Lesson #6 – The Raw Foods Diet

Raw foods have been fashionable since the early 1900s when the original German hippies like Arnold Ehret (author “Mucusless Diet) and Benedict Lust (founder of American School of Naturopathy) were promoting natural, healthy diets based on fruit, vegetables and nuts.

When the hippie movement in America took hold in the late 1960s, Victoras Kulvinskas wrote a book called “Survival into the 21st Century,” which promoted the raw food diet. That book caught on and along with Ann Wigmore, he founded the Hippocrates Health Institute, which promotes raw food, detoxifying your body and wheatgrass juice.

Then again at the turn of the 21st Century, raw foods once again became popular with the masses and raw food restaurants began sprouting up, soon becoming the latest craze!

What are Raw Foods?

Raw foods are any food that is consumed uncooked. Raw food can be anything: fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, grains, legumes, even meat, fish, dairy and eggs so long as they are consumed raw.

Those who practice raw “foodism”, can choose from any of those categories, however most people who get into raw food are vegetarians who want to go a step further in improving their diet and health.

There are several groups raw foodists can choose from including:
Fruitarianism: Eating only fruit, nuts and seeds, and sometimes sprouted grains & legumes.

Raw Veganism: fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts (usually includes grains and legumes)

Raw Vegetarianism: fruit, vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, dairy, eggs and honey.

Primitive Diet: "wild" game/meat, fish, plants, fruit, nuts, seeds, honey and eggs. The idea here is to replicate the diet of our hunter/gatherer ancestors.

Of course those dairy products would be unpasteurized.

Why Eat Raw foods?

Raw foods have been consumed by human beings since we first appeared on this planet. Many aware people believe that modern man's diet has deteriorated due to the commercialization and industrialization of our food supply.

So in an effort to get "Back to Nature", a return to a more primitive diet would improve our health and make us less dependent upon our industrialized, polluted society.

Those who get into raw foods believe that by cooking food, something essential is lost. Heating food destroys vitamins, enzymes, beneficial bacteria and other possibly important, unmeasurable nutrients.

It is believed that raw food is easier to digest and that cooked food has its “life” or “life-giving” properties destroyed. A diet with a lot of cooked food leads to the buildup of toxins and diseases like cancer and obesity.

Raw foodists believe that the enzymes present in raw foods are essential to their proper digestion, and by cooking food those enzymes are lost, causing the body to create its own enzymes to aid digestion, and these don’t do as good a job.

Bacteria and other life forms consumed with raw food help our digestion and keep our immune system active. This is seen as natural and desirable, rather than living in fear of the bacteria that surrounds us and helps us survive every day.

Since there’s an emphasis on fruit and vegetables in all these versions of the raw food diet, many people choose organically grown produce over commercial since there is less contamination with chemicals and more attention paid to the quality of the product, not just profits.

Without a doubt, anyone who is overweight who goes on a raw food diet will lose weight quickly. Their health will improve dramatically, giving them more energy, concentration and stamina.

How Do I Start?

Kulvinskas recommends a wheatgrass juice fast to purge your body of toxins. Of course any kind of juice fast would be good, allowing your digestive system time to rest while detoxifying your body of accumulated waste products.

I’d recommend a minimum three-day juice fast before switching over to raw foods. Then you can start eating solid fruit, then nuts and seeds and finally raw veggies.

Since you can’t cook foods like rice or wheat, you must sprout them. This takes advance planning and preparation as it takes days before such food is ready to eat. Other foods like fruit may require dehydration to be used in various recipes requiring mixtures of dry foods.

In addition to organically grown products, you can also find wild foods growing in forests and fields (read warning below). You should probably prepare a list of all the raw foods you like and plan on making a part of your diet. This is to remind you of all the options you have to vary your diet so you don’t feel limited or fall into a pattern of eating the same few things all the time.

I’d say with raw foods you must spend a bit more time planning each meal to ensure you get a balanced diet and sufficient protein, fats and vitamins. You may also have to spend a good amount of time preparing interesting meals to keep them enticing. But you save time by not having to cook!

Warnings!

Don’t eat raw eggs! Salmonella is endemic, even with organic eggs. So I’m not advising people on a raw food diet to eat raw eggs!

Other foods like raw meat (I don’t recommend this) and dairy products do carry some risk of bacteria borne diseases or parasites. So if your health isn’t the best, you should hold off on eating these raw products too.

Certain uncooked vegetables like potatoes and kidney beans contain toxins and should be avoided.

If you are going to pick and eat wild foods, be absolutely certain you have properly identified the plant, and that eating it raw will have no ill effects before consuming.

Assignment: Make a list of those raw foods you like to eat. Then add any additional items needed to ensure proper nutrition. This should help your meal planning and remind you to keep your diet diverse. You don’t need to post this in class, unless you want to share your ideas.

Report back to us how you do on your raw foods diet.

Good luck with your new diet!

 

Cool, let us know how it goes for you!

 

Have you EVER eaten a RAW potato? Why not?

Many foods require cooking/processing to covert/dilute/remove natural poisons.

Plants create toxic poisons as natural insecticides/fungicides. That's how they've survived and evolved.

If you're going to eat raw foods then you should eat those things YOU NORMALLY eat raw. If you (or others) don't normally eat it raw, then think about it, research it before you do.

 

There is some controversy to how safe raw dairy is and in Australia raw dairy is not legal. I consider this to be paternalism gone too far. We all take risks in out daily lives. I would like to buy raw butter for the Wulzen factor.