"Diabetes is a chronic disease that has no cure. "-- The American Diabetes Association

Simply Raw opens with the above statement emblazoned on a black screen in stark white lettering. In the next 90 minutes the filmmakers present a month-long saga that reveals the American Diabetes Association statement is not completely accurate.

The basic premise of the film was to assemble a small group of diabetics, place them in a controlled environment, and feed them a raw diet for thirty days to demonstrate that diabetes could be reversed. The filmmakers selected six people whose ages ranged from 25 to 68 and sent them to the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona, where they embarked on a month-long raw lifestyle regimen under the direction of Dr. Gabriel Cousins.

The meal plan for the group was a high-fiber, low-protein program with no bread, no cooked grains, no sugar, no caffeine, and nothing cooked over 118 degrees. Also absent from the diet were meat, chicken, fish, dairy products, alcohol, nicotine, soda, junk food, and packaged and processed food. Raw gourmet organic vegan meals were served three times daily and no limits were placed on how much each person could eat.

Tree of Life chefs provided instruction on how to prepare foods like raw vegan burgers and nori rolls. Participants attended a Healthy Cooked Food Class on the last day of their month-long stay to help them make the transition to raw foods when they return home.

Of the participants five were type 2 diabetics and one was type 1.

• Austin (age 25) was not only a type 1 diabetic, but he also had a drinking problem.
• Kirt (age 25) had a blood sugar reading of 1200. Normal is below 100. His doctor told him, "You should be dead."
• Bill (age 58) was seeing a cardiologist and had neuropathy. He could not feel his feet.
• Michelle (age 36) was quite obese.
• Henry (age 58) took insulin plus 9 pills daily. Demonstrating to his grandkids how he checks his blood sugar, he showed a reading of 464.
• Pam (62) was quite obese. Her father, brother, and sister are diabetics.

By Day 3 in the program Kirt, Bill, and Henry were able to stop taking insulin because their blood sugar was in the normal range. Pam could cut her insulin by 1/3 while Austin reduced his to 1/2. Michelle's blood sugar reading of 362 made her so despondent she considered abandoning the program during the next few days.

Going into Day 12, Henry's sugar had dropped 256 points from Day 1 without medication, and he announced, "If this keeps up, I'll feel like a man instead of a eunuch." A few days later he announced that he wanted to go home.

"I'm too old to take this crap," he announced. "My brain don't want the food. My body says no. My mind says no." The irony is that when his family came to take him home on Day 17, he had lost 30 pounds, was no longer taking 17 medications, and had dramatically decreased his blood pressure.

On the 30th and last day some amazing health results were revealed:

• Kirt no longer needed medications. His blood sugar had dropped 214 points to as low as 73 without medication. His cholesterol went from 216 to 160.
• Bill discontinued 19 medications while losing 32 pounds. By the fourth week his blood sugar had dropped 214 points down to 74 without medication.
• Michelle was able to go off medications while losing 23 pounds. Her blood sugar had gone from 291 down to 109 without medication. Her cholesterol dropped from 237 to 171.
• Pam lost 26 pounds while her blood sugar dropped 167 points down to 112 without medication.
• Austin lost 20 pounds and reduced his insulin from 70 units down to 5.

In Simply Raw the filmmakers document an alternative way to treat diabetes WITHOUT MEDICATION. They don't try to sugar-coat the process and make it sound easy. The struggle faced by the participants in discarding their past poor eating patterns is clearly revealed. No effort is made to hide the fact that one of the participants found it necessary to drop out because he could not cope with the diet, even though he saw the positive benefits to his health.

Simply Raw dares to state there is a cure for diabetes, but it's not a simple pill or injection. More physicians, especially those treating diabetes, need to be aware that the dietary and lifestyle changes advocated in this film can be an effective treatment for this dreaded disease. Doctors often say, "It won't work for my patients," but patients NEED to have this option.