Aajonus Vonderplanitz (April 17, 1947 – August 28, 2013) was an American alternative nutritionist and food-rights activist who focused on raw foods, particularly meat and dairy.
[a] In 2001, his effort led to the end of Los Angeles County's ban on the retail sale of raw milk.
[a] According to himself, being "dyslexic" and "borderline autistic", conditions "which no one understood at the time", Vonderplanitz "rarely played with other children", and "embarrassed and frustrated [his] parents", fueling paternal "discipline" that led to several hospitalizations.
[citation needed] While renting a small apartment at a business intersection, Swigart's wife worked as a utility-company secretary, and he as a short-order cook while attending the Cincinnati Institute of Computer Technology.
[d] In the 1980s, he earned money painting murals inside homes and acting on the soap opera General Hospital.
[25] Vonderplanitz claimed to have been tutored by a Southern California nutritionist named Bruno Corigliano, after which he travelled by bicycle across North America and into Latin America in his late 20s while studying biology and medical textbooks, Native American indigenous healthcare, and wildlife habits.
[18][26] He claimed to have discovered raw meat's putative healing capacity when fasting in the wilderness, where a pack of coyotes killed, tore open, and offered him a jackrabbit, then watched him until he ate it.
[5][18] In his early 20s, among the outdoor purveyors at Venice Beach, he set up a table with the banner NUTRITIONIST, and began counseling in a raw-food niche.
[a][18] Although not in his 1997 book, he used the title PhD, specifying nutritional science, in a 2001 research report on milk, cowritten with William Campbell Douglass II MD and thereafter.
[5] In September 1986, Vonderplanitz returned to Cincinnati, Ohio, after living in a Beverly Hills "slum" while freelancing in nutrition.
[31] In 1997 or 1998, Venice, Los Angeles, resident James Stewart, in poor health, discovered Vonderplanitz's Primal Diet.
[36] After visits by southern Californian customers, Organic Pastures obtained a permit to sell raw dairy retail.
[11] In 2004, as the nation's largest unpasteurized supplier, Organic Pastures brought distribution in-house and dismissed Stewart, who then focused on growing his private food club, Rawesome.
[31] In the late 1990s, Vonderplanitz formed the nonprofit organization Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF).
A dragnet was brought against farmers and club managers connected to Vonderplanitz;[44] his attempts to defend them drew mixed results.
[24] In April 2011, the Food and Drug Administration filed in federal court against Amish farmer Daniel Allgyer of Pennsylvania.
[48] The government dropped the citation, Rawesome continued normal operation, and the success gave Vonderplanitz renown for fending off regulators' legal threats over a few years.
[15] Having long thought that his body was responding poorly to some of her products, Vonderplanitz suspected Healthy Family Farms' owner Sharon Palmer, one of Rawesome's main suppliers, of secretly outsourcing, supplying meat that was not organic or soy-free, and providing contaminated eggs.
[45] Vonderplanitz and Palmer's main creditor, Rawesome member Larry Otting, published a defamatory website, Unhealthy Family Farms.
[citation needed] Two days after the raid, Vonderplanitz sent a group email alleging that "government agents trespassed and kidnapped volunteers and members for the entire time that they seized the property, about five hours", and that "they stole, under the term confiscate, thousands of dollars worth of members' FOOD that was private property".
[52] A Los Angeles County District Attorney agent referred to Vonderplanitz's "online notices", argued to protect the investigation and to conceal identifies of undercover agents, whose "lives and safety would be put into jeopardy", and persuaded a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to seal the investigation's documents.
[55] In late 2010, Vonderplanitz visited Ventura County District Attorney investigators to prosecute Palmer for allegedly defrauding Rawesome.
They arrested Stewart, as well as Palmer and Bloch for criminal conspiracy in illegally producing and selling unpasteurized dairy.
[59] After four months of jail, Stewart took a plea deal, paid a fine, gave up Rawesome's cause, and began distributing olive oil.
[62] He later alleged apparent retribution by invaders of his hotel room in Thailand forcibly giving him injections that sent his "mercury, barium, and chromium readings off the charts", impairing his health, causing weight loss, and prematurely aging him.
[citation needed] In August 2013, at his farm in Thailand, Vonderplanitz apparently leaned against his second-story balcony rail, which collapsed; he fell and broke his spine, which paralyzed him.