raw foodists?

[Salasm]

anyone here eat only uncooked foods?

there is a restaurant in ny i ate last night that serves only uncooked foods, busy like s**t.. called pure food and wine. the owners also wrote a cookbook, raw food real world. http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Food-Real-World-Recipes/dp/0060793554

no meat, diary and uncooked. premise is cooking food changes colors textures and precious enzimes burned off. eating raw foods keeps you closer to earth and connects you to the real thing.

cooked foods is considered unhealthy and unnecessary. only humans, pets and farm animals eat cooked food. every other living organism does not. what you think. load of crap or a true health movement.

and dont ****ing wasteland my threads. thanks,

 

[Leareth]

Both.

There is an convincing argument made by physical anthropologists about the size of our jaws changing to take advantage of cooking meat to make it easier to chew.
But cooking meat also destroys the vitamin C.

I dont buy in to the living enzyme stuff due to the fact once it reaches our stomach the acid in there pretty much deactivetes any enzyme used by living things. wrong pH.

I dont think there is anything wrong with cooking food , it does make somethings easier to digest, and taste better its when the foods become overprocessed and need to be enriched to have any nutritional value that I would not consider it food. for example white bread, McDonald's, Most cereals etc.

 

[TheAnswer]

I have eaten at a RAW food place out in Santa Monica once, the food was really good. And I felt really good after eating it, so I picked up a cookbook out of curiosity. Hmmm...turns out stuff is cooked, but never above a certain temperature. I noticed a lot of recipes where you had to leave stuff in the oven for 5 hours at 75º F...sorry, I just don't have that much time.

 

[Salasm]

There is an convincing argument made by physical anthropologists about the size of our jaws changing to take advantage of cooking meat to make it easier to chew.
But cooking meat also destroys the vitamin C.

raw foodists don't eat meat. only plant matter, and avoid cooked foods.

in there words.

"raw foods contain live enzymes that aid in digestion, which activate as they are consumed. heatign foods to temps beyond 118F causes those enzymes to die, destroy nutrients, and vitamins, and alters the natural metabolic structure of the food. essentially eating cooked foods is an inefficient and ultimeately deletrious way of feeding ourselves. because the foods enzymes have been destroyed, your body has to use or produce its own enzymes to digest the cooked food. as we age, our bodies natural source of enzymes is depleted, and many believe eating cooked food only hastens this process. by eating raw foods, we build up our enzyme reserves. SOme enzyme researchers like dr edward howell, the progenitor inthis field and livefood teachers like ann wigmore believe that enzyme preservatoin is the key to longevity."

"furthermore cooking food depletes and destroys vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. deranged molecules in food can break down into new and unnatural substances. this generates toxic substances particularly grilling and frying, many of which are carcinofgenoic. to read more on the effects of cooking on food, check of dr joseph mercola's website mercola.com and type raw food inthe search box."

"humans, dom.pets and farm animals are the only species that eat cooked food. they are also the only ones that get degenerative diseases. as far back as 1930, researchers at teh institute of clinical chemistry in lausanne studied the immediate effects that eating cooked foods has on our bodies. they found that our bodies immediately respond to cooked food by increasing the number of white blood cells, a process known as digestive leukocystosis. generally a jump in white blood cells is the bodys normal response to viruses, infection, stresses or other toxic invasions, such as highly processed foods. keep in mind that highly processed foods were introduced into our culture in the 1930s and that statistics show meteoric rises in cancer rates since the decade"

 

[Leareth]

"humans, dom.pets and farm animals are the only species that eat cooked food. they are also the only ones that get degenerative diseases. as far back as 1930..."

umm
science has shown that even dinosaurs sufferred from degenerative diseases : cancer, arthritis, diabetes etc... they really should do more research before using terms like that...

Yes cooking destroys SOME vitamins and minerals but also releases other nutrient we would otherwise not be able to digest. Protein absorbtion from cooked meat versus raw meat for example, another would be raw potatoes vs cooked.

"live enzymes"- enzymes are proteins that speed up reactions, they are very sensitive to changes in temp, pH, etc. so an enzyme that functions in a living cell ph~ 7 would not work in the digestive tract pH~3, also most enzymes degrade after the organism has died ie the apple has been picked off tree etc.

 

[Leareth]

I realize that it sounds like I am saying you should cook all your food...

that is not my intent, my point is that the supporter of raw food diets are using misleading information and even outright lying to spread their message.

I agree with their viewpoint on eating fresh, whole, local organic food but do not agree with their "scientific" statements. So you would get benefits from eating good food but not for that reasons they outline.

The enzyme thing is pure BS. anyone with high school science can figure its wrong.
The toxicity issue is both right and wrong - some toxins are not affected by heating at all.
And the Bacteria and beneficial flora - again BS, high school biology should have been clear at this point, stomach is very acidic, very few living organism could survive unaltered.

 

[Counterfit]

I dont buy in to the living enzyme stuff due to the fact once it reaches our stomach the acid in there pretty much deactivetes any enzyme used by living things. wrong pH.

All the enzymes we need (except for lactase in some people,) are produced in our bodies anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Food_enzymes_in_the_stomach

An earlier section in the article says

Raw foods contain enzymes which greatly aid in their own digestion, freeing the body's own enzymes to do the work unimpeded of regulating all the body's many metabolic processes. Heating food degrades or destroys these enzymes in food, putting the onus on the body's own enzyme production.

However, the Enzyme article intro reads (in part)

Almost all processes in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at significant rates. Since enzymes are extremely selective for their substrates and speed up only a few reactions from among many possibilities, the set of enzymes made in a cell determines which metabolic pathways occur in that cell.

To me, the enzyme argument is bunk.

 

[dornoforpyros]

I certainly don't doubt that a raw food diet is very healthy, but at the end of the day you have to choose how much time/effort/money you are willing to put into your diet.

I've chosen a laco/ovo vegetarian diet and I feel quite healthy and I'm comfortable with the time/effort I put into it.

In simpler terms, I see no reason to jump onto this particular eating trend.

 

[EricNau]

... cooked foods is considered unhealthy and unnecessary. ...

Less healthy, maybe. Unhealthy? No.

 

[Leareth]

To me, the enzyme argument is bunk.

Thank you... my point...

 

[Sun Baked]

Thank you... my point...

Wash a lot of the nutrient off the plant if you wash it, not to mention all the bugs you should be eating in actual natural pesticide free food.

To get the true benefit of raw foods you should be getting sick from it and tossing your cookies every now and then until you build up a tolerance to the natural stuff that grows on and in uncooked food.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

I have eaten at a RAW food place out in Santa Monica once, the food was really good. And I felt really good after eating it, so I picked up a cookbook out of curiosity. Hmmm...turns out stuff is cooked, but never above a certain temperature. I noticed a lot of recipes where you had to leave stuff in the oven for 5 hours at 75º F...sorry, I just don't have that much time.

75F? So thats sitting out on the counter right? In the summer I only see that temperature in my house at night. 75C maybe which is 167F. Which is pretty much asking for bacterial growth.

As for bacteria and such surviving the stomach there are a number of things which encyst and can survive just about anything. People with diarrhea are often encouraged to eat live yoghurt because the lactobacillus colonizes the colon and displaces bad things.

The biggest problem with raw food is the increased wear on the teeth. There are more vitamins and minerals(depending on how you cook it) but I doubt that it is significant.

If it feels good do it.

 

[njmac]

Completely raw diet? No way. I do like to have about 30% of my diet raw, like fresh fruit, salads, certain vegetables.

There are some foods that are MORE nutritious when cooked, like broccoli, carrots and tomatoes.

Increase Assimilation of Nutrients

This may raise the question of whether it would not be preferable to let the broccoli sit and eat it raw allowing the enzymes to continue functioning. While, of course, this is an option, we prefer to recommend slightly cooking broccoli. Light cooking tends to soften fibrous materials aiding digestion and increasing the potential assimilation of nutrients.

One study has shown that although there may be more vitamin C in a stalk or florets of raw broccoli, we absorb the vitamin C a little better once the broccoli has been steamed or boiled. In a carefully controlled study, the availability of vitamin C from raw broccoli was compared to the availability from cooked broccoli, orange sections and orange juice. All foods forms of vitamin C showed equal bioavailability, except for the vitamin C from raw broccoli, which was less well absorbed.

 

[jsw]

and dont ****ing wasteland my threads. thanks,

You realize, I hope, that such a comment makes it far more likely that your thread will get closed? Don't say that in the future.

Anyway, I realize that a lot of food is good uncooked. But saying that we shouldn't cook food because the other animals don't is bunk. The other animals don't wear clothes or use toilets either - should we abandon that?

I agree that too many of our foods are over-processed. But cooking makes a lot more food available to us, and it tastes good as well. Yes, a steak charred on a grill contains a lot of carcinogens. But a yam cooked in an oven? Please. It's not unhealthy.

Edit: thanks, njmac. I knew the info was out there but hadn't found it.

 

[njmac]

Cooking our food might also have helped us evolved from our ape ancestors:

from the bbc:

According to the adage, you are what you eat. Now some experts think that it could be our cooking skills which raised Homo sapiens above the other apes. Harvard biological anthropologist, Richard Wrangham, believes that humanity may have been launched by an ape learning to cook.

Two million years ago, early humans emerged from a stock of pre-human apes. We began to undergo important evolutionary trends - we acquired full bipedal movement and a larger brain. One and a half million years ago, our ancestors had learned to cook food - could there be a link?

In my experience, people who are raw foodists tend to be obsessed with food. I'm a professional chef and food and nutrition is of special interest to me.. but raw foodists take it to a new level.

If you've ever met a raw foodist you probably know what I mean.

 

[macjay]

In my experience, people who are raw foodists tend to be obsessed with food. I'm a professional chef and food and nutrition is of special interest to me.. but raw foodists take it to a new level.

If you've ever met a raw foodist you probably know what I mean.

Hmmm... The natural diet of a koala is eucalyptus leaves, and basically only eucalyptus leaves. If you took eucalyptus leaves away from a koala, I bet they'd be thinking ALOT about eucalyptus leaves.

 

[FrankBlack]

I know a guy who is really into sushi. Uh, no thanks.

 

[Salasm]

umm
science has shown that even dinosaurs sufferred from degenerative diseases : cancer, arthritis, diabetes etc... they really should do more research before using terms like that...

its been disproved.

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=0002D14F-7A06-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7

""The mistaken perspective that osteoarthritis was common in dinosaurs derived from semantic confusion. Diagnosis of osteoarthritis is based on recognition of a certain type of bony overgrowth at joint margins. Dinosaurs more commonly have overgrowths adjacent to vertebral disks. Such overgrowths have been falsely cited in the past as evidence of osteoarthritis."

and

"It is unclear if dinosaurs developed tumors. The only claim of a malignant tumor in a dinosaur has now apparently been retracted, although researchers are currently studying a variety of possible benign (noncancerous) tumors."

Protein absorbtion from cooked meat versus raw meat for example, another would be raw potatoes vs cooked.

im not vegan but do vegans eat potatoes? looking thru this cookbook [cited in first post] i see no mention of potatoes. raw foodists dont eat raw potatoes. anyway, potatoes are low nutrient foods with too much carbs and starch so both your examples dont factor much with raw food proponents.

 

[Salasm]

In my experience, people who are raw foodists tend to be obsessed with food. I'm a professional chef and food and nutrition is of special interest to me.. but raw foodists take it to a new level.

If you've ever met a raw foodist you probably know what I mean.

you'd have to be obsessive about natural raw food if society constantly bombards you with highly processed foods in groceries and restaurants. you make it sound worse than it is. nothing wrong with being obsessed with health. the raw foodists i refer to are also pro chefs. maybe you looking into it, you might come to same conclusion as them about benefits of consuming raw foods?

chef bios

http://www.vegcooking.com/chef-MatthewKenney.asp
http://www.welikeitraw.com/rawfood/sarma_melngailis/

 

[njmac]

im not vegan but do vegans eat potatoes? looking thru this cookbook [cited in first post] i see no mention of potatoes. raw foodists dont eat raw potatoes. anyway, potatoes are low nutrient foods with too much carbs and starch so both your examples dont factor much with raw food proponents.

Actually, potatoes are not only and important food source for many in the world, it is also an exceptionally healthful low calorie, high fiber food that offers significant protection against cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Potatoes are a very good source of vitamin C, a good source of vitamin B6, copper, potassium, manganese, and dietary fiber. Potatoes also contain a variety of phytonutrients that have antioxidant activity. Among these important health-promoting compounds are carotenoids, flavonoids, and caffeic acid, as well as unique tuber storage proteins, such as patatin, which exhibit activity against free radicals, and newly identified blood pressure-lowering compounds called kukoamines.

Link

 

[b0tt094]

I support people eating habits, vegetarian, raw foodist, Vegan, you get it.... But if some offers me a raw slab of pork and I'm not touching that..... Im not a big fan of worms

 

[njmac]

you'd have to be obsessive about natural raw food if society constantly bombards you with highly processed foods in groceries and restaurants. you make it sound worse than it is. nothing wrong with being obsessed with health. the raw foodists i refer to are also pro chefs. maybe you looking into it, you might come to same conclusion as them about benefits of consuming raw foods?

chef bios

http://www.vegcooking.com/chef-MatthewKenney.asp
http://www.welikeitraw.com/rawfood/sarma_melngailis/

Actually, not only do I know of these chefs ( I have Matthew Kenney's first cookbook ** not a raw cookbook) I have met him.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be healthy, and rid your diet of processed foods but being a raw foodist is an extreme diet. Ridding your diet of processed foods is hard enough (because they are easy,cheap, taste good, and are readily available) but to say not only can't you have these foods AND on top of it, have nothing cooked it extremely difficult and not very satisfying.

It's a lifestyle that involves such a dedication to ONE aspect of healh, and actually makes life more difficult because of special diet restricitons.

maybe you looking into it, you might come to same conclusion as them about benefits of consuming raw foods?

Actually, I have looked into it. Someone at my son's preschool is a raw foods teacher and a raw foodist. She gave a seminar for the parents at the school and I did learn something. I have GREAT respect for raw food, and in fact, I eat quite a bit of raw food. But I also enjoy and find health benefits from the many foods that need to be cooked to enjoy.

 

[Salasm]

no disputing you im sure potatoes have lots of good nutrients... but if i had to choose eating 1 pound of potatoes (raw or uncooked) or 1 pound of broccoli, id choose the broccoli. both for taste and amount of nutrients/per pound.

 

[Salasm]

Actually, not only do I know of these chefs ( I have Matthew Kenney's first cookbook ** not a raw cookbook) I have met him.

sadly i have not. im not a raw foodist by any stretch of the imagination. i still enjoy cooked foods. discussing this topic somehow made me defend the raw foodists but im open to all eating habits.

i think a balanced approach to diet is important, eg 70% raw foods, 20% cooked 10% fish and poultry.

 

[sushi]

I guess that is why I like sushi and sashimi!