KHALIL RAFATI, FOUNDER/ OWNER

In 2003, I had reached the peak of suffering the high cost of low living. I was 33 years old, weighed 109 pounds and was living on the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, addicted to heroin and cocaine. With nowhere to go but up, I decided to get sober. Although the future started looking brighter, I was still smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, eating junk food and drinking copious amounts of coffee and energy drinks. I always felt completely drained and devoid of energy. Depression was a constant.

I was soon introduced to juicing and superfoods by a friend of mine. The results were remarkable and instantaneous. I began to feel alive again— my anxiety quickly replaced by excitement and a renewed lust for life. I started getting more and more adventurous in my kitchen, trying to find a way to make all these amazing natural remedies more palatable, even crave-able, so they would be a part of my daily routine that I looked forward to.

So began my journey (some would say obsession) with finding and consuming the best products nature has to offer. I travelled extensively all over India, Indonesia and Central America, constantly asking questions, learning everything I could from gurus to surf bums, Ayurvedic doctors to street vendors. Here in the States, I explored what traditional Western medicine had to offer. I also went to longevity specialists, as well as a handful of so-called ‘healers’. In the end, I found that the truth was not much different than what most people’s grandmothers advised: ‘eat your fruits and veggies’. By eating a diet of organic whole foods— with the addition of some superfoods, regular exercise, a lot of love and compassion from friends and neighbors, and a daily practice of trying to do good deeds for others without getting caught— I found that I didn’t need a guru or ‘healer’ or Western medicine to recover.