The Raw Food Diet
There have always been a variety of new diets that people have turned to to handle their weight problems, health issues, and sometimes just because they want to eat better but in the last few years something new has developed in the way of eating habits and it’s most commonly called the Raw Food Diet. Raw foodists are essentially people who strive to eat between 75% and 100% raw, live, unprocessed (and usually organic) food. That means that there is no heating or cooking of food at all and that for the most part all you drink is water and all you eat is fruits and vegetables.
The concept behind the raw food diet is a simple enough one to understand but it comes with quite a lot of science and quoted statistics to back it up. The general idea is that not only are our bodies not designed to be able to digest food that has been cooked or heated such food is actually detrimental to our overall health because of the carcinogens and free radicals that are introduced into food when it’s heated and the acidity that eating such foods creates in our body - which is normally a very delicate alkaline balance. It’s said that your body requires certain natural enzymes that are found in “live” (or uncooked) foods and that without these enzymes it takes a great deal of your bodies energy to digest the food you eat, thus making it more difficult and counterproductive, as we are meant to gain energy from our food not spend it on the digestion process. These live enzymes don’t survive being heated above 118 degrees F and thus are only available in raw foods. Heating food up beyond this temperature is also what causes the chemical change in it that can produce the carcinogens and mutagens that are associated with various types of diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and many others.
There is also a lot of evidence to support the claim that our bodies simply can’t handle all the new types of food we have been eating in the last 100 years. Dairy and meat haven’t ever been eating in such large quantities until the last few decades and there hasn’t been such an abundance of corn and corn based products (which is pretty much everything that’s processed and in a box at the grocery store) so our bodies are at a loss as to what they should do with all this “food” we’re giving it. There have been many studies done that show that humans simply don’t produce the right enzymes to break down dairy and most meat and so a lot of ends up rotting in our intestines, causing us gastric distress. However our bodies, like the primates we are so closely related to, are very well suited to the digestion of fruits and leafy vegetables which is what is supposed to make the raw food diet so amazing - it’s the ideal diet for humans according to many of the people who eat it. Eating a mostly fruit diet provides the nutrients and water levels our bodies need while balancing them out with some leafy greens and some nuts keeps the minerals and fat content our bodies require at the right levels as well.
Lots of raw foodists have also looked into new “superfoods” like maca, spirulina, gojji berries, raw cacao, stevia and so forth. There are a lot of people who swear by the benefits of some of these new types of foods but some of the “purist” raw foodies say that these foods wouldn’t be available to us in nature (as many of them have to be processed, extracted, ground, blended and so forth) and so they aren’t ideal for our bodies. Many people find these foods to be similar to supplements and multivitamins and say that they are necessary in our modern day world where food is grown and delivered and consumed differently but there are others that prefer a more natural approach and choose to do everything they can to get their bodily needs from natural sources of food.
For a lot of people the raw food diet is very difficult and it’s quite a transition as well as a lifestyle change. There are more and more raw food restaurants popping up but it can still be difficult to eat with friends and family when everyone else decides to head to the local steakhouse. The quantity of food you have to consume is quite different as well. You have to eat a lot more than you normally would because fruits and vegetables are so low calorie otherwise your body isn’t getting everything it needs. This can be a problem for people who have conventional fridges and small living spaces because the amount of food often requires a lot of storage area especially if you’re planning to keep enough food on hand for a week or so at a time. People also struggle quite a bit with cravings and wanting to eat some of their normal comfort foods and when you switch over to a raw diet its recommended that you do so completely for the first few months so that your body can properly clean itself out which can be really difficult for a lot of people. It can also be a change in the amount of money they’re spending on food. Produce - especially high quality, organic produce - can be very expensive and when that’s all your eating the bills can begin to add up pretty quickly.
Changes as drastic as this is diet can also be pretty rough on any family you may be living with because they wont be used to their new eating habits and it can make social nuances like dinnertime feel strange. Make sure that you discuss such changes with family or spouses before making them and help everyone to adjust as you are adjusting too.
The raw food diet is one of the many that are popular right now and the above information is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re really interested then do some research, talk to some people who are on it, and decide for yourself if it’s right for you.