Getting Teens Interested in Raw Foods

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Renegade Roundtable. In this excerpt, Happy Oasis shares on getting family members and especially teens interested in trying raw foods. There is great advice here.

Happy is the chief visionary Officer of the raw spirit festival, a motivational speaker and author of Uncivilized Ecstasies and Bliss Conscious Communications.

Kevin: Ann has a question. She has a husband and a 14 year old daughter. She's trying to let them know how important raw foods are. They don't seem to understand and she doesn't know how to explain it to them. She frustrated. What can you tell her?

Happy: Well, I wonder if you could give them the gift of the children's book, Serge and Valya. They wrote that really wonderful book when they were, I think Valya was around 14. She might have been 15. They weren't very old. Give them that as a gift or have somebody else give it to them, instead of the mom. Sometimes 14 year olds do exactly the opposite of their parents and it's so frustrating for parents. But it's actually the sign of a healthy teenager, so I understand. I'm not a parent but theoretically speaking a rebellious teenager is sometimes psychologically just doing what healthy teenagers do. So it's a tricky one. However, I would say just the most enthusiasm, the most gusto in yourself. So instead of us trying to make our teenagers do something I would do it by the enticement.

That's what I love to do with everybody I meet. For 13 out of 14 years I'm not convincing anyone to do anything. The first year I was like, "I want everybody to do this because it saved my life."

I would suggest ice cream. Most teenagers love ice cream. Freeze some bananas. Does she have favorite nuts or strawberries? After dinner, have your ordinary dinner, then just make ice cream. That's awesome. The other way to get them on board, we all love desserts. So if you have a chance to bring home some gourmet desserts and then some gourmet dishes. So if you make your lasagna as good as a lot of the raw lasagnas, that teenager is going to cross over. Pizza is a hard one because raw pizza is very different from cooked pizza. What are her favorite dishes? Make them even better raw. Then they can just do the cross comparison.

Next, somehow try hooking them up with other teenagers. We have a teenage program at Raw Spirit Festival. It's led by teenagers. She may or may not want to come but if she did, we have a teenage table and we have teenagers telling us - they're going to be on the main stage this year - teenagers and children telling us what they would like to see happen with the Raw Spirit Festival and what they would like to see happen in the world, in the future. I would say really valuing the teenager's perspective.
How about raw chocolate? A lot of teenagers have acne and raw chocolate can cause a little bit of acne but it's much less extreme than the cooked chocolate. So if she has any acne challenges, suggesting the raw chocolate.

I think winning people over by the taste buds is the way to go. If you make a really awesome carrot cake or something, those kids are going to gobble it up. They won't care if it's cooked or raw. Then after a while she's going to get it.

Another thing is if she could perhaps just try one meal a day and see if she has more energy. I love to talk to construction workers, at least in the past I did, who would be older people, might be really macho guys, and you could tell they were a little lethargic. I said, "Don't tell anyone but just go sneak away while everybody is having their burger and go have a salad and then come back to the group and go back to work and see how you feel." I tell you, 100 percent of these men would say, "I have more energy. I'm stronger than the guys half my age."

I've done this with students too. Students are hyperactive and they have attention deficit disorder. I say to them, just try for lunch this organic, leafy green salad and maybe a sweet drink. Make the juice as well. If you can get on just pure apple juice with a little bit of lemon and a little bit of cinnamon, just apple juice.

See if she likes it, to get off Coca Cola and that kind of thing. Go for the sugar at first and then slowly, slowly they're going to actually wean themselves off the sugar.