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Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine
Gabriel Cousens
An ambitious raw, vegan, and largely low-sugar cookbook and dietary program from Gabriel Cousens, physician and founder of the Tree of Life center in Arizona. The book pairs several hundred living-food recipes, developed with the center's chefs, with Cousens's theory of eating: a heavily plant-based, uncooked diet organized to minimize sugars and "mycotoxins" and to promote what he frames as spiritual as well as physical vitality. It is as much manifesto as cookbook, weaving nutritional argument, spiritual philosophy, and lifestyle prescription around the recipes. Widely read within the raw-food community, it is best understood alongside a clear-eyed account of its author, whose medical and health claims have drawn serious, documented criticism and disciplinary history.
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The author
Gabriel Cousens (b. 1943) is an American physician (a psychiatrist by training) and the founder of the Tree of Life Center in Patagonia, Arizona, a prominent figure in raw-food and alternative-health circles.
The book
Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine (North Atlantic Books, 2003) combines several hundred raw vegan recipes with Cousens's dietary theory, emphasizing low-sugar living foods.
The reputation
Cousens's public record includes serious, well-documented controversies a reader should know. In 1994 the Medical Board of California revoked his medical license for excessive prescribing — the board alleged gross negligence for prescribing desiccated thyroid after only brief phone or single-visit consultations — with the revocation stayed in favor of three years' probation; New York required him to surrender his license, and while California later reinstated his, New York did not. In 1998 a 57-year-old client, Charles Levy, died after a five-day treatment at his center; the county medical examiner and the Arizona Medical Board attributed the death to a gas-gangrene infection from bovine adrenal-fluid injections Cousens administered. The family sued for malpractice and Cousens settled for an undisclosed sum, though he disputed the stated cause of death. His later "cure for diabetes" claims were criticized by physician David Gorski as misrepresenting mainstream diabetes care and promoting discredited ideas.
How to read it
Use the recipes if they appeal, but treat the medical and healing claims with caution and independent verification.
Sources - Gabriel Cousens — Wikipedia - Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine — North Atlantic Books
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Gabriel Cousens
- Publisher
- North Atlantic Books
- Year
- 2003
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Craft & How-to
- Location
- Colorado