Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before I went to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working as a butcher. I was the delivery man and from time to time I had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no awareness or conscience as change never came despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating from Seton Hall with an accounting degree, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say that it was a “plastic” community would be an understatement.
Livingston and superficiality finally got to me. I told my wife that I was fed up and that she wanted to move me. She made it clear that she had to be close to her friends and to New York City. I finally got down to business and went to Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen in late 1974 when she said to me one day, “let’s go vegetarian.” I have no idea what she possessed me to say, but I said, “okay”! At that point I went to the freezer and pulled out about $100 worth of frozen body parts and gave it to a welfare mom who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for a week or so, and then the girl broke up with another guy.
So there I was, a vegetarian for a couple of weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I became a vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, while walking through the city of Aspen, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called “The Little Kitchen”.
Let me back up a bit. It was April 1975, the snow was melting, and runoff from Ajax Mountain was filling the streets with knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great for skiing, but it was a pain to walk when the snow was melting.
He was ready to call it quits and needed somewhere warmer. I’ll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, let’s go back to “La Cocinita”. Knowing that he was going to leave Aspen and basically become a vegetarian, he needed help. So, I went into the restaurant and told them my situation and asked them to teach me how to cook. I told them in return that I would wash the dishes and take out their trash. Then they asked me what I did and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner told me, “Let’s make a deal. Do our tax return and we’ll feed you too.” So for the next two weeks I was doing her taxes, washing her dishes, emptying the trash, and learning everything I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, “Hawaii.” Flipping through the book, I noticed that in Lahaina, Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called “Mr. Natural’s.” I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at Mr. Natural’s. Long story short, that’s exactly what happened.
So, I’m working at “Mr. Natural’s” and learning all I can about my new diet lifestyle – it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch around 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka’anapali and play volleyball, while someone stayed behind to cook dinner.
Since I was the new guy and didn’t really know how to cook, I never thought I’d be asked to stay on to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that’s exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically upriver with no paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo of the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said that the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said his enchiladas had no beans or dairy. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but that he needed him to show me because it was my turn to make dinner.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and asked me what’s for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner was not thrilled. I told him mine were bean and dairy free. When he tried the enchilada he said it was amazing. Being the humble guy that he was, I smiled and said, “Did you expect anything less?” Apparently it was so good it was the only menu item we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people were walking around Lahaina broadcasting, ‘enchilada’s at “Natural’s” tonight’. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later, the restaurant closed, and somehow I found my way to a small health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who ran the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and start a company, they could probably lock down the state. That’s when they found out he was an accountant and “Down to Earth” was born. “Down to Earth” became the largest health food store chain on the islands, and I was its CFO and co-head of its largest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started doing a weekly radio show to try to expose people to a vegetarian diet and stop them from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors so as not to compromise my honesty. A bit of an annoyance was the fact that I was forced to get a Master’s in Nutrition to shut up all the doctors who called asking for my credentials.
Doing this radio show allowed me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within big food industries, big pharmaceutical companies, biotech industries, and government agencies. This information, as overwhelming as it is, allowed me to realize how damaged our health system is. This will be covered more fully in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see it clearly and hopefully it will inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, became nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist, and began traveling the world with a group of guys who were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years, I eventually moved back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii’s leading fitness clubs. It was there that I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She said: “If you want to be with me, you have to stop working with naked women.” So, I went back to accounting and was the CFO of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days as a baby, I had no idea what a “chicken”, “egg”, “fish”, “pig” or “cow” was. My parents imposed my diet plan on me, just as their parents imposed it on them. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and raise my consciousness.
The path I started down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Healthy Diet for a Crazy World.” Hopefully, the information contained in this document will be enlightening, motivating and inspiring to encourage you to make different decisions. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best way to go. I hope that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have met along my path, you will have a better perspective on which path is best for you, not only for your health but also for your conscience.
Last but not least: After being vaccinated as a child, I developed asthma, which has plagued me my entire life. In 2007 I was exposed to organic sulfur crystals, which cleared up my asthma in 3 days and hasn’t come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraines, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, due to the detoxification effects of the release of oxygen that permeates and heals every cell in the body, eliminates parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other junk that big business throws at us. atmosphere. .
For more information, visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!