By Maddie Stagnaro – Staff Writer – [email protected]

A living and raw food center serves as a place where people can go to learn how to rejuvenate and cleanse their body through methods in self-healing.
Although there is not one currently in Asheville, Carl and Judy Murphy, from Queens, N.Y., alongside Scott Anderson of Asheville, plan to team up and open one.
“That’s where people come to learn to become healthier by learning about the values of sprouted foods, fermented foods — what they call living foods — they are like the mother of raw foods,” said Carl Murphy, husband to Judy Genece-Murphy and co-owner of Farmacy Juice and Tonic Bar, located on Haywood Street in Asheville.
“We are trying to accomplish a place for people to come to learn how to take charge of their health and happiness through dietary and lifestyle changes and choices,” said Scott Anderson, a certified Natural Foods Chef.
According to Carl, raw foods are not cooked and never reach a temperature of 115 degrees. He said the living foods are also raw, but they have more of a life force because they are fermented and sprouted. It is this, he said, that brings out the life force in foods.
Carl and Judy have traveled all over the United States, including Puerto Rico, to expand their knowledge of living foods and their mission is to raise money to provide Asheville with the knowledge that residents often go to West Palm Beach, Fla. or Atlanta, Ga., to discover, said Judy Genece-Murphy, nutrition educator and co-owner of Farmacy Juice and Tonic Bar, which has only been open for a year.
“We just met a woman this morning who is getting ready to move to the one in Florida. So if we had one here, it would be about teaching people about the benefits of making an effort to live in harmony with nature and putting as much whole foods and foods that are close to the ground, live and raw foods in your body because the body will heal itself,” Genece-Murphy said.
Asheville has always been a destination for health and relaxation, founded by the railroads and hotels bringing the wealthy elite to the Western North Carolina mountains in order to seek natural healing treatments for tuberculosis and other disorders, Anderson said.
“When we say natural lifestyles and natural foods, think of how people have lived for most of human history before the computer age. Growing and eating food ourselves without the use of chemicals and genetic modification, eating in tune with the seasons and what grows naturally in the current months in your area, getting outside to exercise every day, having real conversations with people face to face, getting acupuncture and herbal treatments for minor medical disorders instead of relying on harsh and invasive Western medical practices that do more harm than good,” Anderson said.
Anderson said life has become a scary but wonderful thing. Although Facebook and Skype bring us together, Anderson said they can also cause awkwardness in face to face conversations and inhibit our abilities to express our feelings offline.
According to Anderson, this technology advancement has consumed the United State’s food production methods.
“We see as well the infiltration of our food system by science and technology with genetic modification, with the creation of ‘food’ in labs that has never actually been cooked, think Twinkies, with factory farmed animals lined up on a conveyor belt like auto parts on an assembly line; there is very little that is natural about our food system anymore and this is a problem we wish to address and correct,” Anderson said.
Genece-Murphy also said there are things being put in our food today that are foreign to the body and the body doesn’t recognize. She said the body gets irritated by these foreign treatments and it eventually could turn into cancer or heart disease.
“If you don’t have a good garbage disposal system, which is our colon, you are constipated. Imagine you’re dumping, dumping, dumping into this phenomenal, fantastic house that you are living in and even if it is a truly beautiful house but you never dump the garbage, you can’t live in there, so it gets sick,” Genece-Murphy said.
The Murphy’s put an emphasis on cleansing, rebuilding and maintaining. They would like to continue and expand the Farmcay Juice and Tonic Bar to help encourage people to practice what they will be learning when the living foods and lifestyle center is open.
“This is a big dream that has many small steps in order to achieve the end result and we will only get there by spreading the word and getting as many people on board as possible to make it a reality,” Anderson said.
Anderson said he wants UNCA students to know because they are the adults of tomorrow and it will require support if it is to succeed.
“You have a unique opportunity to take a look at your lifestyle choices now and see how they are serving you and what you can change, can you add yoga into your life one day a week?  Go vegetarian one day a week?  Skip the Sudafed next time you are sick and go for some lemon-ginger cayenne instead?  Feel like you wouldn’t even know where to begin?  That is exactly where we want to come in, we want to create the place for you to come to find out exactly how and why you should try these things and we want to provide it using the people and skills Asheville already has all around,” Anderson said.