Vegging out: Former supermodel explains how a raw food diet saved her life

Eighties supermodel Carol Alt readily admits that, during her days in front of the camera, she struggled hard to stay thin. Three decades later, she’s a cookbook author and an outspoken raw-food proponent who claims that her raw regime saved her life. At the recent Canadian launch of her Raw Essentials skin-care line, she spoke about what it’s like to step away from the camera and into the kitchen.

Since hanging up your modelling hat, you’ve had second careers as an author, an actress and a raw-skin-care entrepreneur. How difficult was it to switch gears?

I didn’t think there was life after modelling, believe me. It’s a hit to the ego when you are not the diva on the set any more. But I think what keeps me going are challenges. I love when people tell me I can’t do something. When I was modelling, they said no models can be actresses; when I was acting, they said no actors are smart enough to be entrepreneurs. So every time someone threw down the gauntlet, I picked it up and ran. It’s a matter of being open to something you may not have thought about before.

You’ve survived cancer and attribute it to a raw-food lifestyle. Are we really what we eat?

Absolutely. The funny thing is that when I first went raw, I did it for vanity, but then it ended up saving my life. I didn’t know I had health issues; who knows what’s going on inside? But the point is that everything we do to our bodies is cumulative, and if I hadn’t gone raw, I probably would be dead. That’s why I write books [about raw food]. I want [people] to understand that every little issue they have today is going to be a bigger issue at age 30, at age 40, at age 50.

Why did you embrace raw food in particular?

It wasn’t that I thought I had some horrible disease at the time. All I wanted was to feel better. I was so low on energy and I felt my body was just not in optimal condition. I remembered what it was like when I was 20. But at 34, I just didn’t feel the same – and don’t forget I was every day on the set faced with girls who were 20 and so I started to think that my career was over.

You refused to pose in Playboy for decades and then, at 48, finally said yes. Why did you do it?

First of all, I refused to let them retouch my photo because this was a story about the transformation made possible through a raw diet. I wasn’t saying that I got this body through $40,000 worth of liposuction or $60,000 worth of facelifts and boob lifts and tush fillers. I was saying that what I was able to do with my body everybody could do. Whether other women hated me for doing it, admired me for doing it or thought I was crazy, at least they were talking. People seem to think I have been genetically blessed. But I have had every problem on the books, and all of them have eased up or disappeared because I [eat a raw diet].

Raw Essentials is made of green tea, blue chamomile and cucumber, among other edible raw ingredients. What’s the philosophy behind it?

Even though a lot of products call themselves “organic” or “natural,” they still contain formaldehyde, lauryl sulphates and parabens. When I was searching online for healthy products, because I had health issues and I wanted products that would not aggravate them, I found that the more I looked and the more I read and studied the ingredients, the more I realized something was missing. One of our key ingredients is aloe vera. It’s a natural base and we hand-fillet it, and we cold-emulsify all of our oils. If you take cooked oil and put it on your body, it will make you break out. But you put raw oil on your body and the essential fatty acids in it can be utilized by your skin.

Life magazine referred to you as “The Face” when you were at the height of your modelling career in the 1980s. What did that mean to you?

Absolutely nothing. It was great promotion, but there were girls who were way prettier. And certainly there were girls who had way better bodies than I did, because I fought all the time to keep my weight down. Ultimately, what kept me working was a work ethic that none of the other girls seemed to have. No one, it seemed, had really looked at modelling as a profession or a career. But I had.

So, for me, I found my niche: I was the “other girl” when Gia Carangi was in the studio. Once they got a couple of pictures out of her and she wandered out of the studio and disappeared, they would turn to me because they knew I would get the work done. So, “The Face”? I don’t know. Faces come and faces go.

Raw Essentials is available in Canada at Shoppers Drug Mart stores nationwide.

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