Maine, 1974. Julie & Richie cozying up to the wood stove on their organic farm.
Julie and Richie Gerber, former co-owners of the Bread of Life Natural Foods Market and Restaurant in South Florida have been involved with Health and Wellness since they first met over 40 years ago. Together they have seen the Natural Foods movement change from being on the fringes back in the early 70’s to the universally accepted industry it is today.
Julie was a Yoga teacher, Richie a committed vegetarian and Jazz sax player. As their relationship grew, so did their commitment to a healthy lifestyle. In the 1970’s they moved to Maine, started an organic farm, built their own energy efficient home, taught T’ai Chi Ch’uan and vegetarian cooking classes while at the same time teaching in the local schools. After several pioneering years, they moved to Florida and opened the Bread of Life Natural Food Markets.
Licensed nutritionists, Julie and Richie started out with a very small, neighborhood health food store. They shared their knowledge with their customers, holding educational events, giving cooking classes, writing wellness newsletters, running a restaurant, and more. Richie was the host of the Natural Grocer Radio Show, a pioneer in South Florida talk- radio for ten years.
And they did all this, while raising their son, Isaac, who has been a vegetarian all his life.
In 1997 they merged their Bread of Life Stores with Whole Foods Markets. Richie stayed on as the Florida Regional President and Julie as the Regional Marketing Coordinator. After several years they both retired.
Julie and Richie, who years ago made their own tofu from scratch, have seen the increase in the availability of healthy food products in the market. But it has not been so with skin care items. Knowing that there is a need for true natural personal care products made in such a way that they are not toxic to our bodies or the planet, they have created BeeCeuticals Organics, a very special body care line. In 2009 they sold BeeCeuticals and have started to write a book on health and wellness.
The Bee-Log 
here’s a 3 pack of geiger counters for $120
http://store.colemans.com/cart/3-piece-cdv-radiation-detectorgeiger-counter-set-tested-p-2275.html
Good job, Mutt!!!!! Musta heard on Stern today as I did!
Loved you today on Howard.
Thanks
r
Hey Richie..nice to hear you on Howard this morning!! I was your board operator at WWNN AM1470 in Boca Raton when you and Julie did the show…you guys had one of the better shows and I enjoyed working with you both. I am out of the radio business because I needed to make a living and got out of South Florida because I didn’t know enough spanish….Glad to hear all is well and you made alot of sense on the show today..keep the info coming we need more people like you spreading the truth!!!
listened to both of you on howard today…SPOT ON!!! since 1970 dave and i have been living clean, and your caution today DAVE & I agree!! this country answers to big business (because of big bucks)…dave and i research and now my daughter (lives 6 houses from us) has a child and will carry on the pure tradition (no vaccines, nursing still @ 30 months!) anyway, great to hear you.. much love
wendy,
glad to see that our message reached some informed people like you
Chet Baker Lives
richie
I agree with everything you said on Stern. I have known these things for years and can only say people are waking up…very slowly but they are bc of people like you two and I.
I just want to give you guys a pat on the back..we have to support each other in order to beat this corrupt gov’t and all the issues they are hiding and creating!
People who shoot you down and disagree are still in the box…its frustrating and a shame..but its true. They have the wool pulled over their eyes and are too distracted with Paris Hilton/Sports/Etc.
They will all be in for a pretty huge surprise.
Thanks again,
Jon
Dear Richie & Julie!
Heard you both on Howard’s show Monday morning. My hubbie & I are totally on the same page as you & Julie. We have a 7 and 5 year old, so we are doubly cautious about our foods and health. Hidden chemicals in skin care products, eating ‘super foods’, and getting back to basics – we are learning more everyday! Isn’t is funny that although there are still many folks who think our precaution, observation of environmental changes, and weariness of mass media/government… when people ‘like us’ are increasing in numbers, those thought of as ‘kooks’ or ‘conspiracy-theorists’, end up being right? Perhaps you can say things then have really gotten bad! 🙂
Anyway, we ourselves are looking to buy farmland in Eastern PA (away from the Marcellus Shale) and start our 2nd home/hunker down get away. We’ve heard you both before on the show, becoming famililar with BeeCeuticals, but I am soooooo happy to hear that you have experience in and continue to discovering how to read between the lines of the BS out there, use nature to help combat our ails, realize that EMFs, hidden chemicals, et. al. are a real danger, and get back to basics.
Thanks Mutt,
This is not what I am looking for. This is an old reconditioned clunker. I want a small hand held unit that fits into my pocket and I can cut the sound so I do not make a scene at the grocery store.
Thanks again,
richie
Hey Cousin Richie!
Heard you this morning…Keep up the good work. I am in south Fla as well but on the Gulf side. there is a terrific Organization over here called ECHO in Ft. Myers. http://www.echonet.org/
Take care!
Richie, how are you related to Howard? We are related through the Gellers.
My mother was Howard’s Grandmother’s younger sister on Ray’s side.
How about you?
Right on Julie and Richie! Most people really don’t know what’s going on. I’m so glad your cousin Howard gave you two some air time – Howard needs the real serious stuff more often.
xoxo
Michele and Chuck
Oakland, CA
I heard you on the radio today, and thought it went very well. Thanks for the info. I used to go to your Bread of Life store and restaurant whenever I visited Florida, and was totally blown away and depressed when I returned one visit to find it long gone. Thanks for those days, though, and I hope to read your blog from now on.
PS – If only there was a way you and your wife’s great restaurant could live again!
Richie & Julie:
I enjoyed your spot on howard today. I wish howard would do more serious topics like those you mentioned. He always makes really good points. And he is one of the few broadcasters that can speak about a topic without outside influence or the need to be politically correct.
If you are looking for any suggestions on your site, I would really like to know what you consider to be acceptable sources of information on the topics you discuss. It is very difficult to find legitimate sources that are not selling something or are not in some way slanted towards a specific objective. Especially sources on healthy living and food sources.
Hope to hear you again soon on howard…maybe in studio. Those phones were brutal.
Listen to you on Howard today, very interesting discussions. Just read your blog on CFL bulbs. Wish I had read your blog a year earlier before I loaded my whole house with them. Jesus! Think you should keep your site updated more often if you can. Why don’t you & Howard get together & maybe you can get an hour a week or a month on subjects that need to be questioned & talked about.
Richie, I heard you on the show today, and I wish more folks would listen to you and Julie. It goes even further than you mentioned. I lived in Germany in 1986, and let me tell you, there are more implications to nuclear fallout than people realize. It was very scary, not just after we found out that fallout clouds had exposed us, but because it affected our lives, even today. Our food was rationed, and we had to worry about where everything came from. Even today I have to worry. We couldn’t eat local, exposed meats, we had to import from the UK. Which we found out decades later exposed us to Jacob-Cruetzfield. So the ramifications of all of this will not be known for a great many years.
Good luck, and please keep us informed.
Chris in the Deep South
I heard you on the Howard Stern show today and agreed with all of the points you made. But then again, I buy my organic food at Whole Foods so I ‘get it’ anyway.
I do have a request – please can you inform Howard’s audience at large the reasons why they should be concerned about a number of government sponsored solutions that are going to solve no issues but create many. My wish list would be the following topics:- genetically modified food; the effect on health of GM food, highly processed & and antibiotic filled foods; why CFL bulbs are a total disaster waiting to happen – poisoning groundwater with mercury when the CFLs break in a landfill, that the light characteristics can have an adverse effect on behavior – and why British Health and Saftey personnel have stopped Trash collectors from handling CFL bulbs; the effect of pesticides on bees…. that’s just the start.
I am sure it could make a lot of people rethink their purchasing decisions at the supermarket and if demand is high, supply will follow which is good for everybody.
Hi Richie and Julie, Loved you both on Howard today–all good points and people really need to pay attention.
I’ve bookmarked your site–keep up the good work!
Victoria in DC
Cousin Richie loved you on Howards show yesterday. I will look forward to hearing your next visit on the show. Fascinating and scary stuff.
Loved you on Howard as always. I have not heard you talk about Monsanto’s connection to CCD. There is much evidence that the bacteria in their genetically engineered seed is causing the massive bee die-off. Of course pesticides aren’t good for them, but they’ve been facing that for decades. The arrival of Frankencrops and the bee die-off happening at the same time is not coincidental.