Rhio is a singer and author, as well as an investigative reporter in the area of health and environmental issues. Rhio is of Hungarian-Cuban descent, raised in the U.S., but completely fluent in Spanish. Her first book Hooked on Raw is about living a life more closely aligned with Nature by adopting a raw/live food lifestyle. The 358-page book also covers many of the reasons for making these healthy lifestyle changes, as well as more than 350 raw recipes in all categories. A DVD entitled What’s Not Cookin’ in Rhio’s Kitchen Vol. 1 was recently released and presents satisfying substitutes for dairy products.

CNN and American Journal aired stories on raw foods featuring Rhio.  She is considered an expert in the area of raw and living foods and lectures on both the raw/live food lifestyle and the genetic engineering of seeds/plants.

As a singer, Rhio has appeared on numerous TV shows. Currently she is completing her third CD album entitled “I’m Just a City Girl Transplanted in the Country”, which tackles environmental issues and includes some humorous raw food songs. For more information on Rhio’s music projects, visit: www.rhiosmusic.com

Rhio hosts an internet radio show called Hooked on Raw which can be heard worldwide at: www.rawenergyradio.com

Rhio’s Raw Energy website: www.rawfoodinfo.com also provides extensive information on the raw/live food lifestyle, as well as organic agriculture, environmental, human rights, civil rights, globalization and economic justice issues.

On the horizon: Rhio’s video series on raw food preparation entitled “What’s Not Cookin’ in Rhio’s Kitchen” Vol. 2 is set for release in Spring 2011 and Vol. 3 in Spring 2012.

Rhio and her partner Leigh, are also fledgling permaculture, biodynamic,eco-farmers in Upstate New York with a focus on growing edible wild foods, heirloom vegetables, leafy greens and lettuces, fruit, berries and nuts.

In today’s access to raw and living foods prepared and packaged for purchase online, are we short-changing our relationship/connection with what we eat?

It depends on how often we are eating those prepared and packaged foods. If we are just eating them occasionally, then no, I don’t think we are shortchanging ourselves.
In our society and way of life, people have become accustomed to prepared and pre-packaged foods, convenience foods, junk foods, lifeless foods. Adopting a raw and living foods lifestyle necessitates a major change in our way of thinking about nourishing ourselves. For some it will not be easy, but oh so gratifying if we can get over the initial hump. Raw and living foods, unless you are grazing from your garden (hopefully you have one), do take some preparation. Recipes can be very simple or they can be gourmet. Personally, I do very simple recipes most days, but then on the weekends and special occasions, I enjoy preparing something more elaborate.
Something that is very important to me… and I hope that more people can get inspired to do it… is to grow at least some of your own food. This can be a small or large vegetable garden or just indoor sprouts. Just growing something for yourself and your family puts you in touch with the source, our Earthmother, and it is empowering.

In living a fuller life both spiritually and physically, would you say that you feel more intuitive about uncovering people’s barriers?

I’ve always been very intuitive since childhood, pre raw food days, but I’m not sure that I can uncover people’s barriers. I have been able to help a lot of people (at least that’s what many have told me), but many times you can point out the obvious (or not so obvious) to people, and they still will be blocked. Helping people is not a given… it depends on whether they want the help, whether the time is right for them to make a change, or any number of other things that may keep people stuck. I look at the role that I’ve set for myself as just a person planting some seeds for a healthier lifestyle… some of those seeds will take hold and some of them won’t… but I just keep spreading them around anyways.

What prompted you to write such a comprehensive book as to a mere cookbook?

Writing my book was not something I ever planned to do… it was just an accident (but the longer I live the more I believe that there are no accidents). My life partner, Leigh, had become a vegetarian under my influence, but when I decided to go raw, he definitely didn’t want to come along. Because he was so adamant and stubborn about it, I knew that I needed to win him over in a gentle way. So I rolled up my sleeves, went into my kitchen and started experimenting with recipes. I knew the kind of foods that he enjoyed and I worked away at it, sometimes succeeding (he would like it) and other times failing to satisfy his taste buds. After a few years of this, Leigh became an 80 percenter (80% raw), and one day he says to me… “you have all these great recipes, why don’t you put them into a book so that others can enjoy them too?” And that is what happened.

In some recipes in the book that call for specific spices/herbs, do you advocate substitutions when unavailable or should we skip those ingredients?

Substitute, change, experiment… make the recipes your own. The recipes are meant to be guidelines only. I encourage people to experiment and change things around. Tailor and tweak it to your own taste.

Do you believe that our spiritual responses to our physical environment are capable of transmuting it for our good as weeds respond to providing what soil needs?
Yes. I call this the law of grace. I do the very best that I’m capable of under the circumstances, and then I leave the rest, what I cannot directly affect or do not have knowledge of, to this law of grace.  I believe that it gets me through every time, and I’ve had numerous examples of this in my personal life. Here’s one.
We live just 10 blocks north of the former World Trade Center. Though I feel fortunate not to have been caught directly in that tragedy, yet my family and I did suffer from the unbelievable pollution that was unleashed that fateful day. It should have been declared a superfund site… but instead Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the air was safe to breathe.
One day I had a dream and in the dream I was in the downtown area, near where the World Trade Center used to be, looking for an address of a place that could help us, but I could not find it. The dream was vivid, but I awoke frustrated because it was like something that I needed to find, but didn’t.
A few months later, I went on a speaking tour in Florida and one of the places that we stayed was with a couple who were Scientologists. We were having dinner one evening and just talking casually when I mentioned how the pollution of the World Trade Center had affected us, and that we were doing a lot of cleansing with juice fasts, etc. to try to recoup our former glowing health. The lady of the couple asked if we knew about the Rejuvenation Program. I said no, what is that? She says, there is clinic in downtown, Manhattan, that was funded by Tom Cruise, the actor, because he had lost two friends in the WTC. The program used at the clinic is based on the model developed by L. Ron Hubbard as outlined in his book Clear Body, Clear Mind. L. Ron Hubbard had developed this program back in the day for people who were loaded with toxicity from drugs, LSD, chemicals, etc. My friend gave me the name and address of the Purification Program.
After my tour, I found myself back in NYC looking for the address that I had foreseen in my dream.
The Purification Program helped me and my family detoxify from the pollution of 911, in a completely natural way utilizing exercise, saunas, and supplements. Briefly the program consists of the following.  Exercise to get your system going for 20/30 minutes, then you take niacin (the dosages are incrementally increased) and go into the sauna for 2 1/2 to 4 hours a day for 30 or more consecutive days. (You go in and out of the sauna – take a shower, rest, and go back in.) There are other supplements included as well, because the sauna in conjunction with the niacin will detoxify the body, but in the process, you can deplete yourself of vitamins and minerals. The Purification Program is secular and has nothing to do with the religion of Scientology, except that it was created by L. Ron Hubbard. I highly recommend it to anyone in need of detoxification.

As agri-business affects what seed pools are available and hybridization is more rampant, how can we help feed those in developing nations?
It’s not only hybridization that is rampant… but the new kid on the block is the genetic engineering of seeds/plants. While most forms of hybridization are bad enough, GE is way worse, because in doing it geneticists are tearing into the chromosome chain to make their mutant changes. And those changes consist of crossing genes from different species. In the Natural world, Nature has placed constraints – boundaries that prevent this from happening. But, souped up industry geneticists have no qualms about doing what Nature in all her evolution has never ever done.
We have been told that there is a need for GE because it will help feed the exploding population, but in reality, GE causes mutagenic instability – a destabilization of the plant – and so there is no increased yield. All independent research has shown the yield of GE plants to be less than regular plants. But even if there was an increased yield, what are we doing tampering with the very nature of Nature? It’s like saying that Nature didn’t know what she was doing and we know better. How arrogant can we get? All independent research shows that these plants are damaging to the immune system of the animals that they have been tested on, causing some organs to not develop properly and other organs to enlarge.  A recent study commissioned by the government of Austria showed that in the third generation of ingesting GE, sterility is the result.
But your question is about feeding those in developing nations. We have tried to send care shipments of our U.S. GE grain to some countries in Africa and been refused. People sense there is no real “care” in the package. People are starving in this world, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there is enough food for every single person on the planet with abundant surplus. The reasons for people starving has more to do with power, politics and poverty. The food is there but the people are too poor to purchase it, or because of the enclosure movements down through the centuries, millions of people have been enclosed off of commonly shared land where they formerly were able to grow enough food to feed themselves. Just in the last decade 28 million people were enclosed off the land in Brazil and migrated into the urban ghettos.
Starvation has many causes. I hope I was able to shed light on just a few of them.

What were you most surprised to learn during the course of writing “Hooked on Raw”?
That I actually could write. Who knew?? Prior to writing Hooked on Raw, the only things I had ever written were… pretty good letters, sometimes.
Rhio can be reached at www.rawfoodinfo.comand her radio show can be heard at www.rawenergyradio.com