Are you raw curious?

[Yoda]

I'm having a great time with:

 

http://www.rawhealthmastermind.com/

 

Just launched a few days ago and it's a dollar to check it out and then $10/month from there. If you are raw curious you gotta at least do the trial period. It's by the author of "Raw Secrets" which is a decent book but this site is much better. Great resource if you are a raw newbie like Yoda.

 

Gettin greener by the day!

[sean]

Are you still diggin' this site Yoda. I was thinkng about getting a subscription.

 

Hey, have you read either of these?

12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Addiction to Cooked Food

Blatant Raw Foodist Propaganda

[Yoda]

It took me several days to digest the info on it... well worth the $1. I'll go month-to-month on it. Definitely recommend the intro deal for the articles and downloads.

 

haven't read those two books.

[Smile]

[Taomeow]

There's no raw foodist Chinese to my knowledge, or Indians, or Native Americans, or any indigenous peoples. Now rats is a different matter...

 

We started cooking our food because of a climate change that made much of the stuff we evolved eating raw unavailable. We nearly lost the quest for survival to rodents with whom primates have historically competed for foodstuffs for at least 2.6 million years (in fact, over a hundred species of primates did lose it after the climate change that made this competition more fierce, and went extinct). Our very own species figured out an alternative way to make up for lost foods by releasing additional energy (i.e. bioavailability) from them with a blast of yang-fire. This happened so long ago that no homo sapiens anywhere on earth has eaten a raw diet in all of archeologically accounted-for history. They've found huge Native American fire pits that multiple tribes used to roast their meat for twenty-five thousand years in a row in the same locations, coming with the herds and going and coming back, generation after generation, and roasting and frying, and having no health complaints. Now rats, cats, bats -- these are different. For starters, they don't have opposable thumbs, so they didn't even try cooking. We did. And we got away with it. If we didn't, it would have been rats ruling the earth today, the way they did yesterday.

 

This said, raw food diets do have a place in human nutrition, as a short term therapeutic intervention they can be quite useful. A raw food diet is catabolic, and anyone in need of weight loss, sped-up bowel transit, and a detox could benefit from a week or two twice to four times a year of a raw food diet. This has been used traditionally in European naturopathy, in TCM, and in Ayurveda, but none of these have ever viewed the raw food diet as a viable lifestyle diet, only as a short term medicinal intervention. It is funny how people confuse one with the other. A week or two of antibiotics can help with pneumonia, but one wouldn't think of taking them for life.

 

I have seen many folks here in CA who did get too raw curious, the "true believers" who persevere with the experiment, and I'm not too crazy about what I saw. Some of the catabolic changes brought about by a long term use of the raw diet are permanent -- e.g., damage to the thyroid, which can suffer irreversible changes from the goitrogenic (thyroid-suppressing) effects of raw cruciferous vegetables raw foodists are so fond of; to the brain, which loses the myelating sheath off its neuronal dendrites in the absence of adequately bioavailable (i.e. cooked) animal fat and a bunch of coenzymes only found in cooked foods (that's why cognitive processes in chronic raw foodists are not quite up to speed, or to be precise, 10 times slower); or to the nerves, because B-12 is only present in foods humans either eat cooked or not at all. (And, no, supplements don't help, unless it's the injectable form, but what's so very natural and healthy about a diet that needs to be supplemented with injections? )

[Treena]

Ouch! Taomeow!

 

And I've learned that raw/cold food can be quite injurious (sp?) to the spleen.

[thelerner]

From what I've read its extemely cleansing and nutritious short term, but long term, be careful and be honest with yourself. It can cause damage.

 

Smile, I've seen similar 'studies' (in Daniel Reid's book for example) on how modern diets kill the cat. I think his example was cats and homogenized milk. Very similar to your study. But..I've also seen it debunked, as a flawed experiment by true believers who fudged data in order to prove there conclusions, ie feeding the critters a really stupid diet in order to sicken them, ie super sizing them.

 

Balance balance balance. Get to pure and its hard to live in this world. The tao flows within its environment. It can move through extremes while keeping balance. Its eats the whopper with half a bun.

 

 

Michael

[agharta]

Sun, Bu-Er was a Taoist Immortal who wrote a poem about eating all raw. I myself have been all-raw for up to 18 months at a time. I currently eat about 90-95% raw, most of the time. I agree that being raw vegan can be dangerous to the health. I eat a lot of raw organ meats and fish, just like the Eskimos and plenty of other traditional groups. The French eat lots of raw meat, as well as Eastern Europeans, and some Middle Eastern societies.

[DalTheJigsaw123]

More thoughts on Raw Diet? Anyone doing it now?

[King Kabalabhati]

This depends on your body type and the climate you live in.

 

If you're a robust or at least medium built type and have tendency towards a lot of heat or excess weight, then raw food is generally very good for you.

 

I'm rather skinny/light and tend to get cold easily, especially in the climate and the house I live in. So cooked warming (veggie) foods are the way to go. I tried a raw food diet and it made me cold and airy in a unpleasant way. I think if coupled with energy work this would make me fly away with the wind..

 

I hadn't thought of the possibility to eat raw meat products.. Just make sure you do something to get rid of the parasites

Edited October 8, 2009 by King Kabalabhati

[Gerard]

Please be careful with this Western falacy or you might damage your spleen chi.

[Jeremy]

I'm 100% raw vegan on a typical day, though I have some soup and even cheese from time to time. Never felt healthier and mentally sharper! And I'm an extreme "vata" type so supposedly I should be avoiding raw food and eating mainly cooked food hahaha. I did some reading awhile back by Bob Flaws about Traditional Chinese Medicine diets. I figured, hey they got the qigong right so they must know what they're talking about with diet too, right? Well that wasn't good for me as I discovered when I experimented with a cooked food diet earlier this year, following the recommendations in his book The Tao of Healthy Eating. It could be because my body has adapted to the raw diet so much.

 

My biggest challenge is maintaining my weight because I lose it easily, and even more easily on the raw diet. So LOTS of soaked nuts and seeds. Legume sprouts help too. And coconut, mmmmm.

 

Oh, and I tried the 80/10/10 diet (mostly fruitarian with a tiny amount of vegetable fat). It wasn't for me. I doubt it's healthy for the majority of people. But who knows. Anyway, I love fat!

 

On raw food, I need no deodorant, but on cooked food, I do need it, which is funny! I've tested this many times with people who will tell me the truth if I stink!

 

As for raw food not being "warming", I practiced walking to and from work (15 minutes one direction) every day last winter (as low as 20 degrees F) in a short-sleeved shirt, and I take cold showers. I've found it's more a matter of acclimation than the food I'm eating. We're just too spoiled with our overly comfortable lifestyles! Though I do love a bowl of warm soup on a cold morning!

[agharta]

I'm still about 95-98% raw. My health is excellent, my joints are in better shape now than 10 years ago in my early 20s, I have more energy than ever, and my stamina and strength and flexibility are excellent. I eat a lot of raw animal foods, particularly seafoods, plus some fruits, and raw meat/organs. I eat bone meal and healing clays for extra minerals, and I take a vitamin D supplement when I am not getting enough sun exposure.

 

It's not a religion. I do it because I'm addicted to having this much energy, stamina, and health.