I’ve started on a two week raw-for-me test to see how it feels. I’ve definitely been wowed by some of the raw stories out there (like raw running, and the 30 days raw project for people with diabetes).
I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years. I’ve tried cooked vegan before, but felt yucky. I’ve been doing 100% raw for a few days now and feel good.
One thing I’m trying to figure out, and would like to experiment with, is whether it’s really the RAW-aspect that makes this lifestyle good-for-people, or whether it’s the fact that all raw food is unprocessed.
To say it another way: vegans eat lots of processed food (soy products, etc) but once I started raw, I realized how necessary it was to prepare all food yourself (that is, if you want to eat anything beyond the basic salad!)
Has anyone out there tested out this question on their own? Comparing: a raw vegan diet, a raw-vegetarian diet (raw milk), a vegan unprocessed food diet.
how do they make you feel?
Comments
Zoe- thanks for your incredible explanation. I must caveat, I am very excited about the idea of eating just raw, and feel really good on it (barely even miss the coffee), though I’ve only been 5 days at 99%.
This was the article that got me thinking about the question of processed foods: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-... “Cooking up Bigger Brains”- Scientific American, Dec 07. One quote: “[the researcher] examined groups of modern hunter-gatherers all over the world and found that no human group currently eats all their food raw. Humans seem to be well adapted to eating cooked food: modern humans need a lot of high-quality calories (brain tissue requires 22 times the energy of skeletal muscle); tough, fibrous fruits and tubers cannot provide enough.”
I was not familiar with the idea of Digestive Leukocytosis, and want to research it more. Thank you for the reference.
Winona- your experience of the difference between raw unprocessed and raw vegan is really interesting.
I want to sort of ‘test out’ the differences for myself too- but as a vegetarian (including milk and eggs) I have always been really healthy, if a little emotional. :) So the only real upswing I can expect to look forward to on a raw vegan diet is, perhaps, less dramatic than others might experience.
It would be interesting if more studies or documentaries were being done, similar to the diabetes project- like here http://www.rawfor30days.com/Site/Home.html
Hi Saraw- I’ve heard really incredible word-of-mouth stories about the positive effects of giving autistic children only unprocessed foods (and no sugar). Have you written about it elsewhere? How long have you been trying it?
The other reason I started wondering about raw vs. unprocessed is the continual unveiling of foods labeled raw that are actually cooked- almonds, agave, maple syrup-etc. Zoe has a list at purely raw that is very helpful.
When I started reading about raw 4 years ago or so, quasi-raw ingredients were in some of the popular raw cookbooks (like juliano’s RAW:the uncook book)- yet the raw foodists experienced the same great effects that people who are extremely systematic about checking their food’s lineage experience.
so, cooking is processing…
yes, some foods raw foodists eat may not be 100% raw, but you are still eating 99% raw foods, so of course they would see the same benefits.