with natural, food-based sugars |
processed chocolate with refined sugars |
| raw coconut oil |
trans fats, hydrogenated oils |
| green smoothies and fresh juices |
alcohol |
| animal compassion, welfare and rights |
animal cruelty and exploitation |
| bike, walk |
drive |
| intentional communities, gatherings, community assets, parks, p-patches |
private property, private yards |
| composting, recycling, reusing, repairing |
discarding, wasting |
| renewable energy, energy conservation |
coal power, petroleum products, toxic wasteland, landfills |
| Bring your own Bag |
Paper or plastic? |
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