Raw Food – What is the raw food diet all about?

What is the raw foodism all about – and why is it making the news now? A growing number of people are embracing a raw food diet in a bid to improve their health and their sense of wellbeing. Is it simply about raw carrots and broccoli? That’s what most of us think – but we’d be wrong! Although the raw food diet is taken from the 4 main food groups of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, there is much more to it!

It is not some complicated fad diet, but something that can be entered into gradually – advocates of raw foodism claim that the difference in their energy levels when they switch to a raw food diet is truly amazing. It is said to be a much more natural way of eating, and needs no special equipment – meals can be prepared in just 5 or 10 minutes! So, Here are some news stories from our RSS feeds which come in from all around the world which show how a raw food diet can benefit us, with tips on how to get started. The articles are updated automatically, so you will always have something fresh to read about.

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Raw veganism

A raw vegan diet consists of unprocessed, raw plant foods that have not been heated above 40 °C (104 °F). Raw vegans such as Dr. Douglas Graham] believe that foods cooked above this temperature have lost much of their nutritional value and are less healthy or even harmful to the body. Advocates argue that raw or living foods have natural enzymes, which are critical in building proteins and rebuilding the body. Heating these foods kills the natural enzymes, and can leave toxins behind however critics point out that enzymes, as with other proteins consumed in the diet, are denatured and eventually lysed by the digestive process rendering them non-functional. Typical foods included in raw food diets are fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouted grains and legumes.

Among raw vegans there are some subgroups such as fruitarians, juicearians, or sproutarians. Fruitarians eat primarily or exclusively fruits and nuts. Juicearians process their raw plant foods into juice. Sproutarians adhere to a diet consisting mainly of sprouted seeds.

Raw vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is a diet that excludes meat (including game and slaughter byproducts like gelatin), fish (including shellfish and other sea animals) and poultry, but allows dairy and eggs. Common foods include fruit, vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, dairy, eggs and honey. There are several variants of this diet.

Raw animal food diets

Included in raw animal food diets are any food that can be eaten raw, such as uncooked, unprocessed raw muscle-meats/organ-meats/eggs, raw dairy, and aged, raw animal foods such as century eggs,fermented meat/fish/shellfish/kefir, as well as vegetables/fruits/nuts/sprouts, but generally not raw grains, raw beans, and raw soy. Raw foods included on such diets have not been heated at temperatures above104 °F (40 °C). Raw animal foodists believe that foods cooked above this temperature have lost much of their nutritional value and are harmful to the body. They also believe that raw meats should come from healthy sources, such as raw, grassfed meats or raw wild game rather than unhealthy, raw grainfed meats.

Examples of raw animal food diets include the Primal Diet, Anopsology (otherwise known as “Instinctive Eating” or “Instincto”), and the Raw Paleolithic diet (otherwise known as the “Raw Meat Diet”.

The Primal Diet, is a diet consisting of fatty meats, organ meats, dairy, honey, minimal fruit and vegetable juices and coconut cream, all raw. The founder of the Primal Diet is Aajonus Vonderplanitz. Vonderplanitz has estimated that there are 20,000 followers of his raw-meat-heavy Primal Diet in North America, alone. Books by Vonderplanitz include “The Recipe for Living Without Disease” and “We Want To Live”.

There are also those who follow the “Raw Meat Diet”, otherwise known as the “Raw, Paleolithic Diet”, which is a raw version of the (cooked) Paleolithic Diet, incorporating large amounts of raw animal foods such as raw meats/organ-meats, raw seafood, raw eggs, and some raw plant-foods, but usually avoiding non-Paleo foods such as raw dairy, grains and legumes.

A number of traditional aboriginal diets consisted of large quantities of raw food – raw meats, organ meats, and berries, including the traditional diet of the Nenet tribe of Siberia and the Inuit people.

Raw food as a dietary health treatment was first developed in Switzerland by medical doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner, inventor of muesli. After recovering from jaundice while eating raw apples he conducted experiments into the effects on human health of raw vegetables. In November 1897, he opened a sanatorium in Zurich called “Vital Force,” named after a “key term from the German lifestyle reform movement which states that people should pattern their lives after the logic determined by nature”. It is still treating patients today.

Max Gerson M.D. used a diet to cure Albert Schweitzer of type 2 diabetes after previously curing Schweitzer’s wife of pulmonary tuberculosis when all conventional methods had failed. “In a carefully monitored clinical trial, 446 out of 450 skin tuberculosis patients treated with the Gerson diet recovered completely.”
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