Aajonus Vonderplanitz

rdf:langString Aajonus Vonderplanitz

rdf:langString Aajonus Vonderplanitz

rdf:langString Aajonus Vonderplanitz

rdf:langString Thailand

rdf:langString Denver, Colorado, U.S.

rdf:langString John Richard Swigart

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString Alternative nutritionist

rdf:langString Aajonus Vonderplanitz (April 17, 1947 – August 28, 2013) was an American alternative nutritionist and food-rights activist who focused on raw foods, especially meat and dairy. Especially controversial, he conducted legal battles and implemented legal workarounds for consumer access to raw milk, and developed a diet based largely on raw meat, the Primal Diet. His later years, marked by his allegations of conspiracies and by his infighting within the raw food community, drew him notoriety even among advocates of alternative healthcare and food rights. He claimed that in early life, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, but experienced remission via raw carrot juice and raw dairy by age 21. Later, he began informal nutritional counseling. By age 25, he had adopted raw veganism; at age 29, he added raw meat, which he claimed to vastly improve healing. After publication of his first book, We Want to Live, in 1997, he became a leading alternative nutritionist. He made apparently miraculous claims of his clients' routinely curing their diverse diseases, but published no case documentations. Untested by medical scientists, his protocols remain controversial. Vonderplanitz founded the not-for-profit Right to Choose Healthy Foods (RTCHF). In 2001, his effort led to the end of Los Angeles County's ban on raw milk's retail sale. To circumvent laws banning sale of unpasteurized dairy elsewhere, he invented "animal leasing", whereby a dairy farm is leased to, thus effectively owned by, and renders all of its dairy to a private food club, which elects to omit pasteurization. Vonderplanitz's legal defenses of RTCHF's farmers and club managers were mostly successful. By 2010, food clubs under RTCHF numbered about 80 across the United States, including a few with over 1000 members. In 2010, Vonderplanitz accused a non-RTCHF farmer of misrepresenting food source and quality when supplying certain foods to RTCHF's preeminent food club, Rawesome, which had been attracting celebrity membership, in Venice, Los Angeles. Waging negative publicity and a lawsuit against the farmer and Rawesome's owner, Vonderplanitz fostered the club's debacle while the government prosecuted the farmer and Rawesome's owner for distributing raw dairy. In 2013, at his farmhouse in rural Thailand, he fell through a faulty balcony rail, and, severely injured, died a few days later.

rdf:langString John Richard Swigart