David Wolfe's career is on fire.

The 37-year-old nutrition expert feeds and coaches health-conscious actors Salma Hayek and Edward Norton, musicians Seal and Lou Reed, clothing designer Donna Karan and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

But while Wolfe is undoubtedly hot, his meals are not. He's a leading guru of the flourishing raw-food movement, a dietary practice in which food is eaten uncooked to preserve its vitamins and amino acids. A raw-food diet consists only of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, seaweed, wheatgrass, herbs and superfoods like bee pollen, algaes, maca and Goji berries.

Wolfe has written several books on raw food. He runs Sunfood Nutrition, a retailer of exotic raw and organic foods, books, juicers and beauty products. And he leads seminars and retreats on the raw lifestyle all over the world.

But Wolfe wasn't always a health nut. "I grew up on a standard American diet. I ate everything," says the son of two physicians. But in college he discovered he had a dairy allergy, and began reading about nutrition. "One thing led to another and next thing I knew, I'm eating raw food."

That was in 1995. Now he starts every day with a superfood smoothie. 

"I use maple water or coconut water or fruit juice as the base, with cacao to make it chocolatey. I'm a real fan of honey. I'll put in a green superfood like spirulina or marine phytoplankton."

And, um, how does it taste?

"It's intense!" he says.

He eats only raw food, but says a diet that's 80% raw is more doable, and has the same health benefits, including flexibility and energy. "I'm not an athlete. I'm not even a weekend athlete. I don't go to yoga classes — I always skip 'em!" he confesses. "But my health has never been better than it is right now."

Wolfe says a raw diet is healthier for the earth, too, as it reduces air pollution. "The number one way we affect the environment is by burning things," he says. So an idle stovetop makes for a cleaner atmosphere.

When Wolfe first went raw, there were only two raw-food restaurants in America. Now there are 218 throughout the world. His favorite is Pure Food and Wine in New York City. "They make this gourmet coconut ice cream," says Wolfe, who sometimes orders the dessert as his first course. "I like sweet stuff. I like very, very tasty, rich food."

He also loves Rawvolution in Venice, Calif. "It's kind of a deli," he says, "and it has this '60s, Jim Morrison-style energy about it. "

Wolfe's passion isn't just about eating raw foods; it's about growing them, too.

"It's the agricultural research side of things that really gets me going right now," he says. At his farm in Ontario, Canada, he's experimenting with nontraditional ways to grow Goji berries and ginseng. "We're using sound to help the plants grow," he says. "We play symphony music with cricket sounds in it, some world music and certain Beatles stuff. It helps the plants absorb nutrients."

Over the last several years, Wolfe has helped plant more than 100,000 trees worldwide through his nonprofit Fruit Tree Planting Foundation. The organization was inspired by his experience planting trees on his uncle's San Diego ranch as a boy.

"I can go back to my uncle's house today, 30 years later, and I can still eat the fruit off those trees," he says. "My connection with those trees is one of the most profound spiritual connections I have with anything today."

David Wolfe's top 3 suggestions for changing your diet:

1. Go organic.

2. Eat as much raw food as you can. Just start adding into your diet all the things you love that are raw and organic. If you don't like lettuce, no problem, eat parsley. If you don't like parsley, great, eat kale.

3. Use your intuition to guide you. We have a food instinct that tells us when we need something. It's the same way any animal in the wild is able to select a perfect diet for itself. Most of the time you'll be led to the right foods for you at that moment.