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Login Here Signup Here Signup using Facebookhi – you know those common things that come up when people hear that you are raw? like.. “what about winter?”, or “how do you eat potatoes?”.. well, something that keeps coming up is chinese medicine – which as far as i get it, explicitly states that eating all raw is not healthy. now, i have some answers to that, and perhaps i’ll share them later, but for now i would like to hear from others.. in other words, i would like to know, especially from knowledgeable raw-foodists who have been into or are into chinese medicine – some original knowledge here. references to articles and research about this would be greatly appreciated. what about taoism? are there different ways and perceptions to look at the basics of chinese medicine and actually see how it supports an ideal raw food? much thanks
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hey ofek. I am an acupuncturist and chinese herbalist, trained for 4 years and know a lot about chinese medicine. As far as I know, Chinese Med never advocated a raw diet. It does not, in my perspective, support a raw diet. BUT. It helps to look at it historically: chinese medicine goes back thousands and thousands of years, back to a time when eating raw vegetables was not as supportable because of disease. Also, chinese medicine requires a balance of yin and yang, hot and cold foods, and from a chinese perspective, raw was never even considered and cooked foods, like in many cultures, played an important role in Chinese society. So culturally, food developed much as it did in other cultures; as an important element of the overall growth of aChinese sense of self, cooking was an integral part of this. I mean, think about it: NO culture developed a raw food culture, it always involved cooking. China is no different, and their medicine helped support their food culture, and vice versa.
Again, as a raw foodist and a TCM practitioner, I encourage each person to find what works for their own body, and not to rely necessarily on even a deep and medically intelligent culture like the Chinese’ people to tell them what’s right for them. Some people like to each some cooked food in the winter. Some people have “cold” constitutions and can go raw but need to incorporate lots of ginger and warming herbs. Some people do better on a 60% raw diet.
Oh, it is so nice to know there are people thinking about the same things as I have done since last winter. I am very much into TCM and Taoism naturally, as I am Chinese, in particular, the Yin& Yang principle. I am into Indian Ayurveda as well. I started to experiment 100% raw since last March, and everything was perfect for about half a year. I thought I would never eat any cooked food, until winter came, my first raw winter, which turned out hard to me because I was cold and listless all the time, and all benefits of eating raw seemed to be gone. My body was saying to me: I want hot water, warm congee, chicken soup. And, I felt I did not have enough brain power for my academic responsibilities. I thought my experiment failed, I thought I might really be missing some essential elements because of raw, I thought maybe the way I was brought up was the best for me, I thought maybe I should eat eggs as I did in middle school (I think that was my most intelligent years), but I really hated to give up raw. I searched and read, and decided that my heritage did not give me a constitution for 100% raw. Then I thought, I might as well try some rice and eggs and even fish once in a while. I guess it might take years to figure out what is best for me. Ofek, could you share what you experimented and discovered? It might serve as a reference to us all:)
Chinese medicine believes that we just don’t have the digestive fire to digest raw foods adequately. However, this does not consider that we can strengthen our digestive fire to the point where we can easily digest and assimilate raw foods. :)