The Comments...

Greetings all! This is my first post and I thought I would start with an open discussion about some of the comments that we get as raw foodists and what these comments tell us.

Today is my 5th day raw, and I'm already getting the comments. I'm sure we've all heard them. Today I had my green smoothie at work and someone inquired about it. When she was told I was on a raw foods diet she gave me a mortified look and asked "Why? You're already skinny!" I am a little under 5'2" and about 130lbs and do have a bit of extra weight on my body that has accumulated in the past 5 years or so, but I'm still slim enough that overweight people consider me a bean pole compared to themselves. Anyway, I just looked at her and said "It's not about being skinny, it's about being healthy" she kind of blinked and seemed to accept the answer although I don't think it really sank in.

My co workers all seem to think I'm a wack job for doing this. I was talking to one of them about the unhealthiness of the amount of meat we eat in this country (particularly poor quality meat made on meat FACTORIES not farms) and when I told him some studies suggested a strong link to cancers and other ailments he proclaimed "Nooooo!" as if I was straight out crazy. He agreed that the SAD is unhealthy and said that he eats mostly fresh, healthy food but for lunch every day he eats a Lean Cuisine microwavable meal!

There is one woman I'm flat out avoiding telling because she has the weirdest health "advice" I've every heard. I've had some mystery ailments for a while and have been trying to eat healthier for quite some time now to hopefully improve these things, since my doctors can't figure out what's wrong with me. This woman has actually suggested that eating healthy is making me sick. She's asked me at least 4-5 times now if taking vitamins could be the problem, or "could it be the healthy food you're eating?". All of these are things I started doing AFTER my ailments appeared, which I've told her several times, so it doesn't even make sense. If she found out I went raw (I do eat small amounts of healthy cooked food, but I'm mostly raw) she'd blame everything on that. How is eating better going to make me unhealthy?? It's as if she is trying to delicately say to me that I'm not actually eating healthier by eating more fresh, organic, wholesome food. So what should I be eating, then, oh wise one?

I thought about it, and a lot of the comments I get are along these lines. This idea that eating this healthy is somehow very UNhealthy. That we're extremists for wanting to eat unadulterated food as nature created it. How many times have people criticized the idea of a diet which includes large amounts of salad as if there is something wrong with eating a lot of veggies? How many of the comments we get stem from this idea that be healthy is extreme? It seems as if the average American is so numb to the SAD that it's become the norm. That anything healthy is somehow wrong, despite the fact we know that Americans are getting sicker by the day. When I tell people diabetes can be reversed with a raw food diet, as proven by multiple raw foodists and the Raw for 30 Days DVD, people don't seem to believe me. Diet causes Type II diabetes... why couldn't it reverse it? They seem to accept that poor diet can cause some ailments, and yet they seem to refuse to believe that eating healthy should be a part of their prevention and their cure. They somehow believe that continuing to eat the same food as everyone else who's gaining weight and/or getting sick is somehow not related to their declining health. Eating well is reserved for hippies, people who are overweight and women who are obsessed with their weight. I think people's comments towards raw food are a perfect example of this attitude.

So, your thoughts? Any interesting comments you've heard from non-raw foodists and SAD eaters? What do these comments seem to reflect about our society as whole?

(on a side note, I also hate comments people make about overweight people saying things like they need to lay off the cookies and hit the treadmill. Many of the people I've heard such comments from have a horrible diet themselves, sometimes worse than the overweight person they are criticizing who's struggling to eat better)