The Dr. Oz website has a whole section on raw foods, called The Raw Food Challenge, designed to help you transition to a raw foods diet. I’m floored. After the last few years of listening to mainstream news talk about how crazy those raw foodists are (It’s all an eating disorder! Enzymes aren’t necessary!), here’s the Doc himself showing people how to switch to a raw food eating plan.
What do you guys think? Would you consider a raw foods diet if your doctor told you to think about it? Would you be more or less likely to consider eating raw if you had cancer?
Me, I think I’d love to go mostly raw someday, if it’s possible for me to get all my macronutrient requirements met with my finicky taste buds, but I can’t imagine being 100% raw. I really appreciate Carmella’s comment at the end of this post (filled with beautiful photographs!) about how she eats a little cooked food now and then, and doesn’t try to be so rigid with her eating. I love the idea of eating a nutrition-soaked diet, but I don’t like the idea of never being able to eat out with friends, or of forcing my dinner hosts to do anything more complicated than, “No meat please”.
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The *only* way I’d go raw food is if I had some specific condition and this was a treatment, and only then if it were life-threatening and not merely annoying. Seriously. Cooking at its best is an art form utilizing science, consuming it is a social bonding experience, and good food cooked from good ingredients and consumed in moderation is one of the greatest things about being human. I would no more go for a raw food diet than I’d go for an all-cooked-food diet.
I’m pretty sure those cookies you make me every year also count as social bonding. Because I LOVE YOU MAN! :)
Would that be social bondage? ;-)
Muah! It totally would.
Lisa: “Come visit!”
Hollie: “But it’s so far! I don’t like to do long drives!”
Lisa: *waves cookies* *waves chickens*
Hollie: *mesmerized* “YEEESSSSSS LIIIISSSSAAA.”
I can see why a doctor would recommend eating more raw foods, but I’d be pretty surprised if my doctor recommended an all raw food diet. In fact, I’m so skeptical that I’d probably be suspicious of my doctor.
Just seems kind of extreme for me. Or, rather, not the extreme I would choose to pursue. I love raw foods, and I can see how a raw food diet is far and above better for health and the planet than a standard American diet, but that ain’t saying much. I’m just trying to make as much of my food as I can, and get closer and closer to basic, whole ingredients, as many local and seasonal as possible, and that is certainly plenty challenging. All raw? I think I can only take only so many limits.
I was thinking of you today, Hollie. Be glad you are where you are…I am beginning to think that Seattle is a vegetarian paradise. I don’t eat meat more that 4 times a week, so when I don’t eat my own food, I’m always scouting for the non-meat items. Travelling poses challenges. I wandered two airports today for anything decent, and the sad expensive salads, fruit, or overly sweetened yougurt DID NOT appeal. I’m picky about cheese, so none of the non-meat sandwiches called my name, either. I ended up just munching on my raw veggie bag until I ended up ravenous in Oklahoma City, one of the meat capitals of the midwest. (Speaking of the Standard American Diet, which has the fine acronym “SAD”.)
My colleague and I decided, after all these months of going to OKC, finally giving it to the local delicacy. We shared an order of chicken-fried steak, and ordered two sides of veggies. The single chicken-fried steak (shared) was probably 4-6 serving’s worth, and the veggie sides (spinach, and brussels sprouts) were puny: I thought they were half orders. We came nowhere close in finishing the meat, and I’ve had my fill of chicken-fried steak to last the rest of the decade. SAD, indeed.
I don’t think I could go raw. It seems to involve a lot of dried fruit, which I am picky about, and dates especially, which I particularly dislike. I’m also somewhat picky about nuts, and very picky about vegetables. I can manage 60-80% vegetarian — mostly not vegan — but, at least for now, that’s about as close as I get.
Ivana – Yeah, Seattle (my home) and Portland (my hometown) are definitely vegetarian paradises. It’s great. I think I could also live happily in most areas of California, too. But the midwest? Aiyeee, I don’t see how that would work to well. I’ve got some raw foodist friends down in the South, and I’m not sure how they manage it. While their climate does allow for a more varied diet of fresh foods in the winter and spring, I’d think the receptivity of others to the diet would be pretty low.
Nolly – Most long-term raw foodists that I know don’t tend to eat a lot of dried fruit, but you’re right, they definitely do at the beginning. A lot of people transition to raw with a ton of dried fruit. I’m picky about nuts too, which would make going raw really hard for me.
I guess my outsider’s view of raw food is too narrow, then; I haven’t looked into it in any depth, but fruit, nuts, and dehydrators are mostly what I see people talking about when they talk about raw food.
I might do it if I had someone to shop and fix it for me. I actually love most fruits, nuts, and vegetables. That’s my hangup with most “more nutritious” diets – they’re too much work. So then I end up eating a fried egg sandwich again because I was too hungry to come up with anything else. Feh.
I wouldn’t go raw personally for several reasons, firstly the enzymes inherant to the plant kingdom have no function whatsover in the digestive process of humans.
Secondly many foods are far more nutritious cooked as it reaks down the tough cellulose walls of plant cells that otherwise trap the nutrients preventing their digestion(beta carotene in carrots being the classic example).
The cooking process is important for the ‘deactivation’ for any number of antinutrients, grains and beans simply aren’t nutritionally sound when not soaked and cooked and legumes at least are an essential component of the average vegans diet.
A completely raw food diet is very weakening in the long term (fungal infections interestingly have been found to de particularly common in long term raw foodists suggesting that the immune system isn’t working up to scratch), it overly taxes the digestive system (contrary to what most people think hence it is not tolerated at all by most people with digestive disorders) and is overly cooling in general.
All these facts considered the whole premise of benifits from going raw begins to look a bit shaky, there simply isn’t any science to back it up, I mean how can a whole movement of people turn a blind eye to the simple fact that plant enzymes don’t do anything in our bodies and that many components of raw plant foods are toxic to the body and yet non-toxic once cooked!?
The raw movement bases the supposed benifits of raw on an innacurate understanding of basic human physiology and biochemsitry and I’m not really sure how this isn’t more of an issue, why is it ok to lie about how your food is really digested?
I think adjusting our eating habits according to our environment, the seasons and our own changing personal needs is a more logical approach to acchieving and maintaining health.
I tend to eat nearly a 100% raw diet in the height of summer, but my body naturally starts desiring warming stews and slow cooked roasts to build and warm me as the weather gets colder and colder.
Any dietary approach based on a principle of extreme seems unwise to me, I feel that balance within ourselves and between ourselves and our surroundings is paramount to health and harmony.
Thats my 2 cents anyway :)