The Raw Truth by Jordan Rubin |
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| Written by Sally Fallon Morell |
| April 5 2011 |
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This book, published by Garden of Life, commits the cardinal sin of misrepresenting the work of Dr. Weston Price in order to sell products that Price would have never approved. Rubin cites Dr. Price as one of several health “greats,” in the company of proponents of raw, lowfat, plant-based diets with an emphasis on juicing and detoxification, such as John Harvey Kellog, Norman Walker, Bernard McFadden and Ann Wigmore. Weston Price never endorsed a diet high in raw foods (he specifically counseled that vegetables should be cooked) and never once mentioned juicing and detoxification in his writings. Even worse, Rubin alludes to Price’s work on fat-soluble vitamins to promote his “All Raw” vitamin D supplements without any supporting vitamin A or vitamin K, a recipe for problems. By invoking the name of Weston Price, many of his readers will assume that his recommendations are safe. Rubin also describes Mary Enig’s work on fats and oils, explaining that saturated fats are not the devils they are made out to be. His diet plans are heavy on coconut oil and coconut cream, which of course Enig vindicated during her career; But although Rubin mentions butter as a good fat, he does not include even a little bit of it in his omnivore diet plan. Rubin tries to please everyone by endorsing both all-raw veganism and an all-raw diet that includes animal products— just a few animal products, like raw fish and raw yogurt, but no meat or organ meats. Even raw egg yolks are missing from his very limited omnivore diet plan. Both diet plans are heavy on Rubin’s All Raw supplements, with vitamins, calcium, probiotics and enzymes taken at every meal. He provides various plans for different disease conditions, all of which are bound to leave the patient hungry and malnourished. Advertisements for Rubin’s line of All Raw products are sprinkled throughout the book. Big THUMBS DOWN for this one.  This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2011. About the Reviewer
She joined forces with Enig again to write Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and has authored numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. Through her New Trends Publishing label, she publishes books on nutrition and health, such as The Fourfold Path to Healing (by Dr. Tom Cowan), Honoring Our Cycles (by Katie Singer), The Untold Story of Milk (by Ron Schmid) and The Whole Soy Story (by Kaayla Daniel). The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, Sally is also a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her four healthy children were raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat. Comments (4)
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written by Joanna Polaski, Oct 01 2011
I read The Raw Truth and couldn't help but lose some respect for Jordan Rubin. I wish he would have stayed true to his roots and not jump on the raw bandwagon. Everytime I go to his site their is a new and better supplement. Who can afford this? I am grateful to The Maker's Diet though since that is where I learned the truth about saturated fats and how I came to purchase Nourishing Traditions. I suffered from ulcerative colits and The Maker's Diet helped, but I focused more on the supplements than the food. Once I realized what I need to eat which was NOT raw foods, it was too late, the colitis turned toxic and I was dying. Not an exaggeration the doctor said this straight and I had an emergency colectomy 3 days later. In some of Mr. Rubin's articles and books I have read I get bits and pieces of what he ate when he healed himself of Crohn's, raw eggs, raw cream, raw goats milk yogurt, and burgers with sprouted buns, I highly doubt the meat was raw. Sorry Mr. Rubin, but I agree with Sally, BIG THUMBS DOWN.
... written by Elizabeth Grace, May 04 2011
I'm glad Sally challenged Rubin on this one. Although a lot of people think his writings are great I have always found him to be a gimmicky product pusher. He claims to support the teachings of Price and then sells products that clearly are in contradiction with the Weston Price nutritional principles.
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, April 05 2011 18:56 |
The Raw Truth 
Sally Fallon Morell is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (with Mary G. Enig, PhD), a well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods with a startling message: Animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels.
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I will be honest and say that for me personally a huge part of why I work for Jordan Rubin is that when asked what his number one nutritional pioneer is, the name Weston Price is uttered without much thought.
I believe that after Sally Fallon, nobody has gotten close to sending as many people to this foundation, and its seminal and important books such as Nourishing Traditions. Out in the marketplace we can't be hardline and shout down veganism (as is sometimes seemingly done in the WAPF camp), honestly the hard-line elitism of this foundation is the one thing that turns me off about the group.
Diet is such a personal journey. But I wouldn't say that we make products that are "clearly in contradiction" with Weston Price's teachings. It's true that our Raw D doesn't have vitamin A in there, and I too wish it did, and have been lobbying the team to put it in there, and you know they're listening and talking to me about it more lately. But of course I don't want to use carotenoids and the isolated forms of retinol are not so good either, so basically vitamin A has to be obtained from eggs, butter, CLO, food sources. Luckily the body stores Vit A for ten times longer than D, so at least we're filling the bigger gap, right?
At the end of the day, as an educator for this company, I'll tell you guys that I'm paid a living wage (rare nowadays) to fly around the country and do consumer lectures and product trainings during which literally every day I'm breaking down concepts about sat fat, cholesterol, sprouting, bone stocks, fat soluble vitamins, and I've handed out literally hundreds of the main WAPF brochures and written down the names "nourishing traditions" and "westonaprice.org" for thousands of people all over the country. We published this book and gave it away for free with lots of great information, maybe not perfect in my eyes either, but it definitely has helped send A LOT of people to this website, and the Sally Fallon's excellent work.
it's kind of the same as in this foundation, there are some moves they make that are right on target and everyone feels great about, and there are other other voices within this group speaking out against some directions at times, it's that way in every organization.
I guess I'm always a little miffed to see people like Michael Pollan and Jordan Rubin get denigrated by the WAPF when it seems like we're all on the same team, and in fact those people are doing a lot for the human struggle. I know I am! on Garden of Life's dime, and I really do feel we make some of the best products out there on health food store shelves, and we really genuinely care, and it's' the products that allow us to go out there and tell the story of Weston Price, Tanchou, Sweitzer, Steffanson, Osler, Vonderplanitz, Monastrysky, and Jordan Rubin, etc.