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Summary
On episode 339 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Nicholette Richer, who runs The Green Mustache organic cafes across Canada and the Richer Health Retreat Center in British Columbia, where she helps people use food to reverse chronic disease.
Nicholette argues that most people think they eat healthy until you look in their kitchen. Her position: real healing starts with turning back to whole, unprocessed food and follows a specific sequence, correcting nutrient deficiencies, supporting detoxification, adding juicing, and building in real rest.
The conversation covers the Gerson Therapy protocol she trained in and modified into a five-week program, a slow-cooking method she calls long and low that preserves nutrients and eases digestion, a permission-based approach to goal setting, and the science behind coffee enemas as a liver-support tool.
Links
- https://richerhealth.ca
- https://greenmoustache.com
- https://richerhealthretreatcenter.com
Key Takeaways
- Real, whole food is the foundation of healing. Nicholette's first rule is to eat only food that comes from a seed, tree, bush, garden, or ground with no manufacturing step beyond your own kitchen, because processed and refined foods, even ones marketed as organic or gluten-free, don't meet that bar.
- Nutritional deficiencies need to be corrected with targeted, function-specific supplements. Decades of depleted soil and processed eating have left most people short on basics like digestive acids or iodine, so supplementation should support organs the body already has rather than flood it with extras.
- Switching to real food triggers a detox response that needs support. As the body absorbs cleaner nutrition, it starts flushing stored toxins into the bloodstream, and most people's detox organs aren't strong enough to handle that flood without help.
- Juicing delivers concentrated nutrients without replacing whole food. Nicholette compares juice to an IV drip of nutrients, valuable for people racing against a health deadline, but she explicitly does not recommend juice-only cleanses since fiber and whole food still matter.
- The Gerson Therapy has a documented clinical history. Dr. Max Gerson developed it in the early 1900s to treat his own migraines, and it was later validated in a 450-patient tuberculosis trial before becoming known as a cancer protocol.
- The long and low cooking method preserves nutrients and eases digestion. Cooking vegetables slowly in their own liquid, instead of boiling them, keeps nutrients that would otherwise be poured down the drain and makes food gentler on a damaged digestive system, similar to how you'd feed a baby.
- Permission-based goal setting uncovers what's really blocking change. Before people can commit to a protocol, Nicholette has them explicitly give themselves permission for the specific steps involved, buying a juicer, saying no to social obligations, spending money on better cookware.
- Naming the trade-offs of getting well can be as important as the goal itself. One client realized healing meant returning to work and confronting her life purpose, a bigger fear than her illness, showing that unspoken downsides to wellness can quietly sabotage progress.
- Coffee enemas are a liver-support tool, not a colon cleanse. Taken correctly, they stimulate bile production and help the liver process the toxin load released by dietary change, which is different from a high colonic and is the one practice Nicholette's clients tend to keep for life.
“I could write the word healthy on arsenic and give it to you. And that doesn't mean it is.”
Nicholette Richer