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Nutrition Facts

I doubt this is currently possible but it would be great if there was some technology that can analyze the recipes on this site and give a nutrition facts chart for each. The reason why I say this is because many raw recipes contain enormous amounts of fat, maybe there are those here who do not care about these matters but I know many people do care when they consume as much as 80-90% of their diet from fat. You often do not realize that a single tablespoon of pure oil can make a recipe a high fat recipe when the other ingredients are vegetables or other low fat ingredients. Add nuts, coconut, cacao, avocado, seeds, and suddenly you are eating a meal that is probably more fatty than a bacon double cheesburger with fries. I see this as the biggest problem with making raw recipes which try to emulate the tastes of a cooked food palate.

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Comments

  • SocaL, although I don’t believe it would be possible to do it on this site, I think it’s a great idea. I’m often shocked by the amount of excessive fat in recipes, and usually end up tweaking them to reduce the fat content. But this brings up another question. My understanding is that “good” fats are metabolized differently, and obviously have no cholesterol. So how much “good” fat is “bad”? I don’t think you can look quantify them in the same way. Nontheless, I am NO nutritionist, and would love to get some informed input about this.

  • I suppose that as you create a recipe or make a dish you can find out the nutritional information for each ingredient and do the math. I used to use fitday.com to log my daily intake and with certain foods you can look up the nutritional facts. You can also add “custom foods” that aren’t already in their database.

    For example, here are the Nutrition Facts for 1 medium (2-3/4” dia) (approx 3 per lb) raw apple: Calories 81.42 Calories from Fat 4.47 % Daily Value * Total Fat 0.497g 1% Saturated Fat 0.08g 0% Polyunsaturated Fat 0.145g Monounsaturated Fat 0.0207g Cholesterol 0mg 0% Sodium 0mg 0% Potassium 158.7mg 5% Total Carbohydrate 21.05g 7% Dietary Fiber 3.73g 15% Protein 0.262g 1% Alcohol 0g Vitamin A 1 % Vitamin C 13 % Calcium 1 % Iron 1 % Vitamin D 0 % Vitamin E 1 % Thiamin 1 % Riboflavin 1 % Niacin 1 % Folate 1 % Vitamin B-6 3 % Vitamin B-12 0 % Phosphorus 1 % Magnesium 2 % Zinc 0 % Copper 3 %

    Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

    Here are the nutrition facts for 1 raw California avocado (black skin): Calories 278.53 Calories from Fat 238.53

    % Daily Value * Total Fat 26.5g 41% Saturated Fat 4.22g 21% Polyunsaturated Fat 3.38g Monounsaturated Fat 16.62g Cholesterol 0mg 0% Sodium 17.3mg 1% Potassium 1036.3mg 30% Total Carbohydrate 12.78g 4% Dietary Fiber 8.65g 35% Protein 3.43g 7% Alcohol 0g Vitamin A 21 % Vitamin C 23 % Calcium 2 % Iron 10 % Vitamin D 0 % Vitamin E 5 % Thiamin 9 % Riboflavin 11 % Niacin 17 % Folate 27 % Vitamin B-6 24 % Vitamin B-12 0 % Phosphorus 7 % Magnesium 17 % Zinc 5 % Copper 23 %

    Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

    So for example, say you were looking up the nutrition facts for a recipe that included apples and avocados, add up the nutrition facts for each item, then divide by # of servings. (I use an excel spreadsheet).

  • Mon46, yes, raw fats in moderation do have certain advantages over cooked fats but when the percentage of fats nomatter the type (raw or cooked) gets over a certain level in the body it makes it difficult to metabolize sugars and we get many health problems (e.g. candida, diabetes, etc.). Fat negates the function of insulin and does many other bad things when there is too much in the body. As for cholesterol, it is manufactured in the body but more is made when there is more fat available, so eating fat can increase the amount of cholesterol.

    Renoir -

    Here are the nutrition facts for 1 raw California avocado (black skin): Calories 278.53 Calories from Fat 238.53

    Here is the math on your avocado: Calories from fat percentage: 85.6%

    Do you think a diet with a lot of avocadoes in it is a smart choice?

  • I wasn’t recommending or discouraging eating avocados. I just used that as an example for a way to add up your nutrition facts.

  • SocaL, that’s really enlightening. Why is it, do you think, that so many raw recipes seem to throw caution to the wind regarding fat? Particularly uncookbook recipes. I think there has to be a balance somewhere, but how to figure it out? I find it a little frustrating. I’ve been about 90-95% raw since September, and frankly have been confused about what I’m actually getting. I eat lots of greens, fruit, some fats, but try to balance. It’s a little frustrating. Any thoughts?

  • Morning_theftMorning_theft Raw Newbie

    Mon64- I think worrying about it is unhealthy. Calculating percentages isn’t for everyone. Just do whatever feels right, meaning, whatever your body wants. It may be hard to see sometimes, but it’s really the only way to go.

  • Raw_ChocoholicRaw_Chocoholic Raw Newbie

    I simply eat fruit, salad (with minimal dressing), low fat snacks, or a green smoothie throughout the day, and leave the nuts/fats for dessert/dinner.

  • Everyone is free to do as they please. I just wanted to point out the big flaw in the traditional raw food diet that many people think is so healthy. As natural inhabitants on this planet we were given fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds to consume. The most easy to eat food with the best taste and water content is fruits and vegetables. Nuts and seeds are less easy to consume in nature as they require a lot of work to get to the food. Nuts usually grow in a shell that is nearly impossible to break without mechanical intervention. If we were supposed to eat nut loafs and pates I think they would be a lot easier to get to. In most cases you can survive on a high fat diet for a long time but internally you are doing some damage to yourself which could show up years and years in the future. Everyone who is interested in health as well as eating a balanced diet should have a goal to strive for a low fat raw diet. The science is out there, just look at almost any of the health writers mentioned on Vegsource.com, Robbins, Campbell, Pinckney, Fuhrman, Graham, Stepaniak, Esselstyn, McDougall, ... most are MDs or PhDs and they all say to eat a diet low in fat, most of the recipes posted on this site are just the opposite, they are high in fat. Do you think a couple of raw food advocates who do not have an MD, PhD or any other real health education besides reading a couple of books and trying it on themselves for a few years know more than these scientists on the amount of fat that is healthy? Believe who you like after you educate yourself…but do at least try to educate yourself.

  • BluedolfinBluedolfin Raw Newbie

    Hi Socal~ I’m really interested in what you eat… What would be a sample of a few days at your table? Maybe this would also give others a more concrete example of what you are advocating.

  • Bluedolfin, I assume you are not aware of the work of Doug Graham? His book and diet is called the 80/10/10 diet, which forms the basis of the diet that I follow. It agrees with natural hygiene and is the best scientifically proven diet for the human species. It might be difficult for some people to believe or consume because it is not very similar to a cooked food diet at all like the raw food diet that includes the recipes here (I feel the recipes here are more for people who are trying a new fad or are in transition or who are not truly interested in health). I think I have already stated my usual diet on other threads such as:

    http://www.goneraw.com/forums/3/topics/1244

    My post is near the end of the first page. 13 posts from the bottom (?)

  • Mon46 – If you really want to get a picture of what nutrition you are getting from your food, try using fitday.com. You log in everything you eat each day and it will tell you percentage on a pie graph of how many calories you are getting from carbs/fat/protein/alcohol.

    If anyone is trying to work towards 80/10/10 as SoCal suggests, this might help you see where you currently are as you move towards where you want to be.

  • BluedolfinBluedolfin Raw Newbie

    Thankx Socal~ You are very right… I am not familiar with Graham’s work. Wow!!! I looked at your typical day. Just the number of bananas alone is amazing. How do you feel? Do you have energy flucuations? How long did it take for you to transition? How long have you been eating like this? Thankx for the info.

  • As I am eating my 11th banana for lunch :)

    I feel better than I ever felt on the usual high fat raw diet. I tried that for about 5 years. It was not giving me the health I wanted. I heard them all say that it doesn’t matter how much raw fat you eat as long as it is raw. Well I ate all raw and I added my fat calories up on nutridiary.com. At the time I was eating only 1 or 2 avocados a day, nut butters, flax crackers, olive oil on my salad at night, I was shocked to see that I was eating as much as 45% of my calories from fat. I think many people eat much more than that! I switched immediately to the 80/10/10 diet one year ago after reading Doug’s book. It made a huge difference.

  • BluedolfinBluedolfin Raw Newbie

    Just an aside… do you have stock in a banana farm? Do you get a price break on your bananas? Do go through like a case every week (or less)? I’m just floored about that many bananas. lol I have been a bit “put off” by so many recipes calling for nuts or coconuts that I have seen all over, not just on this site. In the same breath, I do look for “creamy” stuff. There is a shift in thinking somewhere in there… :-)

  • I’m reading Graham’s 80/10/10, great stuff, and I’m learning a lot. My diet is WAY too rrrrich in ffffffaaaaat. Thanks, SocaL, for the advice to read Graham’s work! I have questions that maybe he answers later on. If we stick to a diet of mainly fruit and tender green leaves, and limit nuts and avocados, how do we get calcium, selenium and zinc? SocaL’s example diet shows only 52% for calcium, 43% RDA for selenium, and 46% for zinc. I eat pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, brazil nuts, walnuts, etc. Are there fruit and vegetable alternatives? Do you just go short everyday for selenium, calcium, and zinc?

  • That was my diet then, these days I only eat bananas once a week. Usually I eat a few pounds of grapes or a bag of persimmons for lunch these days because they are in season, cheap and abundant. Actually if you add the amounts you need to spend on the ingredients for the heavy duty fat recipes you will find that bananas are much cheaper and they do not need a dehydrator, blender, juicer, or any other special energy sucking device except your hands and mouth.

    Shane, the RDA is for the SAD eater, this is mentioned in Doug’s book or at least I have seen him answer these types of questions on the forum (vegsource forum). If you consume a diet that is similar to the 80/10/10 diet you will not need to overconsume zinc and selenium, this is because your body will use it more efficiently. If you look at the numbers you will find that the 80/10/10 diet also causes you to overconsume potassium, and many vitamins like A, C, etc…but your body will keep what it needs and either store or remove what it doesn’t. It’s not an issue at all.

  • BluedolfinBluedolfin Raw Newbie

    I find it so fascinating to see where generally accepted

  • Here is a quote from the Cancer Project web site:

    The average diet in the United States is about 37 percent fat. The National Cancer Institute suggests that people lower that percentage down to 30 percent; however, studies have shown that fat intake should be well below 30 percent to have an anti-cancer affect. Ten to 15 percent is more likely to be helpful.

    So the writers on Vegsource agree with the National Cancer Institute – low fat diets are more healthy – 10-15% of your calories from fat are recommended. So eating most of the recipes here which run into the 80%+ calories from fat probably is not the best idea if you want to be healthy.

  • It’s amusing to me that I’m sitting here reading this post while eating a coconut…

    I’m curious about this fat thing though. Today I was offshore scuba diving for the second day in a row, and without a doubt, I find it is much harder for me to stay warm than it used to be. I guess last year I was probably 15-20 pounds heavier. Now I weigh about 115, and I’m 5’6”, so there’s really not much insulation left! I do feel better and I think I look better now, too, but I’m concerned about being too cold. I wear a 7 mil wetsuit with a 5 mil hooded vest, so if I add any more layers I literally won’t be able to move. I think I can still handle the cold at this point, but the water is going to get at least 10-15 degrees cooler before it starts to warm up again! It really sucks to shiver underwater, and when it’s really cold you actually get a “brain freeze” sort of headache… from your brain… freezing! But seriously, hypothermia is very dangerous and can come on quick.

    And so now I’m eating a coconut. I guess it makes sense to me to try to eat more fat to avoid losing more weight, but I don’t want to overdo it on fat either!

    SocaL, From your diet it seems like you consume very few calories from fat. Do you ever have trouble keeping weight on? I guess eating 12 bananas a day would provide lots of calories, but I don’t understand how it’s even physically possible to eat that many! Maybe dates would be good, I know they’re pretty calorie-rich.

    Does anybody have any ideas? High calorie food that aren’t too high in fat? I’ve also heard that certain spices can be warming. Maybe I should start taking some warm ginger tea with me…

  • Dates are great. They have nearly no fat and they have tons of calories. Taste great too. I eat about 2-3 pounds of fresh dates a week. Sometimes I eat 1 pound as a snack.

    For some people eating a lot of fat actually causes them to lose weight. You need to be careful with that as you will be coating your internals with fat but will be slimmer. Not a good scenario. When you eat fatty foods you will get calories but no nutrients and your body needs nutrients to stay alive and build new cells. Low fat diets are the ultimate because you get lots and lots of nutrients and hardly any fats to clog up your internals. Just the amount in a head of romaine a day is more than enough for most people (romaine contains covert fats – EFAs).

  • Socal, it sounds as if you are eating very high amounts of sugar (albeit fruit sugar). Don’t you have concerns about that? Where do you get your nutritional information?

  • Socal, I think we agree on something here:) I would like nutritionals too. I am an avid calorie counter. I’ve found that gourmet recipes are high in calories. To stay within my 1400 calories, I end up having such a small piece that I’m nowhere near being full. Its kind of frustrating. I end up trying to sneak in veggies where ever I can.

  • I’m not really into calorie counting, but I do make an effort to not consume the average amount of fat found in a raw food diet. I won’t use nuts or seeds as a main dish (except on rare occasions, or dramaticlly reduce the amount of them used) and try to keep nuts for a small snack at night if I feel I need to munch on something. I usually feel better about eating avocado than nuts, but that’s just my body. Still, I wouldn’t really eat more than 1/2 an avocado a day. I think some fats are importanat in a diet but I have noticed too that a lot of raw recipes really seem to go overboard. There’s no one diet that is perfect for everyone on the planet either, so while some metabolisms may be able to be efficent with higher fat foods, others can’t.

  • Nuts&Seeds are fine, in my opion, if they’re sprouted. The trouble where raw foodies get into trouble, I think, is with extracted oils. Oils are 100% Fat W/O their fibers and other various micronutrients in tact – all thought they still contain pigments such as Antioxidents. The only Oils I use are Flax & Essentail Oil’s(for the flavoring of Certian dishes). Also fats that arn’t extracted don’t lose their Lipase, which no-matter if the oil was ‘First cold pressed’(although it helps) or not, the digestive(Lipase)enzyme is almost always destroyed. -Those are just my 2cents Mocha :)

  • Our body and every single cell in it derives it’s fuel from sugar. Every single cell needs sugar almost constantly to survive. This sugar can come from many sources, fats that are stored in the body or circulating in the blood can be turned into sugars (this is a very difficult and inefficient way to get sugar), it can come from converting cells into sugar (this is not only inefficient but dangerous), or it can come from sugars eaten. The processed sugars that people eat (like white sugar, most cooked or heated sugars, honey, maple syrup, etc.) are simple sugars without any fiber or other nutrients attached. These go into your blood immediately and instantly cause a panic message that goes to the pancreas to excrete insulin to metabolize the sugar. The insulin if it is capable (if there is hardly any fat in the blood which disrupts the function of insulin) will help open the gateway to every cell in the body to accept the sugar as fuel. The problem is that there is not enough fiber attached to the sugar so the insulin level spikes and then falls off rather rapidly. If you consume the sugars as part of a whole ripe fruit right off the tree, there is sufficient fiber attached to the sugar so the insulin levels do not spike but increase at a moderate rate as the digestion slowly separates the fiber from the sugars. There is no better food on earth than fruit to fuel the cells of our body…why would there be a problem with sugar if I maintain a low fat high fruit diet? – there is no fat to interfere with my insulin or block the sugars from entering the cells.

  • JoescJoesc Raw Master

    Sugar is stored as fat in the fat cells. Consuming a high sugar diet even if it has fiber will take a toll on your system in the long run. Certain fruits do spike the blood sugar and the body has to release insulin to accomodate. Your pancreas is working harder than you think. Yes, fruit is essential but in moderation. Our body derives it’s fuel from fat. Our body does not store sugar in our cells, it converts it to lipids. Protein is broken down into amino acids. Carbohydrates are broken down to sugar and then converted to fat and fat is stored as lipids. I suggest you take an anatomy class and focus on the body absorption and digestion part of the class. It is fascinating and it helps understand where half of these fad diets come from.

  • Joesc very good point:) Also I just want to bring up the issue of key tones and how fatty acids almost never produce them in the body. So all predigested fats in foods(sprouts,Fermented food,etc.) can be eaten w/o worry. -blessings Mocha

  • JoescJoesc Raw Master

    Thanks Mocha for the extra info.

  • Sugar is stored as glycogen in the liver and the muscles for use when the body needs glucose as fuel. When someone eats a low fat diet the majority of glucose is used as it is consumed or stored as glycogen. If it was stored as fat I would weigh much more than I do and so would all the other followers of the 811rv diet. Fat is stored as fat if you eat more than needed. All fruits in their ripe natural state contain vitamins and minerals as well as water and they do not require any reserves of the body to be digested. The body water percentage is exactly the same as fruit water percentage – this is by design. We are designed to eat fruits and vegetables in their raw form and nuts and seeds should be consumed in extremely limited amounts if at all. If we were to eat fruit in moderation then there wouldn’t be any human life on earth. Millions of years ago there was no other foods besides fruits and some vegetables for people to eat and stay alive. Fat is only used as a last resort for fuel when glycogen stores are low. Protein is used before fat because it is more efficient to convert to fuel than fat. That is why the Atkins diet stresses to eat so much protein (even if there is no fat with it) – because protein can be used as fuel much easier than fat. Any raw high fat diet is really a fad diet, just read some of the many recipes posted here. They are just re-creations of bad foods to start with but with raw ingredients. Changing the ingredients from cooked to raw doesn’t make the recipe healthy. Health and diet are not to be confused, there is much more to health than diet but health starts with a good diet.

  • ZoeZoe Raw Newbie

    Socal you said:
    “Any raw high fat diet is really a fad diet, just read some of the many recipes posted here. They are just re-creations of bad foods to start with but with raw ingredients.”

    I think people use the recipes to help them transition to eating a raw food diet…people who ate meat, dairy etc need to take it slow and easy for emotional, mental and physical reasons.

    It is not a “fad” diet but part of a journey into who knows where? My goal is breatharian, it may take me 50 years to get there but I will not denegrade where I am at now by agreeing with you that it is a fad diet.

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