raw diet

[Johnny Dangerous]

Anyone tried it completely?

I try to make a large portion of what I eat be raw fruit and veg, mostly in smoothie form right now.

Anyone want to share their experiences doing a raw food diet, or to share recipes or sites they particularly like?

[Thrasymachus]

A 100% raw food vegan diet, is actually one of the most unhealthy vegan diets out there. I tried to make a pathetic attempt at it once, but thankfully quit that nonsense fad diet. It is good to eat more raw food, even over 50% of dietary intake if you can, but all raw food is bad. I would stay away from the raw foodists. They are zealots and none of the so called leaders in their movement are qualified or learned in nutrition or health. I would instead recommend sticking to the advice of some of the following:
Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neil Bernard, Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Gary Null, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, all who are very qualified and are excellent advocates for a whole food plant based diet, unlike the raw foodists. All of those authors have books published. Don't get me wrong if you can find a raw food recipe book, it is still beneficial as long you don't go 100%.

Personally I lean toward Gary Null because I don't have the quiet family environment to read and he has a radio show where he gives lots of free on air nutritional and dietary advice available for download. Also Dr. McDougall runs an excellent web forum where he also occasionally posts, along with dietitian Jeff Novick, so that may be a way to go where you can also get structured guidance for free! Dr. Michael Greger also runs the excellent resource website Nutritionfacts.org.

In my Thread: Purpose of modern medicine: no obstacle to economic growth, I mentioned how most doctors disempower others, but the few exceptions I named above are different. They use a health promoting plant based diet to help their patients avoid most chronic care diseases and live longer. So unlike most patient-victims, if you follow their advice it is based all on patient compliance, unlike most medicine.

[Sara H]

I highly don't recommend this. I was a raw foodist once when I lived in Northern California. I knew many other Raw foodists, as well as people who were Sangha who at one point or another had tried it. I was actually a fruitarian, that's how extreme I was.

In my case, and in every other echo'd by the people I talked to and knew, the results were all the same:

It makes your brain airy and confused.

Like getting high. You can huff paint for the same result.

Lots of energy? Yes.

But the effect is like putting rocket fuel in a lawn mower, it burns out very quickly and the effect on the brain is dangerous.

Every person I know who has tried this has had the exact same experience:

It made them airy and ungrounded.

In a high, delusional sense, not in some sortof "enlightened" sense.

I would reccomend it in a very short term for medical reasons.

I think it can be very helpful as an aid to help in some conditions.

In Gassho,

Sara H