Raw food diet

Ask these guys:
http://altmedicine.about.com/od/popularhealthdiets/a/Raw_Food.htm

The aim of this article is simply to explain what proponents of the diet believe, as Ardicius says, it also reports some of what it's critics believe. It makes no attempt to explain the rationale behind the diet apart from the following statement:

Heating food above 116 degrees F is believed to destroy enzymes in food that can assist in the digestion and absorption of food. Cooking is also thought to diminish the nutritional value and "life force" of food.
Which it provides no justification for. Is this the raw diet's manefesto?

No one has answered my question yet.

.

Its a fad.

going veggie is valid but going raw
is a fad- would you have gone raw
without knowing about it first ?

I say go raw if you fancy it but at
some point the response of your body
will tell you if its for you.

Wild venison, berries and a turnip for Winston.

Don't forget the MUSHROOMS. ;)

Is this just raw veg? You don't include sashimi and steak tartare in this diet?

Can you include raw steak and raw fish in this?

Already asked, nobody answered.

There are both omnivorous and vegan raw foodists. I've only known vegan raw foodists. I'm sure that there must be vegetarian raw foodists, too.

I suspect that some people might argue that 'raw' meat isn't 'raw' in the same sense as raw fruit and vegetables, but you get all sorts of opinions.

The main thrust of raw foodism is against heating food. I have no idea if there is a scientific justification/explanation of the alleged benefits. I must admit that it's never interested me that much.

Don't forget the MUSHROOMS. ;)

Essential.

Hunter-Gatherers do it outside.

What about food heated by the sun? Do you have to make sure your veg and salad items stay in a cool dark place? I remember leaving a bag of groceries on the back seat of a car in Pakistan and they were pretty cooked when I returned. I suppose a lot of people following raw veg diet probably don't drive...

working yourself up to a gallon of milk?

fuck me...

I thought I had low aspirations.

Ha!

Whilst not a raw food diet, a friend once went on a no freezing or microwaving diet. No idea about the benefits.

you wouldn't have to freeze or microwave anything.

Cooking it is better for you:

I had one of these once, never was I so content and repulsed at the same time. Fried mars bars are an odd sensation, they also lose their angular shape and begin to look like a turd in batter....

Oh dear, someone has been Rippetoe'd!

Do you want to be strong or just "big"?

Strong. I find everything to do with bodybuilding deeply offensive. Got majorly into weightlifting last year but made little progress in lifts despite hitting a bare minimum of 4000kcal a day.

The easiest way I can see to increase calories/weight is the milk.

Anyone eaten at SAFs?
they do cook the food but only to 48 deg

Im assuming you were doing some training as well. not just sitting on the sofa drinking milk.

hang about, pasturised milk is probably out for the raw foodies as well. or does it not count if it got cooked but is now cold. can I order pizza then eat it the next day. basically.

By drinking 4.5 litres? That's going to be giving you way too much fat for your needs, surely.

No chance, I was gonna add olive oil or cream into it aswell.

Im too much of a pussy to do 2 gallons which is what many people do.

Im assuming you were doing some training as well. not just sitting on the sofa drinking milk.

hang about, pasturised milk is probably out for the raw foodies as well. or does it not count if it got cooked but is now cold. can I order pizza then eat it the next day. basically.

Most raw foodies are the kind of people who would consider milk to be poison. Food Fad's like it are started by layman hypothesist's basing it on strange assumptions about evolution.

Raw milk has many benefits over pasteurised but is extremely hard to get in the UK.

There are other fads out there, like the paleo diet and pure carnivore diet. All similar fads based on a few ropey facts and a lot of assumptions. Humans like many other mammals we live near (like rats) are omnivores. People need to get over it.

Processing & cooking food makes it easier to digest. Eat grains/carbs makes it easy for us to fuel ourselves. This is why we are living 80-100years now commonly. And growing taller & stronger too. Food 'faddists' assume all carbs are a route to diabetes and that everyone is allergic to gluten.

Why would you want to eat like people did when they died at <35 ?

Raw food combined with vegetarianism is even worse and is begging to become malnourished and ill. Youd have to devote all your time to getting maintenance calories and enough macronutrients to avoid disease.

The black death across europe struck at time when bad weather had caused grain crops to fail a couple seasons in a row. People were underfed which left them susceptible to disease. So they all fucking died.

I think a large part of the reason people eat raw is to do with supposed health benefits -it's claimed a lot of good enzymes get killed off in the cooking process. But I'm guessing that at an equal preportion at least is lifestyle choice - ie not cooking becomes tied up with a blanket distate for all things modern and 'unnatural'.

Processing & cooking food makes it easier to digest. Eat grains/carbs makes it easy for us to fuel ourselves. This is why we are living 80-100years now commonly.

Why would you want to eat like people did when they died at <35 ?

The black death across europe struck at time when bad weather had caused grain crops to fail a couple seasons in a row. People were underfed which left them susceptible to disease. So they all fucking died.

Did they die <35 because of lack of food in general (black death bit) or because they weren't eating processed food?

I propose (as I mentioned earlier) that people died young because of starvation, injury, poor shelter and they were without doctors and medicine....eating bread and pasta is not what's making us live longer it's abundant food (of whatever kind), access to decent housing and the fact that we now survive everyday illnesses that used to kill us such as Influenza and Dioarrhea...

....If anything we're becoming genetically weaker as a species as we rely on medicine to keep us going when previously susceptible or weaker specimens of the human race would've died off....so if some kind of apocalypse / major disaster where there was no access to readily available food, shelter and medical care were to occur, we'd probably die younger than back in the good old days.

A simple example for you.

When you are ill with a bad fever/flu. It feels magic to drink lucozade. It gets you feeling better faster than anything else. Your body has no energy to digest food as it is using so much resources to fight the virus.

When people are ill in hospital they are often hooked up to a drip containing dextrose.

When you are weak and ill you need energy and ideally in the simplest form (sugar). You do need complicated medical treatment for this.

Also being well fed in the first place reduces significantly your chance of getting ill in the first place. Eating well provides basic energy aswell as protein, vitamins & minerals. You do not even need a varied diet if you eat enough of what you have. Such as bread, cheese and meat which europeans wouldve had.

But when you have both limited volume in a diet combined with limited variety of food types. You are fucked in both energy and macronutrients. making you very very susceptible to disease.

the benefit cooking or not cooking depends on the food. Because it has been found that our body absorbs more of compond X from food Y when raw, does not mean all raw food is better for you.

Just as some veg has been shown to provide more of a particular vitamin when eaten raw, so has the converse been shown that some veg provides more of a vitamin when cooked. Of course no one knows the variation of all vitamins/enzymes etc etc. of On top of that is whether it matters at all.

I remember ben goldacre mention he read an article advising we eat some particular leaf because it has oxygen giving qualities. He pointed out the obvious that it only produces oxygen in sunlight, which is clearly lacking in your large intestine.

I think you'll find the sun shines out of my arse so there is plenty of light up there.

i chose to try it (on a temporary basis) because my digestion was fucked - every time i ate a meal my stomach blew up like a football and was extremely painful. over christmas i screwed the balance in my stomach, so i decided to try and re-address it without the use of any medications. anyway, it turns out a pure raw food diet isn't for me - not even just for 3 days - but i have found that eating mostly raw food with a little bit of homemeade, simple cooked food has started to sort it out and i don't feel i've been inflated after i eat. i am still avoiding certain food groups, and am actually surprised that i seem to have more energy than normal.

^^ that sounds reasonable. versus a bad diet the raw food diet would be preferable as it'd limit you to a lot of veg and the like.

my girlfriend eats a raw food diet. Its amazing. I kinda eat it by proxy. Someone said earlier on that these diets are a load of crock as the 'body cleanses itself' - foolish thing to say....yes it does, but do you realise how awfully poisonous 'everyday food' is. It shameful how much toxic shit goes into food.

She eats vegan with about 60% of her daily food raw, if she eats a bit of fish or something she's not supposed to, she'll get a headache about 30 mins later like clock work. I think her insides are probably shiney. However when she returned home to Finland over christmas she ate some salmon that her uncle caught from their lake and she was fine.

It's interested me so much lately, i really believe that, maybe not 100%, but a good portion of food should be eaten raw (some even tastes better IMO - cabbage, prime example) as it's so good and natural for the body. The other thing to note is that, since eating raw/vegan, she eats probably twice as much food as me and is losing weight.....i think her motabloism has rocketed!

So she's made herself so weak and ill on her raw food diet that a little bit of fish makes her ill?
The rest of us can eat loads of the stuff with no ill effects.
ergo: cooked food is better than raw food.

btw, I get all my scientific knowledge off pamphlets and cereal boxes.

i think its more like her body notices toxins so much more than mine. Its not weak, its clean.

You know, drink lots of alcohol/coffee etc you dont feel the effects. she has more energy than me, her skin is great, she's hardly tired, she can smell and taste more than i can.

Also, no ill effects - i'm pretty sure you're a walking bag of: cancers, circulatory problems, digestive issues, mild-to-severe IBS, fatigue, lack-o-concentration, confusion, headaches, flu, acne, depression etc etc etc etc........just like everyone else who consumes the vast amount of shit we as humans in 2010 do.

Raw food combined with vegetarianism is even worse and is begging to become malnourished and ill. Youd have to devote all your time to getting maintenance calories and enough macronutrients to avoid disease.

Just read this - absolute nonsense! Do some research about what nutrients we need and you'll figure out that there are probably more of them found naturally in foods that Johnny UK can't buy in Tesco - foods that people only associate with 'faddy diets' or 'vegan/hippies'.

Tesco = food provider of the nation = nation full of cunts!