Meat but No Heat

February 5, 2001

Boy, has anyone heard of this fantastic [sic] idea?

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http://www.latimes.com/food/20010131/t000008996.html

Wednesday, January 31, 2001

Meat but No Heat

Raw Food on the Vonderplanitz Plan

By EMILY GREEN, Times Staff Writer

As Pat Crowder settles down in the living room of

the Burbank bungalow with her plate of food from the

buffet, she isn't quite sure what she's eating.

" There's some nut and banana with some kind of sauce, "

she says, poking around with a fork. " And some chicken

with lemon, some salmon and cheesecake. "

But when a young man named James Hopson wanders

by clutching a Mason jar in which bits of solids swim

around in a gray-brown liquid, he knows exactly what

he is spooning back. " It's steak, " he says. The

" sauce, " he adds, is his own blend of cherry tomatoes,

cream, honey and chiles.

It's not every meal where cheesecake is served

with the salmon, or steak is eaten with a spoon, but

then not every meal is a " People's Primal Potluck. " At

these regular events, the food served is raw. On this

recent Sunday, for example, eggs were set out on the

buffet table in their carton so that those of the

approximately 30 guests who wished could suck them

back straight from the shells.

The taste for raw poultry extends beyond eggs. " I

find out of the three raw meats, that raw chicken

tastes most like a cooked meat, " says Pat.

James agrees, adding that he marinates it with

lemon or lime and eats at least a half a pound of raw

chicken a day. He also consumes another pound of some

sort of raw meat every day, he said, along with a

quart of raw juice made from celery, parsley, carrot

and zucchini.

Pat is only just beginning to experiment with a

raw food diet. But for James, and most of the other

guests present, it is already a way of life.

Out and about, they admit, their regimen can pose

social hurdles. " I eat before I go to a party, " says a

fine-featured young brunet named Erica Schmidt. It's

especially tricky, she concedes, getting restaurants

to serve hamburgers cooked " 10 seconds on each side. "

Hearing this, an authoritative blond standing

nearby chips in with her tactic for addressing

waiters: " You just say, 'Cold on a cold plate.' "

How does restaurant staff react?

" They're more curious than anything else, " says a

young computer software instructor named Jennifer

Black.

Curious indeed, and it only gets curiouser. Not

one proponent of the diet can go long without

crediting their advisor. He is Aajonus Vonderplanitz

of Malibu and the creator of the " We Want to Live " raw

food diet.

Fortunately, Aajonus is at the potluck, although

he arrives a bit late (he had a radio interview). With

the appearance of this latter-day shaman, a sporty

middle-aged man with staring blue eyes and a weathered

tan, the pitch of the testimonials begins to rise. It

is instantly clear that he is not just an advisor to

this group, but a savior. Ill health, not freakish

dietary predilections, drove them to the diet. Pat

explains that she had sensitive eyes, James cancer,

Erica arthritis, Jennifer depression, and so on.

In the case of Aajonus, as he tells it, it is

less a question of what afflicted him and more of what

didn't. Before his raw food odyssey, he says he

suffered from dyslexia, autism, angina, peritonitis,

brittle bones, diabetes, a stomach ulcer, blood

cancer, bone cancer, psoriasis, bursitis and vertigo.

Though Aajonus is a paid after-lunch speaker, and

the diners are paying listeners, Aajonus is careful to

stress that these potlucks are not his events. The

next day in a telephone interview, he elaborates. " I

stayed away from them for years, " he says. The remove

came after a splinter group on his diet " decided they

were going to eat glandular tissue only. " The glands

weren't organic, he adds. When he tried them, he says,

" They gave me hallucinations. "

There is another good reason for Aajonus

Vonderplanitz to be circumspect about his involvement

with this group: He has no professional qualifications

to treat the sick.

" I don't practice medicine, " he objects. " I don't

believe in medicine. " Rather, as he tells it, after

his super-sickly childhood, he first began to qualify

as a raw food-ist by leaving civilization at the age

of 27 to live in the wild. One learning experience

involved allegedly destroying 90% of his liver by

mistakenly eating a death-cap mushroom, but saving

himself by eating several pounds of raw butter a day.

The teachings of this charismatic picaro may

captivate his followers, but they infuriate county,

state and federal health officials. For them, putting

sick and sometimes dying people on regimens of

uncooked foods is not just loony, but in the case of

foods such as raw chicken, potentially lethal.

" It drives me nuts! " Shirley Fannin, director of

disease control for Los Angeles County's Department of

Health Services, declared last summer.

But for Aajonus, the irritation of doctors is a

badge of honor. As for describing himself as a

" scientist, " Aajonus says he has earned this title

after appearing " 10 times " on panels alongside titled

professionals. " I realized that their approach and

their analysis was much less refined than mine, so

then I accepted people's use of 'scientist' for

describing my particular rationales, " he says.

His name, too, was acquired in an unorthodox

fashion. Aajonus was originally called John, he says,

but he dropped this, along with a middle name of

Richard, in 1975, after a reading exercise with

children brought together the letters A-J-A and

A-U-R-A. This somehow became Aajonus, which he thought

had an agreeable Greco-Roman ring.

Vonderplanitz also sounds like the product of a

crystal ball, but Aajonus insists that this is his

family name, inherited from Russian ancestors who

migrated to Brooklyn via Germany. It translates from

German as " from the planets. "

Whoever he is, whatever he is, his circle of

followers appears to be expanding. He calculates that

he has 3,500 people following his diet to one degree

or another in Southern California.

To the minds of followers such as James, Erica

and Jennifer, the word is spreading because the diet

works. (It must be said, they are a healthy-looking

bunch.) But exact records of success and failure rates

are not available.

Keeping records, says Aajonus, might be construed

as a medical act and land him in trouble with

authorities. Instead, he reels off claims of 90%-plus

success rates and sends e-mails with roll calls of

personal testimonials. Diane in Van Nuys swears by

him. So does Susan in Los Angeles and Daniel in Santa

Monica.

Then there are the claims in person from the

loyal core at the People's Primal Potluck. James, the

man who eats a half pound of raw chicken a day, is so

devout, he is now training with Aajonus. " It's amazing

how easy digestion becomes, " he says, before playfully

pelting fellow travelers with empty egg shells.

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