Raw Food Diet

It seems my dedication to ‘nude food’ (unprocessed food at all times!) is going to be trumped by the raw foodies. The raw food diet was popularised by Max Burcher-Brenner in the late 1800s (coincidentally his American counterpart Dr. Kellogg was doing the same). Yes, both men responsible for a popular breakfast food!

Wikipedia defines a raw food diet “as the practice of consuming uncooked, unprocessed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet. Depending on the type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include a selection of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds (including sprouted whole grains such as gaba rice), eggs, fish (such as sashimi), meat (such as carpaccio), and non-pasteurized/non-homogenized dairy products (such as raw milk, raw milk cheese, and raw milk yogurt).”

A couple of years ago I happened upon a restaurant in Port Melbourne, Le Cru, which served only raw food meals. The cold pasta has remained with me, for good reasons not bad. It was both a shock and a delight. However, I couldn't find a website for them so they not be operating. I have travelled from meat eater, to vegetarian, to vegan and back to vegetarian. The raw food experience is one I haven’t tried. So I have no experience to speak of.

However, I did find this interesting account of one man’s experience of going raw food for a month. He notes that his endurance seemed to improve and his sweet cravings dropped off also. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/02/raw-food-diet/  I guess this is even more interesting given some reading I have been doing (thanks to Mary) about long distance, ultra marathon runners. Many of them are vegetarians, and many live a nude food lifestyle. It’s not raw food but it comes pretty close for many meat eaters. The connection the book makes to nude food and a simplified diet of grains, fruits and vegetables, is that it improves endurance and leaves the digestive system ‘clear’. I would agree with that wholeheartedly and I think the writer of the blog above would also.

So the benefits professed are: number one and most convincing argument is improved nutrient intake because heating raw food generally degrades and damages the nutrients they contain. You can eat more and still lose weight. The diet encourages you to look outside the square when preparing meals so you are more likely to get variety and that makes for a healthy body. It is a more ethical way to eat (meat production isn’t a nice practice). The environmental impact is a more positive one because growing fruit and vegetables and grains emits fewer green house gases etc… than farming livestock does.

I think the raw food diet has much to offer for our health and our waist line. You may not want to go to the dark side completely but consider a few simple changes. Leave vegetables raw, broc is lovely raw, carrots are great raw, mushrooms too, and they can be added to a plate of cooked vegetables. Salads are the most obvious raw food. Get them going with the addition of seeds like chia and pepitas, and nuts like walnuts and almonds. Check out the local expert at www.kemisrawkitchen.com.au for more inspiration.

I do have some concerns that this could be hijacked by people pretending to be raw foodies, see this for a great example, http://rawpower.com.au/products.htm. When did protein powder become a raw nude food???? Uhhhh.