# Raw Food Diet!



## Jenikyula gone mad (Nov 9, 2009)

I'm embarking on a raw food diet. This past semester I really put on some weight by sitting at my desk far too much and splurging on chinese food, pizza, and chicken wings waaaaay too often. I hope that this raw food diet will help me get fitter and happier. I'll probably cheat a little...drink coffee, eat sushi sometimes...but for the most part it's uncooked fruits and veggies for me.

I'm looking for people on here who would like to embark with me! It would be nice to have people to talk to about this, because I'm sure it won't be easy. Any takers? =P


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## sas111 (Oct 20, 2010)

I'm on raw eating right now!, except for one minor slip up, i've been going strong for awhile now. I'll be your raw diet buddy. ^-^
I've already lost so much, it's a real quick process.


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

...why? If you're doing this, please don't just eat _only_ raw fruit/vegetables unless you're trying to get malnourished. You need to calculate your diet properly to pull this off without killing yourself.


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## sas111 (Oct 20, 2010)

Duke of Prunes said:


> ...why? If you're doing this, please don't just eat _only_ raw fruit/vegetables unless you're trying to get malnourished. You need to calculate your diet properly to pull this off without killing yourself.


Since when has anybody ever died from eating raw?, that's ridiculous... :blank Some people eat like this ALL their life.


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## FairleighCalm (May 20, 2007)

Iwill embark with you j. I'm. In the third day of a master cleanse then its all raw all the time. : )


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

Vanilllabb said:


> Since when has anybody ever died from eating raw?, that's ridiculous... :blank Some people eat like this ALL their life.


It doesn't kill you directly, but malnourishment makes you more susceptible to illness and unless you know exactly what you're doing, living on _only_ raw fruit/vegetables will make you malnourished in time.


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## dustbunnies (May 18, 2011)

You should still cook most vegetables 'coz you might get sick or something. Maybe you can steam it for a few minutes.


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

That too, especially if you eat organic vegetables seeing as they're literally grown in s**t. Probably not as big of a deal with fruits though.


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## beethoven (Jan 17, 2011)

Duke of Prunes said:


> ...why? If you're doing this, please don't just eat _only_ raw fruit/vegetables unless you're trying to get malnourished. You need to calculate your diet properly to pull this off without killing yourself.


I know a bunch of raw foodies that would just laugh at this statement. They are living their happy and healthy lives, not spending a single dime on pills or health care, while others insist on blindly following the traditional "FDA approved" western diet. The diet that kills over 600 thousand Americans each year from heart disease and keep millions and millions hooked on prescription drugs.

Back to the OP: I was 100% raw for 2 months and felt great. I'm not a raw fooder anymore for lack of discipline and all the traveling I have to do. I'm still 100% vegan though and I try to eat raw whenever I can.

I was just watching this doc the other day (made by real MDs), maybe it will serve as a motivation to keep you going strong:


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

Overeating, drowning everything in lard and eating loads of sugar is what kills those 600 thousand Americans a year. There's nothing inherently unhealthy about meat/eggs/milk or cooked food.

Additionally, before people started seriously researching nutrition and people became more aware of what they actually need to eat, it would have been a complete trial and error trying to eat a healthy raw vegan diet. They probably dropped like flies (especially before the invention of vaccines... oh wait alternative 'medicine' types don't get vaccinated anyway because of their chemophobia LOL), catching all kinds of infections with their malnourished bodies and subsequently weakened immune systems.


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## Akane (Jan 2, 2008)

Some actually live completely health with no vitamin/mineral deficiencies on blood tests by eating only fruit. I actually looked in to the fruitarian diet and then I developped fructose intollerance which severely limits what fruits I can eat. However you cannot do such diets from birth. We actually require animal products for certain vitamins like b12 but the body normally (not mine) stores enough b12 that it takes 5-15years of absolutely no b12 to see a deficiency and many breads, cereals, and dairy or meat replacers are fortified with things like that.

You can grow things in well composted manure and all you need to do is rinse it. Odds of getting ill are next to nothing unless you have a major immune system problem. Most of the outbreaks caused by raw foods have been traced back to human waste (uncomposted) contaminating things or improper storage leading to damp foods and toxic mold. Fresh food grown and stored properly is perfectly safe to eat raw. Cooking destroys many useful nutrients and you would actually kill yourself of malnutrition much faster if you cooked all your food and did not eat fortified foods or take multivitamin/minerals. While I know it's a different animal and diet they found cats fed on cooked meat diets developed health issues that carried on through several generations even after the diet was changed due to the negative impact on the health of the mothers. The ones they did not change the diet on died out by I think the 5th generation. Cats fed on raw meat lived perfectly healthy with no health issues and healthy offspring until the termination of the study. Cooking is actually bad for most foods and some cultures actually eat a lot of completely raw meat as well as everything else but it takes extra care in the handling and storage of food. Japan recently had an outbreak because a restaurant chain that serves raw beef bought meat from a company without checking whether the meat was suggested for raw use or not. Japan eats lots of raw meat including chicken and most of the time they don't get sick because the food is fresher and stored better than the conditions we use in the US.

All that said it is a good idea to cover your bases by taking a multivitamin/mineral when eating a restricted diet. Also a nutrition professor ran an experiment for a class where he ate nothing but junk food for several months but ingested fewer calories than the really healthy diet he had been eating. He lost a bunch of weight. Portions are more important than type of food for weight loss. Of course a junk food diet is just as likely to give you malnutrition as any of the diet fads out there and he added that he did not recommend doing this long term because of the health risks but was just trying to prove a point.


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## sas111 (Oct 20, 2010)

Duke of Prunes said:


> It doesn't kill you directly, but malnourishment makes you more susceptible to illness and unless you know exactly what you're doing, living on _only_ raw fruit/vegetables will make you malnourished in time.


Raw isn't just fruit's 'n veggies, you can consume nuts, seeds, raw fish, raw sushi, soaked oats ect.


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## Revenwyn (Apr 11, 2011)

I grew up on a raw food vegan diet. It was not good.

By age 26 I still had not gotten my period. Why? Because I didn't have enough fat consistently in my system for my hormones to start functioning. I looked a lot like this:









When I switched to a diet with whole milk, eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and red meat, my period came for the first time, I lost the starvation bloat, and felt healthy for the first time in years.

Raw food diet I think is fine for short term, but do not put a child on that diet. They will not grow through puberty properly.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Revenwyn said:


> I grew up on a raw food vegan diet. It was not good.
> 
> By age 26 I still had not gotten my period. Why? Because I didn't have enough fat consistently in my system for my hormones to start functioning. I looked a lot like this:
> 
> ...


Thank you for such an honest and personal post. Having tried Raw foodism myself in the past, I know how much of a dead end it can be. I never experienced anything as severe as what you detailed, but definitely got symptoms of malnutrition after prolonged exposure to it.

Those in the movement are way too dogmatic and keen to blame every problem that arises on the mysterious 'detox' effect. They have good intentions but fall badly short by constructing a diet plan steeped in ethics (animal rights) and wishy washy reasoning.

Sadly once you're 'in', there is a tendency to blind yourself to reason and the obvious negative effects that the diet has on your body medium/long term. From that point on, only when you have finally reached rock bottom will most see the error of their ways.


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

See, fad dietists? You really need to know what you're doing and carefully calculate your diet if you don't want to end up malnourished. It's not a joke.

On another note, as it's been mentioned, I don't get this 'detox' rubbish that fad dietists go on about. Your kidneys are already 'detoxing' you; if they weren't, you'd certainly know about it. Ever had renal impairment/failure? I've had the former (combination of sepsis and side-effect of the antibiotics they gave me for it, it wasn't bad enough to need dialysis though) and I know people who have had the latter, and it's not a joke. You don't just feel 'unwell', you feel like you're going to die!

The only reason you'd need help to 'detox' other than in renal impairment/failure is if you had severe lead/arsenic/mercury poisoning (and no, you won't get mercury poisoning from your fillings, so don't even bring that quackery up) or similar, and a fad diet wouldn't help you with that; you'd need to be dosed with a chelating agent to sweep it up.


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## rainbowOne (Sep 26, 2010)

All these fad diets just seem strange. I understand that western eating isn't particularly healthy - but why don't you follow a diet that is healthy, instead of being all dramatic? Or are you trying to make some sort of statement?
The Meditteranean diet, for instance, has been proven to be one of the healthiest in the world - why don't you follow that instead of a raw food diet, which certainly hasn't? 
Growing your own fruit and veg is brilliant, but there's no need to just eat that. You can cook them - yourself - with your own sauces, make your own bread, pasta, etc... it's really not that hard. And thats much more healthy than just ignoring several food groups. 

And as Duke said - detoxing is a load of rubbish. You don't need to detox. You just need to eat healthy.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Allow me to re-address the balance a little bit :b There is value in the alternate diet movement, but you have to carefully evaluate everthing and even self experiment to an extent to see what works for your own individual circumstances.

I do eat partially raw I have to say(which includes raw eggs & sushi), as I find it lighter on the gut - particularly useful when I think there's alot of stress coming my way. But eating completely raw long/medium term is near unsustainable. This is even more obvious with the raw vegan crowd (only uncooked fruits & veg). They have all the negatives of a conventional vegan diet paired with the raw one!

As it stands at the moment, my diet is probably around 80% 'screened' lol. I tend to limit my grain intake (particularly wheat) and also limit processed oils.This allows me to sleep better, have improved concentration and keeps my stomach issues/skin condition to a minimum. However I allow myself cheats, for reasons of sanity and the fact that eating a variety is no doubt better for you.


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## seafolly (Jun 17, 2010)

Maybe I've just been studying too much molecular bio and pathology but I can't imagine not at least steaming the veggies. I'm all for strengthening your immune system but there's some stuff on there you just don't want to ingest straight from the grocery store/market/earth! :b


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## tutliputli (Feb 22, 2009)

^ I can't imagine not cooking the veg at all either. Surely they don't have to be completely raw for you to get the best out of this diet...? I eat a hell of a lot of veggies, usually stir-fried - they're delicious that way and not overcooked, still nice and crunchy and I imagine they retain most of their nutrients too. 

I've lost a fair bit of weight by cutting down on refined carbs. I live off soba noodles, wholewheat noodles and pasta and brown rice. You can eat healthily and deliciously without having to go to extremes.


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## beethoven (Jan 17, 2011)

How would cooking foods avoid malnourishment? Name one specific nutrient that is vital for a healthy diet that you cannot find in vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Before someone answers b12, go and research how b12 is produced and how it is available in non-artificial environments.



> By age 26 I still had not gotten my period. Why? Because I didn't have enough fat consistently in my system for my hormones to start functioning.


You didn't get your period because you didn't have enough fat in your diet, not because a raw vegan diet cannot provide enough fat. Using anecdotal information to invalidate a vegan diet is kind of funny. I think all of us know at least a few people who eat a standard American diet and are suffering from some form of chronic disease.



> Overeating, drowning everything in lard and eating loads of sugar is what kills those 600 thousand Americans a year.


You don't need to overeat at a caloric level. Overeating one macro-nutrient is enough to make you sick. Try a high fat diet, like the SAD, for a while and watch your health drop. Or research the long term consequences of a high protein diet.

People are emotionally attached to their food, so getting defensive responses is just natural. Using demeaning terms like "fad diet" to dismiss something is a cheap trick commonly used to replace logical evaluation of new ideas and presentation of relevant information.

Please research the works of Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. M.D., John McDougall M.D. and Neal Barnard M.D. If you can come up with data that invalidates their research, then we can argue at a technical level.


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## rainbowOne (Sep 26, 2010)

^ Well raw food diet is a fad diet though. Definition of fad:


> a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc., especially one followed enthusiastically by a group.


Barely anyone does a raw food diet long term.

I think that food we eat now has got way too many things added that we don't actually need. However, I don't solve that problem by deciding to eliminate all food that has been cooked. I guess maybe I don't know enough about the raw food diet. Why should we not eat cooked food? 
If we look after our bodies - by making sure we eat a balanced diet, one which doesn't cut out random food groups, and exercising enough, then we'll be healthy.


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

Nobody said that raw food and veganism are INHERENTLY unhealthy, it's that you need to come up with a carefully controlled diet and eat all kinds of disgusting crap that wouldn't be possible to obtain if it weren't for imports/exports (you could argue that it's unnatural) to compensate for the lack of meat (yes, I know you can eat some raw meat if it's fresh and kept in immaculate conditions, but it's still not without risk). Most people don't know anything about nutrition and would probably end up eating nothing but your standard fruit/vegetables, which down the line could make them seriously ill.

I'm well aware of what happens when you eat too much protein, fat, salt, etc as well. Note that I didn't just say 'omgz its teh overeatings'. Maybe the raw food diet has taken it's toll on your eyes. Ironically, people who practise veganism and raw foodism are often proponents of taking _toxic_ amounts of micronutrients.

Also, it's funny that you mention being 'emotionally attached' to food, because that's the sort of thing you typically see with people on pseudo-scientific fad diets, the evidence behind which says nothing but 'this is healthier than eating a kilo of lard and sugar every day', which certainly doesn't represent the majority of what aforementioned zealots of quackery call 'Western' diets.

The fact is, there are few valid reasons to go on one of these diets. It's entirely possible to eat healthy without forgoing cooking and animal products, and it doesn't have 'being smug' as a prerequisite.

lol 'detoxing'


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## Nuthatch (Apr 13, 2007)

There are people out there who can go on a raw food diet for life, eating only fruits and veggies, and end up with amazing health. And I know this because I personally know some of those people. Does that mean it's 'the' healthy diet for everyone? Of course not. What most people fail to recognize is that just because something is healthy for one person (or a group of people) doesn't mean it's the best thing for everyone. There is no one ultimate diet where all who follow it will end up in perfect health. It just doesn't exist. Anyone who claims that (based on their own experience with a particular diet) will soon be disabused by all the people who get sick from it. 'One man's food is another man's poison' after all. It's highly individual, and you could end up having entirely different nutritional needs than, say, your next door neighbor. Yes, we're all human and essentially the same. But when it comes to reaching one's optimal health, we're genetically different enough that we require different foods to do so.


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## SMOOZIE (May 26, 2011)

There are many advantages to eating a raw food diet. But, in the long run, the body stores of vitamin B12 might get depleted, probably will. One has to be careful to get enough iron, especially women, as well. It also might be a good idea to keep an eye on protein quality - that you get all the amino acids in recommended amounts. It's not all that serious, as it may sound. People in Africa may live on some grains only plus dirty water. The quality of life could just suffer a little bit and more so in the long run.

It's also all really complex. The amount of nutrients your body will use depends on your genes, how well you can absorb nutrients. Depends in what combinations you ingest your food. Etc.

Any big changes in diet (or in anything else for that matter) is stressful to the body. I'm not even talking about the fact that it might be hard to make big changes due to well-practiced habits.

Personally, I was into raw foodism a year ago and it was too tough to keep up with that lifestyle. Now I'm just gradually making healthier and healthier choices. It's so much easier when you don't do it forcefully and allow exceptions.

But, as everyone is different and has different levels of desire, I say go for it and try it out, if it's really what you want to do. There will surely be benefits.


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## Jenikyula gone mad (Nov 9, 2009)

Sorry I haven't replied in a while, been busy. Thanks for all your support! It's awesome that so many of you raw diet already. It's a really beautiful philosophy and lifestyle indeed.


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## Lolita92 (Jun 7, 2011)

No sorry, tried it and didn't like it. Plus I like meat too much and you certainly can't eat that raw.


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## Andrew1980 (Feb 28, 2009)

People seem to distract themselves with new placebo pills, one after the other. Waiting until they reach a goal.


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