is not everything,
but without health everything is nothing.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
Foreword by Markus Rothkranz
Dear readers,
Would you like to be truly happy and satisfied with your life? Then do the right thing! What that is exactly you will find out by listening to your inner voice – and by taking a good, respectful look at nature. Just look around: humans are the only creatures on earth that heat, cook, roast or bake their food – and they are also the only creatures that suffer from cancer, diabetes, heart disease or fungal disease and pine away at old age. You can only find similar afflictions with animals when they are being fed by humans or eat scraps left behind by humans. Wild animals do not have the same ailments that we suffer from when we get old.
The biggest health problems have only just arisen in our “modern” world. Why do we humans believe that we must alter the natural state of our food before eating it? Nature created everything perfectly well! Millions of years of evolution have only left us with those creatures that are able to “function” in nature: those who are intact and able to survive just the way they are. All others have become extinct. To find answers to our question we need to study nature and respect its design. The more we stray from nature’s path the more problematic our lives will become.
Most humans in the “modern” world are “very stressed” and are “always busy.” As a consequence, they mainly eat fast food and ready meals that quickly satisfy their hunger – that is not “real” food. An example: Take a fresh apple (or rather its core) and bury it in the earth – after a while you will observe the growth of an apple tree. And now take a second apple, cook or bake it and once again bury it in the earth – what arises? Nothing. It rots. Why? Because, by heating it, you removed its life force.
Natural food is meant to be consumed in its raw form, in its natural state. Eating raw foods does not take a lot of effort or time, but results in you feeling great. Your health problems will disappear and you will be awarded with a longer life. Uncooked vegetarian foods – that is not bland, monotonous or unappetizing. You just have to familiarize yourself with every green thing that grows and how to mix it to taste.
When I heard that Dr. Joachim Mutter – a studied medic, a doctor – “treats” sick people with fresh, raw foods I immediately offered my support for his book. Here is a new generation of therapists who show us the only path to health and a long life. On this way, I salute you as readers and wish you a lot of love and light!
Markus Rothkranz
Markus Rothkranz, a German by birth, has been living in the US for many years and is an author1, speaker and activist of the raw food movement.
Preface by Prof. Dr. Franz Daschner, MD
I worked together with the author for many years, and he was one of my best assistants. He was extremely hard-working and popular with his patients and feared by his scientific opponents as he knew the whole scientific literature (e.g. on the topic of dental amalgam) better than anyone else of the world.
I will never forget the following experience I had with him: we took the train to the Robert-Koch-Institute in Berlin (in the matter of performing a scientific risk analysis for the German government on the topic of the toxicity and adverse effects of dental amalgam). At lunchtime, I was eating a meat sandwich with the utmost appetite while he opened a suitcase and took a bowl filled with green stuff that he had collected in the meadow in front of his house in the morning, which he ate with apparent delight.
Now he is publishing this wonderful book. Once again, I am amazed at his unbelievable knowledge, which he passes on comprehensibly to everyone who wants it. To be honest I have never even heard of some of many of the plants that he describes to be edible. And I have to admit that I often prefer a nice piece of meat and cannot resist one or two glasses of red wine. And I still prefer a beef and pork sandwich over a stinging nettle salad.
I read this book with great pleasure and admiration for the author but also with a guilty conscience. It is without doubt however that even those that only perform 10 percent of what Joachim Mutter recommends will live healthier and at the same time preserve our nature. Hence I am very thankful to the author for his dedication and hope this book will gain a worldwide circulation.
Prof. Dr. Franz Daschner
Prof. Franz Daschner was Head of the Institute for Environmental Medicine and Hospital Epidemiology at the Medical School of the University of Freiburg (Germany) for many years; he retired in 2006. In 1998, he was awarded the renowned title as “eco-manager of the year” and as the first doctor ever he won the German Environment Award, the highest doted price in Europe. Also, he got the highest awards from the German government for his research. Today he is the chairman of the Viamedica Foundation – a foundation for healthy medicine (www.viamedica-stiftung.de), which he founded in 2002.
Introduction
The people that come to see me only have one wish: They want to stay or rather get healthy, and want to increase their performance and vigor up until old age. To me, it is important to research, recognize and find the main causes of the diseases. When we know what causes illness, we ultimately find the best cure. This makes the concept of therapy relatively simple: Avoid main causes of illnesses – and people should also be aware of the factors that mainly benefit their health.
The conventional established opinions on things that cause and cure diseases in humans often completely deviate from what practically, in real life, shows the best and safest results. This sounds provocative, but it is possible to, through the aid of few and cheap measures, significantly reduce the majority of today’s disease burden in the world. As this is not happening up to date, the question arises, whether it would be beneficial to certain interest groups to have many sick people for as long as possible. A trenchant answer was given in the Journal of the German Medical Association. In the Deutsches Ärzteblatt – the most popular medical journal in Germany – Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörner (psychiatrist and author2) criticized the following tendency:
“Competition urges the development of new markets. The aim has to be the conversion of all healthy people to sick people. Sick people being people that in order to “live healthy” believe to require therapeutic, rehabilitating and preventive manipulation in a chemical-physical as well as psychiatric manner by experts, for as long as they live. In the area of physical illnesses this is already working relatively well but even better in the area of mental diseases, especially as there is no lack of theories according to which almost all humans are unhealthy.”3
This was put with a little more humor by the author Eugen Roth (1895–1976):
“What robs the doctor of his wealth? a) Death, b) health.
Hence the doctor keeps us to remain in a state in between those two, so he can gain.”
*
For decades, people have spent several quadrillions of dollars in order to prevent or cure diseases. And in fact, this partially resulted in very significant successes: in hygiene, acute infectious diseases, with emergencies, accidents and injuries. Many more lives can today be saved and preserved through intensive care medicine. And certain acute illnesses that used to be more common have become less frequent. However, medicine remains to be mostly powerless against chronic diseases. The absolute number of diseases in the world is getting bigger and bigger. By now, chronic diseases constitute to more than 80 % of all registered diseases. These include the so-called “widespread diseases.” In addition, many acute illnesses (such