30 Days Raw (Blog)

[Natsu]

What an amazing fruit buffet you got there... I would have problems finding all the stuff Steve is using. I'll have to solve some logistic nuisances before trying raw.

[PrimaryErn]

What about raw non-fruit/veggie protein? I realize Steve probably won't be trying this anytime soon.

I went vegetarian for a bit, then vegan, and during both noticed that there were times I had intense meat cravings, but for raw not cooked meat. Generally the easiest way to get that was raw fish (for obvious reasons, not just taste). But on a few occasions I had a little chopped steak when I felt I needed it. And I didn't need it that often - maybe once a week or so.

It would appear that many of the animals that have a 100% one type diet really don't. Dogs and Wolves eat meat, but Dogs eat grass when they sense low trace elements or poor health. And we've already discussed primates eating bugs and such. It appears many animals generally have their diet, but then deviate when they need something specific.

I suppose the question would be, if I was eating raw or vegan, how would it get disrupted if ocassionally the body said "eat animals now please".

Has anybody had any experience with this?

Another question is the monotony. A lot of diets fail because a key component is variety and boredom factors. I know Steve will discuss this, but I hope everyone is honest about it (i.e. "i am NOT bored with this diet because admitting so indicates a weakness with the diet, and its perfect!"). Forcing yourself to eat a diet that bores you isn't a good way to live, either. Animals don't get bored with a diet - even primates don't - but humans do. If our proto-ancestor ate a diet of 90% banana's with the occasional other piece of fruit, that would be a pretty bleak way to live as a sentient human, unless you somehow conditioned yourself to not view eating as a pleasure any longer, which I know some folks (hard core spiritual types) do. That's not to say that the raw diet Steve is doing is a two-ingredient diet...but to deny oneself the wide variety of experience of eating seems....well, doable, but sort of sad.

Anyway, just looking for thoughts.

[Roger Haeske]

Firstly there is tremendous variety possible in a raw food diet. I know someone who eats at least 200 kinds of fruits per year.

In terms of actually availability there many thousands of varieties of fruits and vegetables. What we can get in the stores is different. But once you know where to look, you'll start finding much more variety than you would have initially guessed. Plus you can mail order stuff you can't get directly in your own area.

But monotony really isn't an issue when you love what you eat. Personally, my diet is virtually the same day after day, and week after week all year round.

My staple is bananas. I make green smoothies every day. I make salads every day. Some days I have some avocado and many other days I have no fatty foods.

But I love the way I eat and never get bored of it. I also will eat other fruits as they are in season but basically I eat the same foods day after day. And I almost always eat the same quantity of bananas daily.

Do you see any horses or any wild animals complaining about their lack of variety in their diets? I suppose just eating grass can get kind of boring.

Well I know they can't talk. But nature has provided them with what they need in most cases.I don't think they get bored with what they eat. And you won't get bored once you rid yourself of the addiction to cooked food.

The problem is most people are cooked food addicts. The variety your looking for is a drug response. This need for variety and stimulation would never have happened to you if you were eating 100% raw your whole life.

Eventually you start to develop enhanced or what I call gourmet taste buds.

Once that happens you'll be enjoying plain raw foods without the need for fancy recipes. It's just a different state of mind brought on by eating simply. It's hard to imagine until you start doing it yourself.

But give it time and eventually you're body will change and so will your need for constant stimulation from your foods. Then you'll have developed gourmet taste buds and won't have the need or desire for gourmet foods.

Roger

[Keith]

I was wondering why garlic and onion are excluded from this diet?

Thanks.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Keith

I was wondering why garlic and onion are excluded from this diet?

Many people consider them to be irritants/stimulants. You wouldn't want to make a whole meal out of them. When I eat garlic, my whole body smells of it for at least a day.

Part of the challenge of overcoming cooked food addiction is getting past adding lots of flavoring to foods that you wouldn't normally eat by themselves.

Many raw foodists will use garlic and onions, and they've been some of my favorite foods too. But for this trial I'm going without.

[Jake Birkett]

I was wondering the same thing, so thanks for pre-answering :-) When I go to Aikido I can tell who ate garlic the night before quite easily, and if they had red wine with it too! It's a clear to me as the smokers. Garlic and onions give me a headache anyway (and bad guts) so I'm not keen on them.

Incidentally, my body never says "eat an animal" in like 18 years so I guess it's getting what it needs anyway. I enjoy eating too, but I've realised how much of my pleasure derives from "satisfying a craving" like taking a drug. Also as I eat "simpler" foods I'm able to appreciate their flavours and texture and also just the goodness they are giving me. Plus there's lots more to life than food to be enjoyed ;-)

DRK: thanks for the great article. People always ask the same questions and it's nice to have some more answers (if I can even be bothered). The other classic is "Oh, so you're vegetarian? Well I don't each much meat, no, just a bit of chicken, and fish and red meat every now and then." and I'm like "Fascinating... where's the exit please?".

[PrimaryErn]

'k Roger, thats kinda the response I thought I was going to get.

1st: Animals don't mind monotony because they are animals. They are not humans, with a humans love of variety, ability to appreciate changes and decyphefr patterns. And if you don't think some animals get bored with fodod, own a parrot sometime. Oy vey. I can tell if for certain if I give the cockatoo parrot chow every day with no variety I will have a very sad cockatoo.

The language that people are cooked food 'addicts' is the kind of rhetoric that people complain about when trying to have a rational discussion with hard core lifestylers of any lifestyle. Exactly what am I addicted to? Specific chemicals in cooked food? Variety? I'm addicted to variety?

As for being able to appreciate subtlety in food if I hadn't been raised with variety - yeah, I'm sure thats somewhat true. But you can argue the same thing for an endless number of things. If only I had been allowed to only wear one color, I would appreciate nuances in that one color more. If I was only allowed to read from the Bible for reading material I would appreciate the different Biblical writers styles more acutely. If I was forced to only listen to one style of music, etc etc. That's all true but I'm not sure how it's right, per se, and germain to my question.

Variety - and experiencing same - is a basic building block for forming a wider variety of experience, stimulating different parts of the brain, and helping us to grow. Sure, taking time to focus to learn nuances is important, but I don't know....your response seems to not address my question. I expected a "there may be less variety but its ok - I don't mind, my mind adapted, its worth it!" sort of answer that smacks of "i HAVE to believe this is ok otherwise I'm admitting that a potential negative exists in my viewpoint". For my thinking, anytime someone suggests a new lifestyle and says there are NO negatives, and any perceived "bugs" are "features"...well, those of in the computer world get the analogy. It has that religious overtone, y'know?

Also: one of the prime arguments for raw foodism (I think) is the old chestnut that its closer to the way our ancestors ate, that its more like our genetically evolved primitive diet. Yet a diet of hundreds of different foodstuffs is nothing like what our primitive ancestors ate. An ape in the eurals wouldn't be eating lemons and avocados along with apples and kale - I think. Citrus fruit grow in one place; mangos and papayas someplace else, etc. And the supergreen drink - unless you are preparing it yourself from real greens i don't see the connection. Wouldn't it be more accurate to take a region of the world that the bonobos or chimps or whatever actually live in and just eat what is local to that?

If not - why are you looking for 'variety' from foods elsewhere? (Good natured grin).

Of course the counter to this argument of mine is that not-so-primitive man, even today, often exists on a limited diet. South americans in recent history (hundreds of years) lived on beans and corn almost exclusively - cooked , of course. They got by. I'm sure, however, they enjoyed variety when it was available. I'm sure if nothing was available they made do, as people always do - when they have to. I'm not sure I want my brain to be in a 'make do' mode, if that makes any sense.

This is all my good natured, non-attacking opinion and open search for answers. I'm not even arguing with the health benefits or energy increase that is suggested by the diet at all - I admit those are spot on.

Anyway - I can appreciate the shades of blueberry, and enjoy and be satisfied with small differences in them - but they will never taste like curry, cinnamon, or scotch bonnet, no matter how gourmet my buds get.

[Cat Dancer]

The past few days I've been eating the same: fruit during the day, a salad in the evening, and then the last thing I eat for the day is one handful of peanuts.

Plus I continue to take my fish oil EPA/DHA supplement, which of course is not vegetarian, much less raw food. On the other hand the supplement is only 10 calories, so it may not make much difference one way or another from a dietary point of view.

I haven't been adding anything up so I have no idea if I'm 80/10/10 or what.

I find the diet very convenient. My previous diet (grains like brown rice, stir-fried veggies, tofu etc.) took time to prepare, so like being able to just grab some fruit. And when I go somewhere, I can easily bring fruit with me. With my previous diet I found it harder to go places and either bring food with me or find food that met my diet.

I also find the flavors pleasurable. I had some cherry tomatoes with my salad the past couple of nights, and it felt like the delicious tomato-ness flavor just explodes in my mouth. When I munch on the peanuts at the end of the day, I go "YUM! Nuttiness!" When I ate cherry tomatoes or peanuts on previous diets they were tasty but nothing special.

According to my scale this morning I've lost three pounds this week (130 to 127). If true (I tend to vary by a pound or so day to day, and my bathroom scale isn't all that accurate either), I'd like not to be losing weight so quickly (two pounds a week is the generally recommended maximum sustainable and safe weight loss rate). I'll try being more conscientious about eating as soon as I get hungry and see what happens.

I've noticed an increase in tooth gum sensitivity, I don't know if it's related to the diet or not.

I've taken a couple of naps, but they've been rather different than the kinds of naps I was taking before. On my previous diet, usually after lunch I'd start feeling rather sleepy, and I'd conk out and sleep for a bit. Often I'd have a bit of REM sleep, and awaken feeling more mentally refreshed. The naps I've had in the past couple of days have been later in the day, around dinner time, and I'm not so much sleepy as feeling like I have no physical energy: I could happily lie there forever and just not move. The nap feels more like I'm shutting down, like I "slept like a log" as the saying goes. When I wake up again I have another period of feeling like "oof, I just can't move", like I could just lie there forever, asleep or not. Then after a few minutes my energy level comes back up and I feel alert for the rest of the evening.

[Roger Haeske]

PrimaryErn,

Well I suppose why I don't get bored with eating the same foods all the time is because I'm becoming more like an animal. I'm less human and more animal like and therefore life is simple and eating is simple and enjoyable.

I used to feel much like you and all the others. But that was back when I was a human.

Roger

[bwb]

Yesteray was Day 4 for me. I felt hungry a lot and ate a number of mini-meals throughout the day. Major, major cravings for cooked food, especially grains. I was fantasizing about rice and cereal and peanut butter sandwiches. No physical discomfort or abnormal mental states of note; it was just a regular day. Despite an intuitive feeling that I'm not eating enough calories (maybe because I'm hungry so often), my weight is within 1 pound of where it was when I started. I also checked out the nearest Costco and found only conventionally-grown produce, so disappointing.

[beel]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Many people consider them to be irritants/stimulants. You wouldn't want to make a whole meal out of them. When I eat garlic, my whole body smells of it for at least a day.

This is so true! When I first started eating raw, I loved to make a raw hummus using zucchini (instead of chickpeas), tahini, and lots of garlic. It was delicious and I'd eat it almost daily with raw carrots, celery, or broccoli as a snack. Then one day my boyfriend told me I had to stop because I wreaked of garlic nonstop. I never really smelled it, but he didn't even want to kiss me anymore it was so bad! I never had this problem with cooked garlic though which I used to eat in mass quantities.

[SteveR]

Hi Steve.

You mentioned that eating all that fruit didn't raise your blood glucose, but from what I've read, that is not the true danger.

I'm certainly no expert, but apparently fructose is metabolized directly in the liver, and that too much fructose can screw things up. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is criticized for this reason, and I wonder if eating tons of fruit is harmful also.

Wikipedia says "Excess fructose consumption has been hypothesized to possibly cause insulin resistance, obesity, elevated LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, leading to metabolic syndrome."
Fructose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another source says this: "Because fructose does not produce a high GI, that masks the detrimental health impacts of it. What really matters to our health is not how fast the blood sugar rises but the impact on the liver..."
Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Does Taubes address the glycemic index?

And personally, my intuition says that we're simply not designed to eat that much fruit as a regular diet.

SteveR

[Savage]

There's a big difference between eating an all-raw, high-fruit diet and eating lots of fruit as part of a non-raw, high-fat diet.

I've seen negative items about including fruit as part of the latter but so far not the former. I've read that fat in the bloodstream interferes with sugar metabolism and can cause all sorts of problems, but I haven't seen anything indicating that an all-raw, high-fruit diet would cause blood sugar problems. Fruit actually provides an even, steady burn.

I've been testing my blood sugar from time to time, and there hasn't been a single spike. It's actually been incredibly stable, including after a meal.

Do you have any evidence that an all-raw, high-fruit, low-fat diet causes blood sugar problems? If so, please pass it along. I've found nothing on this so far aside from conjecture.

[SteveR]

Steve,

I'm just saying that maybe there's a danger of using blood sugar measurements to know if the amount of fructose you're eating is OK. Since fructose is metabolized directly in the liver, it appears that fructose would not raise blood sugar, even in excess. But excess fructose may cause other problems, because it overloads the liver. This makes sense to me intuitively, since I don't think we're designed to eat that much fruit, but I have no evidence to back it up. I'm just presenting another perspective.

SteveR

[tekomino]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Do you have any evidence that an all-raw, high-fruit, low-fat diet causes blood sugar problems? If so, please pass it along. I've found nothing on this so far aside from conjecture.

Steve, the fructose causes less of a rise in blood glucose than sugar. Its glycemic index is 32 (where white bread = 100), while table sugar (sucrose) has a GI of 92.

Following is from: Questions and Answers About Fructose
Even though commonly consumed sugars provide basically the same number of calories, they are metabolized and used by the body in different ways. For instance, glucose from dietary sources is digested, absorbed, transported to the liver, and released into the general blood stream. Many tissues take up glucose from the blood to use for energy; this process requires insulin. Fructose is predominantly metabolized in the liver, but unlike glucose it does not require insulin to be used by the body.

Here is from Nancy Appleton, the author of Lick the Sugar Habit (Garden City Park, N.Y.: Avery Publishing Group, 1996). Ms. Appleton writes on page 90 of her book:

Dr. J. Hallfrisch studied cholesterol and triglyceride levels and found that fructose, unfortunately, caused a general increase in both the total serum cholesterol level and the low-density lipoprotein fraction of cholesterol in most subjects. The triglyceride levels also rose significantly, especially in those persons whose blood sugar levels rise higher than normal when they eat sugar. It was concluded that high levels of dietary fructose can produce undesirable changes in blood lipid levels, which are associated with heart disease.

Subsequent studies support these findings. John P. Bantle et al., "Effects of dietary fructose on plasma lipids in healthy subjects," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 72, November 2000, pp. 1128-1134, on-line at Effects of dietary fructose on plasma lipids in healthy subjects -- Bantle et al. 72 (5): 1128 -- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a diet high in fructose produced high fasting, postprandial, and daylong plasma triglyceride levels among men, but strangely not among women.

So it seems you should be watching your cholesterol not your blood sugar levels.

Hope this helps...

[Savage]

If the studies were done on the normal population, the vast majority of subjects will be eating very differently than a raw foodist, including consuming plenty of dietary cholesterol. For starters, cholesterol comes only from animal foods, so a vegan consumes no cholesterol at all. That alone could make the findings completely irrelevant for someone eating a raw diet, not to mention other factors like consumption of caffeine, alcohol, grains, refined sugar, preservatives, etc.

It would be like someone doing a study where 99.9% of the test group consisted of smokers. I wouldn't assume the results applied to me personally, since I'm not a smoker.

[nownow]

Unfortunately fruits have some sucrose and some have very much. A banana, for example, has three times as much glucose/sucrose than fructose. Excessive sugar intake may result in hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) which will make one cranky, foggy headed and always hungry. If the pancreas gives out one day from having to produce too much insulin to reduce blood sugar then you may become diabetic and experience sugar spikes.

[DRK]

Originally Posted by nownow

Unfortunately fruits have some sucrose and some have very much. A banana, for example, has three times as much glucose/sucrose than fructose. Excessive sugar intake may result in hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) which will make one cranky, foggy headed and always hungry. If the pancreas gives out one day from having to produce too much insulin to reduce blood sugar then you may become diabetic and experience sugar spikes.

Actually, there are tons of testimonials of diabetics being able to reduce or eliminate supplemental insulin when following this sort of diet.
The key is the very low amount of fat. Just adding lots of fruit to a high fat diet will wreak havoc with the body, absolutely, because all those sugars get trapped in the bloodstream and the body keeps pumping more insulin to try to deal with them. But when you're not clogged up with fat, that sugar moves in & out of your bloodstream in a matter of minutes, with much less insulin needed. For a detailed explanation, see the 80-10-10 book (or other writings on low fat high fruit diets), but here's a very brief explanation: Fat coats everything. It will coat the sugar in the blood, the insulin, and the receptor sites which the insulin uses to move the sugar out of the blood. This messes up the process, enough so that much of the sugar just gets trapped in the blood. The body continues sensing the sugar in the blood and keeps pumping more insulin (often using adrenaline to push the pancreas to increase insulin production). Eventually, you end up with an excess of insulin which, when enough fat has cleared away, then removes too much sugar. The results of this process include the mood swings, energy level swings, etc., that you mention, and it is indeed very hard on the pancreas.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by PrimaryErn

For my thinking, anytime someone suggests a new lifestyle and says there are NO negatives, and any perceived "bugs" are "features"...well, those of in the computer world get the analogy. It has that religious overtone, y'know?

not only is it religious, it's neo-puritanism. The more punishing and ascetic a diet is, the more virtuous it is.

Also: one of the prime arguments for raw foodism (I think) is the old chestnut that its closer to the way our ancestors ate, that its more like our genetically evolved primitive diet.

this is the direct result of a school system that's too timid to actually teach evolution. Our ancestors ate cooked food. Hominids were cooking food for at least a half-million years before our species evolved and probably closer to two million. By the time the first homo sapiens walked the earth primates had been eating cooked food for longer than modern humans can intellectually conceptualize. Eating raw food is not healthy or natural for our species.

Of course the counter to this argument of mine is that not-so-primitive man, even today, often exists on a limited diet. South americans in recent history (hundreds of years) lived on beans and corn almost exclusively - cooked , of course.

beans, corn and potatoes, actually, almost certainly supplemented with game. Deliberate vegetarianism is pretty rare. Beans and corn are inedible raw and potatoes are poisonous raw.

This is all my good natured, non-attacking opinion and open search for answers. I'm not even arguing with the health benefits or energy increase that is suggested by the diet at all - I admit those are spot on.

I don't admit that. I think any perceived health benefits are psychological and transitory. You will feel ok as long as the B12 stored in your body holds out. Then after that your hair will start falling out and your immune system will crash. Your body can make carbohydrate out of protein but can't manufacture protein. You must eat it. A raw food diet is dangerously low in protein which is what your heart and your brain are made out of. Do the math.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by DRK

Actually, there are tons of testimonials of diabetics being able to reduce or eliminate supplemental insulin when following this sort of diet.

anecdote isn't data. Diabetics probably get better on this diet because it's low calorie and they lose weight--type II diabetics, that is. Type I diabetics would die pretty quickly on an all-fruit diet.

The key is the very low amount of fat. Just adding lots of fruit to a high fat diet will wreak havoc with the body, absolutely, because all those sugars get trapped in the bloodstream and the body keeps pumping more insulin to try to deal with them.

diabetes by definition is a lack of insulin. Your body can't make insulin and so your body can't process glucose, which means your food doesn't feed you. Your body tries to excrete the glucose which eventually destroys your kidneys.

But when you're not clogged up with fat, that sugar moves in & out of your bloodstream in a matter of minutes, with much less insulin needed. For a detailed explanation, see the 80-10-10 book (or other writings on low fat high fruit diets), but here's a very brief explanation: Fat coats everything. It will coat the sugar in the blood, the insulin, and the receptor sites which the insulin uses to move the sugar out of the blood. This messes up the process, enough so that much of the sugar just gets trapped in the blood. The body continues sensing the sugar in the blood and keeps pumping more insulin (often using adrenaline to push the pancreas to increase insulin production). Eventually, you end up with an excess of insulin which, when enough fat has cleared away, then removes too much sugar. The results of this process include the mood swings, energy level swings, etc., that you mention, and it is indeed very hard on the pancreas.

this description of human physiology has no foundation in reality. Glucose doesn't "get trapped in the body," your kidneys will excrete it, or try to. The idea of "fat coats everything" including "sugar" in the blood is laughable. Type I diabetics can't produce insulin and it doesn't really matter what they eat as long as they take insulin. If they eat a healthy diet they will be able to take less insulin. Type II diabetics produce some insulin and sometimes the diabetes can be controlled by diet, but it's not caused by eating too much sugar. It's caused by eating too much, period. And research is showing more and more that lack of exercise is an important factor.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Many people consider them to be irritants/stimulants. You wouldn't want to make a whole meal out of them. When I eat garlic, my whole body smells of it for at least a day.

Part of the challenge of overcoming cooked food addiction is getting past adding lots of flavoring to foods that you wouldn't normally eat by themselves.

cooked food is not an addiction. Our species evolved to eat our food cooked and you can't become another species by fiat. Saying cooked food is an addiction is like saying we are addicted to water.

[PrimaryErn]

Roger: thanks for the followup. Psychologically that makes sense. And hey, if you eat this way, and it works for you, and it makes you simply not want these foods, then thats good if it fits in with your life, for sure. I can appreciate that!

Mrs C: good points. Some of the science bothers me when discussing things like this. The fat molecule one especially. Fat molecules, if I remember correctly, HAVE insulin receptors - they can't bond to them. Chemically only insulin can bond to insulin recpetors - well, and chemicals that have the same electronic shell configuration as insulin.
However, question on your point that the brain is predominantly made out of protein. Isn't it predominantly made out of fat (or a close fat-like substance)? I ask because i had to do some research on a very high-fat diet as an alternate to medication to control epileptic siezures for my ex when she wanted to drop her meds to have kids, and I though that was why they fats were considered healthy for brain activity - the brain being more fat.

Regarding the species food and evolution: depending on how you view evolution, and research on how much the species changed during various pieces of history, you can choose to base diet on very different times. I for example can say my ancestors were italian, and probably ate a version of the meddeteranian diet for several thousand years, which should be enough to base my diet today on. Or I can say, my tribal hominid ancestors probably ate cooked, hunted game, fruits and veggies for several 100k years. Or my basic tree-dwelling superprimates for a million years ate nearly all fruit from europe and africa plus some bugs, small animals, bird eggs, etc. Its hard to point at a specific time. But I think my system is more like the ancestors from the ad 0 time and less like the 100,000 y/o time - and even less like the austrio-whatever they're called time.

But I think to a certain degree, we're forgetting an important thing with this whole experiment - its not science, its non-scientific personal discovery. If it were science, Steve would have done a full series of labs, blood work, strength tests, cognition tests, and maybe gone as far as to test bone density and taking liver samples - and then afterwards doing the same thing. What he's doing is entirely personal, and its worth trying that way! I have questions, to be sure, about it but I think its admirable to try. Remember other than "I feel better" we're not going to get hard scientific results (unless the British scientists out there will be satisified with detailed reports on the quality of his feces ).

My only caveat is the dreaded 'detox' - so many bad diets and practices do harm and the proponents claim its just natural detox. If symptoms don't improve and STAY improved in short order I wouldn't wait to address them.

[Roger Haeske]

Personally I don't believe in the "theory" evolution anymore. And it doesn't have to do with any spiritual or religious beliefs. Just common sense and science. Once I was presented with both sides of the story from a scientific perspective, evolution became a fairy tale. It's just not possible from what I can determine.

We may have evolved or changed over time, but it couldn't have happened randomly or by chance. It all very much had to be designed. Because even the most primitive single celled organism is more complex than a laptop computer. You don't see laptops just popping up every now and then out in nature.

Next, even if evolution were working for most of human history we've actually been eating raw or mostly raw for at least 90% of human "evolutionary" history. I think it's more like 99% but I don't remember the figures.

Do we think we've already evolved to eat Doritos, chocolate cake, pizza and Wonderbread? All you have to do is read "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration," by Weston Price. In every instance when a native culture started eating the Western diet, their children were born deformed. Their faces and jaws actually shrunk and of course they were much more sickly.

And even the parents had badly compromised health when switching to a more Western diet. All of a sudden they needed dentists, when they never needed any before. Weston Price was a dentist. It's quite a comprehensive book, though I don't agree with every conclusion drawn. It helps to know more facts.

Many of those native cultures almost died out due to disease. And it wasn't from the germs the Westerner's brought but their foods. Because the natives that went back to their traditional diets (much simpler and more raw foods) immediately healed their diseases. While the ones that continued to eat the new Western Diet where the ones that continued to die out.

The benefits of eating raw are not in any way imaginary or a placebo effect. To give you an idea. I had depression for 6.5 years.

I started experimenting with diets. I tried the Zone Diet to improve my depression and I felt a bit of improvement. But nothing major. I tried the Atkins Diet, but I couldn't stay on it very long.

Each of those diets promised to really help with depression. So I was expecting success with eating them. But later when I tried a 50% Raw Food Diet, my depression went away in the first day.

So did the placebo effect only work for when I tried the raw food diet but not when I tried the Zone and Atkins Diets?

Does the placebo effect burn 15 pounds of fat? Does the placebo effect make me and virtually everyone else on the Raw Food Diet look 15 to 20 years younger? Does the placebo effect get rid of my arthritis like the Raw Food Diet has? Does the placebo effect lower my blood pressure?

Does the placebo effect give me more energy as well? Does the placebo effect now make me immune to infections? (I no longer get infections and I even had 18 stitches but didn't take antibiotics because I knew I would not get an infection.)

Yes the placebo effect only seems to work for me when on a Raw Food Diet. In fact, there were times I went off the 50% raw food diet and within a day or so my depression came back. Maybe that was the placebo effect. And yet I've met so many raw foodists who've been able to stop taking their antidepressants and cure their depression.

I've seen people healed of M.S., heart disease, cancer, IBS, asthma, migraines, enlarged prostate and you name it. Virtually every disease. Though it doesn't help in every single case. There are many factors involved here. But the body of so-called anecdotal evidence is very large if you know where to look.

As for diabetes. Dr. Douglas Graham has been getting his Type 2 Diabetic clients off of insulin for over 20 years. And they've been doing so with a high fruit diet. Fruit if consumed properly is beneficial to diabetics, not harmful.

Fruit is our ideal natural food. Certainly better to have the high vitamin, high fiber banana as our staple rather than rice or bread. Both are high carbohydrate foods, but grains will destroy your health and they are much lower in nutrients and soluble fiber than bananas.

Folks there's a tremendous amount of misinformation out there being paraded as fact. This is one of the reasons so many people find it hard to stay raw. They get scared off of it by bad science.

There are reasons why this bad or biased information is out there. It makes people in the meat, dairy, medical and pharmaceutical industries a lot of money.

I haven't gone to a doctor or dentist in at least 8 years. And there are thousands of other raw foodists just like me. Our needs for doctors, dentists, etc. becomes greatly reduced. Can that be a placebo for all these thousands of raw foodists?

Just try it for yourself and you'll notice the incredible placebo effect.

Cheers, Roger

[MasterD]

Does anyone know about people who follow the diets that Steve is following right now, the high fruit raw food diet, have admirable muscle on their body? Or are they all skinny bastards?

Like; when I see John Robbins (I don't know the particular diet he is following), I really am not inspired to follow his directions, because he is just so damn skinny and for some reason that just doesn't look healthy to me.

[Wildside]

Hi all,

I am on my 5th day of eating Raw and I am totally constipated!!! who would have thought that eating fruits and veggies would cause constipation...if anything I thought it would be the exact opposite. my daily foods include lots of fruit (banana's being the main one, grapefruit, apples, mandarin oranges, pears, mangos etc) and veggies (mixed greens (the same one's steve is eating), cucs, tomatos, carrots, celery, etc) I have been taking a couple teaspoons of flax seed oil, some sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, some walnuts. I make green smoothies and sometimes juice some veggies. Anyone have any idea why I would be constipated? or what I can do to unconstipate myself?
I'm getting a little discouraged with the 100% raw food diet due to the constipation and no increase in energy.
thanks for any advice.
Steve

[jbailey]

Originally Posted by Wildside

Hi all,

I am on my 5th day of eating Raw and I am totally constipated!!! who would have thought that eating fruits and veggies would cause constipation...if anything I thought it would be the exact opposite. my daily foods include lots of fruit (banana's being the main one, grapefruit, apples, mandarin oranges, pears, mangos etc) and veggies (mixed greens (the same one's steve is eating), cucs, tomatos, carrots, celery, etc) I have been taking a couple teaspoons of flax seed oil, some sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, some walnuts. I make green smoothies and sometimes juice some veggies. Anyone have any idea why I would be constipated? or what I can do to unconstipate myself?
I'm getting a little discouraged with the 100% raw food diet due to the constipation and no increase in energy.
thanks for any advice.
Steve

Hey - My wife and I cook for Unitarian Universalist summer conferences, and we usually cook vegan. I had someone explain to me why it was that we were causing meat eaterns some severe distress. Apparently, their digestive systems are used to passing things through slowly to get all the nutrients out. A high-fiber diet passing through slowly apparently clogs the system up because the body has time to get all the water out.

After a week or so, things should clear up. Have lots of water in the meantime, and see if you can find some prunes to juice (drink just the juice, not the fiber!)

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Roger Haeske

Personally I don't believe in the "theory" evolution anymore. And it doesn't have to do with any spiritual or religious beliefs. Just common sense and science. Once I was presented with both sides of the story from a scientific perspective, evolution became a fairy tale. It's just not possible from what I can determine.

creationist propagandists are extremely good at hiding their lies and bull behind a fog of scientific sounding gibberish.

We may have evolved or changed over time, but it couldn't have happened randomly or by chance.

It didn't happen randomly or by chance. It would be impossible for anything to evolve that way. It happened by means of variation and natural selection. Natural selection is very definite and not driven by randomness.

It all very much had to be designed. Because even the most primitive single celled organism is more complex than a laptop computer. You don't see laptops just popping up every now and then out in nature.

"had to"? how can you possibly know that? I mean, you can believe it, but you can't prove it. It's a religious statement. Designed things are simple, not complex. Evolution is messy and sloppy. It MUST be that way in order to present variation to the environment. Without variation the whole thing falls apart. If you are too perfect for your environment, you go extinct. 98% of everything that has ever lived is now extinct. If there is a designer he/she/it is an incompetent boob.

Next, even if evolution were working for most of human history we've actually been eating raw or mostly raw for at least 90% of human "evolutionary" history. I think it's more like 99% but I don't remember the figures.

so what? A lot of evolution can happen in a couple million years.

Do we think we've already evolved to eat Doritos, chocolate cake, pizza and Wonderbread?

yes and no. We evolved with an unsteady food supply. Therefore we evolved to adore highly concentrated calories, especially fat and sugar. Now the food supply is abundant year round and the food we love and got us this far is no longer healthy.

All you have to do is read "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration," by Weston Price. In every instance when a native culture started eating the Western diet, their children were born deformed. Their faces and jaws actually shrunk and of course they were much more sickly.

so far every nutritional resource recommended on this board has been ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on toast but in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I'll check Price out. Since all humans eat cooked food (except for wealthy Americans and Europeans), I have a feeling the decline of health is caused by the increased amount of fat and sugar. They eat it because they love it and can afford it. That and lack of exercise can be pretty devastating to health.

The benefits of eating raw are not in any way imaginary or a placebo effect. To give you an idea. I had depression for 6.5 years.

it's extremely unhealthy and any psychological improvement was placebo

Each of those diets promised to really help with depression. So I was expecting success with eating them. But later when I tried a 50% Raw Food Diet, my depression went away in the first day.

I've read about the zone diet and the atkins and don't remember them saying anything at all about the diets relieving depression. I would have noticed since I'm a chronic depressive managed with modern medications. 50% raw foods is fine. 100% raw foods will be bad for you in the long term.

So did the placebo effect only work for when I tried the raw food diet but not when I tried the Zone and Atkins Diets?

perhaps they were ascetic enough to satisfy you psychologically. Medicine tastes bad. The worse a medicine tastes, the better it is for you--right?

Does the placebo effect burn 15 pounds of fat? Does the placebo effect make me and virtually everyone else on the Raw Food Diet look 15 to 20 years younger? Does the placebo effect get rid of my arthritis like the Raw Food Diet has? Does the placebo effect lower my blood pressure?

you went on a diet and lost weight. South Beach would have done the same thing to your weight and blood pressure. Arthritis is transitory and comes and goes no matter what you do. At sometime your arthritis will "mysteriously" return and you'll assume it was that hot dog or cookie you ate 3 weeks ago.

Does the placebo effect give me more energy as well? Does the placebo effect now make me immune to infections? (I no longer get infections and I even had 18 stitches but didn't take antibiotics because I knew I would not get an infection.)

Not taking recommended antibiotics is stupid and dangerous. Losing 15 lbs will leave you with a lot more energy. You are NOT immune to infections and as your health declines under an unbalanced and dangerous diet you will be sick all the time. That's okay. The way you cover the fact that something "virtuous" is hurting you is to claim you are "detoxing."

Yes the placebo effect only seems to work for me when on a Raw Food Diet. In fact, there were times I went off the 50% raw food diet and within a day or so my depression came back. Maybe that was the placebo effect. And yet I've met so many raw foodists who've been able to stop taking their antidepressants and cure their depression.

an all raw food diet is self-destructive. Self destructive behavior is common with depression.

I've seen people healed of M.S., heart disease, cancer, IBS, asthma, migraines, enlarged prostate and you name it. Virtually every disease. Though it doesn't help in every single case. There are many factors involved here. But the body of so-called anecdotal evidence is very large if you know where to look.

the claim of all dangerous fad diets is they cure every disease known to man.

As for diabetes. Dr. Douglas Graham has been getting his Type 2 Diabetic clients off of insulin for over 20 years. And they've been doing so with a high fruit diet. Fruit if consumed properly is beneficial to diabetics, not harmful.

losing weight (and exercising) will manage type 2 diabetes. You can do that on a healthy diet also.

Fruit is our ideal natural food. Certainly better to have the high vitamin, high fiber banana as our staple rather than rice or bread. Both are high carbohydrate foods, but grains will destroy your health and they are much lower in nutrients and soluble fiber than bananas.

Folks there's a tremendous amount of misinformation out there being paraded as fact.

no freekin' kidding

This is one of the reasons so many people find it hard to stay raw. They get scared off of it by bad science.

an all fruit diet is pointless and dangerous. the most natural diet for a human is a little it of everything--fruit, vegetables, grains, seeds, even meat. Almost every population of humans has a favorite grass seed. In Europe it's wheat. In South America it's corn. In Africa it's millet. In Asia it's rice. Grass seeds must be cooked in order to be digestible.

Raw food diet is something that is only safe for a rich, fat American or European with a huge, safe and steady food supply. Except for under these rather rare circumstances, a raw food diet would be fatal.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by PrimaryErn

Roger: thanks for the followup. Psychologically that makes sense. And hey, if you eat this way, and it works for you, and it makes you simply not want these foods, then thats good if it fits in with your life, for sure. I can appreciate that!

Mrs C: good points. Some of the science bothers me when discussing things like this. The fat molecule one especially. Fat molecules, if I remember correctly, HAVE insulin receptors - they can't bond to them. Chemically only insulin can bond to insulin recpetors - well, and chemicals that have the same electronic shell configuration as insulin.
However, question on your point that the brain is predominantly made out of protein. Isn't it predominantly made out of fat (or a close fat-like substance)?

I think it's protein, but not the same kind of protein as muscle

I ask because i had to do some research on a very high-fat diet as an alternate to medication to control epileptic siezures for my ex when she wanted to drop her meds to have kids, and I though that was why they fats were considered healthy for brain activity - the brain being more fat.

I hope it worked. Kids are wonderful!

Regarding the species food and evolution: depending on how you view evolution, and research on how much the species changed during various pieces of history, you can choose to base diet on very different times. I for example can say my ancestors were italian, and probably ate a version of the meddeteranian diet for several thousand years, which should be enough to base my diet today on.

Your Italian ancestors were homo sapiens just like you. The Mediteranean diet is an excellent one as long as you don't eat too many calories.

Or I can say, my tribal hominid ancestors probably ate cooked, hunted game, fruits and veggies for several 100k years.

homo erectus evolved about 2 million years ago and they were the first to use fire. They probably ate a lot like chimpanzees. Fruit, vegetables and a little meat.

Or my basic tree-dwelling superprimates for a million years ate nearly all fruit from europe and africa plus some bugs, small animals, bird eggs, etc.

There's a lot of evolution between us and them which you can see by looking at the skulls. They had powerful jaws for grinding grains. We are more "gracile" which means thinner and lightweight. We have smaller jaws because we didn't need the big ones. You don't need a powerful jaw to eat cooked grain.

Its hard to point at a specific time. But I think my system is more like the ancestors from the ad 0 time and less like the 100,000 y/o time - and even less like the austrio-whatever they're called time.

Australopithecus. You are right. They were our ancestors but they were an entirely different animal than we are. Our species evolved LONG after fire was in use by early hominids. Our guts evolved to eat some foods cooked.

But I think to a certain degree, we're forgetting an important thing with this whole experiment - its not science, its non-scientific personal discovery.

as an exercise in self-discipline it is almost understandable. But the problem is, you can do a lot of self-discipline stuff without endangering your health. I'm very busy and have a lot to do (which is why I will disappear off these boards from time to time) and I can't risk my health for the sake of some kind puritanical "virtue."

My only caveat is the dreaded 'detox' - so many bad diets and practices do harm and the proponents claim its just natural detox. If symptoms don't improve and STAY improved in short order I wouldn't wait to address them.

"detox" is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ word. There's no such thing. It means you are having bad side effects from whatever you are doing or eating and don't want to admit it because only evil big pharma has bad side effects and something virtuous and groovy simply can't by definition.

[Wildside]

Originally Posted by jbailey

Hey - My wife and I cook for Unitarian Universalist summer conferences, and we usually cook vegan. I had someone explain to me why it was that we were causing meat eaterns some severe distress. Apparently, their digestive systems are used to passing things through slowly to get all the nutrients out. A high-fiber diet passing through slowly apparently clogs the system up because the body has time to get all the water out.

After a week or so, things should clear up. Have lots of water in the meantime, and see if you can find some prunes to juice (drink just the juice, not the fiber!)

Thanks for the tip jbailey, it makes sense that my digestive system would still be used to passing things slowely, and I have noticed in the last couple of days that I am not nearly (hardly ever actually) as thirsty as I used to be (I used to drink more water than anyone I knew before trying this raw experiment) so I haven't been drinking as much as usual. I will increase my water drinking even if I am not really thirsty and see if that helps. I might look into juicing some prunes too.
Actually this afternoon/evening I probably feel the best I have felt since eating raw...good energy, despite being fairly bloated/bunged up.
Thanks agian.

[Gray]

Originally Posted by MasterD

Does anyone know about people who follow the diets that Steve is following right now, the high fruit raw food diet, have admirable muscle on their body? Or are they all skinny bastards?

One of my concerns before I finally decided to get started. Check out fruitarianfitness.com.