Raw Food Chef and Author Experiences Working at Hippocrates Health Institute

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: Well Nomi, welcome to this program. I’m excited to have you.

Website design By BotEap.comName: Hi Kevin, it’s good to be here.

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: Why don’t you start real quick? For those people who may not know who you are, just tell a little about yourself.

Website design By BotEap.comName: OK, I’m Nomi Shannon, I have a book called “The Raw Gourmet” which is kind of a raw food bible for people just starting out. Especially since if you read the entire book from cover to cover you will know everything you need to know to have a raw food kitchen. I have a newer book called “Raw Food Celebrations” and that book is for people who want to have a celebration meal. The book has menus, so you have a full Italian menu for example, or a full Thai menu. It’s set up so you can prepare most of your food in advance, which is somewhat unusual for raw foods. So if you work Monday through Saturday or Friday, you can do most of the prep and then have your event on Saturday or Sunday without feeling like all you did was work.

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: Right, and putting together these amazing cookbooks is just part of your experience. You started in Hippocrates, correct?

Website design By BotEap.comName: Yes, yes, I worked for quite a few years at the Hippocrates Health Institute, which is a really wonderful and beautiful raw food retreat. The food there is very gourmet and I really feel comfortable and familiar with all aspects of a raw food diet. Cleanse, heal, homeopathically, supplement that kind of thing. People think of me as a chef, a caterer, and a recipe creator, but raw food is on a continuum from therapeutic to gourmet and really Hippocrates and places like this, like Optimum Health Institute in San Diego, cater to the therapeutic for that. When people want to be well, improve their health or avoid ever getting sick. There is a whole range that I am familiar with and can teach.

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: Tell me a little bit about what kind of people came to Hippocrates, what kinds of things helped them, and how they left.

Website design By BotEap.comName: Well, I left Hippocrates in ’95, so I haven’t been there for quite a few years, although I’ve been back several times to teach because one of the things that they have besides a regular three-week program, they also have a health educator program from nine weeks you’re learning a little bit about a lot of different subjects. It’s great for people who want to be in the alternative health field to help them learn the full range of things that are out there and then when they leave maybe they pick one or two subjects maybe iridology which is the study out of the eye of the body’s strengths and weaknesses or there’s probably 15 or 20 topics that we cover lightly and then if you want, you see what you want to learn more about. So I ran that program.

Website design By BotEap.comThe normal person who attends Hippocrates, people come from all over the world. It’s an expensive program, that’s why I also mention Optimum Health Institute, there’s one in Texas and one in California. There’s a place in Puerto Rico called The Anne Wigmore Foundation, essentially the same program. The other places I mentioned are much more affordable. I have literally seen people from every country in the world attend these places. People have come who were very, very sick, perhaps with various types of cancer. People have come in who have already had surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, maybe they got better and then a few years later something came back and they decided to take a natural route. There is another institute in Mexico called The Gerson Institute that, although it is not exactly like that, it does some different things. It is very world famous. They are capable of doing things that cannot be done in this country, that is why they are in Mexico. There are places in Germany, there are places all over the world. Alternative health really is what it is. There are a lot of people who are completely fine who go there to learn the program, to clean up their act, their nutritional act. Unfortunately, it is very, very often that someone is already sick. To go to a place like Hippocrates, it’s not a hospital, it’s not a clinic, you can’t be in bed sick. You have to be well enough to be able to take care of yourself.

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: IT’S OKAY.

Website design By BotEap.comName: Program features are wheatgrass juice, sprouts; they teach you how to grow these things. You squeeze the weed, you drink it, that sort of thing. What sets Hippocrates apart from the other places is that the food is truly gourmet and the quality of the classes, that sort of thing. You can even learn this from books. I like people if they can, especially at the beginning, especially if they have a health problem and they don’t know much, instead of trying desperately to improvise information, especially if they are already terrified because they have received a diagnosis that scares them, I would like to see them go to one of these places. Let someone else cook your food for three weeks and you’ll have all-day classes you can attend and learn how to do. They are immersed in it, so they simultaneously cleanse and heal themselves and learn what to do when they return home.

Website design By BotEap.comIt’s just easier instead of trying to talk to someone on the phone and then you do this and then you do this and they’re not okay and they’re panicking. I’m like, “You know what? What’s more important is your health; take a few weeks off work, no pay. Yeah, it’s a sacrifice.”

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: Yes.

Website design By BotEap.comName: But sign up for the program, especially if you are very sick. Take those three weeks to rest and relax, you will cleanse yourself a lot in three weeks. So you really know what you’re doing when you get home.

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: What are some of the things you find that most people just need? Whether it’s supplements, foods, or things that will universally help people get on a healthier path.

Website design By BotEap.comName: Yeah. Well, the whole fast food thing, everyone seems like it, including me, rushed and busy, even if they’re home all the time. With the Internet and all that, people, even a generation or two ago, did most of their cooking at home. Now they are removing it. It’s hard to get good nutrition when you’re not making your own food, so the transition isn’t even from a person who makes pasta on Monday and roast beef on Tuesday and beans and sausage on Wednesday. They’re actually eating at home, and so what’s their transition, okay, I’m just going to do different food. The transition now is learning to boil water, almost. You’re not really literally boiling water when you’re eating raw food, but the joke is I can’t even boil water to make an egg. I don’t even know how to do that. The people, the generations that come now, have never made food.

Website design By BotEap.comKevin: Yes.

Website design By BotEap.comName: And much less learn to do it at home. That’s the biggest learning curve. And then people are always worried about time. So really, and many people in the raw food movement have figured out ways to have really great nutrition in a really small amount of time. Like you guys, I shared a smoothie with you before we turned on the camera that you had made in your blender, a green smoothie. And that’s, there’s, they have to learn that, that’s the kind of universal thing that people are learning. How to create really healthy food for themselves in no time. That’s the problem.