We Want to Live: The Primal Diet (2005 Expanded Edition) [Hardcover]

Aajonus Vonderplanitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2005

This new edition contains 65 more pages of remedies and explanations. Through this remarkable but true story of the author's battle to save his estranged son from life-threatening injuries following an automobile accident, we not only learn how the author healed himself of terminal cancer, diabetes, bursitis and psoriasis but how thousands of people have healed themselves of hundreds of diseases and ailments with the foods that have healed them. Listed are everything from aging, the common cold and beauty tips to cancer, infant problems and muscular dystrophy. All of the disappointments that people have endured because of failed diets and expensive miracle-cure supplements can be understood and set aside. Finally phenomenal results with health, healing and sensible disease-prevention, culled from over 40 years of medical and naturopathic experience and experimentation. Most people applying the wisdom directly from Aajonus, the author, have reduced their medical bills by 90%. Some have been able to eliminate them entirely. Imagine having a life where you control not only how naturally good you feel but how healthy you are. About the Author: At the age of twenty, Aajonus Vonderplanitz was diagnosed with blood and bone cancer and given less than six months to live. Medical therapies made him a semi-invalid with three new "incurable" diseases and a medical death sentence of "three months at best". After his health improved significantly, he traveled for three years on a bicycle laden with a sleeping bag and books on health, physiology and anatomy. He adventured the North American continent, living outdoors while studying the diets and healing methods of various cultural groups and animals. He discovered a dietary approach that changed his life. His cancer went into complete remission and eventually reversed. He has out-lived his medical death sentence by three decades and enjoys excellent health.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 364 pages
• Publisher: Carnelian Bay Castle Press; Revised edition (September 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1889356107
• ISBN-13: 978-1889356105
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book when your ready to better your health, May 26, 2007

By 

Barb "Realfood" (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Want to Live: The Primal Diet (2005 Expanded Edition) (Hardcover)

This book has helped my family and many others. We started our health journey with "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon. "We Want To Live" showed us how to heal our bodies for optimal health with only RAW FOOD. The first part of his book tells his life story and how he saved his son!!!! The second half gives suggestions on what foods/ combinations to help certain ailments and what caused them. This is a book to get if you are ready to take charge of your own health through real food. Aajonus has been living this way for over 30 years and has healed in many ways with ONLY raw food.
Check out his web site for more testimonials. [...]
His other book "Recipe for Living Without Disease" is also very good. I recommend "We Want to Live" first.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From a former vegan of 5 years..., November 10, 2008

By 

A reader (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Want to Live: The Primal Diet (2005 Expanded Edition) (Hardcover)

This is an amazing book. I read it back in 1997 after I attended a lecture by the author. Although I was vegan for 5 years and vegetarian for 2 years before that, I switched immediately to this diet. And that's the surprising part because I was so against meat eating on both a social basis as well as a health basis. You would never catch me reading anything by an author who recommended any other type of diet because I was so certain of my beliefs.

So there I am walking by a seminar room in a shopping center back in 1997, and notice a sign describing a talk by Aajonus. For a laugh, since it sounded so absurd, I decided to pop in and listen for a few minutes. For the next hour, he described what he had been through in terms of his health challenges and what he did to overcome them. I walked out of there a different person and have stayed on the diet for over 11 years since that day.

When I really think about it, this philosophy really is an extension of being a vegan/vegetarian. Vegans know that animal products are bad for the body, but the distinction here is that cooked meat, pasteurized milk/cheese/butter/cream and cooked eggs are what is bad for you. In their raw form they are extremely healthful, and I have had nothing but major improvement in my health eating this way. In fact, at 43 years old I look forward to each year passing because I feel better in every way due to the healing power inherent in food when it is not altered or processed in any way.

It's also not as if you don't consume vegetables and fruit. The difference is that vegetables are juiced, since the nutrients they contain are mostly unabsorbed as they pass through the digestive tract if they are eaten in whole form. Fruit is eaten whole, albeit in a limited quantity.

Another side benefit of eating this way is the amount of time and energy you save. No preparation, no cooking, cleaning of pots and pans, no gas or electric use. All this may sound austere, but the incredible taste of homemade milkshakes and smoothies with raw ingredients has to be experienced to be believed!

This book is a good introduction to a different way of thinking about food, nutrition and health, but it is more for those who like getting their information in a novel format. For a more left-brain, straightforward approach, his other book "The Recipe for Living Without Disease" is probably a better way to go.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will The Real Diet Guru Please Stand Up!, January 27, 2011

By 

Truth Seeker (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: We Want to Live: The Primal Diet (2005 Expanded Edition) (Hardcover)

If you read the health magazines or go to health food stores, you can't help but see ads and articles all over the place touting the "raw" diet. There are two main reasons why I hate to see raw food diets being sold the way they are being sold today.

One is that some people are capitalizing on the raw food movement and the ignorance of the public by selling raw dead food, dead from processing. It hasn't been cooked, but that's about all you can say for it. In my opinion, once people find out that raw dead foods are useless as far as making them healthier, they will reject the whole raw food movement as just another fad, and it will fade away along with all the other food fads.

Number two, most if not all the raw food gurus you see are touting a strict raw vegan diet which includes no dairy, eggs or meat.

This book was written to show you a different way. And I believe that anyone who is really interested in improving his or her health needs to read it to get the whole picture of not only how raw living foods can improve their health but how and what to eat in the way of raw foods in order to maximize their health giving qualities.

If you look at the health magazines, you will see that all the advocates of the raw vegan diets are young, and that's not a bad thing, but how much experience can they have? The author of this book is over sixty years old and has had over thirty years of experience with all kinds of raw diets including vegetarian and fruitarian, not to mention sharing experiences of many many clients who used raw food to cure themselves of various diseases and health problems that wouldn't respond to any other kind of treatment.

I believe a wise and judicious person should get the whole picture of what raw foods can and cannot do, and they can't get it unless they read this book because this author is the only one who knows enough or is willing to tell the whole truth about diet. People interested in diet should read it first, then they can read all the other raw diet books and magazine articles they want, if they still want to.

There are consequences, Mr. Vonderplanitz points out, to being a strict fruitarian or vegetarian, especially when certain foods are emphasized, which include symptoms of over-emotionality to the point of becoming bi-polar or manic depressive, hyperactive, irritable, even getting tooth decay. It happened to him, and it can happen to you. He spends a lot of time in the book explaining the difference between raw and cooked foods and that you can eat foods raw, such as butter and cream, without suffering the same health ailments you would suffer if you ate them after pasteurization (cooking). Did you know that pasteurized (cooked) milk actually removes calcium from the body instead of putting it in?

One of the things I like about the foods advocated to be used in this book is that they are mostly everyday foods that we are familiar with. I am the owner of a number of other raw food books which include all kinds of expensive and exotic foods in the recipes. You have to spend money on these things having no idea what they will taste like. One of the books, which I reviewed earlier, has nothing in it but pretty pictures and little else. You won't learn much from reading it, but it sold because it came out under the name of a young man who was the raw foods poster boy at the time. I have removed it from my library because I can't afford to give space to useless books.

So, if you are interested in going raw or interested in optimal health through diet, be smart, save money and read a book written by someone who has been there and done it all.