Join John Adams Mon and Wed nights 7:30 EST for Live Webcasts!
And check out Five Reasons why you should attend a FREE AFA Seminar!


Share This Page

View Active Topics       View Your Posts       Latest 100 Topics       Elegance Theme       Prosilver Theme

Benefits of a raw food diet? Any risks?

Discuss health, wellness, fitness, nutrition and food.
Post Reply
User avatar
Winston
Site Admin
Posts: 38441
Joined: August 18th, 2007, 6:16 am
Contact:

Benefits of a raw food diet? Any risks?

Post by Winston »

http://www.happycow.net/raw/raw_living.html

Raw Food Diet & Nutrition * Living Food

What is it?

Plants-based foods in their original, un-heated (uncooked) state are considered raw and alive. Raw food may include fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, grains and legumes in sprouted form, seaweed, microalgae (such as spirulina and chlorella, etc.), and fresh juices. These live foods (living foods) contain a wide range of vital life force nutrients (ie. vitamins, minerals, amino acids, oxygen) and live enzymes. Their nutritional properties are essential to the proper maintenance of human bodily functions.

Who are the "Raw-foodists"?

"Raw-foodists" (also called "Rawists") are those who thrive on live food energy. Raw foodists consume a diet of mostly un-cooked whole plant foods, usually at least 75%, though some say 100% is the only true path. Some contemporary famous raw foodists include raw chef Juliano, actress Demi Moore, and raw food book author, David Wolfe.

Raw food enthusiasts proudly proclaim their break from an "addiction" to cooked and processed foods. They tell us that incorporating a few uncooked meals each week is a good start that will bring immediate changes to the body to feeling better and having more energy. Even if you have a busy schedule, you can still find easy to prepare whole and rawfood recipes at your local health foods stores and natural food markets. For anyone interested in making the jump to a 100% fully raw food diet, it is recommended that you take time to research the various foods that you can eat in their raw state, understand their unique qualities, and spend time learning with teachers and nutritionists. Going raw is a learning experience that requires patience and listening to the body's needs. Over time, a live food diet may help a person achieve a more sensitive body system, and the body will be more sensitive to what it wants that's good for it (as opposed to one's ego/mind). Many 100% raw-foodists claim to experience increased energy, deeper states of meditation, and a long and healthy life.

Why go Raw?

The benefits of going raw-vegan are boundless. Rawfoods are easy to digest, and they provide the maximum amount of energy with minimal bodily effort. Studies have shown that living foods have healing powers that can alleviate many illnesses such as low energy, allergies, digestive disorders, weak immune system, high cholesterol, candida, obesity and weight problems (weight normalization), etc.. Research and real life experiences have also shown that a person can prevent the body's healthy cells from turning into malignant cancerous cells by consuming mostly a raw food diet that includes whole organic foods!

What's wrong with cooked foods?

Heat changes the makeup of food. Foods that have been heated have lost all of their life force, and their beneficial enzymes are destroyed. The digestive system has to work harder and longer to process

cooked foods to get nutrition and energy from it. Once cooked, food can lose up to 85 percent of its nutritional value. Raw foodists call that "dead food." Since we are essentially what we eat, consuming the dead energy of dead foods make our bodies feel heavy and stagnant.

Try eating a raw food diet and see if you can tell the difference! Maybe incorporate sprouts in your meals or salads to add fresh and vital nutrients to your raw diet.

The sprouting process brings out many live enzymes and nutrients in the germinated seeds, legumes, and grains which in turn makes them easy to digest. Sprouts are living foods that are full of pure vitamins and minerals, rich in chlorophyll, and a great source of plant protein.
Check out my FUN video clips in Russia and SE Asia and Female Encounters of the Foreign Kind video series and Full Russia Trip Videos!

Join my Dating Site to meet thousands of legit foreign girls at low cost!

"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne
KristineTheStrawberryGirl
Freshman Poster
Posts: 140
Joined: September 21st, 2007, 12:32 am
Location: Nor-Cal

Post by KristineTheStrawberryGirl »

Raw food and macrobiotic concepts are very healthy. It is unlikely that it would be practical or even good for a person to follow such diets 100% of the time, but to incorporate the ideas can be very good. Americans tend to go too far with extremes in dieting concepts, and it's good to understand that you can pick good advice out of these dieting ideas, without making a religion out of them.

One thing to also remember is that your well-being is also an important part of health, and having foods you enjoy, as least SOMETIMES is part of your well being.

Moderation is the key. In fact, I think coffee, wine, red meat, salt and even lard, ice cream or butter can be just fine of you don't over do it. I used to get together with my Mother's side of the family, about once a month at a Serbian restaurant, and lard is used for allot of the recipes, yet we are not fat people, and Serbs are not fat despite the fact they still use lard in allot of the cooking. Russians also eat allot of bread, sour cream, butter, sunflower oils, meat, potatoes/root vegetables, vodka/cognac and foods thought to be fattening, yet in Russia the young people manage to stay thin.

For people losing weight, it is nice to mix it up a little and add these raw foods to your diet, but keeping a calorie journal is still essential. Being overweight is a pre-diabetic condition, which means your body treats carbs/sugar differently than people at a healthy weight (important concept to understand for any weight loss strategy). I think the fastest way to lose weight, if one is overweight is to eat the types of foods recommended to diabetics, keep a calorie journal, and try to walk as much as possible, then eventually incorporate some strength training and more vigorous aerobic activity.

Going back to the raw foods ...What's kind of funny is that raw food "recipes" are 100 times more complicated than traditional cooking of "non-raw" type of foods.

Whole foods has some really nice pre-made raw food items. This past lent, I had something called "tun-nut wheels" which was 100% vegan and raw, but surprisingly great tasting. It was hella expensive, but when I read how it's made, it would be even more expensive to buy all the ingredients needed to make it yourself. Hence, we buy it on special occasion. [/i]
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
User avatar
Winston
Site Admin
Posts: 38441
Joined: August 18th, 2007, 6:16 am
Contact:

Post by Winston »

One of my cousins took me to this raw foods restaurant in LA. It looked very trendy and was very expensive and the waitstaff claimed they served the best food in the world. It was delicious, but the portions were so small that I thought I ate a lot but felt like I had eaten nothing. When I got back to where I was staying, I pigged out on some heart instant noodles and eggs.

Their sandwiches were served with some flaxseed thing that had the texture of crackers, rather than bread. It was weird. Interesting, but left me hungry and unsatisfied afterward. I can't imagine how anyone could eat that stuff everyday.
Check out my FUN video clips in Russia and SE Asia and Female Encounters of the Foreign Kind video series and Full Russia Trip Videos!

Join my Dating Site to meet thousands of legit foreign girls at low cost!

"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne
User avatar
Winston
Site Admin
Posts: 38441
Joined: August 18th, 2007, 6:16 am
Contact:

Post by Winston »

A guy on my paranormal list, who seems to be an expert (doc) in almost every subject, had this to say about my questions about raw foods:
"Well, in the US right now eating raw tomatoes is a good way to
get salmonella. Eating raw food increases your risk of picking
up intestinal parasites and bacterial infections.

"Life force nutrients" is redundant: a "nutrient" is, by definition,
something which supports life.

All vegetarian diets lack sufficient quantities of certain nutrients
which are primarily found in meat and other animal products -- vitamin
B12, for example. Vegans often need to to take B12 supplements, or
eat vegetable products fortified with this vitamin.

There are some good arguments for eating raw foods, but some of his
conclusions regarding cooked foods are erroneous. For example, cooking
vegetables in water does leach out some nutrients into the cooking water,
but if the vegetables are served with the juice, then you still get all
of the nutrients.

And contrary to the idea that raw foods are "easier to digest," many
foods are in fact more difficult, or even impossible for some people
to digest without being cooked first. If you want to test that, try
munching out on a couple of raw potatoes sometime. Or try getting
down a handful of raw cranberries.

Also, some foods contain toxins which are denatured by heat. Potatoes
contain the toxin solanine; this toxin is destroyed by cooking. If
you eat raw potatoes which have places with a greenish tinge, it's a
fair bet that you will become really ill. Rhubarb contains high levels
of oxalic acid -- also a toxin, but this is destroyed by cooking.

OTOH, some things are probably better raw than cooked, provided you
wash them really well before eating: carrots, celery, and apples
come to mind.

The bottom line is: human beings evolved to be omnivores. To stay
healthy we need to eat a /varied/ and /balanced/ diet. Any diet which
advises you to eat only /one/ kind of food is probably not the healthiest
diet.

I have nothing against raw food -- it can be good for you if kept
in proper perspective.

Dr H"
Last edited by Winston on February 14th, 2012, 1:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Check out my FUN video clips in Russia and SE Asia and Female Encounters of the Foreign Kind video series and Full Russia Trip Videos!

Join my Dating Site to meet thousands of legit foreign girls at low cost!

"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne
Enishi
Freshman Poster
Posts: 345
Joined: September 3rd, 2007, 11:24 am

Post by Enishi »

I no longer have the book, so I'm not sure if this is accurate, but in a book on traditional chinese medicine I read, cooked food is considered good because your body doesn't have to expend as much energy heating the food up. Cold stuff should generally be avoided. In addition, cooking helps release the nutrients in certain types of food. It shouldn't be overcooked, mind you, overall there's nothing wrong with a mixture of raw and cooked foods.

Cooking is an invention we can up with which improves our meals, a creation of our greater intelligence. Sometimes this whole emphasis on being "natural" goes overboard. Personally, I roll my eyes at arguments which state we shouldn't drink milk because were the only animals which do it after being weaned. Um, yeah, whatever. The important thing is to do what works.
User avatar
Winston
Site Admin
Posts: 38441
Joined: August 18th, 2007, 6:16 am
Contact:

Post by Winston »

Check out this video about how raw food diets have reversed incurable illnesses. Do you believe these claims?

http://www.vimeo.com/18267272
Check out my FUN video clips in Russia and SE Asia and Female Encounters of the Foreign Kind video series and Full Russia Trip Videos!

Join my Dating Site to meet thousands of legit foreign girls at low cost!

"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne
momopi
Elite Upper Class Poster
Posts: 4898
Joined: August 31st, 2007, 9:44 pm
Location: Orange County, California

Post by momopi »

A vegetable loses nutrients as soon as you pluck it from the ground. Any processing steps such as washing, cutting, cooking, etc. destroys nutrients. But realistically, who's going to pull a carrot from the ground and eat it with the dirt on?

The most well known "raw food" restaurant with the local Vietnamese community here is probably Au Lac in Fountain Valley. They used to have a much larger "raw food" section, but I think due to lack of diners ordering it, the menu has since then changed to reduce the number of raw food offerings. However, at least I can say that they serve more veggies than fake meats:
http://www.aulac.com/

There's another restaurant in Costa Mesa called 118 Degrees. They "under cook" their foods to preserve the nutrients, and has some raw offerings:
http://118degrees.com/

They also have a cook book avail if anyone wants to order it. If you'd prefer something that looks more "normal", try the cook book from Native Foods instead:



Are there risks to eating raw foods? Ever tried to eat a raw olive from the tree? hehehe


Image
Post Reply
  • Similar Topics
    Replies
    Views
    Last post

Return to “Health, Fitness, Nutrition, Food”