Raw Ramblings
03 Mar 2006 A Letter to a Student:
A student named Christina asked me what are the problems with a raw food diet.
Hi Christina,
The Problems with the Raw Food Diet that come to my mind right now are:
1. It is difficult for people who have been brought up on a cooked food
diet to eat a stable long-term raw diet because they have to go against
lots of childhood conditioning. Most people have enough personal problems
without having to take on a whole new set of psychological goals and they
prefer to seek comfort in the food of their childhood.
2. It is also difficult for most people because they are living amongst
a whole society that revolves around cooking: advertising, packaged food,
restaurants, social gatherings, you name it! Most people have not got
the fortitude to be different and stand against the masses for what they
believe is right. Most people are just struggling to be accepted by their
peers and elders.
3. It is also difficult for most people because they are addicted to the
sugar rush of high GI foods such as bread, cereal, biscuits, cakes, etc.
4. It is confronting for many people who have learnt how to cook, and
pride themselves on their ability to prepare beautiful looking and smelling
meals of destroyed food.
5. It is disturbing for overweight people because they often cannot attract
enough attention and physical pleasure from other people so they have
a higher need to seek pleasure in eating, and overeating, high GI foods,
which then increases their weight. (This need to excessively seek pleasure
in eating can also result from living in denatured, unaesthetic, and alienating
city environments.)
6. It is demanding for people who were not breast fed until they voluntarily
gave it up, because they have a deep sense of oral and sensual deprivation
and use food to try to satisfy it.
7. It is perplexing for people who do not understand pre-history, biology,
and evolution because they find it hard to accept that humans have only
conducted agriculture and eaten cooked grain-based diets for a small part
of their time on Earth. Religions teach that bread is the staff of life.
8. It is difficult for a person to learn how to eat raw food in a way
that will not create cravings or deficiencies because there are not enough
people who really know how to do it properly and the information on how
to do it is buried amongst a load of fanciful mystical bullshit. People
have a strong need to mystify things they don't really understand. People
attempting a raw food diet without training often go low in kilojoules,
sodium, calcium, iron, EFA's etc because they do not know how to do it
right.
9. It is challenging for boys and men to eat a fruit based (50-70%) diet
because of the macho culture that believes eating fruit is "sissy"
and salads are "rabbit food". Expressions like "He is a
fruit cake", "He is going bananas", "He is a nut case",
"He is a bit of a vegetable", and "She is a sweetie",
"She is a real peach" all serve to turn many insecure or homophobic
men off eating raw food with the association with homosexuality, weakness,
and femininity (and insanity).
10. Many people have learned to get their stimulation from alcohol, cigarettes,
coffee and tea, to which they are physically addicted. They need this
strong stimulation because they eat a heavy grain/meat based diet which
drags them down emotionally and physically. These people find it very
difficult to transition to a raw diet because eating a good raw diet provides
lots of stimulation. Because they are still having their original stimulants,
they get over stimulated and cannot handle it. So a transition to raw
requires drastic reduction of addictive stimulants as well as stodgy foods
simultaneously.
So the problem with the raw diet is that it is too difficult for most
people to achieve.
There is also the problem that many people who turn to a raw food diet
are also motivated by the "thou shalt not kill animals" belief
system. This brings the key long-term serious health issue of low vitamin
B12. These people bring the raw food diet into disrepute because they
cause themselves harm. There is less (but increasing) support in the raw
food movement for people who want to eat 150 g of flesh (raw or cooked)
once a week to keep their B12 level in the healthy range.
All foods, including fruit, veggies, and nuts, are becoming increasingly
deficient in vitamins and minerals because our sewage and kitchen scraps
are not being composted and returned to the soil the food was harvested
from. So this a problem with with the raw food diet as well as every other
diet.
All foods, especially non-organically grown foods, are becoming increasingly
polluted by toxic chemicals which are spreading around the planet. This
is less of a problem for people who eat less animal foods because animals
tend to concentrate those toxins in their bodies. But it is still a problem
even for raw food eaters.
All foods which are green harvested and/or refrigerated are likely to
be deficient in glyconutrients. This can contribute to poorly glycosylated
proteins in the body and a subsequent reduction of functionality of all
body systems.
Some special foods may need to be added to a raw food diet to provide
adequate supplies of plant hormones. Cooked food diets are also usually
low in plant hormones, which are the building blocks of human hormones.
I hope that helps.
Your fruitfully,
Sapoty Brook
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06 June 2006 (666 watchout!)
There was an interesting program on ABC Radio National titled 'Cracking the century' - Healthy ageing part one.
The comment that stood out for me was when the interviewer asked 105 years old Suzie Scullard about her diet:
Suzie Scullard: Most things, I like vegetables, not too much meat, I like fruit, any fruit I like.
The interviewer passed straight on to other questions.... does not compute, therefore ignore?
Here are a couple of other interesting comments:
Tom Perls:
[Regarding psychologica traits of centenarians]... they tend to score
low so far in the sample we have of really only 30 people, so we really
have to expand this. But people who score low in neuroticism means that
they tend not to dwell on things, they tend not to internalise things
that might be stressful, rather they are able to let go. It doesn't seem
so much important of whether they've been exposed to a lot of stress that
matters but how they manage the stress.
Tom Perls: [Regarding why seven times more women reach the century] ....I think one of the possibilities, a little controversial and a little bit out there is that women menstruate compared to men for 30/40 years and the result is that they become iron deficient. And it turns out in the basic biology of ageing that iron is critical for our cells' ability to produce these very nasty molecules called free radicals, they are very highly reactive, they glum into our cell membranes and our chromosomes and DNA and render them less able to function. And may play a very important role in the basic biology of ageing.
Well it just may be
that by having less iron you may produce fewer of these free radicals.
It's a pretty simplistic theory but there've been studies of populations
that are either vegetarian or don't eat red meat, which is really the
source of iron on our diet, and lo and behold they've about a 20% reduced
risk for vascular disease. And there's been some studies of men who donate
blood, kind of our way of menstruating, who donate blood on a regular
basis become iron deficient and lo and behold they have a 20% reduced
risk of vascular disease as well. So I think it's a pretty interesting
theory and one that we have yet to investigate a bit further.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2006/1624896.htm#
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10 June 2006
Next week a friend and I are launching "Your Instant Kitchen Garden" at our local organic health food shop. People will be able to buy fully grown vegetables in pots. There will be a deposit charged on the pots and soil. This is for people who haven't got the time to grow a garden but want to have fresh, unrefrigerated greens.
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Its your turn to washup darling.
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