To All:


Does anyone know much about Alissa Cohen's work? Apparently quite impressive, but wanted to see if anyone had any personal experiences with her, her workshops, seminars, retreats, one-on-one consulting, certification programs, etc. Where she trained, how she trained; 20 year of being raw is one heck of a statement. Know she has another book being published soon as well. & was recently on Tyra Banks nutrition program.

Also, thoughts on BEST places for cerfication - HHI, CHI, Alissa Cohen? HAve mine from HHI but reviewing other programs.

Thanks for input if you have any.

Blissed be,

Annie

Anne Kaspar
bodybybliss@gmail.com

Alissa has her own website and message board, you can catch testimonials there.

[www.rawfoodtalk.com]

Deborah

Already been there - meant other personal experience. Note she sells a low-end juicer through her site, which kind of sets me back a bit, given I wouldn't recommend such a juicer for clients.

Blissed be, Annie

Anne Kaspar
bodybybliss@gmail.com

well-i sure wish she had her cookbook in the stores so i could buy it.or should i say her "uncook book".the web site she has is really good and everyone very welcoming and nice.the food she prepares looks so wonderful.taylor

taylor.. I believe you can buy it through this website and an amazon.com... yeah it bugs me that she recommends cheap stuff. She actually says in her book to buy cheap food processors. I've had cheap ones and they don't last too long and I've had a kitchen aid that i use all the time, LIKE ALL THE TIME... and it's lasted me 6 years... another one is on order but the base still works great!!! The bowl is just falling apart.

but i think she does that stuff so as not to put people off. Lets face it if you are just starting and have nothing and want to have a fully equipped raw kitchen according to her recipes then buying the best would cost about 1200-1500 dollars depending on what kind of knives you get. That's for knives, juicer, blender (like a vitamix), dehydrator (excalibur), food processor (kitchen aid, a big one), hi quality knives (henckel, global and they do make a difference) mandolin, spiral slicer and what not... so i really think it's kinda cool that she offers lower cost stuff and says that you can really do it all with a knife.

Another place to get raw food chefs certification is Cherie Soria's raw chef school, Living Light International. The alumni there is impressive:

* Roxanne Klein, Roxanne's restaurant and coauthor of RAW.
* Chad Sarno, author of Vital Creations.
* Elaina Love, author of Elaina's Pure Joy Kitchen.
* Sergei and Valya Boutenko, coauthors of Eating Without Heating.
* Suzanne Alex Ferrara, author of The Raw Food Primer.
* Jenny Cornbleet, author of 'Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People.
* Matt Samuelson, executive chef, Cafe La Vie, Santa Cruz, CA
* Ito, Chef of Au Lac, Fountain Valley, CA
* Leland Jung, chef/owner at Alive! Restaurant, San Francisco, CA

Once again Bryan, you have great information

Thank you!

Blissed be, Annie

I do not own any expensive raw food gear. We have some old two-tray dehydrator that was passed to us as an exchange for Luke's handy work, pretty low key compared to excalibur. We have a regular food processor with a blender, bought locally, we do not have anything sexy like vitamix or champion. I do have a spiral slicer (wow) and I use a coffee grinder. I do not consider having my cheap stuff being something inappropriate at all. We have a juicer but never use it. Somehow, we prefer chewing our fruit. The most used gear is a blender, for the daily smoothie for the kids breakfast. I don't see why selling cheap gear could be seen as bad. When we save some money, it will go towards a glasshouse and gardening, not the kitchen gear.

Gosia


RawGosia channel
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lol i never said it was bad.. i've just gone through it more quickly and actually feel badly for consuming more. I do believe there is a stigma with recommending cheaper stuff. I'm of the opinion if it works then it works. People ask me why I drive around a 1989 Isuzu Trooper. I say because it runs wonderfully. I love driving it and it meets our needs as a family perfectly. Yet there is a stigma with the vehicle I own even though it completely and wonderfully does the job. I hope this makes sense

>People ask me why I drive around a 1989 Isuzu Trooper. I say because it runs wonderfully. I love driving it and it meets our needs as a family perfectly. Yet there is a stigma with the vehicle I own even though it completely and wonderfully does the job.


Yes, there is a stigma: guzzler.

Depending on the configuration, it gets 15-16 mph in the city, 16-19 on the highway, emits at least 10.6 tons of C02 per year, and ranks about halfway between worst and average in greenhouse gas emissions. But, since it is older and the emissions controls are suboptimal, real life emissions are probably higher to much higher than EPA estimates.

>I hope this makes sense

No, it does not.

If you have to have a vehicle, why not something with less than half the impact. Like a used Echo or something.

I can't understand why anyone would be concerned with a small kitchen appliance when there is are enormous optional impacts that people apparently show little to no concern about. It is like worrying about a spec of dust and ignoring the telephone pole.

Goshia, you made me laugh! I have a sexy champion juicer.

Arugula, love your cavalier braininess!

morrisson66, actually, there is no need to worry about driving an old car. Mathematicians studied the problem whether it is better to fix the old car and keep it, or replace it with a newer car. The result of the study was that the most economical thing to do is to keep fixing the old car until you cannot fix anymore! Sorry, no reference for that, it is a word of mouth, from other mathematicians at a conference that I attended once. I could spend some time finding that reference but I am not really motivated because the result seems intuitively obvious.

Rawrrr, good on you!

I'm too sexy for my juicer, too sexy for my juicer, too sexy...

Gosia


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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2007 10:31PM by rawgosia.

You guys are funny!


Here's a list of my kitchen appliances:

several knives


Ha, ha!

I love the way this lifestyle is simple and easy. I feel free!



Love,
Julie

Same here, a cheap blender, a knife, and a sexy champion juicer I bought years ago, that I rarely use.

rawgosia Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> morrisson66, actually, there is no need to worry
> about driving an old car. Mathematicians studied
> the problem whether it is better to fix the old
> car and keep it, or replace it with a newer car.
> The result of the study was that the most
> economical thing to do is to keep fixing the old
> car until you cannot fix anymore! Sorry, no
> reference for that, it is a word of mouth, from
> other mathematicians at a conference that I
> attended once.

There is a ref at Click and Clack (cartalk.com).
They made a graph of costs vs age and the
financial sweet spot IIRC is age 17 years. At that
point it becomes more expensive to keep repairing.

But the environmental sweet spot is not the same
as the financial sweet spot.

arugula,

thanks for the horrifying and brash judgment. Actually my truck gets over 20 mph in the city and almost 27 on the highway. I keep it very well tuned to maintain this performance. We hardly ever drive it, maybe a tank a month, because we walk everywhere and I still bike in the winter. It has more stringent canadian emission controls, or at least that was what I was led to believe. The calylitic converter does a better job than those in the US.. of course this could be total bullocks that someone told me. I do know that it's a 4 cylinder, gets great milage and does what I need it to do, which is cost almost no money, thus making me less consumerist, allows me to haul music equipment around AND.. and did I say AND? has 4 wheel drive for the 2 days a year I actually need it for safety in central, PA, which by the horrible way, does in fact lower my gas milage while conversly protecting my family. To account for this milage increase I drive even less.

Perhaps I'm just different or lucky with my vehicle but that's the way it is. Also, whenever we go on trips we rent cars with as hi of gas milage as possible because the pollutants idea kills me and we try to get other riders to lower general auto emissions. I'm sure you can find holes in my arguments though.

morrisson66-i will look for allisa's book. i just want the cook book-and not the dvd's or any of that other stuff.i am also looking for a cookbook called "TEN TALENTS"...it is very very good on healthful eating.printed in 1968 by frank hurd.I have a champion juicer.a blender.a roncho food dryer(it is a cheap little thing).they are nice to have but it is not all totally necessary,i suppose. sure is nice though.taylor

gosia,

too sexy.. LOL that's really funny!!! we did the major simple kitchen for the longest time and then bought some other stuff and basically still use the simple stuff except for the food processor before we went raw. We have stuff that we don't use much so I try to find uses for them just so it's not a waste. I do think it's funny though.

WOW, never realized Alissa Cohen could stir up so much........

Anyhow her workshops, certs are good, but too much information too fast. All recorded on DVDs...as is the case with anyone doing the money thing. BUT SHE IS GETTING RAWFOODS OUT THERE & ISN'T QUITE AS FREAKY as the JuiceMan once was.

So, I guess it all comes down to personal taste at the end of the day. No pun intended.

Blissed be,

Annie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2007 05:19AM by Bryan.

She used to post here a lot. She was inarticulate, couldn't spell, didn't know much, and was horrifically self-promoting.

On the plus side, she does seem pretty normal and enthusiastic. But I'd rather give my money to somebody who took biochemistry, organic chemistry, physics, calculus, statistics, anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, molecular biology, metabolism, reads tons of papers, etc. etc.

Joel Fuhrman has. Cousens has, too. But I prefer Fuhrman's approach, it is more practical than poetical.

Hear you but you know what - you are the rarity. Most people want SIMPLE EASY, WTIHOUT TOO MUCH OVERWHELMING INFORMATION. Masses are masses for a reason Arugula.

Personally I've studied only the best and taken most classes you write of. I continue my study daily. If only I had a clone of me! However, I find time and again, MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT YOU ARUGULA. Most people require simple instructions, not scientific proof.

Yes, we all want to be scientifically accurate, but I have only found GCs and BCs to be on the very cutting edge of what's happening with research and raw foods.

So...my 2 cents for the day.

Blissed be, Annie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2007 05:15AM by Bryan.

I think that whatever people studied or not studied, their approach will be always flavoured by their personal beliefs.

Gosia


RawGosia channel
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bodybyblis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hear you but you know what - you are the rarity.
> Most people want SIMPLE EASY, WTIHOUT TOO MUCH
> OVERWHELMING INFORMATION. Masses are masses for a
> reason Arugula.

I don't think it's ethical to take advantage of
people's gullibility and to promote magical thinking.
This can be especially dangerous when one's diet
borders on religion. Some people will cling to their
diets against all rationality, even when it makes
them unwell.

> Personally I've studied only the best and taken
> most classes you write of.

I don't believe it. Certainly not at the university
level.

> Most people require simple instructions,
> not scientific proof.

That means you can tell them anything, and they will
believe it. I don't think that's right.

> Yes, we all want to be scientifically accurate,
> but I have only found GCs and BCs to be on the
> very cutting edge of what's happening with
> research and raw foods.

I find neither to be so, and I am absolutely certain
that if you had the background you claim, you would agree
100%.

The less one knows, the more authoritative they appear.

They are predators preying on people's hopes and weaknesses.

I find that knowledge is much more empowering. Give the people
the tools to evaluate with better precision. As Gosia says, we
are all contaminated by bias. But, hopefully, when the mountain
of evidence appears to be incontrovertible, we accede to what
appears to be the truth, for example, meeting RDAs--they are
our best guesses as to meeting the needs of the vast majority
of the people, and there is good evidence that we may run into
trouble if we fail to meet them (most of them, that is).

For other things less certain, it's important to maintain at
least a grain of skepticism.

Where is the ethics of promoting a diet that reverses aging?
One person promoting juice fasting makes such a claim.

There is no such thing. We can only slow down, not reverse it.

I personally distrust a lot of science, especially if it used to promote eating meat or dairy.

The RDAs for protein are double what is needed, they found out what amount of protein a body looses everyday when it is not eating and said that this is the body's protein requirement. But when they set the RDAs they doubled the amount for safety.

They set the RDA for calcium around 1000mg, but I bet that this is doubled-for-safety too since most of the countries who have elderly with healthy bones (Japan had the healthiest in a chart that I found and they ate less than 500mgs) actually have much lower calcium intake than 1000mg.

What would you call gray hair that goes back to it's natural color like Igor Boutenko's? I'd call it reversing aging - symptoms of aging going away. So when you say that you can only slow it down you mean that eventually his hair will turn gray again?

I am a scientist (mathematician with PhD, MSc, background in applied probability) and my personal experience, including the experience of ALL other scientists that I met or or worked with, has been that scientists are no gurus the common public often takes us for. Yes, scientists may be very intelligent and educated. But, we all make mistakes. And, science changes. Nevertheless, I still like seeing research that explains/confirms THOSE truths that seem intuitively obvious to me. I think that it is a valuable skill to be able to explain such truths using modern research. Some very useful research is out there. For example, many times I got nicely surprised, when I started looking for publications on various topics, and found things such as plant sources of B12, evidence of human frugivorous origin etc.

By the way, except in maths, there is no such thing as a proof, in rigorous sense. There is empirical evidence instead. For example, even many people changing their hair color back from grey does not the "prove" that all ever will. So, there are things out there that may be very compelling, but we may not necessarily be able to prove. Oh, well. I trust my instincts!

Gosia


RawGosia channel
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rawgosia Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am a scientist (mathematician with PhD, MSc,
> background in applied probability)

> By the way, except in maths, there is no such
> thing as a proof, in rigorous sense. There is
> empirical evidence instead.
> Gosia

In maths the theorems are only provable by the underlying assumptions in an imaginative universe (Euclidean, Non Euclidean, ..). An universe is constructed to prove the theorem and properties are derived from the assumptions

What we need is sound judgement and common sense.

"In maths the theorems are only provable by the underlying assumptions in an imaginative universe (Euclidean, Non Euclidean, ..)."

Exactly, there are always some assumptions.

"What we need is sound judgement and common sense."

And these are always subjective.

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

If I were looking to get certified I'd go here: Living Light International. As Bryan said, Cherie Soria has trained many of the top raw chefs. Her school looks impressive.

Alissa is talented, but not very thin, I have seen her, very big butt and thighs for a raw food woman.

I am going to get hate mail, aren't I? it's just my impression..my thoughts.

I notice she is heavy on the nuts..in recipes..and making stuff like raw enchiladas and Burritos , nuts in the shell and filling.. and Cannolis filled with creams..same.. I was always afraid to try them..but I am sorry, am I being rude?





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2007 09:03AM by coconutcream.

coconut...

no i don't think you are being rude at all. she does say she dehydrates a lot and she does say she's a lot thinner than she was before and a lot fitter. She talks more about energy in her book and focuses a lot on other's success with raw living. Perhaps it's her constitution or body that wants her weight at that level. I know a woman, around 24 years of age, who followed Dr Graham's way of eating and never really got super thin. She did lose a lot of weight but then stopped short of what she thought would happen. She ran 5 k a couple times a week and went to the gym and walked a lot.

I just wonder if tha stuff is sometimes personal.