Im looking to drastically change my diet and I think I can be committed to it. Im a meat eater (not heavily) but have been having high stress levels lately and think I really need to adjust my diet (usually not much food daily, and is not the healthest).

The problem is I have a hard time finding healthy choices that I can have on a daily basis. I need an outline for a good lunch and dinner, so I can make better choices about what food to get.

Do you have any site/book suggestions that could supply me with alot of different options for healthly meals that I can do daily? The problem it seems it that buying vegetables and other healthly products is very hard on my budget and I simply dont have the time buy fresh foods every day.
The second problem is I really dont enjoy the taste of these kinds of food, so I really need to find food that is both healthy and fits what I like (I really cant live without bread/grain products). Im not looking to become strict vegetarian or live off mung beans :)

Not looking to diet here either (actual quite the reverse) but Im just looking for meals that I can do on a constant basis, that is inexpensive, tasty, and will help my state of mind (as all this junk is never good).

Any suggestions would be very appreciate Steve!
Im sure other people here could benefit from advice on this subject.

Thanks.

Alex

This is something I ran across recently which I found interesting... It's not really a healthy-eating book per se, more of a weight loss title but it's unique and interesting.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

The first step is to clearly define what you mean by "healthy." For some this means reaching and maintaining a certain weight. For others it's a state of being pain and disease free. For still others it's a holistic concept, centered around having an abundance of physical and mental energy and eating in a way that's ecologically sound for all.

So what do you believe it would take for you to consider your diet "healthy?" What is the healthy ideal for you?

A healthy way of eating is only partially about following a particular diet or eating certain kinds of foods. That's just the outward behavioral pattern we see. But attempting that kind of change by itself will usually fail to achieve the desired results. There's an inner change that must accompany it. Most people never resolve the deeper questions that go along with diet, like "If I knowingly eat unhealthy food, doesn't that mean that I value the taste of food above my own life? And what does that say about the value I place on my life? Doesn't it suggest that I'm trying to hasten my death?" Most people are afraid to answer these questions and accept the consequences, but only in asking and answering these kinds of questions is real progress made.

On the one hand you say you want to eat a healthy diet, but you also imply that it isn't worth the financial/time cost to do so. So as long as you treat time and money as roadblocks, it won't make any difference if you try to change the foods you eat. You'll always sabotage your results. The reason is that time and money are only excuses for you -- in reality the time/money factor is exactly the opposite of what you think it is. But most people just accept that eating healthy is more expensive or time consuming, since these act as convenient excuses to keep them safe from the fear of seeing the truth. How much time/money does it take to eat an apple or a banana? And how much time/money will a cancerous tumor or a triple bypass set you back?

It's funny how people always seem to have the time to watch their favorite TV shows (30-60 minutes), but never to make a healthy meal like a bowl of fruit (5 minutes).

The question you're asking about book/site recommendations isn't really the one you need answered because it assumes the problem is behavioral. But the specific words you used reveal that you don't have a behavioral (dietary) problem; that's only a symptom. If you define the problem purely as a behavioral one, you won't be able to solve it. I could answer your questions about what to eat very easily. I.e. for lunch, eat a couple apples or a cantaloupe. But those aren't the answers you actually need. You can answer the question about what to eat on your own, but you probably don't like the answers your brain is coming up with.

You mentioned you wanted to "drastically change" your diet. Why drastically? And how does the thought of making a drastic dietary change make you feel? Excited? Deprived? Desperate? A bit of all three? To me the word "drastic" implies something severe with a definite negative slant.

You also said, "I think I can be committed to it." Why "think?" Why not "know?" Do you actually know you can be committed to it? Are you certain? If not, what's stopping you from being 100%certain?

You also mentioned that you wanted "a lot of different options." Why is that important to you? To me this implies that variety is very important to you... that perhaps you are worried that your options will be greatly reduced if they have to pass through the "healthy" filter first.

"I really can't live without bread/grain products." Do you truly believe this? And is it objectively true? Wheat is actually one of the most addictive foods; it causes measurable withdrawal symptoms for a short time when people remove it from their diets. I assure you that you won't die without grains in your diet. Believing that you can't live without something (when you really can) is one possible definition of addiction, isn't it?

Finally, you say you want food that is balanced in terms of the attributes of being inexpensive, tasty, and that will help your state of mind. Which of these attributes are the most important to you? If you could only pick one, what would it be? Can you name a few foods that fully satisfy all three attributes for you?

The reason I ask these questions is that improving our diets isn't about making a behavioral change (i.e. the foods we eat). It has to do with raising our awareness about how we eat, why we eat the way we do, our beliefs about food and health, etc. When you reach a certain point of awareness, the external dietary changes happen automatically, without stress, hardship, or deprivation. But until those internal changes are made, we usually encounter massive internal resistance when we try to change from the outside in. For example, even though my diet would be seen as severe and restrictive and deprived by many people's standards, those aren't my standards... just the opposite. I see my diet as abundant, while others' diets seem deprived of good health, energy, and internal congruence with their beliefs.

Try:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/

SC

To answer the first question...
"Healthy" for me is a feeling of vibrance, free of lethargy and generally in a good state of mind. A balanced state of mind is most important for me, to be able to deal easily with stress and have a generally upbeat mindset. I feel as though the foods I eat and put into my body, throw off the natural balance.

I believe when posed with the question concerning if I put taste of food above my own life, a very quick answer appears. It is that the affect of unhealthly foods on my state of being is very gradual and not quick enough to shock me into considering that question. If I eat a bag of chips, it wont affect me...if I eat a bag of chips every day for a solid year, it will slowly bring me down. The problem is not considering the long run.

I think though that I generally do not understand what kinds of foods have a positive effect on the body and mind, hence why I am almost looking for "menu" suggestions. From one source I hear you need lots of iron, another says strict greens, another says no wheat, etc.
It is confusing as to if you should continue eating meat, how often, etc.

Other than fruit and vegetables, what is apart of a "healthy" (refer to first definition) meal?

What is a typical breakfast/lunch/dinner for you?

While of course we should not simply mimic what works for another, but it will help me see what is included other than the typical "vegetables and fruit" that most stick to. Surely you need a source of protein? (Nuts, milk) Wheat bread? etc.

I basically want to understand what, and what types of food, provide for as a helper of body and mind, as opposed to an intoxicate.

Thanks Steve and thanks CS for the link.

Alex

Darn it Steve, can you put some kind of "this will make you think" disclaimer on your posts?!?!

I would recommend starting slowly. Every time I tried to make a huge, drastic jump to a new lifestyle I ended up caving in because I hadn't taken the time to "re-educate" my tastes and habits surrounding food. Wherever you start it should probably consist of standard supermarket food and not require the purchase of special hardware (dehydrators, juicers, etc.) just yet.

One of the fastest ways to up your "vibrancy" (for lack of a better term) is to up your fiber intake. Okay, you can stop chuckling now :) but most people do not get anywhere near the amount of fiber they should in their daily diet. It's such a stupid, simple thing but you will feel results and most people tend to shed a few pounds as well. It's as simple as a bowl of Raisin Bran in the morning with low/no fat milk (I never drink the milk anyways so I use Rice Dream or soy milk). Have a bran muffin at work and if you have a sandwich for lunch use whole wheat bread. Lastly, make sure to have a good helping of fresh veggies with your dinner.

Even more important than diet (I've found) is exercise. You don't have to do anything strenuous to feel results, just take nightly walks and lift some weights. Resistance training is especially important for people with sedentary jobs (*cough* programmers *cough*), even more so than aerobics.

That's the best advice I can give. I'm working my way to the "healthy lifestyle" but for most people it is such a monumental change in habits and tastes that it should be done in increments. My girlfriend and I have a program where the first of every month we implement a new "rule". August was "increase fiber", September was "no red meat", October was "regular exercise" - and we keep building like that until we've slowly eliminated bad habits and replaced them with good ones.

Hope this helped some :)

Thats a great idea about setting a n ew goal every month. I should definately give that a shot.

Im definately not trying to lose weight, one reason about Im always iffy about adjusting my diet. I think I need heavier foods to help gain weight and be grounding.

In any case, Im going to start a new goal monthly ;)

Thanks.

Alex

A good point was made about how small slips in the present add up to big slips over a longer period of time. The truth is that these slips are always made in the present, and they're usually the result of eating unconsciously. If you eat with full conscious awareness of what you're eating, you will begin to develop a sense of which foods belong in your body and which don't. Most people have such corrupted diets that they've lost touch with this part of their senses, but it's still there.

By eating consciously, I mean eating silently and slowly and just focusing on the food and the energy/feeling it gives you when you eat it. Chew it slowly and pay attention to your perceptions. This means no TV or reading or talking while eating. You don't have to do this at every meal for life, but if you do it for several meals, you'll grow more aware of what you're eating.

Most people only notice the taste and texture of what they eat, and often they barely notice that. But when you eat consciously, you can sense deeper attributes. Think of it as the life energy of the food. For example, if you have a juicer, you can make a glass of fresh apple juice and compare it to a glass of store-bought bottled apple juice. Bottled juice is always dead because it's pasteurized; the cells and enzymes are killed by heat. Fresh juice is still alive and contains active enzymes (enzymes will help digest the food for you in your stomach, so your body doesn't need to expend its own limited enzyme reserve). When you drink both of these two juices and compare them, you will be able to perceive the dead and lifeless quality of the bottled juice with ease. The fresh juice will feel much better to put in your body. You can do the same type of comparison with raw and cooked veggies. Compare a raw carrot to a cooked one and notice the difference. The same goes for nuts like almonds. Place a raw almond and a roasted almond in the ground. The raw almond will sprout and grow; the roasted one will only rot.

After doing this kind of experimenting for a while, the difference between dead foods and living foods became so obvious to me that I stopped eating dead foods completely. This is what I mentioned before about how raising your awareness about what you're eating will lead to the outward behavioral changes. It wasn't a big struggle for me; I just reached a certain point of awareness that I realized that I no longer wanted to put dead food into my body. So everything I eat now is alive. If you want to know what I ate today as a sample "menu" for me, here it is:

Breakfast = carob-banana shake (2 bananas, handful of raw walnuts, a little flax oil, a teaspoon of carob powder, 4-5 ice cubes, and some water in a blender)

Lunch = coleslaw (purple cabbage, diced cucumber & roma tomatoes, shredded carrots, chopped green onion, minced garlic, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, olive oil, raw sesame seeds, and spices) plus dehydrated flax seed crackers.

Tea time = a cup of herbal tea plus some several dozen dehydrated banana chips (delicious)

Various snacks throughout the day = shoyu almonds (raw almonds marinated in shoyu, which is a type of soy sauce), 3 bananas, handful of shredded coconut, more flax seed crackers

Dinner = one whole avocado with Braggs liquid aminos (Braggs is similar to soy sauce), more coleslaw, some fresh cauliflower with almond-veggie pate (soaked almonds plus red onion, garlic, red pepper, fresh parsley, fresh lemon juice, shoyu, and a few other ingredients blended to a smooth paste in a food processor)

Dessert = lots of dates

Evening drink = glass of fresh apple juice (juiced from 4 apples)

Aside from the breakfast shake, which was made fresh (it takes about 2-3 minutes total), all the other food was prepared on the weekend in advance. It probably takes me about 2 hours to prepare all my food for the week, so it's not a big time commitment. Since none of my food is cooked, the only appliances I use are a juicer, a blender (Vitamix), a food processor, and a dehydrator. I don't even need a can opener, since nothing I eat comes from a can.

If I add up the number of "servings" of fresh fruit and veggies every day, it's easily into the double digits. The bananas and banana chips equal about 7 bananas. The apple juice was 4 apples. Tons of fiber. Tons of vitamins and minerals. And the nuts, seeds, oils, and avocado provide lots of fat for satiety.

Now even though most people would consider my diet deprived, my guess is that it's much higher in variety (in terms of the number of different foods eaten) than most people's diets. Plus because it's all raw and very water rich, in terms of quantity I end up eating several times the food weight of what the average person eats. I ate about 3-4 pounds just of bananas and apples today.

This is a fairly typical day for me, and it's also the kind of day that, without a doubt, will cause me to lose weight. On average, if I eat like this every day, I'll probably lose about 1/4 pound per day (about 2 pounds per week).

How do you tell the difference between addictive cravings and your body actually telling you that it needs something? From a physiological standpoint, aren't they similar?

Try to eat a real yoghurt a day ( i know they are hard to find in the usa, if you can find Yo Baby - stonifield, that'll do )

Live cultures ;) ( not for vegans though )

You'll get much better digestion. ( Have you noticed all this heart burn pills commercials ? we just don't have any in european countries where they eat yoghurts )
pat.

Steve, thanks for the sample and the discussion about living food. I do hear how uncooked food is much better for you and you can feel a difference. I shall give that a try.

Same with yogurt, I think I will definately start eating natural yogurt.

The last comment did concern me though. Losing 2 pounds a week is not something I can really do. I almost under weight for height as it is, and losing any more probably would not be the best ;)

Do you have any concerns about the weight loss? Would there be any additional difference foods you would eat to maintain your weight? Perhaps more foods with more natural fats (avocados, etc.)?

Thanks for the responses guys.

Alex

Originally posted by Siebharinn
How do you tell the difference between addictive cravings and your body actually telling you that it needs something? From a physiological standpoint, aren't they similar?

There is some overlap, but the signs are usually distinct enough to tell them apart. Plus there is an element of common sense. If you crave ice cream, for instance, you can be 100% certain that it's an addiction, not a deficiency.

When your body needs something, you won't get a craving for a particular type of food. Instead, you'll simply begin to show a deficiency symptom of some sort, but this will feel much different than a craving.

When you are thirsty and your body craves water, you begin to experience the symptoms of dehydration. Your mouth, lips, and throat become dry, and you experience the sensation of thirst. In that case, drink. Virtually any liquid should satisfy your thirst.

But if you feel a strong urge to drink only a particular type of liquid... if it must be coffee or cola but not water, then that isn't thirst. It's addiction.

There is an emotional component to addiction that isn't present in deficiency. If you are thirsty for a while, you will be uncomfortable. If you become slightly anemic due to an iron deficiency, you'll also experience a degree of discomfort. In these cases there's no emotional component to the temporary discomfort. But try giving up caffeine, and witness the strong emotional component during the withdrawal period.

Also, we have a pretty good knowledge base of what's addictive and what isn't. Caffeine, sugar, wheat, and cooked foods are all addictive. You can thrive without any of these foods in your diet, and when these foods are removed from your diet, you'll experience temporary withdrawal symptoms.

Originally posted by Sirrus
Do you have any concerns about the weight loss? Would there be any additional difference foods you would eat to maintain your weight? Perhaps more foods with more natural fats (avocados, etc.)?


I follow the modern theories that purport that excess weight is a buildup of toxins, which are stored in the body's fat cells. When you reduce your intake of toxins, the body has a chance to catch up and eliminate the toxins, thus reducing fat stores.

The calorie theory has been proven false, i.e. that you need X number of calories per day... that you can lose a pound a week by eating 3500 fewer calories. But the reason calorie restriction works in most cases is that it simultaneously reduces your intake of toxins. Less food = less toxins.

However, people who supposedly need only 2000 calories a day can actually lose weight by eating 3000-4000 calories a day of low toxin food. This completely invalidates the calorie theory.

How toxic are certain foods? Veggies, fruits, nuts, and seeds contain an average of 10 pathogenic microorganisms per gram. Milk is 20,000 per gram. Butter, cheese, and ice cream are 300,000 - 1,000,000 per gram. Meat is 300,000 - 3,000,000 per gram.

The average plant-based vegetarian meal contains less than 500 pathogenic microorganisms. The average American meal that includes animal products, however, contains between 750,000,000 and 1,000,000,000. Eat up!

So if you eat animal products, that's a lot of toxins you're consuming (billions every day). This is why if you go 100% raw for only one week, you may expect to lose 5-10 pounds. This is a typical experience, since the body will begin a mass purging of its toxin stores. The toxins are stored in your fat cells to keep them out of your blood and away from other vital tissues, like your brain cells. But this only happens when the body is so overloaded by toxins that it doesn't have time to eliminate them.

Consequently, you don't have to worry about becoming underweight with a diet like this. I'm losing weight because I still have weight to lose (i.e. toxins to eliminate), since I've been raw for less than a year. But eventually your weight will stabilize. Yesterday I probably ate over 3500 calories, and the calorie theory says I should gain weight fast if I eat like this. But the opposite actually happens.

Everyone's body responds to an excess intake of toxins differently. Some people gain weight. But others will commonly become ill. Coughing, sneezing, sweating, and other symptoms of disease are all methods the body uses to eliminate excess toxins.

When your body can't handle the overload of toxins any longer, that's when things take a turn for the worse. Cancer and heart disease are the most common results, which afflict about 90% of Americans at some point during their lives, often proving fatal. It's been shown that cancer cells can only grow in an acidic environment (which is the environment of the typical American's bloodstream). Cancer cells cannot live in an alkaline environment (and raw foodists will generally have alkaline blood unless they eat virtually nothing but nuts and seeds). You can even see this kind of change in your own body by testing your saliva with pH strips (which can be gotten at most health food stores). When the blood is acidic, the saliva usually will be too. Acidic saliva also helps to slowly dissolve your teeth.

When your blood is acidic, it creates the environment where all sorts of nasty things will grow in it, including yeast, molds, and fungus. If you eat animal products, it's guaranteed that you have zillions of these pathogens floating around your blood right now. Yeast is particularly bad, since it thrives on sugar. So when you eat a meal (especially a sugary one), the yeast will gobble up the sugar in your blood and reproduce more rapidly, thus making you crave more food and forcing you to overeat, thus gaining weight. In an acidic environment your red blood cells will also tend to stick together, reducing their ability to deliver oxygen. So you feel a bit fatigued and tired.

The sad thing is that most people experience acidic blood their entire lives, never even going one day with alkaline blood. When your blood is alkaline, you'll have very few pathogens. Blood sugar will be used by your own cells, so you won't have cravings or a desire to overeat. Your red blood cells will repel each other effectively, so their oxygen-carrying capacity is optimal. Thus, you'll feel strong and energetic and alert all day long, every day. Since most people have never experienced this state in their entire lives, they simply don't know what they're missing. On a scale of 1-10 in terms of how you feel energy-wise, the best you can probably experience with acidic blood is a 4-5. But with alkaline blood, almost every day is an 8, 9, or 10, with your worst days being maybe a 6. But those who've never tried this way of eating simply don't know how bad off they are and how great they could be feeling every day. Of course, there are lots of advertisers who'd prefer to keep it that way.

I follow the modern theories that purport that excess weight is a buildup of toxins, which are stored in the body's fat cells. When you reduce your intake of toxins, the body has a chance to catch up and eliminate the toxins, thus reducing fat stores.

Steve this is interesting I have never heard this, I read alot about nutrition and have yet to run into this.

What are the thoughts on exercise, I have always been fairly avid with exercise, what does the above theory have to say about the weight loss associated with exercise. Does exercise help dispose of toxins.

I would really like to read a little more on this theory do you have any suggested resources.

Great thread, the most important decision we make is what we eat. It amazes me that I still make the mistakes I do with nutrition.

Thanks
James

I'm also concerned about weight loss. Right now I weight 10-15 pounds less than what I'm supposed to weigh for my height. I started going to the gym again (circuit training), which will help me gain weight in muscle. Do fruits, vegetables, and nuts have enough protein in them? I always heard you're supposed to eat beans, but I guess you have to cook them, so that rules them out of your diet Steve. :)

"The calorie theory has been proven false, i.e. that you need X number of calories per day... that you can lose a pound a week by eating 3500 fewer calories. But the reason calorie restriction works in most cases is that it simultaneously reduces your intake of toxins. Less food = less toxins.

However, people who supposedly need only 2000 calories a day can actually lose weight by eating 3000-4000 calories a day of low toxin food. This completely invalidates the calorie theory. "

Steve, I love your writings, and I agree completely about deeper changes being necessary for long term health, but this claim is complete nonsense. Where did read this theory? You should atleast put a disclaimer that you're reciting a "raw foodists" cult that, with reason, is not taken seriously by most scientists.

The body obeys the laws of thermodynamics. If you expend 3000 calories a day and eat only 2500, you will lose weight, since the body will utilise its fat and muscle energy stores.

Losing two pounds a week implies a Caloric deficit of 1000 Calories per day, since one pound of fat has a Caloric value of 3500 Calories. It is unhealthy to lose weight that quickly, unless you have a high body fat % in the first place, because too much of the weight loss will be muscle as opposed to fat.

The human body evolved during the paleolithic period on eating high levels of meat and fruit and vegetables. The ideal diet will mimick that. The widespread use of grains and cereals occured in the neolithic era and corresponded with a decline in life expectencies and an increase in disease. In terms of macronutrients the ideal diet would be about 40-50% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 20-30% fat. (Not all fat is bad..)

Fenix Down, if you follow Steve's diet while working out you'll be physically weak, underweight, and protein-malnourished. If you want to gain muscle you need to provide the stimilus in the gym, which increases protein synthesis rates in the worked muscles, and also protein itself to provide the amino acids required for muscle building.

Fruit and vegetables have hardly any protien. Nuts on the other hand are a good source, but meat is best of all. Failing that you could get some protein powder from a health food store.

To gain weight you need to be in a state of Caloric surplus, so that means eating about 500 Calories more each and every day than what you do at the moment.

Here's a short list of facts about protein and its animo acids that I wrote.
http://www.workoutgenius.com/articles/protein.shtml

- Dexterity -
Meat is 300,000 - 3,000,000 per gram.

What about a high protein diet, like the Atkins plan, which during the induction phase is almost exclusively meat? If fat was simply a matter of toxins, anyone on the Atkins diet would just explode, when in fact, they usually see dramatic weight loss.

I'm not trying to argue, I'm trying to understand.

Day 1 purchases:

-Tomatoes
-Bananas
-Avocado
-Plain low fat yogurt
-Raisens
-Grapes
-Bran Flakes
-Kashi 7 grain crackers
-Whole wheat bread
-Carrots

Dinner tonight:

Chopped Avocado and Tomatoes with a little shredded cheese, banana, and some crackers


Lets see how I do :)

Alex

I read 'Fit for Life' last night. I was talking to a friend about 'food combining' the day before. What an amazing coincidence.

On the subject of protein, for example, the 'raw veggies' people argue that you do not need to *eat* protein, you need to supply the body with the materials required to *produce* protein. And of course, this is exactly what you find in 'raw veggies' :)

It makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.

Originally posted by a_j_harvey
I read 'Fit for Life' last night. I was talking to a friend about 'food combining' the day before. What an amazing coincidence.

On the subject of protein, for example, the 'raw veggies' people argue that you do not need to *eat* protein, you need to supply the body with the materials required to *produce* protein. And of course, this is exactly what you find in 'raw veggies' :)

It makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.

To me it says a lot about their level of knowledge!

What "materials required to produce protein" do you find in vegetables, apart from small amounts of protein itself?

Protein is made from amino acids. The body can produce some itself, but others must be provided by diet.

See the raw food section of www.beyondveg.com for a critique of their 'theories' from the point of view of someone who admits to have once been one. People can become very sick following such a diet, so I would urge extreme caution before doing something like that for any extended period of time.

I'm gonna have to go along with tristanj on this. First, I'll be very upfront in admitting that my dietary knowledge is very limited. However, what I do have is a very good sense of knowing when I'm hearing misinformation, hype, or lies, and I have to say my BS meter went off the scale. This isn't the first time Ive heard this type of stuff either. The thing is, it goes contrary to what 99% of what science tells us, and contrary to what 99% of the world believes. Now, I understand that sometimes theories are wrong, and sometimes popular "factual" knowledge is disproved, but to me this sounds like disproving scientific research with pure magic. I've never seen any type of scientific research that backs it up convincingly. The whole idea reeks of cultism to me.

Originally posted by asphalt
Steve this is interesting I have never heard this, I read alot about nutrition and have yet to run into this.

What are the thoughts on exercise, I have always been fairly avid with exercise, what does the above theory have to say about the weight loss associated with exercise. Does exercise help dispose of toxins.


I've read several books about the connection between toxin consumption and weight gain. This stuff has been around for at least a decade or two. The most technical of these that I've read was Sick and Tired by Dr. Robert O. Young. If you have a decent understanding of biology and want to see microscopic slides of what human blood looks like with and without toxins, this is the book to read. This book primarily convinced me to go raw -- the pictures of the red blood cells sticking together in an environment full of yeast, mold, and fungus really allowed me to visualize what was happening in my own body. Dr. Young's book The pH Miracle covers similar ground, but it's a lot less technical and easier to read.

Exercise definitely helps eliminate toxins. One reason is that you eliminate toxins through your sweat. Exercise also helps to raise your metabolism, and it causes you to take deep breaths. Deep diaphragmic breathing activates your body's lymph system; like a suction, it serves to eliminate toxins from your body. Think of your lymph system like the body's sewer system, and deep breathing is the pump that makes it work.

Originally posted by Fenix Down
I'm also concerned about weight loss. Right now I weight 10-15 pounds less than what I'm supposed to weigh for my height. I started going to the gym again (circuit training), which will help me gain weight in muscle. Do fruits, vegetables, and nuts have enough protein in them? I always heard you're supposed to eat beans, but I guess you have to cook them, so that rules them out of your diet Steve. :)

The idea that you need too consume lots of protein is a myth as well. You don't even need a lot while doing heavy weight training. What time in your life are your protein needs the absolute greatest? This would be during infancy, when you're growing at the fastest rate and your body is increasing in mass rapidly. Yet nature has designed mothers milk to be only about 1.2-1.6% protein.

Plant products are abundant in protein, but the meat and dairy industries like to keep circulating the myth that meat = protein and protein = essential. Most people don't know that as a percentage of calories, broccoli is 50% protein, lettuce is 33% protein, and virtually all fruits and veggies have an abundance of protein. If you eat a plant based diet, it would be hard not to get enough protein even by design. You really only need about 5% of calories from protein.

Plant protein also comes in amino acid form, which is the best way for the body to use it. On the other hand, when you consume animal protein, the body cannot use it as is, since animal proteins aren't compatible with human proteins. Instead, your body has to exert extra resources to break down the animal protein into amino acids and then rebuild it into human protein. Plant protein is thus more efficient and easier to digest -- the body is able to use it more readily.

Your body also has an amino acid store, so even if you don't consume every amino acid at every meal, it doesn't matter. Your body will use its stores to mix and match what it needs to make complete proteins. The idea that you need to combine certain plant foods at every meal to make complete proteins was first put forth by Francis Moore Lappe in her book Diet for a Small Planet in the 70s. Twenty years later she came out to state that she was totally mistaken, since she only later learned about the body's amino acid pool. Nevertheless, this old theory (now a myth) is still blindly believed by many nutritionists today. It's hard to erase a false belief once it gets integrated into popular wisdom.

How many people have you met who have a protein deficiency anyway? I've never met anyone with this condition. It's virtually impossible to achieve as long as you eat enough calories, and there's no way you'd have this problem by accident. You could only accomplish it by intentionally designing a diet that's deficient in protein, barring any serious illness that inhibits protein digestion.

However, the much greater problem is overconsumption of protein, which is a leading cause of osteoporosis. Protein requires calcium to digest, and when you consume too much protein, your body has to leech calcium from your bones to process it. Dairy products are a big problem here because although they contain calcium, that form of cow calcium is largely unusuble by humans. Of course, the dairy industry advertises that milk has calcium and calcium is good for bones. Those statements are true. However, milk is actually not good for bones at all ... just the opposite. Broccoli is a much better source of calcium because it's form of calcium can be readily used by humans. Cow calcium is designed for baby cows. Also, the cow protein is also largely indigestible by human stomachs. Cows have four highly acidic stomach to digest this stuff. So you end up with undigested cow protein floating around your blood, which ends up being eliminated by your liver, and this requires even more calcium to process. Studies have shown that regular milk drinkers have far lower levels of blood calcium than non drinkers.

Eating meat is also really bad for your bones, since the high protein content will cause serious bone loss. A USA study during the 1980s (the largest of its kind ever done) showed that by age 65, meat eaters suffered roughly double the rate of bone loss of vegetarians. This was true both for men and women.

As for beans... those are a small part of my diet. But instead of cooking beans, raw foodists soak and sprout them, so they're eaten still alive. For instance, a while ago I made some raw hummus from sprouted garbanzo beans. I can also make raw breads from sprouted grains. I blend them up in a food processor and then dehydrate them. Dehydration dries out foods while keeping them alive, since enzymes aren't destroyed until reaching somewhere in the range of 110-150 degrees.

Originally posted by tristanj
Steve, I love your writings, and I agree completely about deeper changes being necessary for long term health, but this claim is complete nonsense. Where did read this theory? You should atleast put a disclaimer that you're reciting a "raw foodists" cult that, with reason, is not taken seriously by most scientists.


You can read this information from many reputable health books. There are even weight-training books with mainstream diets that debunk the calorie theory. Dr. Scott Connely's book Body Rx is a good example. This book advocates a high-protein diet, not too disimilar from Bill Philips' Body for Life program (which I'm sure you've heard of since you sell weight training software). In his book, Connelly mentions an interesting study. Two groups of people were fed the same diet for a period of time, except that the second group was given an extra protein shake every day. That higher calorie group lost a lot more weight than the first group, something like an extra 8 pounds if I recall correctly. Yet according to the calorie theory, the exact opposite should have occurred.


The body obeys the laws of thermodynamics. If you expend 3000 calories a day and eat only 2500, you will lose weight, since the body will utilise its fat and muscle energy stores.


Yes, the body obeys the laws of thermodynamics. However, the calorie theory makes some assumptions about what happens to food once it enters the body. It assumes perfect or near-perfect digestion. Today, however, we know that this assumption is highly inaccurate. The body doesn't perfectly digest everything you put into it. It doesn't always store excess energy as fat.

The body is much more flexible than that, and digestion is much more complex than the simplistic model of burning food and turning it into energy. Much food will pass through your body undigested. Much of it will be digested by the bacteria in your intestines (and most people have several pounds of harmful bacteria in their intestines). Excess food can be used in the metabolic and reproductive activities of these microforms, both in the intestines and the blood.

All of this is easy to prove. I've proven it for myself by experimentation. If I eat the same number of calories I eat today, but switch to cooked food, I'll rapidly gain weight. But with the current foods I eat, I lose weight.

Also, digestion itself takes energy. Elimination takes energy. How much energy these processes require is highly dependent on the food. Even water requires energy to move through your body. If you drink and extra glass of water, it has no calories, yet your body must burn extra fuel and pump extra blood to handle it.

Here's another experiment. Take a handful of sesame seeds and swallow them with some water. You'll see them in the toilet later on, and they'll still be whole. These seeds have calories, so if your body converted them into energy, then why are you seeing them come out your other end? Did those calories get used up? What if you chew them for a while? Grind them to a powder? Does any of this make a difference in terms of how much energy/calories your body can extract? Absolutely.


The human body evolved during the paleolithic period on eating high levels of meat and fruit and vegetables. The ideal diet will mimick that. The widespread use of grains and cereals occured in the neolithic era and corresponded with a decline in life expectencies and an increase in disease. In terms of macronutrients the ideal diet would be about 40-50% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 20-30% fat. (Not all fat is bad..)


There are lots of theories like this that try to explain how humans should eat based on how we've evolved. These theories all sound good at first glance, and they all conflict. There's a different interpretation of our history for every imaginable diet.

But what matters is what we can measure and witness today. According to some dietary theories, I shouldn't be able to survive eating what I'm eating, or I should experience severe deficiency symptoms, or I should be dead. Yet I'm still here. :)

Again, just like I advocate testing and experimentation with running Dexterity, I do the same with my diet. I've tried many other diets including high-carb, high-protein, lacto-ovo vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotics, etc, and I measured the results. So far I've gotten the absolute best results from the raw diet.

Anyone here can do these same experiments and learn the truth for themselves. I encourage you not to take my word for any of this. Prove me wrong. For example, here's an experiment you could do. Eat nothing but raw fruit and veggies for just 3-5 days, but eat 1000 calories more per day than you think you would need. You'll lose a measurable amount of weight (probably several pounds), but the calorie theory says you should gain about a pound. And the longer you run this experiment, the more striking the results will be.


Fruit and vegetables have hardly any protien.


Not true at all... just the opposite in fact. As I mentioned in a previous post. Most veggies are 10-50% protein as a percentage of calories, and most fruits are 5-15%. This is more than adequate.


http://www.workoutgenius.com/articles/protein.shtml

This information isn't too bad, but bits and pieces of it are a little bit off, like the assertion that animal protein has a better balance of amino acids than plant products. This is misleading since it doesn't take into account the body's amino acid pool or the fact that animal proteins don't come in amino acid form -- they must be broken down into amino acids and then rebuilt into human proteins by the body, an inefficient process that places a strain on the digestive system. The info on your site appears to be congruent with research done in the 70s, which is the basis for the knowledge base that most nutritionists still use today. Unfortunately, there's a lot of research that was done during the 90s that has undone many of the conclusions made during the 70s, but in most cases this information hasn't made the leap from medical journals to college textbooks. We'll probably have to wait a couple more decades for that to happen, but the change is gradually occurring.

Originally posted by Siebharinn
What about a high protein diet, like the Atkins plan, which during the induction phase is almost exclusively meat? If fat was simply a matter of toxins, anyone on the Atkins diet would just explode, when in fact, they usually see dramatic weight loss.

I'm not trying to argue, I'm trying to understand.

Have you seen the people that go on this diet? I've watched some family members do it, and they definitely lost weight. However, they looked like the undead, as if their skin had died on their body. They also felt worse much of the time, and they were too disgusted with eating so many animal products that they didn't eat as much as they normally would have.

Atkins is dead now. I think he died from slipping and falling, and he wasn't that old. And didn't he also have some kind of heart trouble, which he claimed wasn't diet related? I don't recall the exact story there.

Honestly I don't know enough about Atkins' diet, so I can't explain how that effect works, since I don't know what the diet is. I've never read any of Atkins' books. But from the people I've seen who've gone on this diet, that was enough for me to know it wasn't a healthy choice. I know several people who've tried this diet, but I don't know any who've felt good about while eating this way. It seems almost as if the diet induces some form of illness that kicks the body into elimination mode.

Also, one odd thing I noticed about Atkins' dieters is that they have really bad breath... like sulphur (i.e. rotten eggs).

Ok, first off I'm not a vegetarian, I eat meat a fair bit. Now here comes the but .... becoming a Vegetarian can be a good switch for some people and is a healthy way to live.

Firstly be very, very carefull when you switch to a vegetarian diet. You body needs 9 essential amino acids (Some can be subsituted with each other) and 11 non-essential amino acids. Bascily protein=amino acids. By that I mean different types of protein are broken down by the body to amino acids which are then distributed to various parts of the body. However there are two types of foods, complete and incomplete protein foods. Basicly if a food type supplies enough of the 9 essential amino acids it is classed as a complete protein. If it cannot supply enough of the 9 essential amino acids it's an incomplete protien.

Now here is the risk, complete protien foods for vegetarians are rather limited. The most comon complete protein foods are Meat, Eggs and Dairy goods. Basicly most animal products are complete proteins. This means most Vegetarians need to get their proteins from different sources. At it's most basic form, when your a vegetarian you should be able to cover your complete protein requirements with a form of grain and a form of bean. You'll notice that most third world countries that are being helped by UNICEF and other support organisations get rice and lima bean or lentils as their food source. This is mainly because it is an easy way for them to supply lots of people with their complete protein foods. A cup of rice and a cup of lima beans can supply a person with more than 15 grams of protein. A 4oz steak has about 35 grams of protein. The major difference, however, is that the lima bean and rice contain less than 5% fat. The steak contains almost 40% fat. (These figures are averages and may differ.

Now after saying all of this I'm not a vegetarian. I eat a fair amount of meat, however I do not eat a lot of red meat (generally to fatty). I do eat a lot of fish and chicken, as well as eating a lot of dairy products. I have a fairly decent workout/physical fitness lifestyle so I have a fairly high protein diet. My now ex-girlfriend was a vegetarian (and a sports dietitian) which is where most of my information comes from.

Originally posted by a_j_harvey
I read 'Fit for Life' last night. I was talking to a friend about 'food combining' the day before. What an amazing coincidence.


I read Fit for Life during the mid-90s. It was written by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond almost 20 years ago. They got divorced and Marilyn is now married to Dr. Donald Schnell. Today she's a raw foodist like me and runs the web site www.spiritualjava.com

My wife knows Marilyn and will be conducting an interview with her soon. Marilyn also has a few of her articles published on my wife's web site. I hope to meet Marilyn someday; she seems like a very interesting and happy person. Like me, she experienced a much deeper transformation in her whole attitude towards life while working to improve her diet.

As Marilyn states on her web site, "With Fit for life, I was only half way there.... [Today] I'm buzzing with energy, shining with inner cleanliness and tingling with glowing health! Every cell in my body is literally bursting with happiness! I've never felt better or more alive!" Just read the home page of her web site, and you'll see how much she gushes with enthusiasm about how much energy she has today. I can relate to this completely. This diet literally makes me feel like the cells of my body are electrified with positive energy. I'd never want to go back to my old ways of eating, since I can't stand the thought of being deprived of such vitality.

I followed the Fit for Life plan during the 90s when I was doing a lot of running. It worked well for me, and I maintained my ideal weight easily on that diet. It's definitely not a bad start. But like Marilyn says, I was only halfway there. Tony Robbins was also a big Fit for Life supporter and used to work with Marilyn in the early years. Tony's Living Health audio program is largely based on Fit for Life. Today, however, Tony is a strong and open advocate of the Dr. Robert Young approach. I think Dr. Young even speaks at Tony's Life Mastery seminar today. Of course, if you want a model of exceptional physical energy, Tony Robbins isn't a bad choice, no matter what else you think of him or his infomercials. I've been to two of his firewalk seminars over the past decade, and his energy is unimaginable. My wife and I were so exhausted that we fell asleep on a hotel lobby couch during one of the breaks and were awakened by hotel security. At one point I was up on the stage with him during a particular exercise. When I high-fived him, his hand just dwarfed mine.

I guess the basic point I'm trying to make is that if you want cutting edge health, you have to stay on the cutting edge yourself and not just keep reading mainstream books or falling back on the common wisdom, which is largely based on outdated research from the 70s. Even Fit for Life, which some people still see as revolutionary, is about 20 years old. A lot of the best just knowledge hasn't trickled down to the mainstream yet... and it probably won't for another decade or so. I'm fortunate that my wife runs a popular vegetarian web site, so she gets to interview doctors about the research they're doing today and the new conclusions they're drawing, and I conveniently gain access to this info.

Originally posted by tristanj
See the raw food section of www.beyondveg.com for a critique of their 'theories' from the point of view of someone who admits to have once been one. People can become very sick following such a diet, so I would urge extreme caution before doing something like that for any extended period of time.

Yes, it's pretty common to experience a severe detox on a raw foods diet, especially if you convert directly from a meat-eating diet. I went from vegan to raw, and the detox period for me lastest about a week, during which I experienced flu-like symptoms. I also had a noticeable detox going from vegetarian to vegan in 1997. This experience is very common, and it's temporary. There will usually be a lot of weight loss during the first week. When I first went vegan I lost 7 pounds in the first week, as did my wife. I know this is impossible according to the calorie theory, but my body didn't seem to read that theory. :)

Dr. Young's program recommends a one-week juice fast period to start with, which he calls the cleanse. I didn't take that route, but some people swear by it.

As with the newly converted to any diet, there are some raw foodists who get overexhuberant and make false claims about the health benefits of the diet, such as claims about supernatural powers. I got the facts for myself just by experimenting and measuring the results, same as I did with other diets like high-protein, macrobiotics, etc. It's one thing to talk about a diet. It's another to try it for yourself and measure the results. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't work, move on to the next experiment.

Have you ever tried the raw foods diet for yourself for a 30-day period? What about vegetarianism or veganism? If so, how did those work for you? You generally have to go at least two weeks on any new diet to get past the detox period and into the "feeling good" part.

Originally posted by LordKronos
I'm gonna have to go along with tristanj on this. First, I'll be very upfront in admitting that my dietary knowledge is very limited. However, what I do have is a very good sense of knowing when I'm hearing misinformation, hype, or lies, and I have to say my BS meter went off the scale. This isn't the first time Ive heard this type of stuff either. The thing is, it goes contrary to what 99% of what science tells us, and contrary to what 99% of the world believes. Now, I understand that sometimes theories are wrong, and sometimes popular "factual" knowledge is disproved, but to me this sounds like disproving scientific research with pure magic. I've never seen any type of scientific research that backs it up convincingly. The whole idea reeks of cultism to me.

I understand. And you certainly aren't alone. As you said, your dietary knowledge is very limited. If you want a really good scientific/experimental treatment of the subject with microscopic analysis of blood and the like, I recommend the book Sick and Tired by Dr. Robert Young. If you don't at least expose yourself to the most modern research (Sick and Tired was published in 2001), then all you have to go on is what you think you already know, which again is probably based on research from the 70s and the calorie theory. If the most recent 1% of science contradicts the older 99%, you can't just go with the 99%. The earth just isn't flat anymore. If you read this book, it will help give you an update on what amazing new things we're learning about diet and health this millenium.

For instance, I know that I haven't kept up in the field of astrophysics. So I imagine that what I think I know about how the universe works is probably all wrong, since I haven't studied this field with any depth since the early 90s. There are no doubt scientists today that have done new experiments to make my knowledge in this area obsolete. Someone could make a statement about astrophysics that would send off my BS meter too, but in that case, if the person seemed credible and certain, I'd want to dive in and look at the data myself.

This is why I use the process of experimentation and measuring my results as my "compass," so to speak. I know the calorie theory is wrong because I've been able to prove it such for myself.

In another century, Dr. Young's theories may be proven wrong as well. But in terms of results, using his conclusions provides a more accurate model for me than older theories. By following his theories, I'm able to get results that I can't get from other theories, and I'm able to explain and understand things that I previously couldn't. To me that's a good yardstick. The calorie theory can't explain how I can overconsume calories and lose weight. It probably can't even explain Dr. Atkins' diet either. The calorie theory has been contradicted on multiple fronts, yet it still remains a part of "common knowledge." It takes a long time for outmoded theories to die off. New theories always sound like BS the first time you hear them. I had the same reaction when I first heard about the raw diet, figuring the people who ate like that were some kind of weirdo fanatics.

Originally posted by ScrewBall
Now here is the risk, complete protien foods for vegetarians are rather limited. The most comon complete protein foods are Meat, Eggs and Dairy goods. Basicly most animal products are complete proteins. This means most Vegetarians need to get their proteins from different sources. At it's most basic form, when your a vegetarian you should be able to cover your complete protein requirements with a form of grain and a form of bean. You'll notice that most third world countries that are being helped by UNICEF and other support organisations get rice and lima bean or lentils as their food source. This is mainly because it is an easy way for them to supply lots of people with their complete protein foods. A cup of rice and a cup of lima beans can supply a person with more than 15 grams of protein. A 4oz steak has about 35 grams of protein. The major difference, however, is that the lima bean and rice contain less than 5% fat. The steak contains almost 40% fat. (These figures are averages and may differ.


You're referring to the incomplete protein theory that was introduced by Francis Moore Lappe in her book Diet for a Small Planet during the 70s. As I mentioned in a previous post, she came out 20 years later to recant that theory, saying she was utterly mistaken. Unfortunately, Diet for a Small Planet was a lot more popular than her later books, so this misconception still lingers today. People just seem to accept it as fact now, even though it's been proven false by the very originator of the idea.

Originally posted by Dexterity
Plant products are abundant in protein, but the meat and dairy industries like to keep circulating the myth that meat = protein and protein = essential. Most people don't know that as a percentage of calories, broccoli is 50% protein, lettuce is 33% protein, and virtually all fruits and veggies have an abundance of protein. If you eat a plant based diet, it would be hard not to get enough protein even by design. You really only need about 5% of calories from protein.

That's great info Steve, thanks! It also explains how cows manage to grow so much meat while primarily eating plants (or grass as it were).

I've been disgruntled with American food for a while now, especially how much salt (sodium) and sugar most food products have. For instance, candy bars are about 50% sugar or more. The very popular Snickers bar (http://www.dietfacts.com/item.asp?itemid=11263) has 30 grams of sugar while the whole thing weighs 58.7 grams. To put it in perspective, 30 grams of sugar is 6 teaspoons. Imagine eating 6 teaspoons of pure sugar *shudder*. And of course it has bad fat too.

Carbonated drinks (soda/pop depending on where you live :)) can also have as much as 40 grams of sugar per serving (a lot more for the "high energy drinks" not to mention the caffeine), and usually the bottles (and Snapple, which contrary to what they say is NOT made from the best stuff on Earth :)) have 2.5 servings. Do the math -- that's 100 grams of sugar, or 20 teaspoons of sugar if you drink a bottle of mountain dew. I've stopped drinking this stuff a long time ago, and also switched to low sodium or "no salt added" products (like salt free ketchup). Recently I've finally got fed up with how much sugar sweets have and pretty much have given up on them too. Ok enough ripping on the average American's diet. :) I just had to get that out.

Now I decided based on what you're saying to take meat and dairy products out of my diet. I just need to figure out what to replace them with. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts seem to work pretty well. But I'm probably going to start with a more vegan diet than raw foodist. It'll be easier to make the transition I think.

Originally posted by Dexterity

Honestly I don't know enough about Atkins' diet, so I can't explain how that effect works, since I don't know what the diet is. I've never read any of Atkins' books. But from the people I've seen who've gone on this diet, that was enough for me to know it wasn't a healthy choice. I know several people who've tried this diet, but I don't know any who've felt good about while eating this way. It seems almost as if the diet induces some form of illness that kicks the body into elimination mode.

From what I understand about the Atkins diet, it works because it is carbohydrates that make people fat, not fat itself. Studies show that excess carbs get converted into fat by the body, but fat doesn't (or does but to a much smaller extent). Thus cutting carbs makes you lose body fat. I think this is because animal fat isn't as easily digested to a form where it can be made into body fat. At least that's how I understand it. Either way, the diet might reduce body fat, but it probably does nothing good for cholesterol levels and your body in general.

Also, eating so much meat causes a protein overdose. As you say this is very bad for the body. I read in Time Magazine recently that eating too much meat can cause liver and kidney damage because of the extreme protein intake. What's interesting is that they are targeting a mainstream audience, yet they are suggesting eating as little meat as possible. So perhaps the mainstream is starting to get with the program finally. :)

Sheesh. I feel like I'm hosting the Dr. Steve show or something. :) Obviously I have far more information on the subjects of diet and health than I can conveniently share without posting all night long. But for those who are interested, I think The pH Miracle by Dr. Robert Young is a good starter book on a road to a more modern understanding of diet and health.

I'm not sure how I can argue against "conventional wisdom" unless people are willing to experiment for themselves. How does one convince people the world is round when conventional wisdom says that it's flat, especially if people wn't take the time to review the evidence for themselves (which can indeed be very time consuming)?

I guess it's the same thing with shareware. I'm sure that even if my current A-B experiment proved that we got more sales without offering demo downloads (which appears to be the case), most others would never try the experiment for themselves and would continue adhering to the belief that free demos are necessary. For some reason we humans have this herd mentality that almost biologically encourages us to stay with the pack in terms of beliefs, even if those beliefs are logically proven false. Perhaps I just have a defective gene in that area or something. :) I usually assume that convention wisdom is likely to be wrong. From a historical perspective, this appears to be the most accurate outlook, since conventional wisdom is usually proven wrong; the only issue is how long it takes for the proof to emerge (and then a few decades have to pass before the new reality hits critical mass).

Originally posted by Fenix Down
I've been disgruntled with American food for a while now, especially how much salt (sodium) and sugar most food products have. For instance, candy bars are about 50% sugar or more. The very popular Snickers bar (http://www.dietfacts.com/item.asp?itemid=11263) has 30 grams of sugar while the whole thing weighs 58.7 grams. To put it in perspective, 30 grams of sugar is 6 teaspoons. Imagine eating 6 teaspoons of pure sugar *shudder*. And of course it has bad fat too.

Now I decided based on what you're saying to take meat and dairy products out of my diet. I just need to figure out what to replace them with. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts seem to work pretty well. But I'm probably going to start with a more vegan diet than raw foodist. It'll be easier to make the transition I think.


Yup, the typical American diet is unhealthfully high in sugar, and this isn't without serious consequences. A great book on this subject is Lick the Sugar Habit, which goes through chapter after chapter of the negative consequences of eating too much sugar. Refined sugar is basically a drug in how it affects the body, and a highly addictive one, and its hidden in so many foods like salad dressings and ketchup. I grew up eating lots of refined sugar products. In fact, the next step in my diet is to replace more of the sugary fruits with veggies or low-sugar fruits. Cantaloupe, lemons, and limes are all very low in sugar.

One of the reasons sugar and salt are commonly added to foods is that they help to kill the food, rendering it inert.

That's great to hear you're willing to try some dietary changes. Again, I recommend treating it like an experiment with you as the scientist. What has always worked for me is to never think of any major new dietary change as a permanent one. What I always do is make a 30-day commitment only, meaning that I will definitely commit to 30 days, but after that, I'm open to switching back, but if I like the results, I'll consider making the change permanent. This is how I went vegetarian, then vegan, then raw. All of these started with a 30-day trial. Hey, it's try before you buy! Some other diets like macrobiotics that I tried for 30 days I decided to drop, since the results were either negative or negligible compared to my previous diet.

Remember that many foods have an addictive quality to them, but this will normally subside within 30 days or less. So if you just commit to a 30-day trial, you'll be in a better position at the end of the 30 days to make an informed decision about whether you wish to continue. And that knowledge makes a big difference. Also, even if you decide to terminate the trial, you'll learn something when you convert back. For instance, with vegetarianism and veganism, I stuck with it after the 30-day trial. But with the switch to raw food, I decided to try some cooked food again after the trial, and I'm glad I did, since after eating nothing but live foods for 30 days, the cooked food tasted totally dead and artificial. My wife had a similar experience when she cheated once after being vegetarian for a few months; the bad experience of eating meat and the feeling it gave her convinced her that she had made the right choice.

So I think the best attitude for improving our diets is to get curious... you have to learn what works best for you. I don't really know if any particular individual would thrive eating the same way I do; the only way to know would be to try it and see.

If you need any help, suggestions, recipe ideas, etc... feel free to PM me.

*Gathers up the mops a buckets so everyone can clean up after their food fight *

;)

Originally posted by Dexterity
Exercise definitely helps eliminate toxins. One reason is that you eliminate toxins through your sweat. Exercise also helps to raise your metabolism, and it causes you to take deep breaths. Deep diaphragmic breathing activates your body's lymph system; like a suction, it serves to eliminate toxins from your body. Think of your lymph system like the body's sewer system, and deep breathing is the pump that makes it work.

The other way that the majority of toxins are released is in your urine and excrement. One of the best reasons for drinking lots and lots of water is it helps flush your system of toxins that you have picked up eating different foods but have not nessesarily obsorbed yet.

The idea that you need too consume lots of protein is a myth as well. You don't even need a lot while doing heavy weight training. What time in your life are your protein needs the absolute greatest? This would be during infancy, when you're growing at the fastest rate and your body is increasing in mass rapidly. Yet nature has designed mothers milk to be only about 1.2-1.6% protein.

Very true. Majority of the time people who do heavy weight training and are eating lots of protein are not helping themselves all that much. Basicly the body will use protein in it's normal, everyday functions. If you have excess protein the body can and will get rid of some through excrement. If you consume excess protein it can lead to health problems. I knew a few "gym junkies" who a while ago thought it would be great to consume a lot of protein. The went so far as to drink almost a litre of milk after weight training on top of high protein diets to help the build their protein levels to increase their muscle mass. They got very sick. Any excess protein is processed through your kidney's, and people who have previously gone on extremely high protein diets have known to had kidney failure.

Plant protein also comes in amino acid form, which is the best way for the body to use it. On the other hand, when you consume animal protein, the body cannot use it as is, since animal proteins aren't compatible with human proteins. Instead, your body has to exert extra resources to break down the animal protein into amino acids and then rebuild it into human protein. Plant protein is thus more efficient and easier to digest -- the body is able to use it more readily.

I'd like to see your source on this as it sort of contridicts most things I know. Protein is basicly amino acids linked in a certain structure. I usally think of it like a DNA chain, where the various proteins are made up of amin acids linked different ways. Like DNA chains, no two different food sources have the same protein structre. Saying that Plant protein may be broken down more easily as the amount of different amino acids in plants is less than animal products, which usually are complete protein sources.

Your body also has an amino acid store, so even if you don't consume every amino acid at every meal, it doesn't matter. Your body will use its stores to mix and match what it needs to make complete proteins. The idea that you need to combine certain plant foods at every meal to make complete proteins was first put forth by Francis Moore Lappe in her book Diet for a Small Planet in the 70s. Twenty years later she came out to state that she was totally mistaken, since she only later learned about the body's amino acid pool. Nevertheless, this old theory (now a myth) is still blindly believed by many nutritionists today. It's hard to erase a false belief once it gets integrated into popular wisdom.

Yeah, although you don't need to get a complete protein selection at every meal it is good to get all the essential amino acids covered daily. If your looking at improving your body through weight training is recomended you eat a fairly balanced protein meal before or after as this is the time your muscles need that protein.

However, the much greater problem is overconsumption of protein, which is a leading cause of osteoporosis. Protein requires calcium to digest, and when you consume too much protein, your body has to leech calcium from your bones to process it. Dairy products are a big problem here because although they contain calcium, that form of cow calcium is largely unusuble by humans. Of course, the dairy industry advertises that milk has calcium and calcium is good for bones. Those statements are true. However, milk is actually not good for bones at all ... just the opposite. Broccoli is a much better source of calcium because it's form of calcium can be readily used by humans. Cow calcium is designed for baby cows. Also, the cow protein is also largely indigestible by human stomachs. Cows have four highly acidic stomach to digest this stuff. So you end up with undigested cow protein floating around your blood, which ends up being eliminated by your liver, and this requires even more calcium to process. Studies have shown that regular milk drinkers have far lower levels of blood calcium than non drinkers.

Eating meat is also really bad for your bones, since the high protein content will cause serious bone loss. A USA study during the 1980s (the largest of its kind ever done) showed that by age 65, meat eaters suffered roughly double the rate of bone loss of vegetarians. This was true both for men and women.

Long term over consumption of protein with a lack of a good calcium source does cause osteoporosis. As far as cow calcium is concerned I would like to see your source again. As far as my knowledge of things goes, because of the way milk is produced the body does have a harder time breaking it down, but I have yet to see anything about "cow calcium" not being absorbed and used by the body. Also your body naturally stores some level of calcium deposit's for the use of some of the organs and it does take a faily long period of calcium malnutition before the body resorts to stripping it off your bones. As far as studies go I really have a bad opinion about them for this reason. Selective studies can usually give you a result you want. Not only that but a lot of the time you can't get a lot of people to eat the same things except one has meat and the other doesn't, or one has milk and the other doesn't. I doubt very much that the body would discriminate against "cow calcium". Yes it may work a little harder breaking it down because milk may have a longer protein chain, but I seriously doubt the body would ignore it. Protein only ever hits the liver if you have to much of it and the organs don't need it. It almost never hits the liver because it takes to long to break down.

In his book, Connelly mentions an interesting study. Two groups of people were fed the same diet for a period of time, except that the second group was given an extra protein shake every day. That higher calorie group lost a lot more weight than the first group, something like an extra 8 pounds if I recall correctly. Yet according to the calorie theory, the exact opposite should have occurred.

The calorie theroy always bugged me. It does make sense the high protein diet lost less weight as part of the unused protein absorbed my the body is turned into energy and stored as fat if unused.

All of this is easy to prove. I've proven it for myself by experimentation. If I eat the same number of calories I eat today, but switch to cooked food, I'll rapidly gain weight. But with the current foods I eat, I lose weight.


If you switched to cooked food, I am asuming this would constiture eating meat. Generally speaking meat does contain anywhere from 20% - 50% more fat than uncooked plant based products. I re-establish my hate of calorie based weight loss groups ect :-P

But what matters is what we can measure and witness today. According to some dietary theories, I shouldn't be able to survive eating what I'm eating, or I should experience severe deficiency symptoms, or I should be dead. Yet I'm still here.

Some people who make up these theories should actully try to put them in practice first. The human body can survive and even flourish so long as they have an ample amount of amino acids, the essential ones primarily. From a dietry point of view, your current diet is very stable and very clean. Personally I would need to eat a fair amount more than you currently do (I am fairly heavy and tall but also do a lot of physical activity) but it wouldn't be all that much. I do also, however, enjoy some meat dishes.

Not true at all... just the opposite in fact. As I mentioned in a previous post. Most veggies are 10-50% protein as a percentage of calories, and most fruits are 5-15%. This is more than adequate.

I never look at calories. Basicly I look at it like this:

1 4oz Steak = 35 grams of protein
2 Cups of Lentils = Roughly 34 grams of protein

However looking at the same two, the steak contains roughly 35% fat, the lentils a measly 8%.

This information isn't too bad, but bits and pieces of it are a little bit off, like the assertion that animal protein has a better balance of amino acids than plant products. This is misleading since it doesn't take into account the body's amino acid pool or the fact that animal proteins don't come in amino acid form -- they must be broken down into amino acids and then rebuilt into human proteins by the body, an inefficient process that places a strain on the digestive system. The info on your site appears to be congruent with research done in the 70s, which is the basis for the knowledge base that most nutritionists still use today. Unfortunately, there's a lot of research that was done during the 90s that has undone many of the conclusions made during the 70s, but in most cases this information hasn't made the leap from medical journals to college textbooks. We'll probably have to wait a couple more decades for that to happen, but the change is gradually occurring.

Ok, I'm not entirely sure what your sources are but as far as I am aware plant products still contain proteins that must be broken down to amino acids. I don't think anything that I have read / been told otherwise. As far as I knew amino acids always form chains together in food sources (into peptides). A protein can have 500 or more amino acids linked together uniquely which determins it's structure and function. Animal proteins aren't broken down into amino acids and rebuilt. Why would they be ? Animal products generally take longer to be broken down as the protein in animal products have longer amino acid chains and many more amino acid types. Animal products do have a better balance when compared to plant products. Most animal products have complete protein, which means the protein contains the 9 essential amino acids. Most plant products don't have the full 9 amino acid chains in their protein types. Does this mean you can't get your full amino acid requirements from plants ? Hell no, it just means you have to eat a range of plant materials to cover your essential amino acid requirements. Plant products are good for you and can easily cover the dietry requirements AND do it with a fat content less than 40% or more than meat.

Honestly I don't know enough about Atkins' diet, so I can't explain how that effect works, since I don't know what the diet is. I've never read any of Atkins' books. But from the people I've seen who've gone on this diet, that was enough for me to know it wasn't a healthy choice. I know several people who've tried this diet, but I don't know any who've felt good about while eating this way. It seems almost as if the diet induces some form of illness that kicks the body into elimination mode.

Also, one odd thing I noticed about Atkins' dieters is that they have really bad breath... like sulphur (i.e. rotten eggs).

An all meat diet sounds really really dodgy to me. Your depriving your body of many minerals and vitimins you need from plant based products to stay healthy.

Sorry for the long post. You have some great points in here Steve, but until I read some of your sources some of the things sound a little off to me, especially the whole "animal proteins" concepts such as animal proteins being broken down then remade then broken down again. All proteins break down into about 20 amino acids, I doubt there is a difference between amino acids in animal proteins and plant proteins.

Your diet is well balanced. My ex-girlfriend tried to convert me to a vegetarian a few years back and while I don't want to and haven't changed to vegetarian I do eat a lot less meat due to the research I did. Also being physically active and knowing a few "gym junkies" and deititions I try and keep up with the latest research being done, it's just I haven't seen some of the stuff you have brought out yet :-|

Originally posted by Dexterity
You're referring to the incomplete protein theory that was introduced by Francis Moore Lappe in her book Diet for a Small Planet during the 70s. As I mentioned in a previous post, she came out 20 years later to recant that theory, saying she was utterly mistaken. Unfortunately, Diet for a Small Planet was a lot more popular than her later books, so this misconception still lingers today. People just seem to accept it as fact now, even though it's been proven false by the very originator of the idea.

I'm not saying you can't get all the essential amino acids off plant based food, I am saying you need a combination of plant based food to get your essential amin acids. The majority of plant based food by itself (Let's say a carrot for instance) are made up of incomplete proteins, proteins that do not contain all 9 essential amino acids. Eating a combination of plant based food can and will cover your essential amino acid content. All the dietitans I know say this is correct and the previous dietry journals I have looked at (from about a year and a half ago) still reinforce that fact. There are a few plant based foods that contain complete proteins (can't remember which off the top of my head) but most animal products are made up of complete proteins.

As far as trying stuff goes, I went on an all vegetrian diet for roughly six months. I did lose a fair bit of weight but I also noticed a had a lot less energy. I had to really up my food intake to cover me. Now I am not the average person. I play three different sports on the weekend, I do weight training three to four times a week and cardio training for at least an hour or two a day. I use a lot of energy. I also drink a lot of water which I think has a tendancy to flush a lot of food out (but I'm not entirely sure). These days a lean meat and plant based diet works for me. By that I might have red lean meat (I hate meat with a lot of white fat on it when you buy it. Most of my red meat has all the white fat I can chop off, chopped off) meal once a week. I also eat red meat very rare. I might have a chicken or fish meal three to four times a week. For lunch I may have two to three chicken or fish meals a week. The meals I love the most and have frequently are:

Pasta Bake -- Pasta, Cheese and mushroom sause, baked in oven
Mushroom Caserole -- Basicly mushrooms, potato and a herb sause cooked like a caserole
Chicken salad is what I mainly have for lunches, sometimes I break it up with a pasta and salad though.

- Dexterity -
Most people don't know that as a percentage of calories, broccoli is 50% protein, lettuce is 33% protein, and virtually all fruits and veggies have an abundance of protein


This is true...and wrong. It's true that plants contain a lot of protein, but it's not digestable (and usable) by humans. There is a reason that herbivores have extra "hardware" in their digestive system (rumen, enlarged colon, multiple stomach sacks, etc). Plant protein is primarily cellulous, and humans lack the necessary physiology to break it down. A cow can live on grass because it has the physiology to do so, a human trying live on just grass would die. There are nutritional benefits from eating fruit and vegetables, but protein isn't one of them.

Originally posted by Siebharinn
This is true...and wrong. It's true that plants contain a lot of protein, but it's not digestable (and usable) by humans. There is a reason that herbivores have extra "hardware" in their digestive system (rumen, enlarged colon, multiple stomach sacks, etc). Plant protein is primarily cellulous, and humans lack the necessary physiology to break it down. A cow can live on grass because it has the physiology to do so, a human trying live on just grass would die. There are nutritional benefits from eating fruit and vegetables, but protein isn't one of them.

This is another one of those theories that says I should be dead. :) Anyone see a problem with that? Whenever I hear one of these, I feel like that cartoon character who walks over the edge of a cliff and doesn't know that he's supposed to fall until he looks down. Ahhhhhhh!

If plant protein isn't digestible and usable by humans, then why am I not dead... or other lifetime raw foodists? The only source of protein in my diet is from plants. As a vegan I also consumed no animal protein, and I went vegan in January 1997 with nary an incident of cheating, so I haven't consumed any animal protein in almost 7 years. Yet since then I actually gained weight. In 2001-2002 I also worked with a personal trainer (doing lots of weight training) and gained 10 pounds of muscle (based on weight / body fat analysis). I'm not a bulging bodybuilder or anything, but I can do 30 push-ups without difficulty, and I can certainly see and feel the extra muscle on my body. If it didn't come from plant protein, then where did it come from?

- Dexterity -
If it didn't come from plant protein, then where did it come from?

I would imagine that what little protein you do get is from seeds and nuts, which are digestable. But you aren't getting any appreciable amounts from lettuce and apples.

Originally posted by ScrewBall
Very true. Majority of the time people who do heavy weight training and are eating lots of protein are not helping themselves all that much. Basicly the body will use protein in it's normal, everyday functions. If you have excess protein the body can and will get rid of some through excrement. If you consume excess protein it can lead to health problems. I knew a few "gym junkies" who a while ago thought it would be great to consume a lot of protein. The went so far as to drink almost a litre of milk after weight training on top of high protein diets to help the build their protein levels to increase their muscle mass. They got very sick. Any excess protein is processed through your kidney's, and people who have previously gone on extremely high protein diets have known to had kidney failure.


I seem to recall that kidney failure was also a big problem with the Atkins' diet.


I'd like to see your source on this as it sort of contridicts most things I know. Protein is basicly amino acids linked in a certain structure. I usally think of it like a DNA chain, where the various proteins are made up of amin acids linked different ways. Like DNA chains, no two different food sources have the same protein structre. Saying that Plant protein may be broken down more easily as the amount of different amino acids in plants is less than animal products, which usually are complete protein sources.


I've seen this in a number of different sources. One of them would probably be Diet for a New America by John Robbins.


Yeah, although you don't need to get a complete protein selection at every meal it is good to get all the essential amino acids covered daily. If your looking at improving your body through weight training is recomended you eat a fairly balanced protein meal before or after as this is the time your muscles need that protein.


The idea that animal protein is superior to plant protein dates back to 1914 when Osborn and Mendel did research on rats' protein requirements. They noted that the rats grew faster on animal protein than on plant protein.

The essential amino acids (and their ideal proportions) were discovered in the 1940s through more rat experiments. As far as I know, these experiments have still never been repeated on human subjects. The main reason is that a lot of people would have to die in order for this to be studied accurately, as was done with the rats.

So because of the practical impossibility of conducting the proper human experiments, about all that could be done was to assume that the essential amino acids worked out the same way for humans as for rats.

It was the animal product propaganda groups including the National Egg Board and the Dairy Council that began promoting the idea that animal protein was superior to plant protein. At the time no serious researchers considered this to be more than a working hypothesis. But these groups essentially advertised it into public consciousness, where it sadly remains to this day.

The reality is that we don't really yet know what amino acids are essential for humans. Indeed there are some researchers, including Dr. Young, who believe that no amino acids are essential.

Here's a quote from Dr. Young's Sick and Tired:

"... the body has a free amino acid pool, a constantly changing supply of amino acids derived from body sources, as cells that were once organized, like red blood cells, disorganize to provide microzymas, when then organize themselves into protein complexes. This body pool contributes about 70 grams of protein daily. Thus, the idea that you need to each all the essential amino acids simultaneously is erroneous. In reality, all you need are those tiny, indestructible, intelligent beings -- the microzymas -- found in all green foods."

Most people don't know that the common nutritional wisdom here about the essential amino acids comes from rat experiments done in the 40s, experiments that were never repeated on humans. But modern research is beginning to show that no amino acids are essential, since our body is capable of building all of them from microzymas (which are sort of a precursor to living cells), and the body can also recycle dead cells and rebuild new proteins from them.

Of course, lots of people today sell products that rely on the belief in essential amino acids, so it's just good marketing to keep the myth alive. It sells a lot of drinks, bars, and powders.


Long term over consumption of protein with a lack of a good calcium source does cause osteoporosis. As far as cow calcium is concerned I would like to see your source again.


Hmmm... I don't recall the exact source on this one. It was probably the book Diet for a New America plus a number of med journal articles.


If you switched to cooked food, I am asuming this would constiture eating meat. Generally speaking meat does contain anywhere from 20% - 50% more fat than uncooked plant based products. I re-establish my hate of calorie based weight loss groups ect :-P


No, I wasn't assuming any animal products. I could gain weight on a pure vegan diet than was lower in calories than what I'm eating today. I know because I've done so.


Some people who make up these theories should actully try to put them in practice first.


Agreed. But for determining what's essential, it's virtually impossible to conduct experiments without killing or seriously hurting people. So much of the nutritional data we rely on today comes from rats and mice, and in many cases those experiments were decades old and conducted under relative primitive conditions by modern standards.

The force that tends to drive this knowledge base is marketing. There are thousands of businesses with a stake in the current knowledge base. As long as people think they need powders and shakes and bars to be healthy, they'll keep spending money. People like me who can get all their nutrition from their own backyard if they wanted to are a big threat. Even just from the personal choices I've made, I'm costing these companies thousands of dollars in the long run.


Sorry for the long post. You have some great points in here Steve, but until I read some of your sources some of the things sound a little off to me, especially the whole "animal proteins" concepts such as animal proteins being broken down then remade then broken down again. All proteins break down into about 20 amino acids, I doubt there is a difference between amino acids in animal proteins and plant proteins.


That's a great attitude to have. I'd say the two most comprehensive books are Diet for a New America by John Robbins and Sick and Tired by Dr. Robert Young. The bibiolographical research that went into the first book is truly amazing, so that will give you lots of new leads to pursue if you're interested. I've seen John Robbins speak at a seminar too.


Your diet is well balanced. My ex-girlfriend tried to convert me to a vegetarian a few years back and while I don't want to and haven't changed to vegetarian I do eat a lot less meat due to the research I did. Also being physically active and knowing a few "gym junkies" and deititions I try and keep up with the latest research being done, it's just I haven't seen some of the stuff you have brought out yet :-|


Due to my wife's business, I have a lot of new information coming my way, often from interviews with doctors doing active research. The big trend I see right now is the move towards raw foods and the importance of green foods. A lot of people are getting excited about this.

I have been studying diet and health since around 1992. In the beginning it was extremely confusing to me. There is so much contradictory information out there. Every week a new diet book hits the shelves, as old ones are pulled off the shelves. But each new book has only a small piece to the puzzle.

Why do I give so much credibility to Dr. Young's research? Because he takes a totally different approach than any of the other diet doctors, one that in my opinion is much more scientific. His theories don't rely on case studies or aggregate information that can be misinterpreted. He actually looks directly at people's blood to see what's really going on. In his book Sick and Tired, he has dozens of pictures of microscopic views of people's blood. He uses a special process that shows more than just blood cells -- you can also see other organisms in the bloodstream too that can't be seen under a regular microscope. And he looks at the cells while they're still alive, whereas other blood tests often use dried/dead blood.

So in his book, he'll say, this person has diabetes. Here's what his blood looks like. This person has cancer. Here's what his blood looks like. This person is suffering from chronic fatigue. Here's what her blood looks like. And you see these pictures of blood cells sticking together in big globs, and things like yeast and mold and fungus floating around the blood abundantly.

Then he puts these people on a new diet for a while, and he shows images of their blood again. The blood cells no longer stick together, and the harmful microforms are severely reduced or eliminated. He also does before and after interviews of how these patients feel. Diabetes... gone. Cancer... gone. Fatigue... gone.

I believe Tony Robbins has adapted this technique to use in his $5000 Life Mastery seminar, which is a 9-day seminar. You get a blood test at the beginning and another at the end, during which times you're able to see your own blood under a microscope. And during the seminar you'll eat a healthy diet and do lots of exercise. I haven't done this seminar myself, but I have talked to others who've been to it, and they've told me how seeing how their own blood changed really hit home for them and made them make permanent dietary changes.

This is why I think Dr. Young's research is very credible. It's based on physically looking at our blood cells and seeing how much they change when we eat differently. He evolved his diet plan using this process of seeing what effect different foods had on the blood. I don't know of any other diet doctor doing this level of research to actually look at our cells and see what's happening to them.

Also, Dr. Young's books aren't about weight loss. Pick up any popular diet book, and the first chapter and/or the intro will invariably be about how other diets don't work, how this isn't a diet but a lifestyle change, a few inserts of the word "revolutionary," and some motivational fluff about how bad it feels to be fat and how good it feels to be thin.

Dr. Young's book doesn't start out like a diet book at all. He jumps right into discussing the acid/alkaline balance, pH, and a history of scientific research in this area. It's not a motivational or weight loss book. The book is about how to eat if you want to maximize your energy and health and how different foods have different effects on our cells.

Originally posted by Fenix Down
That's great info Steve, thanks! It also explains how cows manage to grow so much meat while primarily eating plants (or grass as it were).


Ho ! Cows don't eat Cows ? :rolleyes:

pat.

Originally posted by Siebharinn
I would imagine that what little protein you do get is from seeds and nuts, which are digestable. But you aren't getting any appreciable amounts from lettuce and apples.

But there are many long-term raw foodists (including fruitarians) who don't eat seeds and nuts at all, and they're not dead either. In fact, Steve Jobs was supposedly once a fruitarian (hence the name Apple Computer). Also, while I was a vegan I hardly ate any seeds and nuts at all, maybe once or twice a month.

I can say with certainty that there are living people who are proving this theory wrong by the mere fact of their survival.

Are you saying that if I dropped seeds and nuts from my diet, I would experience protein deficiency symptoms and then die?

Incidentally, can you give me the source of this theory that says I should be dead (or should die w/o nuts and seeds)? Maybe I can get my wife to interview him/her for her web site. I know a lot of people who would find such an interview a source of entertainment. :)

Sorry for the facetiousness... It's just a bit hard for me to accept theories that predict that people I know (myself included) who are alive should actually be dead. That's usually a sign that the theory needs to a bit more work. :)

But if you're able to tell me the source, I will at least fire off an email to educate this misguided soul to the fact of my continued survival. Hopefully s/he won't kill me to prove me wrong. :)

Looks, it's really just a matter of perception. One of the things that Tony Robbins talks about is rewiring your perceptions so that they serve you instead of limit you. That's not a bad thing, in fact it's a technique I use regularly. Robbins gives the example of the woman who loved chocolate and hated grapes, and in just a few minutes had her hating chocolate and loving grapes.

Your own perceptions are wired to be pro-raw. When you see something relating to food, they go through your perception filters. You don't see the reality of the situation, you see a heavily biased "version" of reality. Your raw experiences were all good. The experiences of everyone you know are good. Every cell alive with positive energy. In contrast, everyone you've seen who has tried the Atkins diet is a walking corpse, with dead skin and bad breath. My experiences have been vastly different. I've seen people on the Atkins diet drop 100 pounds and just explode
with life. I've seen vegans with crippling ailments. You see what you're biased to see.

It's this bias that will let you read a book like Young's and think "Yeah, this makes sense". Or to hear about success with Atkins and say "It seems almost as if the diet induces some form of illness that kicks the body into elimination mode." Anyone not entrenched in the vegan/raw mindset will see a statement like that as just plain scary, on par with "I don't understand it, let's blame it on witchcraft". The bias allows you to throw out the 99% of science that doesn't agree with your viewpoint and embrace the 1% that does.

When you described going on the raw diet, one of the things that really stuck out to me was the daily affirmations that what you were doing was good and for your benefit. After 30 days you couldn't go back to even a standard vegan meal. I don't doubt that. But was it really an issue with the diet, or was it because you used your NLP skills to rewire yourself to accept only that? Would you be able to stick with that diet if you weren't telling yourself every morning how great it is, how great you feel and how happy you are? I have no doubt that you could have a massive protein deficiency and convince yourself that you felt great anyway. The mind is an amazing thing.

In the early 90s, I was convinced to try the Fit for Life diet for six months. I did it, and I hated it. I felt weak and tired all the time. I didn't experience any of the things that the authors claimed I would. Part of the problem, looking back, is that I woke up every morning saying to myself "Man, this sucks, fruit again!". It was doomed to failure. Recently I tried the Atkins diet. I had put on some extra pounds and wasn't happy with that. So I bought the book, read through it, and committed to do the diet. I was excited about the prospect of losing the weight and getting into shape. I was positive about the experience. And the results were predictable: the weight melted off, I felt energized and alive, my health was excellent and I was happy with the results. In both cases, my perceptions made the difference.

Your scientific method (try it and see what works for you) is therefor highly fallable. How someone "feels" is about as unscientific a metric as you can get. You yourself dropped your first try at raw foods. You didn't have the right mindset, you hadn't convinced yourself that it was a good thing. Once you got those filters in place, then it worked. The diet hadn't changed, the underlying biochemical processes hadn't changed, just your approach to it.

I really don't care what you eat. But I don't like the misinformation and elitism that goes along with it. :)

Originally posted by patrox
Ho ! Cows don't eat Cows ? :rolleyes:


Only if they're mad cows. :) In the USA, feeding bovines to bovines is illegal, so our cows are fed a diet that includes ground up pets and roadkill animals, cement dust, old newspapers, feces, and lots of antibiotics. Whatever it takes to pack on the poundage at the lowest possible cost....

Dead pets (those that aren't buried or cremated by their owners), including those that are put to sleep by animal shelters, and roadkill animals are sold to rendering plants, where they're ground up and turned into pet food and livestock feed. Purina, for instance, is one company that supposedly uses rendered pets in their products. Many people are shocked when they first learn that their pets are eating other people's dead pets. But it's true. You can even subscribe to Render Magazine (www.rendermagazine.com) and learn new tips for the rendering industry, which is a very big business. Subscriptions are free, so sign up now. :) Or you can join the National Renderers Association (www.renderers.org). Render Magazine refers to roadkill as "dead stock" and rendering is often referred to as "recycling" or "animal disposal." You can read all about it on their web site.

Also, here's a really funny cartoon my wife showed me yesterday called The Meatrix:
http://www.bancruelfarms.org/meatrix

And here's a video called Meet Your Meat, narrated by Alex Baldwin:
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=mym2002

Yummy!

Originally posted by Dexterity
Then he puts these people on a new diet for a while, and he shows images of their blood again. The blood cells no longer stick together, and the harmful microforms are severely reduced or eliminated. He also does before and after interviews of how these patients feel. Diabetes... gone. Cancer... gone. Fatigue... gone.


Are you saying here what I think you're saying? That you believe it's possible to cure diabetes, and cancer with dietary changes alone?

One of the kooky thing I noticed in the usa is that the eggs are white :) ( i've seen a white egg for the first time in the US )
Most people really thing that chicken eggs are white and won't eat a yellow/orange one ! ( haaa i'm a farmer remember ;) )

pat.

Considering most of the diseases that kill us are lifestyle based it's not unreasonable to consider that a lifestyle change could reverse or reduce the effects of a disease. One of the first things any respectable institution will do for a high risk cancer / heart disease/ diabetic patient is put them on an extremely restrictive / macrobiotic diet. Doesn't it make sense to adopt the diet and avoid the disease altogether?

There are documented cases for cancer but I'd hesitate to call it "cured", more like a remission. Certain types of diabetes can have their symptoms reduced and even be reversed by diet. How much of that is the diet and how much is a placebo effect (getting better based on a proactive outlook), I don't think we'll ever know.

Nothing reliably cures cancer, or we wouldn't have it anymore.

I watched a documentary recently that was about diseases going into remission. The basic point was that a certain percentage of nasty diseases will go into remission, regardless of what the afflicted actually does. Of course the afflicted are desperately searching for something to heal them, so when a remission occurs, they attribute the remission to whatever miracle source they were believing in at the time. Healings via prayer/diet/psychic-surgery/whatever all boil down to the fact that a remission would have occured anyway.
So the "diet cures" crowd is really no different than the "God cures" or "touching the badger totem cures" crowds.

I don't know anyone miraculously healed by a change in diet. I did know one lifelong vegan who switched to raw to battle cancer, and he died. Your milage may vary.

Originally posted by svero
Are you saying here what I think you're saying? That you believe it's possible to cure diabetes, and cancer with dietary changes alone?

Dietary and lifestyle changes, yes, absolutely. But this is nothing new and has been known for decades. There are many strategies people have used for successfully ridding themselves of "terminal" illnesses. Norman Cousins used laughter and positive emotions (documented in his book Anatomy of an Illness) to cure his terminal illness. Others have used visualization or mind-body techniques. Still others have used dietary changes. Macrobiotics, for instance, which I tried for a while, apparently has had great results with reversing cancer and is often referred to as the cancer prevention diet. There are various macrobiotic centers, the largest of which is on the USA east coast, and I'm sure that if you contact them, you can be put in touch with people who've cured their own cancers through dietary changes. Dr. Young's Sick and Tired book also documents dietary cancer reversal with before and after pictures.

I realize most people don't encounter this info because they never intentionally seek it out. It doesn't enter mainstream media because there's little or no money to be made from it. Drug companies don't want people curing themselves with diet. Sadly, cancer has become a multi-billion dollar business. Cancer is a systemic condition which localizes itself, but it's really a symptom of the larger problem of overacidification of the blood. Cancer cells cannot live in an alkaline environment; in that environment they die. Keep your blood alkaline, and you won't get cancer. The same goes for diabetes. And raw fruits and veggies are the best alkaline-forming foods. Animal products and cooked foods are acid-forming. At least this is what current research is showing.

Unfortunately, when people get diagnosed with something like cancer, they often go into a negative emotional tailspin and then begin treatments that can never cure them but only perpetuate the problem. A friend of mine contracted cancer years ago, and he just let himself go. His diet is worse than it was before the diagnosis. He eats hot dogs and other junk that only further acidify his blood and promote the continued growth of the cancer. And that's what keeps happening to him. He goes through rounds of chemo and radiation treatments for a bit of remission, only to have the cancer reappear elsewhere. His dominant emotional state is one of fear and worry and anger. But not everyone reacts this way. Some do manage keep their emotions positive and redefine what the cancer means to them. They focus on healing themselves and cleansing their bodies, and once cured, they see cancer as the best thing that ever happened to them (as odd as that may seem) because it teaches them what's really important in life.

I realize this is a very sensitive subject to many people, so I'll just add that if anyone has more questions about this or would like to be referred to resources where you can look into this more on your own, please feel free to PM me.

Originally posted by Siebharinn
Nothing reliably cures cancer, or we wouldn't have it anymore.


Why not? The cure for obesity is known, yet it remains an epidemic. The dangers of cigarette smoking are well known, yet millions still smoke.

The problem is more the attitude people have that good health should come in a pill.

- Dexterity -
Why not? The cure for obesity is known, yet it remains an epidemic. The dangers of cigarette smoking are well known, yet millions still smoke.

The problem is more the attitude people have that good health should come in a pill.


No arguments there. The difference, I think, is that most obese people aren't desperately searching for a cure to obesity, they are busy promoting "Fat is beautiful" and working towards getting large people covered by the ADA. Absolutely, diet cures obesity. But few are really making any kind of effort to get rid of the fat. Attitude really is the problem.

However, no one thinks cancer or diabetes is beautiful, and when someone gets it, they try like heck to get rid of it. If diet was a reliable way to get rid of it, then people would do that. These are people that are actively searching for anything that works. And in those situations, diet works about as often as faith healing: not very often. You can cite examples where people did miraculously get better, but you can do the same thing with people touching a cactus that looks like the virgin mary. For every success, there are thousands that weren't healed. No one ever mentions them.

Could sick people have prevented the illness in the first place with a better diet? Probably. Again, attitude.

I should clarify that raw foodism by itself is not a disease prevention or healing diet per se. Many plant foods are still acid forming, including nuts, seeds, and many sweet fruits. One could go raw and still easily have acidic blood that yields cancer. So a raw foodist dying of cancer comes as no surprise to me. Raw is a very good step, but it may not be enough if the body is already in a diseased state.

Dr. Young's diet (which is a disease prevention and healing diet) is a highly restrictive subset of raw. His diet is to raw as raw is to meat eater. Young's program focuses on alkalizing the blood, and it includes uncommon supplements like colloidal minerals (minerals in liquid form) and noni juice extract. His diet is heavy into green vegetables, and it begins with a 7-day veggie juice fast, which is an essential part of the program. On Young's program, even raw carrots and beets are discouraged due to their high sugar content. In the ideal situation, Young's diet also monitors the blood to see exactly what's happening there, and the program is adjusted to adapt to specific conditions. For instance, one of Young's patients who was a serious burn victim used topical colloidal silver to treat the burn with outstanding results.

The whole idea of alkalizing the blood is about changing the inner terrain of the body to a place that is inhospitable to cancer. It is well documented that cancer cells thrive in an acid environment and die in an alkaline environment. Chemotherapy and radiation attack cancer cells and tumors, but they only further acidify the blood, so the soil is still fertile for the re-growth of cancer. Young's approach aims to change the inner terrain to a place where cancer cannot grow but yet healthy cells thrive. If the blood can be made alkaline enough and kept there long enough, the cancer cells will die. The challenge is how to use diet to induce this change.

Without being able to physically see what's really going on in the blood, it's hard for individuals to understand what their dietary changes are doing for them and whether the new diet is having the desired effect. I think this is one reason that some of the best cancer reversal stories involved cooperation between a patient and a willing physician, whereby the physician didn't provide any medical treatments but did provide testing and feedback to the patient. So the patient could see his/her blood changing, tumors shrinking, white blood cell count improving, etc.

In the absence of having someone like this to actually monitor progress, the best testing you can do on your own is pretty rudamentary. You can buy pH strips from a health food store though. Instead of your blood you can measure the pH of your saliva or urine to see how acidic it is. These aren't as accurate as testing the blood, but if you take a few measurements and average them, you should get a fair approximation of the true value. I used these strips when I went raw and noticed a significant change in my own levels in a matter of days. pH is a logarithmic scale, so even a seemingly small change in pH is highly significant. This was one way for me to actually see that I was indeed altering my own internal biochemistry as I changed my diet.

I would love to be able to get access to the kind of tests that Dr. Young is able to perform. Imagine being able to look at your own blood cells after eating different kinds of foods and see how they respond. I find it interesting that Dr. Young and his family adopted such a restrictive diet after doing this kind of analysis. Imagine what effect it would have on a person to eat a hamburger and then see mold floating through his own blood, or to drink a soda and see the yeast cells multiplying as they gobble up the sugar.

Originally posted by Fenix Down
Do the math -- that's 100 grams of sugar, or 20 teaspoons of sugar if you drink a bottle of mountain dew. I've stopped drinking this stuff a long time ago, and also switched to low sodium or "no salt added" products (like salt free ketchup). Recently I've finally got fed up with how much sugar sweets have and pretty much have given up on them too.

My Floridian Uncle reported yesterday that McDonalds and Coca Cola raised the amount of sugar they put into theire products in the past 10 years or so. Same time kids in the US became much more often ill by diabetis.

I hope you can understand what I tried to say. (?)


Ok enough ripping on the average American's diet. :) I just had to get that out.


You mean Kentucky's, McDonalds, Taco Bell etc? That' not American diet, that's american bussiness sense. American diet are privately held restaurants with excellent service. Once I got a plate build around a fresh catfish, some sort of tomatos-based salad, grits and eggs in one of those. I'll never forget that. Please don't represent the Wall Street based sugar marketers as typical american cooks. They are not.

Ok, I actually tried an all raw, no meat diet for about two weeks a while ago. I lost around 1 pounds and didn't get any kind of 'health' benefits as energy boosts or whatever. Was it good for me? Maybe, but still, I can lose a pound every two weeks with two meals of meat a day and even a sweet everyonce in a while.

The problem I see with most diets is that they can't be the same for everyone. Some people sit all day on the computer on cold weather, others run 10 miles a day on warm weather. Others paint houses on high altitudes (less oxygen) and all of them require difference diets.

My cousin has a problem with a leg and her weight is beginning to be a problem, she isn't really overweight, but to prevent serious problems in the future, she had to lose a few pounds. She went to a nutricionist and told her her normal day to day and the nutricionist made a diet for her so she would lose X pounds (don't remember how much) in 6 weeks. It worked fine, the meals consisted of both cooked and raw veggies/fruit and meat/fish.
Now, if I picked up that diet for myself, I would starve to death, to maintain my weight, I eat around 2.5 times what she does (and I'm only 140 pounds).
I currently eat what I want when I feel a need for food, and trust me, I eat alot, and I'm still able to slowly lose weight.

Steve, just wondering, the reason if you switch from raw to cooked you would gain weight may be because the cooked food is easier absorved by your body than raw, and not the actual 'living/dead' thing?

Hi there.

Although I do not buy into the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, I do eat very little meat and a lot of fruit and vegetables.

The one thing that really made a difference in so far as feeling vibrant, healthy, etc... was to drink a lot of water (2-3 liters a day).

Also, eating lots and lots of fruit helps feeling more awake, healthy, etc...


::: emp :::

wether you eat mad cow or you eat genetically modified vegetables/fruits ( about 99.99% of the us fruits are genetically modified )

Or get your own garden...
pat.

ps : the yoghurt doesn't have to be plain, it has to be *real* ( strawberry yoghurt is fine )

You know what? I actually like good food, raw, cooked, plant and animal in all its many delicious forms. I'm not afraid to answer the question:

"If I knowingly eat unhealthy food, doesn't that mean that I value the taste of food above my own life? And what does that say about the value I place on my life? Doesn't it suggest that I'm trying to hasten my death?"

No, I recognise that life is short and uncertain for everyone, and I plan to enjoy it while I'm here. It might hasten my death. Or it might not. Probably not by all that much, I daresay. Whatever... I can't really say, since I don't know what I'm going to die of. But I definitely know that I am going to die one day - and no amount of raw veggie shakes are going to save me in the end.

And I for one am much happier after a fine meal in a good restaurant than I would be after yet another cold serving of coleslaw and raw cauliflour.

Everyone makes their own choices about that, and that's fine. It's not for me to say how people should live; whatever works for you. But I object to the sanctimonious tone coming through in some of these pro-raw posts. It sounds almost like a religious sermon... we can change our diet, change our mindset, and save our souls. But it won't save us. Nothing can. So whatever makes you happy...

Call me a fatalist, but I'm just going to live my life according to my nature and come what may. Sod self-improvement; I'm happy already.

Originally posted by Anthony Flack

No, I recognise that life is short and uncertain for everyone, and I plan to enjoy it while I'm here. It might hasten my death. Or it might not. Probably not by all that much, I daresay. Whatever... I can't really say, since I don't know what I'm going to die of. But I definitely know that I am going to die one day - and no amount of raw veggie shakes are going to save me in the end.

And I for one am much happier after a fine meal in a good restaurant than I would be after yet another cold serving of coleslaw and raw cauliflour.


Amen brother :) Nothing sweeter than a nice rare spicy 4oz steak with french fries, rice and 2 eggs for dinner :)

Hmmm... I'm going to switch gears on this thread and inquire into other people's choices to see if we can gain a deeper understanding here.

For those of you that eat meat, if you are willing to try this very simple and easy 5-minute experiment, I would greatly appreciate hearing your results, as I think it would help us all learn something....

The next time you're able to eat a piece of meat (by itself or as part of a meal) alone and in silence, without distractions like radio, TV, or other people, just put your conscious focus on what you are doing, and note all the sensations you experience: taste, texture, emotions, thoughts, etc.

Then as you do this, think fully and deeply about the consequences of this simple action at your highest possible level of awareness. What was required to bring this bite of meat to your mouth? What is the history behind it? How does it make you feel to think about this as you eat? Just pause for 60 seconds in silence and listen to what you hear in your inner voice, once you quiet the chatterbox part of your mind. Do you feel open to embracing these thoughts and feelings with every bite? Or do you feel an urge to tune them out? Do these thoughts and feelings enhance or diminish the enjoyment of your experience? Does eating this meat make you feel more at peace or less at peace?

Once you do this for meat, if you're willing, you can try the same experiment with a fresh, raw vegetable or a piece of raw fruit, preferrably organic if that's convenient for you. Note any similarities or differences between the two experiments.

I realize that some may read this experiment and be unwilling to take it seriously, but if you're willing to give it your best and share the results (either by posting here or PMing me privately), I would be most appreciative.

I'm not asking anyone to do this experiment because I know what the results will be. I honestly don't know what the results will be. That's what I'd like to learn.

- Anthony Flack -
No, I recognise that life is short and uncertain for everyone, and I plan to enjoy it while I'm here. It might hasten my death. Or it might not.

You don't have to look at your dietary choices in terms of life and death. There is also quality of life. I'm not really concerned with trying to avoid death, we all know you can't do that. But I want to live well until I do die.

Americans, on average, are overweight and in terrible health. If you take the average American's attitude about diet, it's not suprising why.

I disagree with the science that Steve cites, so I'm not able to follow his particular diet, but I do think that one should try to live a healthy life, only because it makes the quality of life better.

OK, I'm not exactly sure what it is you are exactly asking for, but I gave it a little try. I normally don't eat a lunch, but since I was home preparing a round sirloin steak in a sweet burgundy marinade for dinner, and since I'm not likely to experience the conditions you asked me to try this under at dinner time, I cooked up a little portion of my steak for lunch while I was home alone.

I took the first bite and thought about the taste. Delicious flavor, but I realize the flavor mostly comes from the seasoning. You could probably just as well apply this flavoring to any meal. However, the texture is a different matter. I love the consistancy...that slightly stringy/tough/chewy texture of the meat (I'm not good at describing sensory input, but that's the best I could think of). I've never tasted any vegetable with the same texture. In addition, the one difference I notice is that with meats, the flavor soaks right though. The entire substance absorbs the flavor (something I can't say I've ever enjoyed from a seasoned vegetable quite the same). I certainly very much enjoy fruits and vegetables as well, but nothing like I do a piece of beef

With my next byte, I started thinking that this couldn't quite be what you were asking me about, so I started thinking deeper. What did it take to put this on my plate? Then it hit me...the slaughterhouse. Maybe thats what you were referring to. Does it bother me to be eating this poor animal? Not the slightest. I can imagine it's probably a pretty gross scene to be there (I've seen pictures and video, but that probably doesn't do it justice), but I'm glad to have someone do it for me. I'm very sensitive to animals, and care about them very much, so it would bring me great pain to have to put this meal on my own plate. However, I believe it's just the natural order of things. Many other animal kill for their food, there's nothing quite unnatural about it. There is a lot of things in life that are necessary or that I enjoy that I don't have the skill, patience, or stomach for, and I'm glad there is someone that does.

In addition, if I were to really feel sorry enough for the animals that I'm eating to make the decision to write them out of my diet, where would that leave me? What about the animals that died when they lost their homes because the forest was cut down to make the wood for my home? What about my automobile, and my computer, TV, books, furniture? If I were to truly let the fates of those animal have an effect on me, I'd have to be living in a straw hut to keep my conscience clear. I personally feel comfortable with a layer of indirection between my food and the animal it is made from. Many vegetarians (and the like) do not feel comfortable having someone else doing the job for them. They protest and say its not right. Yet they feel perfectly comfortable with that layer of indirection when it comes to the sacrifices that were made to build their home and other worldly possessions. To me, that's hypocritical of them to condemn one death and condone another when they were for the same basic cause. But whether it is natural or not, whether I feel it is right or wrong, does that fact bother me? Does it make me hesitate to put that piece into my mouth? The only hesitation was the time it took to think about it.

What about the health aspects of that bite I just took? Well, everything I know tells me there's nothing wrong with it. People have survived for thousands of years on meat diets. The majority of our advance in lifespan has come from medical advances. The effect of dietary changes has probably been an order of magnitude less important on the human lifespan (I'm not counting the all fast/junk food diet). But who cares about anecdotal evidence from thousands of years of human history. What about me? How has it affected me? We'll, let me say that I enjoy a beef, chicken, or pork meal probably on average of 6 out of 7 days a week. After all this time, I still feel great. I have energy to do things. Earlier this year, I underwent a stress test (i was born with a heart defect...it has since been corrected, but I undergo yearly monitoring to keep an eye on it), and my doctor told me I performed exceptionally well for a healthy male of my age. Now, I don't go out of my way to eat a particularly healthy diet (I mostly just eat what tastes good, and avoid fast food more than one, occasionally twice, a week), and I don't go out of my way to get a lot of exercise (for the most part, I generally take what comes my way). Yet I feel good, my doctor tells me I'm doing good ("well, whatever it is you do, keep doing it"). I see nothing that tells me I should change my diet except for the people who say it's unhealthy for me.

As for the fruit or veggie, it's almost shopping time, so all I have on hand is a few apples left from our trip to the apple orchard a few weeks ago, so I went with that (not sure which kind it was...we picked 5 different types).

Overall, it was a much shorter experience, since there wasn't as much to think about. No dead animals to think about. Nobody argues that fruits are unhealthy. Nobodies denies they are good for you. About the only thing to think about is the taste, which is very good. I do like the somewhat tangy taste. It's a bit different in that it floods your mouth with flavor more-so that a meat does (the taste of the meat is a little more localized). The texture...well, it was just there. Nothing remarkable about it. I think I probably enjoy the texture of a pineapple or kiwi more, but I don't have any of those on hand.

All together, I'm not sure if this is the type of thing you wanted me to address, but it's what came to my mind. I feel good, I'm comfortable with how my meal makes it's way to me, and I enjoy the taste. I also enjoy fruits, but I don't think I would enjoy one to the exclusion of the other. Since I'm comfortable with the other aspects of my food, the only thing of any real concern to me is the flavor. I'm more interested in expanding my flavors that restricting them.

Does this help?

Yes, this helps. I'm grateful that you chose to try this.

If I might ask some follow-up questions to get a deeper understanding....

You mentioned that it would bring you great pain to go through the steps of putting this meal on your own plate. I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. What exactly do you mean by "great pain?" What part(s) of this process would be painful? What parts would not not painful?

Also, what is the difference between you putting the meat on your plate and having someone else do it for you? How are these two things different? You implied that you couldn't do the first but could do the second, so what exactly is it that makes the difference for you? What is the part that you couldn't do (or wouldn't want to do) yourself?

You mentioned that this is just the natural order of things. I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean, since you seemed to be referring to the slaughterhouse. What did you mean by "natural order?"

I hope these questions don't sound dumb. Please keep in mind that I haven't eaten a bite of meat in over 10 years, and my family is all vegan. So I often don't even remember what it's like to eat meat.

Btw, I found it funny that you used the word "byte" instead of "bite." :) I do that a lot myself.

The problem I see with most diets is that they can't be the same for everyone. Some people sit all day on the computer on cold weather, others run 10 miles a day on warm weather. Others paint houses on high altitudes (less oxygen) and all of them require difference diets.

You know I agree with this. I am reading a book called nutrition and physical degeneration. It was written in the 20's by a dentist who traveled to the remote regions to document diets that had not been affected by the "white man". It is astounding the huge variety in the diets from one region to the next.

He takes pictures of people living on the traditional diet of the region and those eating more of a modern diet exams their teeth and always a huge noticable change. Now these studies do leave room for error, but very interesting either way.

It is a fairly interesting read.

So much mis information out there. Makes it tough to decide what to eat.

With regard to pain, and having someone else get the food for me, I just mean that I don't really have the heart to kill the animal myself. I'm the type of person that, it doesn't bother me that certain things are done, but it does bother me to be the one doing them. Killing an animal in person would be a difficult process for me, but the fact the the animal is killed doesn't really bother me. I don't know if its the process that freaks me out (seeing blood and organs doesn't bother me, but seeing a person cut open during surgery gives me the willies), or if it's because I develop attachments easily (I might feel like I'm killing my pet), but I just think it's something I wouldn't want to experience firsthand. Perhaps once I did it, I'd be more used to the idea and be comfortable with it, but its a little more extreme than taking my first ride on a big roller coaster, so I'm a lot more apprehensive to just give it a try. :)

With regard to "the natural order of things", I mean that I happily accept that some animals die to provide food for animals. It doesn't bother me that they die. Again, I just don't want to be the one killing them firsthand.


Please keep in mind that I haven't eaten a bite of meat in over 10 years, and my family is all vegan.
That's another interesting aspect of it. Everyone in my family is a meat eater. Now that we are all older and don't see each other as often, one of the things I really enjoy are the times we do get together for a holiday dinner. Not eating with all of them (or eating my own food to match my diet) just wouldn't be quite the same. Not that they'd look down on me or anything (my family is very understanding and accepting), but I imagine the experience just wouldn't be the same.



Btw, I found it funny that you used the word "byte" instead of "bite." :) I do that a lot myself.
Didn't even realize that. One of my favorite shirts is one I have with big letters on the front: BYTE ME

Originally posted by LordKronos
With regard to pain, and having someone else get the food for me, I just mean that I don't really have the heart to kill the animal myself. I'm the type of person that, it doesn't bother me that certain things are done, but it does bother me to be the one doing them. Killing an animal in person would be a difficult process for me, but the fact the the animal is killed doesn't really bother me. I don't know if its the process that freaks me out (seeing blood and organs doesn't bother me, but seeing a person cut open during surgery gives me the willies), or if it's because I develop attachments easily (I might feel like I'm killing my pet), but I just think it's something I wouldn't want to experience firsthand. Perhaps once I did it, I'd be more used to the idea and be comfortable with it, but its a little more extreme than taking my first ride on a big roller coaster, so I'm a lot more apprehensive to just give it a try. :)


Interesting... so paying someone else to handle the killing part on your behalf is what makes the difference? Are you implying that if you had to do all the throat-slitting yourself, then you wouldn't enjoy meat as much or perhaps wouldn't eat it as often?

Also, you mentioned getting attached to animals easily. So if you raised a pet pig from a piglet, you wouldn't feel a desire to kill it and eat it? If it's the throat-slitting part that bothers you, would you be ok with sending the pig to the slaugherhouse and having the meat stocked in your freezer?

When I pick a tangerine off the tree in my backyard, I actually enjoy it more that way than if I buy it at the store, even if I raised it from a seed. The tree doesn't die and will bear more fruit, and the fruit will fall off anyway and rot if not eaten. While I'm ok with paying others to do this sort of thing, I'm also willing and able to do it myself without any discomfort. The awareness of where the food comes from only heightens my enjoyment of it. Pesticides do bother me though, so I try to buy organic when it's available. There's a great farmers market in my area with lots of organic produce, but it's only available half the year.

Maybe I've just been out of the omnivore loop for too long, but it seems to me that if one is fully aware of what eating meat entails and openly accepts that, then there should be no discomfort in the process. If killing animals for food is ok, then it shouldn't really matter if you know that animal or not or whether you or someone else does the killing, should it? If any of this bothered a person, then it seems that they wouldn't want to eat meat, since all of this comes with the territory. So what am I missing?


With regard to "the natural order of things", I mean that I happily accept that some animals die to provide food for animals. It doesn't bother me that they die. Again, I just don't want to be the one killing them firsthand.


Ok. I wouldn't consider the current state of factory farming to be a "natural" anything though. It's actually quite unnatural with the antibiotics, hormones, debeaking procedures, scalding alive, etc. The closest you would get to a natural order in this case would be to hunt wild game I would think.

Even so, if killing animals for food is just the natural order of things as you say, then shouldn't your active participation in the process feel perfectly natural? Would slitting your pig's throat feel natural to you? If not, then for whom does action this feel natural?


That's another interesting aspect of it. Everyone in my family is a meat eater. Now that we are all older and don't see each other as often, one of the things I really enjoy are the times we do get together for a holiday dinner. Not eating with all of them (or eating my own food to match my diet) just wouldn't be quite the same. Not that they'd look down on me or anything (my family is very understanding and accepting), but I imagine the experience just wouldn't be the same.


Veg*ans handle holidays many different ways. My mother is a vegetarian and thus has no problem making vegan options at holiday means. My wife's family is less helpful though, since none in her family are vegetarians, so we bring our own food. But the smell and sight of dead animals on the table is actually nauseating to me, so I usually prefer all-vegan events. I guess my experience would be similar to a meat eater sitting down to dinner with cannibals and seeing human body parts being served up. Since we never have meat in our house and mostly eat out at vegetarian restaurants, it's very odd seeing people who still eat animals... an infrequent event with our lifestyle.

The social consequences are no big deal though. Usually it's the non-vegans who feel uncomfortable at such family events. This is consistent with what you've written though, so I guess I can see why. Our food choices remind people of the choices they're also making, which raises their awareness of what they're doing, and this tends to diminish their enjoyment of it. I've seen this elsewhere too -- a lot of people seem to feel uncomfortable eating meat in front of a vegetarian. I don't feel uncomfortable eating an apple in front of a meat-eater though.

Steve, did you start down the vegan path because of ethical (don't kill animals) reasons at first? Most vegans that I've had contact with (admittedly, only a handful) seem to have begun that way.

If any of this bothered a person, then it seems that they wouldn't want to eat meat, since all of this comes with the territory. So what am I missing?
At a guess Steve (and people may or may not disagree with me), the pressure of social norms and peer groups may be a factor? "Since everyone is doing it can't be *that* bad, can it?" I doubt anyone is going to pressure others into eating meat, but there can be a degree of ridicule for being veg*an. When you go for dinner with friends, your special dietary requirements can be a hassle and imposition on them if they have to cook special dishes for you - and if the etiquette/culture says it's disrespectful to bring your own food, that can be awkward.

Of course, none of that is logical - why not make your own food, stand up to your friends, ditch them and find new ones? But there's an emotional factor that perhaps people aren't ready to overcome (yet).

I imagine it's easier to be vegan if most people you associate with are vegan. Similarly, I wonder if it's harder to be a meat-eater if most people you know are vegan. I could see some peer pressure being applied then :)

Maybe most meat-eaters put the concerns out of their minds. If they've never had to confront it (eg by witnessing a pig being slaughtered), then maybe it's easy to do that. Maybe it's hard to connect a pig being slaughtered to the ham in your sandwich if you haven't witnessed the *full* processing of the ham? (I mean every step to packaging). They can seem disparate events. And perhaps then social norms, convenience and taste become stronger factors.

Then again, it might be interesting to ask a cattle or chicken farmer this, since I gather many of them do eat meat and they *have* witnessed the whole process from slaughter to cooking.

Just trying to forward the discussion, feel free to disagree with me :)

I enjoy meat, and I seriously don't care from where it comes or how it gets to my plate as long as it tastes good.

As far as killing them, again, I have no problem, heck, in my grandma's village there is a traditional family gathering called "Killing of the pig" where we usually release a pig to a enclosed area, put whoever who wants 'fighting' over whoc catchs it (hard to catch a muddy pig btw) and who does has the pleasure of killing it. And then all the family feasts for the day on the pig. Its a nice family day out.

I also have no problems eating meat in front of vegans, heck, the guy sit next to me is one and that doesn't stop me :) But I do have a few friends that are vegan, and whenever I had to cook lunch/dinner for them, i had to go the extra mile to go and by enough veggie stuff to make them a full meal.

ps: i didn't do the experiment as I know I wouldn't be objective, but even thinking from where the food comes, doesn't the least makes the food less tasty.

When I was a kid, we raised chickens. We killed and ate a bunch of them. My youngest sister raised a fuss about it, but it didn't bother me. I've been fishing all my life, which is pretty much the same thing - seeing an animal go from alive to dead to cooked to on my plate.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where hunting is a big deal. I personally didn't hunt, but my dad did, and I would help him clean and butcher deer when he brought them home.

I've never killed a cow or a pig. I wouldn't be particularly bothered by doing it, if I had to. I'm content to let the slaughterhouse do the dirty work. Not because I'm squeemish, but because it's a messy job that I'm happy paying someone else to do. Changing the oil in my car is also a messy job that I'm happy paying someone else to do.

If you accept the fact that humans are omnivores, then there has to be a certain level of acceptance in another animal's death in order to further yours. It's the circle of life (queue Disney music).

You are asking me how it would feel to experience something I've never experienced. I can't really do anything but make up answers. I doubt I would enjoy it any less if I had to kill it myself. Would I eat it less often? Maybe, maybe not, I can't say. That would depend on how I felt after it happened. When I expressed that I wouldn't enjoy the process of killing the animal, that was only speculation based on what I have experienced. If some of the answers I'm giving don't add up, it's probably because I'm purely speculating. I really enjoy meat, despite the fact that I know exactly where it comes from. So why would I enjoy the taste any less? On the other hand, my current experience has been that seeing animals dead has been a sad experience. Maybe the killing process would sour the flavor of the meat. I can't say. However, there is a difference here. The animals I usually see dead are cats, dogs, squirrels, birds, etc. Animals that I've grown up to accept as either pets or friendly little creatures that roam the neighborhood. I've grown to accept pigs and cows as food. Maybe I wouldn't have a problem actually killing them. I can't say, I'm just guessing.

When I pick a tangerine off the tree in my backyard, I actually enjoy it more that way than if I buy it at the store, even if I raised it from a seed. The tree doesn't die and will bear more fruit, and the fruit will fall off anyway and rot if not eaten. While I'm ok with paying others to do this sort of thing, I'm also willing and able to do it myself without any discomfort. The awareness of where the food comes from only heightens my enjoyment of it.See, there is a fundamental difference between the two of us. It almost seems as if the process is some sort of spiritual experience to you. I'm not really very spiritual at all. You seem to think about the deeper meaning of things. I tend to take things more at face value. To me, the process of growing my own food doesn't really alter the experience any. The first thing I grew on my own was a strawberry. When my first strawberry was finally ripe and ready, I was a bit proud to have done it on my own, but after that it didn't affect the way I perceived the strawberry as I ate it (other than "with a minimum of effort, I can now enjoy this for free"). This year was my second year growing strawberries, and I can tell you that the only thought I had about them this whole year was "ooh, more strawberries are ready....yummy". My effort didn't make the taste any sweeter.

Ok. I wouldn't consider the current state of factory farming to be a "natural" anything though. It's actually quite unnatural with the antibiotics, hormones, debeaking procedures, scalding alive, etc. The closest you would get to a natural order in this case would be to hunt wild game I would think.Well, in today's society, I just don't have time to kill my own food, or the property to raise them on, or the knowledge of how to do it safely, or the time to spend doing it all. I've outsourced. I didn't say the mechanism for getting my meat is natural. The fact that I eat meat is natural. The fact that the animal dies is natural. We've just changed the process a bit to make it more convenient for modern society. In the process, I've become somewhat detached from the whole process, but that doesn't bother me.

I've seen this elsewhere too -- a lot of people seem to feel uncomfortable eating meat in front of a vegetarian. I don't feel uncomfortable eating an apple in front of a meat-eater though.Of course you don't feel uncomfortable eating an apple. They eat apples too. The reason a meat eater might feel uncomfortable eating meat in front of you is not because it makes them think eating the meat is wrong. It's because they respect that your beliefs are different than theirs, and they worry they might might be making you uncomfortable. They want to enjoy themselves, but at the same time, they are wondering whether they might be being inconsiderate to you. Myself, I personally couldn't give a crap if I offend someone by enjoying a bloody chunk of cow.

Originally posted by Siebharinn
Steve, did you start down the vegan path because of ethical (don't kill animals) reasons at first? Most vegans that I've had contact with (admittedly, only a handful) seem to have begun that way.

When I went vegan it was due to a combination of many factors: health, personal growth, ethics, the environment, congruency with what I knew. When I went vegetarian years earlier, it was mainly for health reasons; I was 22 when I went vegetarian, and at that time I wasn't very aware of the big picture.

I'm not certain of this, but I feel that I probably encounter a lot more vegans who choose that path for the ethical reasons. My wife's veg magazine includes "Why vegan" stories with every issue, which are people's personal accounts of why they went vegan. Many are written by teenagers who come to realize that they don't want to support animal cruelty, for example. You can see dozens of such stories at http://www.vegfamily.com/why-vegan/ -- I've never read them all, so I don't know what % go vegan for each possible reason.

I was raised a Hindu Brahmin (from India) and am a vegetarian not vegan. I havent eaten meat/fish/eggs because I never had to. I have always had access to great vegetarian food even after moving to the uk.

One thing I do notice is meat eaters are definitely stronger than me! Each day I'm amazed at the speeds blokes/gals (majority must be meat eaters) power past me on the bicycle :)

I dont think one can justify becoming a vegetarian or vegan because one wont kill a living thing. Every breath one takes kills a few thousand bacteria at least. Its all where one wants to draw the line.

However, it really did disgust me to see millions of cows slaughtered in the uk due to foot and mouth disease 2 years back.

I guess as humans we hate to see a living thing killed consciously so maybe vegetarians/vegans have a point in not letting that happen as much as possible.

Personally, I do feel killing something (and/or eating) is not being truly civilised. The reason a nation abolishes death penalty is because it wants to become civilised. Law cannot kill the criminal because he killed someone.

Maybe the pscyhological trend would be to turn vegetarian but I may be biased because I am.

Originally posted by LordKronos
See, there is a fundamental difference between the two of us. It almost seems as if the process is some sort of spiritual experience to you. I'm not really very spiritual at all. You seem to think about the deeper meaning of things. I tend to take things more at face value. To me, the process of growing my own food doesn't really alter the experience any. The first thing I grew on my own was a strawberry. When my first strawberry was finally ripe and ready, I was a bit proud to have done it on my own, but after that it didn't affect the way I perceived the strawberry as I ate it (other than "with a minimum of effort, I can now enjoy this for free"). This year was my second year growing strawberries, and I can tell you that the only thought I had about them this whole year was "ooh, more strawberries are ready....yummy". My effort didn't make the taste any sweeter.


I don't think of it as a spiritual process but rather one of striving to become more conscious and aware. I don't follow any formal religious doctrine, but I do think a lot about the idea of congruency, meaning that I attempt to get my actions and beliefs in sync. It's my attempt to perceive reality as accurately as possible and to accept the consequences consciously.

For example, if I drink milk, I have to acknowledge that I support animal cruelty. I know how the dairy cows are raised and treated, and I've seen the videos. I also know that I don't in any way need milk, which means that I'm free to choose a different option. If I drink milk, I am paying people to torture animals on my behalf. That action is incongruent with the type of person I wish to be. So I choose not to drink milk. The only other way I could be congruent in this area would to accept that I support animal cruelty and to feel congruent with that choice. But to drink milk and pretend that I am anti-cruelty would be incongruent; I would have to lie to myself and exist in a state of denial to live this way, and that would prevent me from perceiving reality accurately.

So my curiosity about others' choices stems from wanting to know how they make this resolution. Are their actions and beliefs congruent (i.e. "I'm pro animal cruelty and have no problem with that at all. All animals are potential food, including pets.") or incongruent (i.e. "I like to think of myself as being an animal lover, but I don't mind paying people to torture animals on my behalf. As long as I don't have to see it, I'm comfortable living with this illusion.")?

There's also a person's values hierarchy to consider. A meat eater would place the experience of eating meat above the lives and suffering of animals in terms of what's most important to him/her. Also, depending on the person's knowledge, some would place the meat-eating experience above their own health. And still others, uncomfortable with the social consequences of not eating meat, would place social acceptance above the lives of animals. My values hierarchy is such that the life of an animal is more important to me than these things. If I had the choice between losing my taste buds and never being able to taste my food again vs. eating/torturing an animal for food, I would rather lose my taste buds and never taste my food again because killing and torturing a defenseless creature isn't congruent with my beliefs and values. Maybe that's why I wrote Dweep, a game where a defenseless creature is the hero, and the player must protect him from harm; if you try to harm Dweep, you lose the game. :)

Originally posted by jaggu
I dont think one can justify becoming a vegetarian or vegan because one wont kill a living thing. Every breath one takes kills a few thousand bacteria at least. Its all where one wants to draw the line.


I see vegetarianism/veganism as more of a process than an end result. Everyone is at a different point along a continuous spectrum. And I don't think there's an end to it.

Some vegans will eat honey; others won't. Some will wear leather; others won't. Some will kill bugs; others won't. To some it's just a diet; to others it's an integrated belief system. People aren't static creatures. Their beliefs and behaviors are constantly evolving.

My wife once posted an article on her site called "How Vegan Are You?" It generated so much controversy that she eventually had to take it down. People kept arguing over the proper way to define "vegan." Can you eat honey and be vegan? Can you wear leather or wool and be vegan? Some say yes; others say no.

Great thread, thanks to everyone for their contributions

Originally posted by Dexterity:
Maybe that's why I wrote Dweep, a game where a defenseless creature is the hero, and the player must protect him from harm; if you try to harm Dweep, you lose the game.

I've always wondered if any 'animal rights' advocates would complain about torching the innocent little creatures in OTT? Those penguins are so darn cute.. I even hate to have to see them go up in flames sometimes.. and then there's the T-Rexes.. definately not vegans.

Now things are getting interesting...

Okay, I did the experiment and took it serously; I'm not going to reply in full just now because it would be an epic post and I don't have time... but briefly:


You don't have to look at your dietary choices in terms of life and death. There is also quality of life. I'm not really concerned with trying to avoid death, we all know you can't do that. But I want to live well until I do die.


Well, everything in moderation, including moderation (as they say). I'm not overweight, nor do I have any health problems. I eat a balanced diet. Plenty of delicious fruit and veggies. I don't really eat any junk food. Nor do I worry about my diet.

Re: Vegans eating honey. I have wondered if some vegans took moral issue with this. I can tell you, you'd be a damn fool if you did. I come from a family of apiarists, and I can tell you:

The bees are not held in any way; they're free to go if they prefer (and they do sometimes swarm and leave). However, the beekeeper provides them with better housing than they could find on their own, and also moves them to within easy reach of a good food supply. The beekeeper takes most of the honey, but leaves the bees enough to live through the winter, and will also supply sugar syrup to prevent the bees from starving (something wild bees don't have the luxury of). Apart from that, the bees live just the same cruel, vicious and brutal lives as they would in the wild. Except of course, that in most parts of the world wild bees actually can no longer survive at all, because of the spread of the verroa bee mite, and so bees are now fully dependent on apiarists for their survival. And if you have any moral objections to the keeping of bees, then you had better stop eating fruit too. Because orchardists are dependent on apiarists to supply them with pollination hives. Even the fruit in your garden was likely pollinated from a bee from a man-managed hive.

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
Re: Vegans eating honey. I have wondered if some vegans took moral issue with this.


Who said the reason some vegans don't eat honey was a moral issue?

Regarding quality of life (and the implication that being vegan would diminish it)... that's a common misconception from the outside looking in. I can't say I've ever met a vegan who thought their quality of life was reduced by their dietary choices... quite the contrary. Actually, it sorta makes me laugh to think of it that way. Vegans feel their quality of life is greatly enhanced by this choice. People who feel that they would suffer or be deprived by eating such a diet typically wouldn't go veg, or if they did, they wouldn't last long and would simply revert, or perhaps they'd whine and complain about it a lot. If your mindset is such that you think that going vegan would mean deprivation, then you simply have no concept of what it feels like to be a permanent vegan by choice.

Think of all the edible things in the world that you've never tasted, such as those served up on an episode of Fear Factor (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, cow bladders, sheep eyeballs, etc). Do you feel deprived for leaving those options out of your diet? Certainly you're missing out, aren't you? Most likely you don't define those options as food. And that's exactly what vegans do with animal products. Pieces of dead cows and pigs and chickens simply aren't food to me. If I had a choice between eating a bowl of sawdust or a chicken leg, it would honestly be a toss-up to me in terms of which seems more appetizing. Neither are food to me. From the outside looking in, you might think I'm lying or exaggerating. I assure you though, this is the truth.

One strange paradox is that the more restrictive my diet became, the more variety I experienced. When I ate meat, I often used to eat the same foods over and over. I see this a lot with other meat eaters too; they often have 10-20 favorite meals that they just keep rotating, occasionally trying something new, but they often don't venture far from the familiar. But as I made my diet more restrictive, the variety actually increased dramatically. If I kept eating meat, I probably would never have experienced all the interesting different kinds of food that can be found in a well-stocked natural foods store. How many different foods do most people have for breakfast? Cereal, eggs, toast, pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, etc... Maybe 10 different items that just get rotated, and for some people it's just cereal every morning, with little or no change year after year. They live with the illusion of a higher quality of life because of supposedly more options, yet they seldom exercise the full range of those options.

Yea Fear Factor! Do you have time to watch those Steve? I watch it all the time. I seem to notice a lot of intellectuals watching that show (my profs and teachers). I wonder what it is with that show.

Not me. Although with breakfast I generally have whatever is fast and convenient, usually toast, cereal or fruit. But my dinner last night was raw fish marinated in coconut milk with herbs, on a bed of rice and rocket. Delicious. And I'd never had it before. I've recently started eating quite a lot of Kim Chee (sp?) - until this year I'd never tried it, but I love it!

In the eyes of people who enjoy eating crickets, sheeps eyes, etc. we certainly *are* missing out, though. I'm not that brave myself! But then, they are missing out on the stuff we eat in our culture.

Even if I did develop a taste for fried scarab beetles, I doubt if I would eat them much because they wouldn't be worth the effort to get hold of. Even Kim Chee is damn hard to procure.


Who said the reason some vegans don't eat honey was a moral issue?


So if there's no moral issue, um, what is the issue? Why else would people be debating whether or not they want to take a hardline stance on eating a certain food? It seems like any other objection you might have would allow for some leniency. Don't think it's good for you? A little bit just this once can't hurt. Etc.

Not to disagree with the incontestably healthy diet Steve advocates, but just as a point of fact, some nutrients in some foods become more bioavailable when the food is cooked. For instance, the available Vitamin C in raw tomatoes increases when the tomatoes are boiled. You can see examples from a USDA study at this Beyond Vegetarianism page (http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2f.shtml).

This data also indicates that the quantitative difference in nutrients between raw and cooked foods sometimes amounts to only a few hundredths of a milligram per hundred grams. I strongly suspect that this quantity is imperceptible to human taste buds, except for poisons and substances with exceedingly strong tastes. So on that basis, at least, the idea of judging a food's nutritional value based on how you feel while eating it is probably ungrounded.

Although it's obvious that vegetarian diets imply less animal cruelty than meat diets, LordKronos still raised a salient point that Steve avoided addressing: We all live, work, and conduct our lives in structures that were built over animal habitat, and that -- by their very existence -- form obstacles to animals trying to further their own existence. For that matter, small-acreage farmers harvesting fruits and vegetables use horses, mules, and other beasts of burden. Practically speaking, we simply cannot arrange our lives to avoid animal cruelty. On that score none of us can justly feel self-righteous or superior.

Originally posted by Chandler
Yea Fear Factor! Do you have time to watch those Steve? I watch it all the time. I seem to notice a lot of intellectuals watching that show (my profs and teachers). I wonder what it is with that show.

Sometimes my wife and I like to watch that show together, usually taped so we can fast-forward through all the fluff and finish it in 30 minutes instead of 60. We sometimes envision a vegan Fear Factor, where you'd be forced to eat regular fast food. Neither of us think we could do it. :)

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
So if there's no moral issue, um, what is the issue? Why else would people be debating whether or not they want to take a hardline stance on eating a certain food? It seems like any other objection you might have would allow for some leniency. Don't think it's good for you? A little bit just this once can't hurt. Etc.

Well, I can't say, since I don't presently exclude honey from my diet. Many raw food and vegan cookbooks include honey in their recipes. Pure maple syrup and dates are the most common sweeteners I use, but I had some honey yesterday with a cup of herbal tea.

Some vegans define honey as an animal product; technically, it's bee vommit. Or they think of their diets as entirely plant-based. Some vegans would therefore define "vegan" as excluding honey. Others who still consider themselves vegan don't make this distinction.

There's always some fuzziness around the edges when you try to slap a simplistic label on human behavior.

Originally posted by Allen Varney
Not to disagree with the incontestably healthy diet Steve advocates, but just as a point of fact, some nutrients in some foods become more bioavailable when the food is cooked. For instance, the available Vitamin C in raw tomatoes increases when the tomatoes are boiled. You can see examples from a USDA study at this Beyond Vegetarianism page (http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2f.shtml).


Carrots are another example where certain nutrients are increased by cooking. However, the downside is that toxins, including known carcinogens, are also activated by cooking, while valuable enzymes are destroyed. The bioavailability of many nutrients can also be increased by juicing instead of cooking.

Also, and I can't remember where I read this, so I can't find the exact source, I read somewhere that increasing the bioavailability of certain nutrients via cooking isn't necessarily a good thing. I.e. supposedly there is a certain nutrient balance within raw foods, and cooking can artificially throw this balance out of whack, with suboptimal results. Apparently it's a similar concept to the potassium-sodium balance which your body must maintain; these need to be balanced within a certain ratio to keep you alive. So when cooking artificially inflates one nutrient while simultaneously destroying other nutrients, destroying enzymes, and activating dormant toxins, it can increase the work your body must do to restore the properly balanced ratio. I'm sure I read this in one of my books, but I can't find the reference, since I can't think of what words would be used to index it.

The URL you listed is pretty limited in its data as well, and the data appears to be severely biased. Only a very limited dataset was used (just 7 foods total). There are only two vegetables and one fruit listed in the table, and two of these (carrots and tomatoes) are the two most common examples of foods that experience a vitamin increase when cooked. Honestly, this looks like biased data that is simply being used in an attempt to prove a point rather than report the truth. This data only includes 10 vitamins -- no minerals or other micronutrients which typically take a big hit from cooking. So where's the rest of the data, and why such a puny slice? Even so, this data still shows significant loss, including 16% of vitamin C, 26% of vitamin B1, etc.

And one more thing... who eats boiled bean sprouts? :)


This data also indicates that the quantitative difference in nutrients between raw and cooked foods sometimes amounts to only a few hundredths of a milligram per hundred grams. I strongly suspect that this quantity is imperceptible to human taste buds, except for poisons and substances with exceedingly strong tastes. So on that basis, at least, the idea of judging a food's nutritional value based on how you feel while eating it is probably ungrounded.


This viewpoint is inaccurate and oversimplified.

First, for your statement above to be accurate, you need to rephrase it to say that the difference amounts to only a few hundredths of a milligram of nutrients per hundred games of food.

A key factor is the form in which minerals are consumed. Recent research suggests that the best form to us to consume minerals is in colloidal form, bound with certain metal transitional elements. Certain foods like carrots and watercress have high concentrations of colloidal minerals. Cooking destroys these colloids, and while the minerals are still technically present, in their non-colloidal form they are not as beneficial to the body.

Virtually all enzymes will be destroyed above 110-150 degrees. Food enzymes help digest the food; when we eat cooked food, our body must provide these enzymes. There's a theory that suggests that using up our body's enzyme pool with hasten our death (Howell), but this theory is debatable since it largely came from research on rodents.

Also, there are many other healthful plant chemicals, a significant percentage of which are destroyed by cooking (up to 87% according to one study I read). For instance, cooking broccoli will kill up to 97% of its flavonoids (depending on how it is cooked); flavonoids are strong anti-cancer agents that also provide protection from heart disease.


Although it's obvious that vegetarian diets imply less animal cruelty than meat diets, LordKronos still raised a salient point that Steve avoided addressing: We all live, work, and conduct our lives in structures that were built over animal habitat, and that -- by their very existence -- form obstacles to animals trying to further their own existence. For that matter, small-acreage farmers harvesting fruits and vegetables use horses, mules, and other beasts of burden. Practically speaking, we simply cannot arrange our lives to avoid animal cruelty. On that score none of us can justly feel self-righteous or superior.

Out of curiosity, why do you imply that those with compassion towards animals are feeling self-righteous or superior... like it's a competition or something? I didn't address that earlier point, since I didn't see any substance to it. If you got this impression from me, you must have read something into my posts that wasn't there. I simply don't know what else to make of it, since I don't feel self-righteous or superior. Whenever I start getting too uppity, my wife invariably smacks me down to earth again. :)

It seems you are suggesting that since it would be too difficult not to do at least some amount of harm to animals, that we shouldn't concern ourselves with animal cruelty at all? I.e. that if we can't go all the way, then why even begin the journey? So why do people still fight the good fight even if they know they can never achieve the ideal they strive to reach within their lifetimes? If you can answer this question, it may help you understand why people follow this path willingly.

I apologize profusely to Steve for my careless phrasing in my last post. I didn't mean you yourself sound self-righteous or superior. Rather, while thinking of certain vegetarian acquaintance of mine (not online) I silently jumped to a new and unannounced frame of reference. Very clumsy of me.

Here's to fighting the good fight.

No apology necessary... I was more curious that I might have said something that gave that impression. It's hard to convey tone of voice via text.

There are indeed many people who pursue health that are very cocky and arrogant about their lifestyles. I've certainly met fellow vegans like this, but I've met just as many high-protein-diet gym rats with such an attitude. That kind of attitude stops people from making changes though and keeps them fixed, since they close their minds to new info. If I was like that, I never would have moved through vegetarianism, then veganism, then raw foodism, with some dabbling in things like macrobiotics along the way. I would have remained fixed at some point. I see health as a continuous process that never ends. But today I find it interesting that I'm happily enjoying a diet that ten years ago I would have thought to be impossible for me. So I have to question what I think is impossible for me today, since ten years from now, it may seem perfectly natural to me.

What a gem! I'm sorry I didn't see this thread before now. Since it's already far underway I'll just add my things that are important.

I've been experimenting with different diets over the past year or so. I've found that as long as it wasn't absurdly unhealthy it didn't have much difference what it was I was eating beyond how I felt directly after it. Greasy food puts me to sleep so I avoid that when possible. Beyond that all that really mattered is cost, taste, and weither I could eat it without interferring with what I'm currently engaged in.

I also did some experimenting on what makes things taste good. Having tasted a variety of meats, I can plainly say that I really don't care if I eat it or not. Meat by itself tastes like wet cardboard to me. Beef pressed into a thin sheet, smothered in mozerella and maranara, and then cooked on slow is GODLY! It's all the spicing and cooking style. So I honestly don't care whether it's vegetables or meat that's being spiced. The thing is that it takes a lot less work to get vegetables to taste good. Many things like corn, artichokes, and berries taste great without any added effort. For someone like me who just wants get the bodily upkeep done as soon as possible, this is a big plus. Pop in steamer for ten minutes or just open and eat as approapriate. The meat in my diet is almost always a suppliment of some kind. Pepperoni on pizza, bacon in my pasta, etc.

Of course, this all changed a few monthes ago when I hit some financial hardships. When my only goal was to find a short-term method to pay the bills and live, you'd be surprised how small you can get the food budget. Pasta and cheese for almost two months. Surprisingly, I never did get sick of it either. It worked pretty well though and I didn't have ANY kind of nutrition deficiency. This and prior experimentation leads me to believe that most nutrionists are full of it.

It may not seem as though I learned anything from this thread that I didn't already find out myself, but I did. Holy canoly, I completely had no idea they put so much sugar into sodas! I'll bet the juice they sell in soda bottles is just as bad too. I think I'll switch to water for a month and see how I feel. Looking back, I do get horrible cravings when I drink lots of water. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm addicted to sugar. I used to be addicted to caffine as well, complete with withdrawal symptoms.

As for the animal aspect, I have hunted in the past. About five to ten years ago we had a problem. There was a massive surge in the squirrel population due to there being less preditors. This is a big problem because there won't be enough food to go around. Mass starvation will occur and it would take years for them to recover. So we broke out the shotguns and used them for more than shooting at coke cans and wooden targets. Actually, we didn't do a very good job and they still all died, but at least we tried. From what I hear, my parents are just now starting to have squirrels again.

Of course, since we hunted we did score some kills. This means I shot, killed, gutted, and prepared my own food. To be honest, they tasted better than most store bought meat. That's probably because of how we cooked them. They are rather tough so we put them in a stew. Still, they were very high flavor with very little grease. Most store bought meat is the opposite: soft, greasy, and flavorless. Just eat carefully in case some bird shot was still in them.

I've also had food grown from a garden. It was also much more flavorful for certain types of foods. Tomatos are a big one. Store-bought ones are cardboard in comparision. I live in a city now so I can't exactly grow my own. But I can do the next best thing and buy them from people who did. That's what the local farmer's market is all about!

Hmm, I'm probably going to have to redo all of my dieting experimentation after switching to water. Oh well, it was fun eating all that variety. I wouldn't mind doing so again.

Originally posted by Dexterity

When your blood is acidic, it creates the environment where all sorts of nasty things will grow in it, including yeast, molds, and fungus. If you eat animal products, it's guaranteed that you have zillions of these pathogens floating around your blood right now. Yeast is particularly bad, since it thrives on sugar. So when you eat a meal (especially a sugary one), the yeast will gobble up the sugar in your blood and reproduce more rapidly, thus making you crave more food and forcing you to overeat, thus gaining weight. In an acidic environment your red blood cells will also tend to stick together, reducing their ability to deliver oxygen. So you feel a bit fatigued and tired.

The sad thing is that most people experience acidic blood their entire lives, never even going one day with alkaline blood. When your blood is alkaline, you'll have very few pathogens. Blood sugar will be used by your own cells, so you won't have cravings or a desire to overeat. Your red blood cells will repel each other effectively, so their oxygen-carrying capacity is optimal. Thus, you'll feel strong and energetic and alert all day long, every day. Since most people have never experienced this state in their entire lives, they simply don't know what they're missing. On a scale of 1-10 in terms of how you feel energy-wise, the best you can probably experience with acidic blood is a 4-5. But with alkaline blood, almost every day is an 8, 9, or 10, with your worst days being maybe a 6. But those who've never tried this way of eating simply don't know how bad off they are and how great they could be feeling every day. Of course, there are lots of advertisers who'd prefer to keep it that way.

Actually, the sad thing is that you believe that your blood can get acidic. That's false information. People often read quacky health info without ever researching anything that contradicts it. Here's some articles:

http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/1603redothis.html

http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/1603redothis.html

Once you read both sides it's much easier to identify the B.S. they spew. Dr. Mirkin's site provides a good balance of up to date health information as well as some short articles on misleading info. Here's an anti-quackery web site that goes into even more detail: www.quackwatch.com There you can learn how these people attempt to mislead and deceive you. That's the real conspiracy. It's your lack of knowldge that they will exploit so that they sound like experts. Another common occurance is pointing out the shortcomings of science as an attempt to win you over. There's tons more tactics they use and people owe it to themselves to find out.

I agree that Atkins diet is dangerous though. Many people have had heart attacks as a result of his diet. Too much protien in your diet is a serious problem and it can cause osteoperosis, which causes bone loss. In 2002, Atkins had a heart attack, but survived. Of course, he vehemently denied that his diet was causing it. He's done an immesurable amount of damage to dieters, so it's too bad he died with the blood clot caused by his slipping accident, for he surely would have had another surprise cardiac arrest on his disgusting diet. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/04/17/obit.atkins/index.html

I just read the Mirkin article mentioned above, but there isn't much substance to it. Dr. Mirkin seems to be miffed by people selling products that claim to alkalize the blood, but I don't see many actual facts in his diatribe. Blood pH changes occur within a fairly narrow band of the pH range, but they're significant enough to be measurable.

Overacidification of the blood is a known medical condition which is heavily linked to diet. This condition is called acidosis, and certain foods are known to contribute to it, especially sugar, artificial sweeteners, soft drinks, alcohol, and beef. Acidosis has been linked as a causal factor in diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, cancer, and several other conditions. Mirkin seems to imply that the only way to get acidosis is temporarily by holding your breath. But that conflicts with reality.

The optimal pH of blood is about 7.4, slightly alkaline. If it drops to a pH of just below 7, coma and death are the result. At a pH of 7.7, tentanic convulsions occur. The pH of blood, saliva, and urine are closely linked. If your urine and saliva are slightly acidic, most likely your blood is too. Urine and saliva should have pH values in the range of 6.8-7.2, although urine can range from 4.5 to 8.0 and saliva from 6.0 to 7.2.

Mirkin admits that urine pH can be altered from food, but he seems to ignore where those acidic elements in urine come from. Does the food you eat somehow just magically go from stomach to urine without even entering the bloodstream? We know of course that these acid-forming elements from food do indeed enter the bloodstream. This isn't hard to measure at all. Consume a meal of animal products, and then take a blood sample an hour later. You'll actually see a yellowish-white glob of fat floating on top of the blood.

It appears that Mirkin is assuming that when the body pH starts to become slightly acidic, the body just immediately adapts and turns it back to alkaline. Under ideal dietary conditions, this is actually true. But it isn't true at all for most people. The body can only compensate for an increase in blood acidity through the use of alkaline minerals, which must come from food. It's just simple chemistry that you need a base to neutralize an acid. The more quantity and strength of acid you must neutralize, the more quantity and strength of base will be needed.

The alkaline minerals come from the foods you eat. When these alkaline minerals are depleted (because the person is consuming too many acid-forming foods and too few alkaline ones), acidosis is the result. So Mirkin's implication that homeostasis is somehow magically instantaneous and unlimited in its ability to neutralize any amount of acid just doesn't mesh with the chemistry behind how this is accomplished.

Now I'll admit that I'm intentionally oversimplifying here. If you want to get into the actual chemistry about how the body maintains the acid-alkaline balance of the blood, then we have to get into a discussion of all the tools the body uses to accomplish this, including water, bicarbonate ions, phosphates, ammonia, protein buffers, electrolyte buffers, LDL fat buffers, kidney hormones, etc. But I think that's deeper that we care to get in this kind of discussion. The end result is still the same though.

I'm sure an article like Mirkin's is a nice read for some people, but I prefer articles that get deeper into the science and chemistry of what's really going on and with lots of references to actual facts that I can verify from other sources. Then I can more easily tell whether the arguments actually make sense or if they violate the laws of physics.

I agree completely that a lot of doctors use great-sounding pseudo-science to sell their ideas on an uneducated public. Most diet books would fall into this category.

Originally posted by Landon_Fox
Of course, since we hunted we did score some kills. This means I shot, killed, gutted, and prepared my own food. To be honest, they tasted better than most store bought meat. That's probably because of how we cooked them. They are rather tough so we put them in a stew. Still, they were very high flavor with very little grease. Most store bought meat is the opposite: soft, greasy, and flavorless. Just eat carefully in case some bird shot was still in them.


Oh, brother! Where art thou? :)

I've made a 30 day commitment to half try the raw food diet. When I say half try, I mean that most of my food will be raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts, but I'm having a hard time transitioning completely so a small amount of cooked food is sneaking into my diet as well (some crackers, a little peanut butter, some salted nuts, chow mein noodles :)). It's been four days, so far.

I also don't have the tools to dehydrate, blend, or process any food, and I still don't have the patience to sprout plants, so that limits it a bit as well.

I doubt I'll completely transition. This is pretty difficult to get used to, and I'm currently getting hungry so often (and when I'm not around food) that it's getting annoying.

That said, I don't completely buy into the raw foodist theory, but it does seem to explain the deficiencies in the calorie theory I was adhering to beforehand. Plus, Steve really made me think about how little variety of food I was eating before, and when I went into the supermarket last night, I confirmed it for myself. I left the store with almost $40 of raw food, most of it I'd never or rarely tried before.

I then made myself a salad which consisted of:
Romaine Lettuce
Bean Sprouts
Alfalfa Sprouts
Green Beans
Tomato
Avocado
Raw Almonds
Shredded Coconut
Chow Mein Noodles (they called out to me in the store.)
Honey (instead of dressing)
............................that was one of the best salads I've ever eaten. Usually I don't even eat salads because I need lots of cheese, eggs, ham, and creamy salad dressing just to even eat it, but this salad still rivals it (well, except the Green Beans, those were a mistake). And all I did was combine a bunch of foods that appealed to me at the store.

So we'll see how it goes. Day 4 and I've lost 5 lbs so far (first two days were more vegetarian than raw foodist, actually, but I got the proper foods now). My goal was to lose 20 by Christmas, so if it helps me get down there, I'll be happy. I have a feeling it'll always remain a raw food/vegetarian hybrid, though. Hopefully I can maintain it for 3 years like my vegetarian phase did. (Note: I also exercised around 30 mins a day also. Mostly Nunchuku/Katana practice, some weight training as well).

Congrats on your 5 pound weight loss, cableshaft! That isn't unusual at all, even if you don't go 100% raw. You may find that quite a bit of that weight is coming out of your intestines, including several pounds of bacteria. You may find yourself going to the bathroom more often during the first week, but that will ease up once your intestines have a chance to finally de-clog.

According to the calorie theory, for you to lose 5 pounds in 4 days would mean that you would have had to cut back on calories severely... by 5 x 3500 / 4 = 4375 calories per day, which is most likely much more than you were previously eating. Supposing you used to eat 2500 calories per day, this means you would have had to consume a negative 1875 calories per day to pull this off. Supporters of this theory would probably try to dismiss it by referring to it as water loss or something like that, but the typical raw diet actually is very water-rich, and it isn't a calorie-restricted or intake-restricted diet, so water loss doesn't explain this. It isn't uncommon for people switching to a raw diet to lose 15-30 pounds in the first month and feel a massive surge in energy after the first 7-10 days.

If you're actually hungry, then eat. Eat as much as you want, and don't worry about fat or calories. If you eat a lot of water-rich foods, expect to eat more than you used to in terms of volume. Feel free to eat lots of nuts like almonds and cashews, or throw a half avocado onto your salad. Fats from avocados, nuts, and oils helps provide satiety, leaving you feeling full longer. The salad you mentioned will probably be out of your stomach in less than an hour.

Also keep in mind that when you give up certain foods, you'll experience strong cravings during the first 5-10 days, after which they will ease up considerably. The first time I tried going raw I confused these cravings with hunger, and only later did I learn how to tell them apart. A good question I use is, "Could I satisfy this feeling by eating apples, as many as I want?" If the answer is yes, then it is real hunger, so eat. If the answer is no (i.e. I feel that no amount of apples would satisfy me -- I need something else like bread or cereal), then it's a craving caused by withdrawal from an addiction. Wheat products are especially addicting. Again, these cravings will subside. Just focus on getting through the first 10 days. If you keep your belly full, it will make it easier to handle the withdrawal from cravings. Once the cravings subside, you'll probably find you can get by on much less food without any discomfort.

I've found bananas to be a good food for transitioning. I typically buy about 25 bananas each week, sometimes more. Bananas are a great food when you're really hungry, since they're very convenient and easy to eat. When I used to do marathon training with a running group in Marina del Rey, they would have a table full of bananas for us to eat after our runs. Sometimes I'd eat as many as 9-10 of them after a long run. Bananas have a relatively low glycemic index, so they won't spike your blood sugar like other sweet foods. Plus when they start to become overripe, you can freeze them (they'll keep for a few more weeks in the freezer) and use them as a base for shakes and raw ice cream. I make banana soft-serve ice cream by running frozen bananas through my Vitamix, which I sometimes top with a maple-carob sauce.

If you want a good raw salad dressing, here's one I invented just a couple days ago. I think it's one of my better experiments:

Steve's Ginger-Garlic-Red Pepper Dressing

1-1/2 cups olive oil
1/2 cup lemon juice (fresh squeezed is best)
1/3 cup chopped garlic
2 tablespoons chopped ginger
1 red bell pepper (just the red part, no seeds)
2 tbsp tahini (I use raw organic tahini)
3 tablespoons shoyu or soy sauce (I use shoyu)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (add more if you want it spicier)

Just put all the above in a blender and blend it until creamy and smooth. In a regular blender this takes about 2 minutes, and you should chop up the pepper, garlic, and ginger first. In a Vitamix it takes about 15 seconds, and nothing needs to be chopped first.

I also use the dressing above as a veggie dip. It has a thick and creamy texture, and its flavor goes well with just about any veggie. Today I used it as a dip for a plate of roma tomatoes, cauliflower, celery, and carrots.

Other things you can add to your salads (which I use often) are sliced olives, chopped cauliflower, chopped broccoli, shredded carrots, shredded purple cabbage, diced or sliced cucumber, and raw sesame seeds. Sesame oil plus lemon juice also makes a decent simple salad dressing.

The first time I tried to go raw, the big mistake I made was not including enough fat in my diet during the transition week. I ate mostly salads and fruit, and I felt hungry all the time because those foods digest very quickly and didn't help me get past my cravings. When I aimed to include some fat with every meal, that made a huge difference, and the transition week was much easier. After the transition week, you can ease up on the fat, since the cravings will start to subside.

RE:Calorie Theory : Yeah, I was getting incredibly confused when I'd limit my calories to ~ 1600-1800 a day (and eating healthier foods in the process) and exercise for about 30 minutes (but that's all), and drink a few liters of water, and I'd check my weight the very next day and it'd say I've lost 2-3 lbs. Considering all I really did was limit my calories by about 1000 more than normal and somewhere around 150 calories burned in exercise, I should have only lost about a third of a lb, at the most. It was a major discrepency that never really made sense. And if I stuck with lighter foods for a couple weeks, I'd lose like 10-15 lbs really quickly and then the weight loss would slow down quite a bit, which supports the theory of detox better than calories (with calories the weight loss should have been be pretty consistent the whole way through).

I think I'll have a try at some of those suggestions. I especially need to see if anyone in town's got any low sodium olives. I debated picking some up last night, but all the options at the store were loaded with sodium, and it made me sad that I had to leave them behind :(.

While I'm at it, what have you guys heard about the Slim-Fast plan? A friend of mine has been on it for about six months and has lost 80 lbs with it so far, and wants to continue for another 80 (he's at 250 right now), but I never really thought it was healthy. Tolerable for a kick start, maybe, but I was under the impression that the Slim-Fast plan wasn't a good idea for any long term health goals. He's pretty adamant about it, however. (On the plus side, his constant drop has kept me from going on any prolonged binges like I'm used to, the simple thought of his potential at getting skinner than me has kept me from letting myself get obese again.)

This isn't hard to measure at all. Consume a meal of animal products, and then take a blood sample an hour later. You'll actually see a yellowish-white glob of fat floating on top of the blood.

Yuk! I think you've just convinced me to try this raw veggie diet...

- simonh -
Yuk! I think you've just convinced me to try this raw veggie diet...

Or at the very least, do some research of your own and don't take anything said here at face value.

Is it possible to bulk up with a raw vegetable diet? When I say bulk up I don't mean Mr. Universe-type muscles, I just mean a good, physical build.

All the vegans I have ever seen have looked like rakes, and that's not really the look I am after.

Perhaps if you just used protein drinks instead of meat - maybe that would work.

Originally posted by Siebharinn
Or at the very least, do some research of your own and don't take anything said here at face value.

Always good advice.

Dr. Michael Klaper, M.D., author of Pregnancy, Children, and the Vegan Diet, tells a story about how he was doing a blood test on a patient once, and when he took the vial of blood to the lab, the top inch of the blood was this gooey-looking white substance. I have a video tape that shows what this actually looks like -- very disgusting. Surprised, he went to the patient to ask what he'd eaten for his last meal. It was a burger, fries, and a milkshake. Dr. Klaper then realized he was seeing all the fat from that meal floating on top of the patient's vial of blood. Apparently that helped drive him to give up animal products. My wife did an interview (http://www.vegfamily.com/interviews/michael-klaper.htm) with Dr. Klaper a while back, and he also wrote an endorsement for the back cover of her book.

Originally posted by simonh
Is it possible to bulk up with a raw vegetable diet? When I say bulk up I don't mean Mr. Universe-type muscles, I just mean a good, physical build.

All the vegans I have ever seen have looked like rakes, and that's not really the look I am after.

Perhaps if you just used protein drinks instead of meat - maybe that would work.

I think the reason you may find mostly thin-looking vegans is that most vegans simply don't do much, if any, weight training. Things like martial arts, aerobics, swimming, and yoga seem to be more popular with this crowd. I did a year of weight training as a vegan and gained 10 lbs of muscle, and I still do some as a raw foodist but not nearly as often. For some reason I'm just not as attracted to weight training as I am to endurance exercises like running and biking. I also throw in some calisthenics like push-ups, crunches, etc. This week I've been starting each day with a 3-mile run, followed by a 3-4 mile walk, followed by some stretching and then 25 minutes of meditation. I do weight training about once a week or so, mainly just to maintain my current strength. Bulking up just hasn't been important to me. Maybe this attitude is common among vegans; I don't really know. I don't know any vegans or raw foodists besides me who are into weight training at all, but I know plenty of non-vegans who weight train (I would see them at the gym).

While there are some vegan bodybuilders (and there are dedicated web sites like www.veganbodybuilder.com and www.veganbodybuilding.org), what's the percentage chance that a vegan bodybuilder will happen to become well-known, all else being equal? The last statistic I saw (which may be outdated) was that about 1 in 500 Americans is vegan. For lacto-ovo vegetarians it's around 1 in 100. I don't know the stats for raw, but if I had to guess, I'd say maybe 1 in 10,000. But what if even fewer vegans and raw foodists are attracted to weight training? Again, aside from myself (and I only do a little weight training now), I don't personally know any others.

Since I'm not aware of any other raw foodists who actually weight train, I don't know what effect it has on weight training. This might be such a small group that it just never hits the radar. How many of you personally know other raw foodists besides me?

Statistically, you'll have a far easier time finding vegetarian bodybuilders than vegan or raw ones. For example, 5-time Mr. Universe Bill Pearl, power-lifting champion Bill Manetti, and world weight-lifting record holder Stan Price are all vegetarians.

When I first went vegan in 1997, I did notice a big boost in my endurance. This came in handy while I was practicing Tae Kwon Do at the time. There was this very muscular boxer I used to spar often, and while he could knock the wind out of me with his powerful punches, he had no endurance. I would just hop around him, easily avoiding the swings of his massive (and slow) limbs while I landed kick after kick. After the first 30 seconds, he was so winded he could barely muster the energy to lift his leg, and about all he could do was stand still and try to block. This is an extreme example, but I enjoyed abundant endurance while sparring, and I sometimes stayed after class to do some extra sparring with the black belts. Consequently, these experiences may have led me to be more attracted to endurance exercises where I performed above average. After doing martial arts I got heavily into running and did the L.A. Marathon. So I wouldn't be surprised if other vegans find themselves more attracted to endurance sports than weight training for similar reasons. For instance, Dave Scott, who won the Ironman Triathlon a record six times, is a vegetarian. So is Sixto Linares, record-holder for the 24-hour triathlon.

One odd side effect is that since my diet is so far away from the norm, I have to doubt a lot of research that's been based on the population as a whole (i.e. people who are close to the average). Since way below 1% of people eat a diet even close to mine in this country, how can I know that medical studies done on "normal" people would apply to me? Statistically, the puny percentage of raw foodists in any such studies would have an insignificant impact on the results, but what if the results would be different if done only on raw foodists. For instance, what effect will long-term smoking or alcohol consumption have on a raw foodist? Is it the same as for the "average" person? The results may be the same, or they may be different. I have no idea. And the same goes for weight training as a raw foodist. Who knows what rules apply to such a statistical oddity?

Thanks Steve for the interesting reply.

Hmmm... I did a little web searching and actually found a book called Raw Power by Stephen Arlin which is about weight-training and the raw diet. I have no idea if it's any good though.

One thing I should note is that the terms vegan and raw can be applied both to diet and to lifestyle. So there is a vegan diet and a vegan lifestyle, and the same for raw. For example, if you follow a vegan lifestyle, then you'd be a person who wouldn't wear fur or leather, and you'd probably be somewhat environmentalist in your thinking. A raw lifestyle also involves a transformation to a more basic and natural way of relating to your body and your food.

Originally posted by simonh
Is it possible to bulk up with a raw vegetable diet? When I say bulk up I don't mean Mr. Universe-type muscles, I just mean a good, physical build.

All the vegans I have ever seen have looked like rakes, and that's not really the look I am after.

Perhaps if you just used protein drinks instead of meat - maybe that would work.

I just turned to a vegan diet about a week ago. Also started weight training again (after a long time off) about the same time. If you'd like, I'll let you know my results in a year. :)

Seriously though, I don't see a problem with a meat excluding diet when it comes to protein. I don't know if you've been following the thread, but it has been mentioned a few times that what you hear about needing lots of protein is a myth. You really don't need a lot. On the contrary, too much can cause kidney and liver damage (a la Atkins diet). That said, you can get protein from many different places as a vegan/vegetarian. For instance, you can buy tofu hot dogs or other "fake meat" which has a lot of protein (but watch out for high sodium content!). Beans have protein, nuts, bread/pasta, and even vegetables as Steve has said.

So you really don't need to supplement yourself with protein shakes and the like. I would personally avoid them, and especially stuff like Creatine. Who knows what the long term effects of something like that are. I believe FDA only tests for 5 years before they let a product on the market.

Let's say you add 10 pounds of muscle in a year, which works out to be about 12 grams of muscle per day. If you assume that muscle weight is 100% protein and no water (an overestimate), 12g/day still isn't a heck of a lot of protein. If you consume a 2000-calorie diet, then 12g of protein is only 2.4% of your daily intake -- relatively insignificant. A 100-calorie serving of broccoli is sufficient to cover it. And if you manage to add 20 pounds of muscle in a year (which would be an exceptional gain IMHO), that's still not a lot of extra protein you need -- a whopping 5% of a 2000-calorie diet.

Also keep in mind that the strongest animals on earth are invariably raw vegetarian. A gorilla's natural diet is 100% raw, and it has sufficient strength to bench-press 4000 pounds. Even the scrawny chimpanzee is strong enough to rip the door off a car. So where do they get their protein? From plants.

And when people do eat animals, they eat naturally vegetarian animals like cows. When was the last time you ate lion or tiger meat? Even most carnivorous animals will normally only eat vegetarian animals unless starvation threatens them, so they're only one step removed from plant foods. Ultimately, we all get our energy from plants, which get their energy from the sun.

Originally posted by Fenix Down
So you really don't need to supplement yourself with protein shakes and the like. I would personally avoid them, and especially stuff like Creatine. Who knows what the long term effects of something like that are. I believe FDA only tests for 5 years before they let a product on the market.

Although I believe FDA testing is better than nothing, the FDA has sadly become something of a sham organization in many ways. Members of the drug approval committees often own stock in the pharmaceutical companies whose drugs they're about to approve. And the drug companies commonly have an open-door policy in terms of hiring FDA employees who want to leave their govt jobs for the private sector (with a big salary boost). That's a rather problematic conflict of interest if you ask me.

Let's say you add 10 pounds of muscle in a year, which works out to be about 12 grams of muscle per day. If you assume that muscle weight is 100% protein and no water (an overestimate), 12g/day still isn't a heck of a lot of protein. If you consume a 2000-calorie diet, then 12g of protein is only 2.4% of your daily intake -- relatively insignificant. A 100-calorie serving of broccoli is sufficient to cover it. And if you manage to add 20 pounds of muscle in a year (which would be an exceptional gain IMHO), that's still not a lot of extra protein you need -- a whopping 5% of a 2000-calorie diet.

Everything I have read indicates that to gain muscle mass you need to consume at least 1 gram of protean per 1 one pound of body weight daily. This would mean in my case consuming 200 grams of protein a day, which I am not sure would be easy to find on a Vegan diet. A vegetarian diet maybe.

Your facts and figures sound feasible, but I think in reality increasing body mass with just brocolli and other such plant substances would be a hard task indeed. Don't ask me why, I'm no expert on the subject, but perhaps your figures assume that the body will use all the protean it receives purely for building muscle, which may not be the case.

I was referring to extra protein for bulking up, above and beyond your normal daily requirements to maintain your current build. So I'm definitely not saying all protein goes straight to muscle; that just isn't true.

You can look up nutritional data and do the math yourself if you'd like. If you ate nothing but broccoli all day (2000 calories worth of it), you'd consume 200-250g of protein. If you ate nothing but lettuce (also 2000 calories) all day, you'd consume 150-175g protein. Of course, that would be a lot of broccoli and lettuce, so chances are you'd include denser foods like nuts and avocados (also high-protein). And if you're doing heavy workouts, chances are you're beyond 2000 calories a day, which means you'd likely consuming even more protein. It's really a trivial matter to consume an abundance of protein from plant products. If you want a very low-protein plant-based diet, you'd have to do so by intentional design or by curtailing calories severely (i.e. fasting). As a percentage of calories, broccoli is higher in protein than beef, and without all the fat, cholesterol, blood, and uric acid. All plant products are 100% cholesterol-free. But broccoli farmers don't have the advertising budget that the beef industry does, largely because they don't receive such generous govt subsides.

The makers of protein bars and shakes and the like would prefer that people assume they need to buy such products instead of just any produce at the supermarket. It's just good marketing and helps sell a lot of products. Also, many people want to believe they can get better gains by eating something tasty; it's easier to buy into this than it is to do extra sets and reps at the gym.

Also, do you know where the figure of 1g protein per pound of body weight (or 2g protein per kg body weight as some people use) actually comes from? Look it up, and see if you can track down the source. I think you'll find it enlightening.

Originally posted by Dexterity

As a percentage of calories, broccoli is higher in protein than beef, and without all the fat, cholesterol, blood, and uric acid. All plant products are 100% cholesterol-free. But broccoli farmers don't have the advertising budget that the beef industry does, largely because they don't receive such generous govt subsides.

Maybe, but not nearly as tasty....

Hi Steve,

I am just reading this discussion. I am not any diet follower. Maybe
I am beginner in my experiments. I did not read any diet books. Now I
don't eat something special or keep any special diet. I just keep
trying to eat less meat and junk food and eat more vegetables.
Can you recommend which books or web sites should I read in this beginner stage?
Maybe some transition phase from usual 'no-diet' stage to raw food
stage.

Another interesting question: Dr Young makes blood analyses. Goal of
my good diet is health and health means long life. There are so many
diets out of there. Each of them seems tries to reach some goal: loose
weight, build muscles. But I think that "common determinator" is
health level of an individual. Health level is also quite questionable
concept. But again, good health simply means long life.
So: did Dr Young tried to look at blood of very old people: 90-110
years old? and compare their with 60-70 old but already sick people?
What's level of alkaline have these 90-110 y.o. people with comparison
to sick 60-70 y.o. people and to healthy 20-25 y.o. people?
What kind of food eat 90-110 y.o. people? Your wife takes interview
from doctors and diet specialists, maybe good point is to add new
category for interviews: very old people. What is a diet for
longevity? Form some news stories that sometimes appears on web sites
I red that these people usually lives in mountains and eat very simply
prepared (raw??) food. I think that it's very interesting idea to
interview long life people. Maybe you have already some information to
share about them?

I'd avoid books that are just about weight-loss, since those are usually too shallow. Beginning books I like are Diet for a New America by John Robbins and The pH Miracle by Dr. Robert Young. Neither of these are diet books and cover many different aspects of health, including longevity.

There are a lot of problems with longevity information. To my knowledge we still don't have a good way to determine how "old" a person is in terms of how fast or slow they're aging. But we do know that people clearly appear to age at different rates. Some people's bodies are worn out at age 50, while others are running marathons in their 70s.

I am aware of a 1-year study that's trying to determine what effect eating 1/3 fewer calories has on people's longevity. This is a very recent one, and I'm not sure if it's been concluded yet or what the results are. But it looks promising because this experiment has been done on many other species from worms to mice to baboons, and the results have all been consistent, suggesting that the less you eat, the longer you live because you actually age more slowly.

By studying different populations, we do know that the longest-living groups of people in the world tend to eat plant-based diets. But this doesn't tell us enough -- it could simply be that people who are genetically inclined to live the longest happen to be more genetically attracted to plant foods. There's no knowing if the plant-based diets are the causal factor, especially since these long-lived populations can be rather isolated. To my knowledge there is no large population of raw foodists clustered anywhere in the world, so this method can't be used to determine how long a raw foodist might live. The only related statistic I saw was that lifetime vegans outlive lifetime meat-eaters by an average of 17.9 years, but I have no idea if that's accurate, since I don't remember where I read it, and it was probably at least 5 years ago that I encountered it.

If you live in the USA, then you basically have a 90% chance of being afflicted with heart disease and/or cancer during your lifetime, and these are the top 2 causes of death, which are massively diet-related. So if you can simply avoid these two killer diseases, you stand a great chance of living much longer than the average person. The leading cause of death for vegans is accidents (followed by murders and suicides IIRC). So I'll probably be slain by a drunk driver before my body wears out.

Originally posted by Akura
Maybe, but not nearly as tasty....

Depends on how you define tasty I suppose. Meat gets its taste from the animal's blood and uric acid (i.e. urine). If the blood and uric acid are drained from the meat, it becomes relatively bland and flavorless. Personally I prefer the taste of broccoli over bloody cow urine. To each his own though. :)

- Dexterity -
Depends on how you define tasty I suppose. Meat gets its taste from the animal's blood and uric acid (i.e. urine). If the blood and uric acid are drained from the meat, it becomes relatively bland and flavorless. Personally I prefer the taste of broccoli over bloody cow urine. To each his own though.

And THAT is the main reason I have not been able to get all the way through Personal Power. I've tried several times, and every time I get to the chapter where he starts that nonesense, I just put the book down in disgust.

Personal Power is the audio program. Unlimited Power is the book. When I got to that chapter in the book, I put my burger down in disgust and kept reading. The book was better than the burger. ;)

Unlimited Power was TR's first book. Most TR advocates seem to agree that Awaken the Giant Within is much better. I tend to agree. If you like the NLP stuff without the diet info, another great book is Using Your Brain for a Change (by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, I think).

Well, taking in consideration that most plant products use cow's [poop] to 'nurish' themselves, I don't see to much of a difference :)

- Dexterity -
Personal Power is the audio program. Unlimited Power is the book.

Doh! You're right. I thought the audio program was much better than the book. I got a whole lot more out of it.

The point is that cows don't have uric acid at all. It was nonsense when Robbins said it, and it's nonsense when you say it.

I'm afraid Steve was right. Meat does indeed gets its taste from urine, at least at Burger King it does:

http://www.rochesterdandc.com/news/1110NM2AC4O_burger101_news.shtml

:D

Originally posted by Siebharinn
The point is that cows don't have uric acid at all. It was nonsense when Robbins said it, and it's nonsense when you say it.
I'm not so sure about that. From what I've read, that's not true. However, I'm not sure what the point of Steve's argument was. Meat isn't the only thing containing uric acid. It's found in vegetables too.

Like many dietary advocates, Steve is an excellent marketer for his cause. Bloody cow urine? Please Steve, that's marketing spin. There is nothing at all wrong with consuming meat. However, there is a social stigma placed on blood or urine (we've been raised by society to generally think it's gross), thus you turn to calling it bloody urine to appeal to peoples sense of disgust to market your dietary beliefs. Same thing with "alive" versus "dead" foods. You seem to imply your diet it so much better because your foods are "alive". Well, I hate to break it to you, but unless you are eating that apple while it's dangling from a tree branch, there isn't a thing "alive" about it. I've never seen an apple grow sitting on my kitchen counter. and I don't know of anything that can take a run through a vitamix and come out "alive". It's all marketing spin.

As a side effect of natural biological processes, animals end up with too much nitrogen in their bodies, and it has to be eliminated. This process is different depending on the type of animal.

Fish and other sea creatures bind the nitrogen into ammonia (NH3). This can move permeate freely through their bodies. Fish don't urinate, the ammonia is released via osmosis through their skin.

Birds and reptiles don't use ammonia, instead they bind nitrogen into uric acid (C5 H4 N4 O3). The liver produces this, it moves through the bloodstream until it is filtered out and eliminated. Birds and lizards don't urinate either, uric acid is not water soluable, and is eliminated through defecation. The white part of bird poop is primarily uric acid.

Mammals have, for the most part, a higher water content than lower order animals. Nitrogen is bound into urea (CO(NH2)2). The liver produces this, and it moves through the bloodstream until the kidneys filter it out. Since urea is water soluable, it is mixed with water and other things that the body wants to eliminate, and is eliminated via urination.

So problem number one is that cows simply don't have uric acid. Problem number two is that urea does not equal urine. Urea is just a simple nitrogen compound. Urine is urea plus excess water, plus any gunk the body wants to eliminate, plus things that it digested but can't use, and so on. So to compare urea in the bloodstream to urine is just silly, and wrong. Third, there isn't a whole lot of urea in your blood at any given time anyway. Not enough to affect taste.

If ammonia/uric acid/urea is responsible for the taste in meat, why does beef taste different than pork? Why do both of those taste different that chicken or fish? Is there a special beef version of urea that is different than pork urea?

I've never had kosher meat so I can't really comment on it's lack of taste, but given the factually deficient context in which that statement was made, I kind of doubt that it's true. I do know that when my dad brought home deer that he'd shot, they were very carefully drained, and yet still had taste. I'll find some kosher meat and try it.

My parents go further than draining deer meat. They soak it for hours on end to leech the blood out. It tasted flavorful enough. I've found the biggest taste generator for nomral meats is the grease. Take away McDonald's grease and you'll have some bland food indeed!

Do note that Macdonalds burgers are just a small level above shoes taste wise. I eat both raw and cooked meat, with or without any kind of seasoning and it tastes great. If you have beef well done (very well done) it does taste like sole shoes, but a medium rare even without anything has a very distinctive taste.

I see a lot of people digging in their heels to defend their belief systems...but not a lot of open minds.

If you want to get healthy try this completely radical system that I'm developing. So radical that many will scoff in disbelief and call me a crazy heretic spreading lies and corrupting minds! My crazy-assed program absolutely, 100% guaranteed WILL:

1) Cause obese people to lose weight.
2) Reduce your cholesterol level.
3) Improve cardiovascular fitness.
4) Effectively reduce your risks for osteoperosis.
5) Effectively reduce your risks for heart diease and cancer.
6) Improve skin tone, appearance and mental awareness.
7) Improve your sleep patterns
8) Improve your sex drive and performance!
9) Cure depression and other popular "syndrome" illnesses
10) Actually REVERSE damage cause by poor nutrition and illness and take 5 - 10 years off your biological age!

It's a 10 point revolutionary system that has never been seen before! I will eventually be charging $399 (in 4 easy payments of $125) for this information but for now I will give it to you for free:

10 POINT PROGRAM FOR ULTIMATE HEALTH AND FITNESS:

1) Don't eat so much pre-processed crap. Cook your own meals!
2) Increase your fiber intake through natural means (not pills!).
3) Drink more water!
4) Decrease your sugar, salt, caffeine and saturated fat intake!
5) Don't smoke or consume drugs or drink alcohol!
6) Eat fresh fruits and vegetables as part of every meal!
7) Make meat a once a day side dish - not the central theme of your diet!
8) Buy a pet and show it affection on a daily basis!
9) Workout with weights 5 days per week and go for brisk walks every night!
10) Eat 5-6 small meals throughout the day instead of 3 big ones!

I dare you to adopt my program for 30 days and give me a legitimate excuse as to why it didn't work for you!

Seems like a reasonable plan to me. That's pretty much what I'm doing.

I don't want it to sound like I'm arguing against veganism or arguing for the consumption of meat, because I'm not doing either. I'm against bogus science and misinformation. That's all.

Originally posted by KNau
I will eventually be charging $399 (in 4 easy payments of $125)
Scammer!

Originally posted by LordKronos
Scammer!
I think that people usually pay much more for the same type seminaires. Thanks to KNau for giving this information for free! :)

That's my "convenience fee". After all, isn't it more convenient to pay $125 dollars 4 times than to pay $399 dollars once? :) Makes good financial sense, too!

"I think that people usually pay much more for the same type seminaires."

Sad but true. No one will believe in a program unless you charge a lot of money for it. Or if you can get brain dead celebrities to promote it. After all, who knows more about health, integrity and mental stability than actors and musicians? :)

Unfortunately, after exhaustive marketing research that involved standing in the local mall with a clip board survey and a monkey that danced for nickles - I have come to the conclusion that my program will not sell at any price :( As it ends up the theory of "moderation" isn't crazy enough for the average north american consumer.

Eating handfuls of dry oat bran and reading your aura makes more sense apparently. Buying hamburgers without the buns and pouring olive oil on everything makes more sense apparently. Worst of all, my theory of "lighten up a little" is backed by the medical mainstream and hundreds of studies! A sure recipe for disaster! Gads, how did that happen?!

But don't worry, David Hassele...Haseell...that Knight Rider guy and I are going to launch a new diet where you eat nothing but pink fiberglass and take your temperature rectally every 5 minutes. Our "studies" show that rectal temperature is a sure sign of overall health and that fiberglass pink is rich in essential silicons and colourings.

Originally posted by RomanV
I think that people usually pay much more for the same type seminaires. Thanks to KNau for giving this information for free! I was making a joke about his bad math (which he gracefully recovered from by claiming it as a "convenience fee") :)