Raw nerve

There is delicious irony in the fact that it was chocolate that started Kristen Pavez on her journey from corporate office worker to healthy eating guru.

Although Kristen’s diet was healthy, she had a weakness for the sweet stuff. It was an addiction. After she became the mother of two young boys, she put on weight she really wanted to lose, but just couldn’t kick the Cadburys.

Then one day, someone offered her raw chocolate, then such a hippy-dippy-tie-dyed- kumbaya concept that it was almost taboo.

“I found I could eat a bit and feel satiated because it’s so nutrient rich,” Kristen remembers. “I always say the raw chocolate is what saved my life. It was the domino that fell, then I started to change the rest of our diet accordingly.”

For someone who did a degree in business law, moved into banking recruitment, then made and sold raw chocolate and did a stint as a Thermomix rep, Kristen admits she took a roundabout way of getting to her dream job.

But now, her business — running healthy cooking, fermentation and wholefood dessert classes, as well as writing ebooks — has grown so much she is about to move out of her home office and into the funky new Feld & Co space in Booragoon.

And it’s not just her professional life that has been transformed. Before this latest incarnation, Kristen “was about 30kg heavier and depressed”.

“I had no energy at all and I had a very short fuse with my kids,” she says candidly, in the sunny backyard of her home in leafy Palmyra.

“My kids were absolute animals because I was so stressed and unhappy. We were always sick. I didn’t sleep. I was a completely different person. Now, my whole perspective has changed, my energy levels are through the roof, I feel like I have a lot of vitality and my kids are never sick any more ... It’s been really life changing for us. I’m very grateful.”

It’s little wonder, then, that Kristen now has a zeal for helping others along the same path. But while the change was dramatic, the transformation was gradual and she says it was having her children, Cruze, 7, and five-year-old Hugo, that was really the catalyst.

When she was pregnant with Cruze, she decided to eliminate chemicals around the home, swapping bleach, make-up, toothpaste and shampoo and various other items for low-toxin alternatives. She then began weeding out foods that contained artificial colours, preservatives and additives and replacing them with “whole foods”.

“I had always wanted to be a chef, it was a passion of mine since I was little, I loved to cook,” Kristen says. “But I thought I had to go to university and get a degree, so I got a business law degree and then never worked a day in that field. I worked in recruiting but I decided when I finished up there (to go on maternity leave) that was it for me because I never loved it, it was just a job.

“Until I had my kids, I was never brave enough to follow my heart. But when I started living more through my heart with them, I got the courage to pursue what I was really passionate about.”

It started small, with friends and family asking if they could buy the raw chocolates Kristen was making.

Then she started a small business, Healthful Treats, wholesaling them to cafes and shops around Fremantle.

In-between, she was selling Thermomix machines and when she did demonstrations, the avid “people person” realised how much she had missed those interactions while home raising her boys.

So Kristen decided to say yes to requests to teach people how to make her healthy desserts and other treats. It started with half-a-dozen students in a church hall, with her husband Pedro assisting. Today, she has two or three staff who help her teach up to 40 people at a time, at public classes, events and for corporate groups. “It is a much more polished product now than when I started,” Kristen laughs.

“But I had a class on Sunday and there were ladies there who came to my first ever class, coming along just to get different recipes. My classes are about education, not just about how to make food. I talk about why we are using cacao, what it is good for. I use essential oils in my cooking and I teach people why. We can get overwhelmed with so much information, so if you don’t explain why to people, they’re not going to bother.”

Kristen does her own research but is the first to admit she is not a professional, so she has a network of health workers she uses to provide the scientific side of the story.

Kristen’s family now eats whole grains, lots of vegetables and fruit and a small amount of sustainably farmed meat or fish. The boys have dairy and gluten but Kristen abstains (her body doesn’t cope well with either).

Husband Pedro, who Kristen describes as her “rock”, is her biggest support. He’s been printing out her recipes for years, helping at her classes and looking after the kids while she works. Luckily, he is a true believer, fully committed to clean eating.

“We are all very much on board, although the kids don’t really have a choice and they do get jealous of their friends’ chips or whatever sometimes,” Kristen says. “When they were little I was like ‘No way, you’re not having that’, but now I have to let them have treats, and not my treats but the proper sugary rubbish. Otherwise they’d go to a birthday party and just stand at the sweets table and gorge themselves, whereas now they have a few things and then go off and play.

“But they also know that if they eat something that is not good for them, they will feel sick. They will say to me ‘Mum, I shouldn’t have eaten that’.”

Kristen’s biggest push at the moment — “it’s something I think everyone should do” — is fermentation. An idea once on the fringe, it is now a growing part of Kristen’s business (she runs classes and is about to publish an ebook) as the science on gut health grows and people become more knowledgeable about the importance of their microbiome.

“If you put diesel in an unleaded car, it can’t function on that incorrect fuel. It’s the same with our bodies,” she says. “Our gut is our second brain and if our gut is not healthy, we are not getting the right nutrients in. Gut health, for me, has been an absolute game changer. Fermentation is a big one because it is so important to have our gut healthy and it is so easy and so cheap to make ferments, it’s a real passion of mine.

“I teach people to make kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, milk kefir, and then how to integrate those into their food, plus how to look after your cultures, because if they are neglected, they die.”

Fermentation, along with her healthy dessert classes, are a good “toe in the water” for people contemplating making changes to their diets. After all, it is not feasible for most of us to completely change our habits overnight.

“I started with toxins in the home and then went to food but some people start with food and go the other way,” Kristen says. “Either way, you have to do it gradually or you will get overwhelmed ... I think I’m empowering people to make better decisions just by showing them how easy it is. Just try it.”

See kristenpavez.com