Peter:
>Another trick question? ;-)  Like the plagiarized version it is a very
>dogmatic and speculative work blaming all the evils of mankind on cooked
>foods.  I have not read the whole book but have so far not found any hidden
>pockets of substance in it. ;-) I know there are several copies of the book
>circulating so maybe somebody else will want to at some point answer this
>question in more depth.

Depth, I haven't ;) but I agree that Raw Eating is pretty pretentious stuff
with little actual content, lots of ranting, etc. But also that at least
the fellow is writing from some experience. NFL seems to have not only
plagiarized words but experience (though they are deaf and dumb when it
comes to the experiences of most fruitarians and many raw vegans ;)).
Another huge difference is that Hovanessian appears to be selflessly
promoting his raw vegan message. In direct contradiction to NFL who wants
to be rich and famous of the same stolen message.

While, like you Peter, I have not read Hovanessian's book page by page
(something of a masachistic task), I can see that the books are not
identical. Hovanessian's is longer. As far as I can tell there isn't an
original idea in NFL. NFL is a subset of Hovanessian's book--they stole
what they thought was "cool", added some slogans (like "cooked food is
poison" at the end of every "chapter"), and copyrighted Hovanessian's book
as their own.

One point to add: Hovanessian's book really _was_ a radical act given the
repressive government he was living in in Iran. NFL trying to be "radical"
in southern CA (or on Oprah, dream on) is kinda like trying to get
attention by drooling at a big city bus stop ;) I guess their "upping the
ante" means that they will redouble their efforts to spam their products on
the only list that will have them--truly American, eh?

Cheers,
Kirt