Raw food diet

I remember watching this programme "Health food junkies" on channel 4. A doc on people who follow raw food diet, a bunch of complete twats (who probably live in stoke newington or some variant thereof). One of them even starts talking about some pendant he has which quantum mechically makes a field which protects him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTecK6odDoc

she has a tea pot in the background!

she must beable to shit though the eye of a needle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0dMxwoT5U0&NR=1

He has a vortex pendant "the level on which they work is on quantum physics, so it's pretty sophisticated so I wont get into it here"

He's got on on his phone, on the fridge, round his neck..

The woman has a water de-ioniser, all her water is de-ionised. Now I work in a university chemistry dept. and we use de-ionised water in our experiments. It's widely advised that it's not for consumption. I don't know the details, and I'm sure it wont do much harm, but she's been sold it on the terms that it's good for her. Highly questionable?

Meat as an energy source?

Although some glycogen remains within flesh, meat in the diet is primarily eaten for it's protein content, protein has exactly the same calorie content as carbohydrate at 4 / grm. Protein can be metabolised into immediate energy but generally only makes up 10% of energy used by humans. most of the protein you consume will go towards maintenance and growth of body tissues not providing energy. Meat can also be difficult to digest and varies wildly depending on the animal, cut and cooking methods. Protein that we eat is useless as is and has to be converted to amino acids which then build new proteins and enzymes.

Fat has the highest calorie count at 9 / grm not only that but body fat does not require water to be stored in the body so body fat produces five times more energy than the same amount of body glycogen. Fat is converted to triglycerides which are laid down as body fat but can also be used immediately as energy, see below.

The Human body generally uses energy sources from the different food groups in this order:

Carbohydrate converted to glycogen.
If no glycogen is available then body fat
If no glycogen or body fat is available then the proteins in your muscles will be converted to energy (starvation)

It is true that you can live without carbohydrate and plant material (Innuits?) but this far from "optimal nutrition" and I would guess a continuous heavily restricted diet like this would lead to deficiencies and low life expectancy.

To call someone malnourished is a bit much, very few people are malnourished in the Western world...do you know how much she weighs even? Eating less calories than the body requires is the thinking behind all weight loss diets pretty much .....doen't mean she's ill....it's really not unusual that someone eating a kilo of raw veg or fruit would gain less weight than someone eating a kilo of cooked pasta!

Wheat and rice are not the only sources of plant carbohydrate, there are two types, sugars and starches, sugars are converted to energy immediately and starches more slowly, a good balance of these should be fine and is possible in a raw diet...oats are a particulalry nutritious starchy carbohydrate and can be eaten raw....Muesli!

Anyone on a raw food diet concerned that they are not consuming enough calories could just add few tbsps of cold pressed olive oil to their diet couldn't they?...assuming it's allowed, I haven't checked.

Malnourished may have been interpreted as to strong a word, but the fact remains based on the evidence provided to support this kind of diet a female is reported to be eating "twice" as much as her male (assumed) partner and still loosing weight it indicates that the females diet is very low in calories per bulk grams consumed. This is not indicative of a more rapid metabolism or a more effective diet, this just shows that the human body is not absorbing the maximum nutrition available from the ingested food sources. If the lady in question was previously over weight then the loss of body mass should be congratulated, but if this loss of mass continues passed the established healthy range then I this extreme (un-natural) dietary choice really needs to be assessed by a educated dietician instead of some unqualified new age mung bean munch.
I'm all for a reduction in the amount of over processed food consumed because there is no end to the evidence that the average western human consumes far to higher percentage of saturated fats, salt, and calories. We are living longer and growing taller and stronger because we are better feed. With the increase in life span and the advances in medical science the occurrence and identification of diseases associated with old age such as dementia, type 2 diabetes, cancers of all varieties (in particular digestive, reproductive and respiratory) have increased. The reason there was no real problem with parkinson's diseased 50 years ago is because most sufferers died before their disease was identified where as now modern medicinal science can easily identify and control the problem in the early stages. The same can be said for most cancers, Alzheimer's, most cardio vascular diseases etc.

The guts of it is that all of the sudden (evolutionarily speaking) the majority of the population has the ability to exceed their calorific intake with real no effort. This excess of food has allowed us to develop incredibly rapidly over the last 200 years (techno spike) but we have out paced our own physiological development and are suffering from the consequences of our current diet. Hence the massive rise in obesity, type II diabetes etc. These problems aren't due to E numbers, they are because it is now to easy to eat to much nutritous food and avoid exercise. we are getting fat because for the first time in 100,000+years of evolution we don't need to work for our food, not because some scientist has put a weird chemical in the chickens.

Winston, it seems olive oil is not encouraged

http://www.raw-food-health.net/RawOliveOil.html

...
Just read that article. What a crock of shit. It makes no mention of the essential fatty acids that our bodies require, but cannot produce. The the body needs to obtain them from outside sources (food). Olive oil contains some of these essential fatty acids, therefore consumption in moderation (as with pretty much anything) is "healthy".

They are banging on as if people are going to be downing bottles of the stuff!

Wiganwill
Aspartame, Saccharin, Trans-fats, caffine, MSG, Hydrogonated vegetable fat, taurine, large amounts of salt, the endless list of E numbers.......i've not even scratched the surface of what goes into food production
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NAH/is_4_33/ai_100732356/
http://www.healthyeatingadvisor.com/food-additives.html

poisonous and toxic aren't strong words at all - they're pretty accurate. in my local tesco the other day, 9 different energy drinks on sale that occupied about 70% of the drinks shelf......we are indeed being fed toxins. i'm not trying to be elitist or scare monger or any of that - i'm just defending a pretty good lifestyle choice that i believe we should all adopt.

Not picking on you in particular, but we should probably beware of a false dichotomy between a raw food diet and a typical western diet. Lots of people eat rubbish which includes the stuff you mention. A raw food diet might be better than that, but this doesn't mean that it is necessarily better than a proper diet that will include some cooked stuff.

The latter claim is gonna be hard to prove, because it would need to be shown that eating cooked stuff is actually harmful.

Have you lot read all the stuff by the weston price foundation?

http://www.westonaprice.org/

Bloating can be caused by food poisoning in the form of parasites/bacteria.
(are you having poo problems too?)
Most doctors would recommend a 24hour fast to try and starve them out.

It can also be caused by simple things like lactose intolerance.

well, all was fine. was feeling better. then in a moment of weakness ate bacon and eggs yestersday. bad move. felt really heavy all afternoon. projectile vomited at about 8pm then spent the next 10 hours throwing up and on the loo..... feeling a bit better now, had some sleep and managing to keep gatorade down, but still not right.