The wellness guru to the stars shares how to get supercharged with electric and alkaline foods.
“Your food is your medicine and health is wealth.” There is no further truth than the wisdom shared by Atlanta, Georgia-based chef Ahki Taylor. The superfoods expert and author of three books on plant-based lifestyle advocates for healthy diets integrating indigenous and wild foods. The self-taught celebrity chef and natural food activist, once the personal chef for singer Lenny Kravitz in France, is working full steam ahead to the get word out about a lifestyle that has been 20 years in the making while creating wellness along the way.
Current Wellness Projects
Taylor is the author of “Electric: A Modern Guide to Non-Hybrid & Wild Foods” featuring vegan recipes inspired by her studies as a naturopath. “The Fibroid Elimination Recipe Guide” serves as an instructional manual to eliminate uterine fibroids in as little as 40 days. “Superfood for the Modern Baby” provides methods to prepare the body for a healthy plant-based pregnancy and incorporating alkaline electric foods into the diet for the mother and baby’s first years together.
“I wished that I had a book that I could go to that could help me with all the different things I was being met with as a new mom,” she says about working on “Superfood for the Modern Baby” through her own experiences as a mother raising her baby boy. Even as she is on a book tour for her latest book, she is working on the next addition which is a natural lifestyle beauty book that’s a guide to help women to discover new ways they can take care of themselves on the outside naturally.
According to the chef, people are hungry for information more than ever, particularly about alkaline and electric foods. One reason is the bad rap vegan food and lifestyle have gotten in the last year because one could be vegan and still be very unhealthy. She has since taken upon herself the challenge to educate people on ways to become not just vegan, but also how to do so healthily and clean. She says alkaline or electric foods are really the way to do it. Has the term “electric food” caught your attention yet?
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It’s Electric
For a layperson, Taylor describes an alkaline or electric diet as one where “you are not eating any inorganic food or any food that has a pH of 7 or below so basically you are eating just plant-based meals with everything that has a high pH,” she shares. “That’s the easiest way to say it, but it starts to get complex when people want to incorporate more than just plants. They want grains and snacks and that’s where my job as chef comes in to help them discover what they can and cannot eat.”
This lifestyle came with a significant transition and life change that has had a physical and spiritual impact on Taylor. Though she was raised eating everything, she opted to go vegetarian at the age of 18. With many family members suffering from different health-related issues and on medication for treatment as well as her sister having eight surgeries before doing a complete hysterectomy at 22, she became extremely conscious about her body and how to care for it.
Having started on the path of wellness at a very young age, she is one of the only people in her family who hasn’t suffered from health issues. For those looking to transition to the lifestyle, she offers guidance. “I would encourage that they get some support because the average person doesn’t eat this way and it’s hard to stay the course. Also get properly educated.” She offers both the support and education through her website and her private membership group where “my tribe keeps everybody motivated on staying on the path of alkaline electric foods.”
Inspired by Her Ancestors
Taylor also digs deeply into her Choctaw roots, finding inspiration in the ways her grandparents grew and prepared food and how that translates to her own life choices. “It’s been an incredible journey to connect with my indigenous roots and culture,” she shares. “My grandparents kept a huge garden, so many things we ate grew wild around the home and making food, preparing it and foraging for it was normal for me growing up. That had a huge impact on the way I remember food, how it tastes and is supposed to taste.”
A somewhat nontraditional learning curve paved the way for some interesting experiences. “I didn’t want to go to the typical Michelin schools and learn how to chop and kill meat or bake with dairy and eggs. I had to really train myself,” says Taylor. Most of that learning happened during her time in Texas where she was exposed to a bigger community of vegetarians. “I would circulate to classes with elders that were already cooking that way or go cook and learn with the local Hare Krishna temple or the Buddhist temple, to teach myself to make this food for my family.”
Taylor also speaks at events (she will be hosting a wellness talk at Essence Wellness House in Atlanta on March 7) and hosts retreats to impart her knowledge on electric foods. The next retreat is coming up in Mexico at Playa del Carmen in April. “My retreats are typically based on detoxification so people will come to learn how to transition and through that time they will drink a lot of herbs, do a lot of plant-based meals that I prepare. But also they have the opportunity to do plant medicine for mental and spiritual health,” she says. “I love retreats because I like to bring that indigenous food experience right to the table for people.”
To learn more about chef Ahki Taylor, visit her website on www.gochefahki.com or follow her on Instagram.
