Robert ‘Rawbert’ Reid: I Eat Only Raw Foods
Photograph by Trevor Reid
Robert “Rawbert” Reid
Age: 51
Occupation: Accountant turned restaurateur at Beverly’s Organic Garden Café.
Passion: Vegan-, organic-, raw-food evangelism.
It Helps That…: His wife works at Whole Foods.
The Goal: Longevity.
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People dream of doing this. Few actually commit. What made you go for it?
My sister-in-law was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer when I was 30. This was the catalyst to reanalyze my diet in general—and to try to save her life. I was a meat-and-potatoes accountant; she was only given two months to live. It was a race against time and I became obsessed, reading everything I could get my hands on.
What’s so bad about the way we typically eat?
White flour, white sugar, the overconsumption of animal products—these things leave a trail in our body, a mucus plaque that’s damaging.
Describe your diet.
I have two breakfasts. The first consists of three to five servings of a fruit, whether it’s three or four bananas, five or six nectarines, or two to three mangoes. I’ll eat a total of a quarter-cup of bee pollen a tablespoon at a time, with tea or water—and a quarter-cup of pumpkin seeds, which are lowest in fat, highest in protein.
My second breakfast is usually a quart of a green smoothie. I’ll also have a super-food snack: a big handful of chlorella tablets.
Lunch is my biggest meal: a huge salad with avocado, nuts, seeds, and a little nutritional yeast, B12, and a nut cheese of some kind.
I don’t eat after 6 p.m. You can’t sleep as well if your body is busy digesting. It doesn’t have a chance to heal and rejuvenate. Dinner is usually soup made of grains, shiitake mushrooms, diced-up butternut squash, turnips, carrot, celery, and kale, in enzyme-rich miso water.
I’ll have a protein shake along with my workouts, three or four times a week: 30 grams of raw pea protein (or bio- fermented brown-rice protein or raw Brazil-nut protein) with orange juice and pineapple juice.
How do you feel?
I just turned 51, and I feel like I’m in my twenties. On Christmas morning, I jogged down the Minuteman Bikeway in a knitted Viking helmet.
