raw food has up sides and down sides

I first heard of raw food during the PDC I took in 2005.  There was food for vegans, food for the raw food people and then food for everybody else. 

I guessed that raw food was simply food that was not cooked.  I'm still not sure if that's accurate. 

I had the excellent fortune to hear a lot of details from two friends who traveled the raw food path.  And then let it go.  What they said about it was simply astounding:  a HUGE up-side, and an equally massive collection of down sides.

The up side:  imagine feeling like your IQ went up 30 points and your energy level is so far up that you feel like you are accomplishing twice as much every day.  Everybody around you seems sluggish. 

This, in my opinion, is a 500 pound upside. 

The downsides are each smaller, but in the end, they add up to more than 500 pounds.

A)  When you have been on the raw food diet for a while, eating other food acts like a toxin.  You don't just slow down to your old self, your body sort of shuts down for a day.  Feeling sick or sleeping for a whole day is not unusual.  It can take a week of raw food to get back in the awesome raw food groove.

B)  Wherever you live, you are surrounded by stores and restaurants selling non-raw-food.  That food is easy and quick and yummy.  There is raw food that is easy and quick and yummy too, but it can get .... boring.  So you want to keep lots of raw food on hand, eat lots and spend lots of time preparing good dishes so that you are not tempted by non-raw-food.    If you are used to eating at friends or restaurants once in a while ... well .... those options are much rarer, so you spend a lot more time preparing food.  Raw food prep begins to consume a large part of your life. 

C)  In the winter, your raw food will travel a long way.  For many raw food folks that desire a more locavore diet, this can feel ..... awkward.  And expensive.  This dilemma can be resolved by moving some place more tropical.  And that is a big life change. 

D)  Friends are awesome.  It is fun to visit friends.  Often times, a friend heard you were coming, so they baked you a cake.  An excellent cake.  And amazing ice cream.  And maybe a full dinner to go with it.  Painfully awkward.  Do you eat the food and go into a 24 hour sick/sleep mode?  Do you tell your fiends that their lovingly made food is like a toxin to you?  Do you attempt to explain the whole raw food thing? 

So, you can trade certain yummy/convenient foods for a super charged brain plus super vitality.  And along the way, possibly alienate your lovely friends.  Is it worth it?

Since I'm not much of a cook, I think it would be fun to be part of a group that does raw food for a month and see what it is like.  But without that group, I don't feel comfortable with the idea.  But that's just me.

If I remember right, raw food is still considered "raw" as long as it hasn't been exposed to a temperature in excess of 115 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Personally, I've gone back and forth on the merits of raw food a few times.  I think a lot of their ideas are good.  I very rarely see a need to cook fruits and veggies (although I'm steaming some asparagus tonight!).  I eat raw fish in sushi fairly often, and I drink raw milk when I can find it.

The meat aspect is where I think their arguments break down from an evolutionary biology perspective.  If you look back into the fossil record, human teeth shrank dramatically and other things like height and apparent health went up.  Some researchers believe that this point was the time when cooking was discovered.  As modern humans, we lack some of the equipment to fully digest raw meat.  Our teeth are a bit wimpy, and our intestinal action doesn't fully get the job done.  We've lost those enzymes and helpful bugs to history.

In the Weston A Price tradition of searching for indigenous populations, all of them cook their meat in some way.

With that said, I'm in my first attempt of making pemmican, which is psuedo-raw .

this link gives a pretty fair analysis I think. and the second quote points out something that fits one of my wacky observations/ideas....at least about myself.

http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2h.shtml

"No one-size-fits-all answer. The nutritiousness of a given food may or may not be improved by cooking, or only by certain methods of cooking. There may be an ideal temperature, or an ideal cooking time."

"Caloric considerations on high-bulk all-raw diets. An additional issue is the difficulty on all-raw vegan diets of getting enough calories due to bulk. (See The Calorie Paradox of Raw Veganism for an examination of this problem, and why so many raw-fooders end up emaciated or hungry all the time.) Cooking coarse veggies makes them softer, and easier to eat more."

I think that the last quote is inadvertantly brings out what is responsible for that "high" or feeling of super energy or intelligence. you can get that same feeling by eating reduced calorie diet. cut your calories down to 1000-1500 a day for a week and see if it works for you. it does for me. and it has nothing to do with raw or not. what people are really feeling (imo) is the feeling of "motivation". after initially becoming accustomed to a slight level or sensation of starvation it is just no longer conciously recognized as hunger. hunger is the biggest motivator. I think that the terrible feeling after eating "cooked meals' is a feeling of satiation. a feeling that they don't need to be "running around doing stuff" . and when you want to be running around doing stuff that is annoying. it is why I (when not gestating) go almost all day without eating anything substantial, and eat probably 80% of my calories at dinner. if I eat all day.....well .......I don't get anything done. I'm a slug. totally unmotivated. the chemical motivators are gone from my body.

I would be extremely interested in someone elses experience with this if you are up for it. most people I know think I am crazy. and they are probably right. if I hear one more person say "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" to me i am going to rip their heads off.  its crap, at least for me and my body.

hunger is what motivated our ancesters to think. to do. to move. to live. our bodies chemicaly  saying "get the heck up and do something" and... of course 500,000 years ago, there wasn't much "doing" that didn't involve "finding sustenance" so "do something" came behaviourly synonomous with "find something to eat".

this theory has weighed on my mind alot. it irritates me when I see recomendations for people to "eat many small eals". that might stabilize blood sugar in a clinical sense but it is not a normal way to eat (once again IMO). I think our pancreas needs a break, our bodies need to be reminded how to mobilize fat stores, and our minds need the "high of hunger" to motivate us to excercise. as a society we are killing ourselves with food availability. re creating that feast or famine even within the day could be beneficial. there is a reason our stomachs are stretchy and capable of ingesting large amounts of food at one sitting. it is because large amounts of food would be come available sporadically in our history....just like a big cat with a few big kills every now and then. agriculture changed that somewhat but I still think it was at first likely to only provide a rough form of calories to tide people over, certainly not a balanced diet especially proteins,  and there was still much feast or famine...................

Leah, Sounds like you fall in the intermittent fasting (IF) camp.

I have read that medieval European culture frowned on breakfast for workers and considered lunch a necessary evil, and it was only during the reniassance that people began to think that someone could eat anything but a very light meal and then go to work.

This was very much a function of class, though: people in sedantary occupations would have their heaviest meal at midday, and it was understood that their food needs were radically different in type as well as schedule and quantity.

I find it interesting that medicine seems to ignore differences in activity as much as possible, only allowing that the number of calories should change with total exercise as kind of a footnote, but recommending that most people do what's good for an average person even in cases where people tend to cluster at the extremes.

I most certainly feel better in a mild fasting situation on a temporary basis. I can tell when I need to get a little something to keep going....but too much and it stops me entirely. I normally eat when "my day is done". works for me! I can't get away with that now in my current state and I actually find it rather frustrating.

that is a neat little piece of info about past practices and cultures, both in regards to the different needs of workers and those that for whatever reason weren't as active and the recognition that maybe eating alot and working didn't jive. maybe they knew something that science hasn't bothered looking into.

By eating Raw food are you including   Beef, and poultry?

I have eaten raw veggies, eggs and close to raw fish.   

Raw Animal meat I would add Parasites to the con list.

I done a far share of hard work physically speaking and I find a good breakfast paramount to continued energy.  I found the best breakfast was one with a good deal of complex carbs like oatmeal.  Eggs digest fast so I would get hungry much sooner.   

travisr wrote:
By eating Raw food are you including   Beef, and poultry?

I have eaten raw veggies, eggs and close to raw fish.   

Raw Animal meat I would add Parasites to the con list.

Some of the traditional raw meat recipes involve herbs, food acid, etc, often in combination.  It seems to me, this is a response to the risk of parasites.  Steak Tartare is a good example: the modern recipe calls for wine and onions; it was once quite common to include vermifuge herbs in wine, as evidenced by the word "vermooth" (i.e., wormwood).

travisr wrote:I done a far share of hard work physically speaking and I find a good breakfast paramount to continued energy.  I found the best breakfast was one with a good deal of complex carbs like oatmeal.  Eggs digest fast so I would get hungry much sooner.   

One good reason to cook eggs, in my opinion, is that they digest a lot slower when cooked, and give sustained energy.  From my experience, it seems like "quick" (thinly rolled) oats would digest faster than cooked eggs, and steel-cut oats would digest slower than raw eggs.

My older brother finds that, as he puts it, "salted meat" keeps him going through a hard day's labor.  In practice, I think this means he eats fast food.

As a young woman i used to eat little for breakfast and at midday i dinot want to get fat and it was not till i started to eat more lunch that i found out that if I ate little at midday i got tired at about seven by tired i think i mean slight back ache which i interpreted as tired, if i eat lunch this does not happen to me. People had  told me that you feel hungry if you don't eat, no one told me to connect tiredness with not eating.
      I had never heard of raw food diet. agri rose macaskie

With all this great thinking about raw vs. cooked, I'm surprised no on has yet suggested eating BOTH!  Our linear thinking culture gets in the way and we get all tripped up with either/or thinking and deciding.  We are a counter culture of purists, it seems.  What about balance and "all (natural) things in moderation?"  I love the stuff on intermittent fasting.  Hunger is certainly a good thing, but clearly it needs to be addressed on a regular basis to live a productive life.  When we produce new life, hunger becomes absolutely insistent for very good reason!

Our bodies arise in the natural world and are constructed on the foundation, of course, of balance, of ebb and flow, of wax and wane, of seasonal fluctuations -- concepts our culture finds challenging.  There are general principles for health that we are still in the process of discovering.  Each body is both unique AND one of a species and subject to our species' patterns and requirements for health.  Trying things for one week or one month or 3 years is one thing, suggesting that a particular way of eating works over a lifetime, or over a whole population from generation to generation is quite another.  We forget we are always looking at ourselves from one thin slice of one life stage or another (I've sadly seen too many young children with vegan and raw food parents not thrive), and really lose sight of protecting our gene pool.  We know that heart disease and cancer can take decades to develop.  So, too, with certain nutritional deficiencies -- some impacting specifically our ability to reproduce and produce viable offspring (time will tell), at least some of whom in turn must be capable of viable offspring production for the continuation of our species.

From my understanding, our bodies at this stage in our evolution need both raw and cooked food.  Fire has been with us for a long time (500,000 years, with some evidence that people were using fire in East Africa to cook "fibrous material" as early as 1.7 million years ago).  Plant cell walls break down and are more easily digested in cooking and fermenting.  In fact, some people consider the fermentation process a form of biologically active cooking. On the other hand, digestive enzymes particular to each food are available in raw foods.  Many cultures include raw animal flesh in their cuisines, but not to the exclusion of cooked flesh as well.  (By the way, freezing raw meat first destroys parasites, a handy use of modern kitchen equipment to consume raw meats safely.)

The question is not which nutrients are there and in what quantity in the foods consumed (linear science), but Are the nutrients BIO-AVAILABLE?  Bio-availability means our bodies can make use of the nutrients in a net gain way.  Sometimes our bodies work so hard to digest foods that we use up more nutrients than we gain in the process.  While we are utilizing some kinds of nutrients, we are depleting stores of others that we may not notice in a couple months or even years.  This seems to be the case and shows up over years and decades in vegans and raw foodists.

I'm sure we're in for a wild ride....

pennielinkpc wrote:
With all this great thinking about raw vs. cooked, I'm surprised no on has yet suggested eating BOTH! 

The question is not which nutrients are there and in what quantity in the foods consumed (linear science), but Are the nutrients BIO-AVAILABLE?  Bio-availability means our bodies can make use of the nutrients in a net gain way. 

what a novel idea

I totally agree. I believe it is normal and healthy to eat both raw and cooked food. the bioavilablitity of the nutrients in food is something that escapes alot of people. jsut because a food can be shown to contain a nutrient or mineral doesn't mean it comes in a form that the body can assimiliate.

iron is one that comes to mind. high fiber food with high iron can prevent the absorption of that iron by 1/2 or more. so you may get way more iron by eating a lower iron food that is highly available such as in meat.

trouble with eating meat is someone has to die for you to eat it. Good h indues don't eat meat asoem peoploe say they eat cow but when i learnt more about hinduism i learnt that they don't eat meat. the untouchables eat pig or some sects eat meat. that is many traditional vegetarian people.
  NOw farming is getting less and less nice animals are kept shut up, there are more and more reasons not to eat meat. I have just started again after about 15 years as a vegetarian i want to go back to being a vegetarian. agri rose macaskie.

well I don't dignify chickens with the label "someone" I reserve that label for a hard define but significant change in ability to be self aware on some higher level. Plants are alive but they aren't "someone". 

Ever since I was a kid, hearing about starving people in countries where animals were not eaten for (mainly) religious reasons, I have always questioned starving in the name of their "gods".

I recall seeing pictures of hungry children, as a nearby cow wanders into the street (to possibly cause a car wreck or perhaps trample a small child thereby killing those who won't kill it) and I'm wondering...why doesn't someone butcher that cow and feed those starving kids? It seems like such a basic equation to me. Cow = food for starving people.

I'm with Leah, as I wouldn't refer to chickens as "someone" either. The modern chicken is a result of 100's of years of being bred as a food. I've spent enough time around live chickens to appreciate them for their eggs, meat & ability to control insect pests...but that's it. Regarding their personalities and general habits...well...I sure wouldn't want one for a "pet".

I realize I'm a little off topic, regarding the raw food. Once again, I agree with the moderates who have posted here. I love raw fruits and vegetables, but I love them cooked too. I sure don't see myself choosing to eat raw exclusively.

I will eat just about any kind of fish, but I can't bring myself to eat it raw. Someone mentioned parasites in meat, the same goes for fish. Some varieties are worse than others. I have eaten raw oysters in the past &  could do it again, but I don't really see the need for it at this point in my life. You don't really chew them or roll them around in your mouth to "savor" them. Just douse them in hot sauce and swallow. Gulp!

Ah, yes.  Killing and eating.  There is a flaw.  Being alive, and eating, DOES mean death.  Period.  From death, life arises.  Out of life, death arrives. 

When we plow the fields, we take over land that had formerly been (or would return to) a source of food for wild animals.  We prevent deer and rabbits from eating our berries and vegetables growing in the ground.  When we "humanely" put a fence around our garden, we 1) keep wildlife from eating our food, and 2) keep them from eating the food they would have eaten on that land (the wildlife vegetation that is no longer growing in that spot), and some of the wildlife starve as a result, even when we share and use wildlife borders and corridors.  No getting around it -- CARROTS KILL RABBITS when they are used for human food!  The rabbit and deer (or human, if you're into protecting the deer and rabbits instead) population adjusts as there are fewer adults to reproduce the following year.  If we don't expand our garden plot or farm next year, perhaps none of them dies from starvation.  When we shoot or otherwise hunt or trap the deer and rabbits, we eat them (hopefully).  When we don't eat wild animals, someone (I don't mind that term at all) else will -- wolves, cougar, etc. 

I believe on some level, prey animals accept and understand their life path as including death by being eaten.  Sure they fight to survive -- that's also part of the path that we share.  Natural selection selects for survival instincts.  It's what keeps life LIVING.  Humans, in our consciousness, (a wonderful gift we are still learning to grapple with) are the ones who get all confused.  WE ARE PART OF THE CYCLE OF LIFE ON PLANET EARTH.  We are built as omnivores, and our bodies thrive, generation upon generation, when we see ourselves as part of all life and eat like omnivores.

I love chickens and have some.  I love their eggs.  I eat their flesh.  Both cooked.  I love their personalities (though I'm happy they live in their own house).  I eat raw fish.  I would eat raw meat if I trusted the source and preparation.  What if we LOVED what we killed and ate -- all of it?  We are stewards in our self awareness of this planet and the life that we are fully part of.  I bless my food and all the Life that it takes to keep me alive and healthy, in all the forms that Life takes.  When I die, I will be eaten as I remain part of the cycle of life.

Not only does life evolve, but also human culture and consciousness, including religious understanding.  Suppose there is a higher understanding than not eating cows....

Namaste

I'm agreeing with most of your thinking here, pennie. Admittedly, I'm a little phobic about the raw fish thing. But that's just me!

Regarding the word "someone", I think Leah and I are pretty literal in our word usage. Someone refers to a person. Person literally means "human".

Not necessarily disagreeing that a chicken could have a "personality"...but there's that "person" word again. Like you said..."Humans, in our consciousness, (a wonderful gift we are still learning to grapple with) are the ones who get all confused."

It's been my experience with some humans that when they start equating human personalities with animals, that's where the confusion can begin. 

Confusing human animal is  also a trick of Bill Mollisons, he spends some time confusing animals and humans saying on his video on how to grow thing on your balcony, that you can have a frog on th etaqnki on your balcony and could eat frogs legs but that one does not eat ones friends, or talking of what cannibals say about eating people, he says they say that people would not be made of meat if they had not been made to be eaten and you start to wonder if he is making us think about eating animals.
    Then there is a film about a guide to a map maker, a sort of native guide who makes the map maker think of what is of value in other cultures, in the Siberian wastes of Russia, the part which is near China i suppose because this Russian guide is very Chinese looking. Russia stretches over and sometimes includes much of Arab places and china  reaches the far east In one bit of the film the guide gets cross with the Russian map making team, he says they forget the people, they throw the food they have not finished eating, the bones etc., on the fire and it could feed some animal. He refers to the animals as people and then goes on to particularise a rat or fox. He is annoyed about the human lack of solidarity and universality.
      I can't really think my dog is so very different from people, nor can i think it of many other animals, others can but i can't, i respect people eating meat i do it myself, it is traditional but i admire the Hindus who don't. A boy in India took a bullet for a deer a antelope or something of the sort not long ago i can try and find the story again and died, that is how seriously they take treating animals well in some parts of India. An English man died in prison on hunger strike for animal rights i admire people who go further much further than i do for causes. agri rose macaskie.

Gwen Lynn wrote:It seems like such a basic equation to me. Cow = food for starving people.

I have heard some experts weigh in on this issue, and they say that the taboo may have been instituted so that animals could continue to produce dairy over the long term, rather than all being eaten at once.

Point taken on person / someone word usage, Gwen.  You make a good point about the dangers of human/animal conflation, and I do certainly agree that humans are significantly different than other animals -- with power comes responsibility and with consciousness comes the possibility, at least, of compassion and even deference (though as I said, I think we are asked to defer to our own nature as omnivores as well as edible animals' paths of being prey).

One thing I do appreciate about the hindu practice and non-meat eaters -- and you speak to this in the stories you share, Rose -- is that they are embodying the important message that we have a connection to all species and that needs to be recognized and honored.

Oh, and I enjoy cooked fish, too!

CARROTS KILL RABBITS 

I think we tend to miss the fact that we are part of the system. both in not understanding that animals die for others including us and in not always understanding that we have a right just like those animals to fight for our life. I don't consider it honorable to die in protest of eating animals anymore so then I would consider a lion noble for starving itself to death.

we have a responsibility with our awareness to provide decent lives (for domestic animals) and swift deaths. for the most part, in comparison to the cycle of life outside of humans we perform in a stellar manner. anyone everwatch video of a pride of lions disemboweling and consuming an antelope while it could still scream and thrash??? I think on the scale of sympathy humans in general are pretty evolved and if any species has a natural right to eat meat based on morality then its humans.

i enjoy sushi and rare steak on occasion........

Well put, Leah!

   THe film of the guide in the wastes of russia is called dersu uzala. a good film.
    I have heard that the benefits of cows you cant eat as in india end up being positive it is not just the milk they produce it is the manure which they mix with a bit of straw and dry in cakes and use for the fire, and for building and for flooring, cow muck used in the water you wash a mud floor with stops puddling. THey also swear on it for sealing wounds which has not always been so cool on the umbilical cords of babies they use it on cuts in trees the trouble with using manure for this sort of thing is you are not building up soils which need all the vegetable matter in the manure because the vegetable matter absorbes and retains more water, important in dry countries, though you do put the ash back on the ground so part of the good in the manure goes back into the soil.
   
  Another interesting result of Hindus being animal crazy is they feed the cranes in the Thar desert of India, that is poor people giving a way a lot of grain and the result is that the cranes manure the desert and so when the rain comes it is really beneficial to the population. I read that in an article on google or saw it in a documentary and now can't find a reference to the importance feeding the birds have because they fertilize the desert.
   Look up the Hindu sect of the Thar desert  the Bishnois people that feed the cranes, it seems they were the first organics, a saint their founder ordered them to look after animals and trees, there is even a story of them dying to save the trees that the king wanted to cut for their wood. There villages are geener than other villages in the desert.
       I suppose that people being even more willing to take bullets than one is oneself is an uncomfortable truth. We should give credit where credit is due, some things about hinduism aren't so cool others are pretty coool, we should mention both. agri rose macaskie.

your very right rose. each belief system has probably evolved to suit subtle details surrounding the living conditions encountered by the population. and in some areas the benefit of eating meat may not exceed the benefit of not for a zillion possible reasons. as long as it is kept in context and seen for what it is then it has much value in helping us to understand the world, humans and culture in general and could likely give us some hints about how best to do things in certain geographical areas.

Gwen Lyn, you said what my father would say about getting confused about humans and animals. Beatrice potter books worried him because they humanised animals, i wonder if he knows them well, they are such bloodythirsty  books bones in the chimney the rats making a pudding of the kitten and the mother cats talking abut the nest full of mice they had for dinner last week Mr McGregor trying to eat Benjamins Bunnies children. etc.
  The animals are their for our use and abuse is also misleading. Our ego makes us inclined to measure ourselves up against them in a way that leaves us looking great and them stupider than they are.
    Ego or simply the fact that we know our own minds and so know we can think of complicated things and don't know other peoples and conversation is  not often very inclusive of everything we know, so people don't get to know us, all this means that we don't know how intelligent others are. If we want to  know their abilities we have to be good at drawing them out and animals don't even talk so judging their intelligence is even more dependent on our scientific rigor, on our ability to observe and communicate with them and on our admitting all signs they give of intelligence instead of repressing them, for fear of ridicule for example.
      We want to be the best, first me, then my family, unless they are really ghastly and then those of my nation, culture and  then other mammals. The rest is our neighbor the other person, family, nation, religion, type of mammals. ¡Just think if God loves elephants more than humans, that would put our noses out of joint! agri rose macaskie.

This topic is covered a bit in podcast 017

This podcast covers a LOT of different topics!

As mentioned at the beginning of the podcast: email signup.

We start off reviewing the movie "Food Matters".  The premise is that many diseases can be resolved by food choices.  And this has been discussed several times at the forums.  A good start is my thread on eliminating medication with polyculture; and the thread about beating  cancer; 

We talk about raw food; local food; the missoula urban demonstration project; composting toilets; outhouse; urine diversion; women peeing outdoors; hugelkultur; rain barrels; greywater; commercial compost; art ludwig; pee powered cars; jean pain technique; poop beasts.

I did the raw food thing for a good long while, I worked in the industry as well. I never felt or looked better in my life, energy off the charts, never sick a day, just wonderful. But I did get very sensitive to things, bad smells from cars and perfume, cooking food odour was unbearable, even being in the city around tons of people and cars and all that energy was constantly aggravating. And I got so hungry by the 5th month of my pregnancy that I couldn't not start eating cooked foods (plus there was just zero info at that time to be had about raw vegan pregnancy).
We revert to mostly raw in summer now, winter is another story. I do like to eat locally but what grows in Canada in the cold months? Not much...

T. Joy wrote:
. I do like to eat locally but what grows in Canada in the cold months? Not much...

but food storage in winter is so easy once the daily average temps drop below freezing a cooler chest on the porch will keep anything fresh (frozen) until spring

That works if you have the right area/space to store food, if you can afford to buy things in advance and not month to month, if you have the time to put food by, if you live in an area where people don't steal stuff out of your backyard (lost a kid's bike this winter. Again. Sigh). Not to be a naysayer but this wouldn't have worked for us this year in any sort of volume. I've got a dehydrator to dry food now but that takes lots of electricity. There is no perfect system.
Oh, and frozen food is not generally a staple of the raw food diet either, if it is used at all it's very little.

Leah Sattler wrote:
this link gives a pretty fair analysis I think. and the second quote points out something that fits one of my wacky observations/ideas....at least about myself.

http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2h.shtml

"No one-size-fits-all answer. The nutritiousness of a given food may or may not be improved by cooking, or only by certain methods of cooking. There may be an ideal temperature, or an ideal cooking time."

"Caloric considerations on high-bulk all-raw diets. An additional issue is the difficulty on all-raw vegan diets of getting enough calories due to bulk. (See The Calorie Paradox of Raw Veganism for an examination of this problem, and why so many raw-fooders end up emaciated or hungry all the time.) Cooking coarse veggies makes them softer, and easier to eat more."

I think that the last quote is inadvertantly brings out what is responsible for that "high" or feeling of super energy or intelligence. you can get that same feeling by eating reduced calorie diet. cut your calories down to 1000-1500 a day for a week and see if it works for you. it does for me. and it has nothing to do with raw or not. what people are really feeling (imo) is the feeling of "motivation". after initially becoming accustomed to a slight level or sensation of starvation it is just no longer conciously recognized as hunger. hunger is the biggest motivator. I think that the terrible feeling after eating "cooked meals' is a feeling of satiation. a feeling that they don't need to be "running around doing stuff" . and when you want to be running around doing stuff that is annoying. it is why I (when not gestating) go almost all day without eating anything substantial, and eat probably 80% of my calories at dinner. if I eat all day.....well .......I don't get anything done. I'm a slug. totally unmotivated. the chemical motivators are gone from my body.

I would be extremely interested in someone elses experience with this if you are up for it. most people I know think I am crazy. and they are probably right. if I hear one more person say "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" to me i am going to rip their heads off.  its crap, at least for me and my body.

hunger is what motivated our ancesters to think. to do. to move. to live. our bodies chemicaly  saying "get the heck up and do something" and... of course 500,000 years ago, there wasn't much "doing" that didn't involve "finding sustenance" so "do something" came behaviourly synonomous with "find something to eat".

this theory has weighed on my mind alot. it irritates me when I see recomendations for people to "eat many small eals". that might stabilize blood sugar in a clinical sense but it is not a normal way to eat (once again IMO). I think our pancreas needs a break, our bodies need to be reminded how to mobilize fat stores, and our minds need the "high of hunger" to motivate us to excercise. as a society we are killing ourselves with food availability. re creating that feast or famine even within the day could be beneficial. there is a reason our stomachs are stretchy and capable of ingesting large amounts of food at one sitting. it is because large amounts of food would be come available sporadically in our history....just like a big cat with a few big kills every now and then. agriculture changed that somewhat but I still think it was at first likely to only provide a rough form of calories to tide people over, certainly not a balanced diet especially proteins,  and there was still much feast or famine...................

As for your first part about food making slugish. I as mentioned elsewhere have been a laborer most of my life and i have done it both ways. Very little eating and very much. Both my father and uncle wwere laborers and would not eat during work. Eating lunch at work then getting back to work makes you sluggish for sure, which is why the foreman would often try to hide lunch. Besides that I worked with a lot of portuguese guys who would often eat huge lunches. I think its a matter of preference, but you definitely get more done the less you eat. IMO the best solution is a snack of peanuts and sunflower seeds always handy.

Which gets to your second point. I disagree that that is not a normal way to eat. I think the least normal would be the idealized breakfast, lunch, dinner. And the most normal would be eating as often as one finds food (maybe part of the modern problem). When im working on my land and i feel a tinge of hunger, i bend over and eat some purslane or dandelions. this to me is optimal , and jives with my peanuts and sunflowers theory.



As for raw or cooked, ihavent gotten to the end of the thread yet but i would like to comment on oxalate. the traditional belief is to destroy oxalate (kidney stones) by cooking the offender. but since reading a scientific sounding article that i thought made ssense i no longer believe this. i think that oxalate is more harmful when cooked, partly because the nutrients needed to help digest it are destroyed in the cooking.

Just a quick comment on the "big healthy breakfast". There is at least one doctor who says that the first meal should not be eaten before about 10am as the body goes through a detox cycle from about 3 am to that time. Eating interrupts this cycle. We of course, are forced to eat when we can fit it in during work hours, but I have heard of many people who find not eating breakfast makes them feel better.... I don't wake up till I eat   I do find grazing as I work feels good though (berries, apples, plums etc seem to grow around here) but them I work outside and am constantly moving from place to place.

It's incredibly time consuming to be a raw foodist.

Soaking, sprouting, and dehydration 'baking' of things. It's a lot of forethought for each and every meal.
Also, it's expensive depending on where you live or the type of buyers group you can join to buy things like whole sale untreated seeds, beans and nuts.

Here in Canada- it's uber expensive in the winter time to buy your supplies.

Not discouraging anyone from trying it but just giving you fair warning about the cost/availabilty issues.

It's incredibly nutritious if it's all planned out well.

~Patrick

Wow, this is an old thread - but I'm going to throw in my two cents anyway

I love eating raw! Feels awesome in such an amazing way.

In winter (in the south east) I actually have more easy raw stuff going on since my root crops and tons of greens grow best in winter.

I like to eat ALOT and eating raw helps me indulge my tendency to want to snack on something all day.

I'll never give up my eggs though - my girls lay such amazing tasting eggs I couldn't bear not ever having them again.

Raw recipe ideas.
http://www.rawbc.org/raw_crackers.html

Raw links.
http://www.rawbc.org/raw_links.html#misc

Good topic and I loved what Pennie said almost 3 years ago now!

But a lot of out of topic about meat... (and I believe most rawfoodists are vegan)
I started to have doubts about the impossibility to stand cooked food anymore, so thanks Paul for stating this.
and I think I will keep some cooked food.
One can at least increase the amount of raw food!

The advantage of raw food is worthwhile, especially if you can get it even while eating some cooked food...

About friends:
Well, what ever special diet you eat, or intolerance you have, might have the same effects.
Real friends know what you eat.
They do not cook meat the day they invite some vegetarian friends.
They chose rice instead of pasta when they invite me!
And a big salad for the rawfoodist friend is not so hard, and they can still eat their cake!
Same as I look at people enjoying a yummy pizza!

I do not believe it is more work to eat raw.
Well, sure more work than junk food, but no more than good cooked food.
I do spend more time on greens washing when I want to juice, as I will eat more than for a salad!
Sprouting is not long, if you are organized.

You save time: no more burnt pans!!!

Then I put some of the remaining after juicing (what is not too fibrous) in the soup pot.
The best of both world!
Juice allows me to eat more vegetables,
and i have less fibers, they are cooked.
I have raw fibers from fruits.

I cook bones and meat in the soup, as I am somehow paleo now.
That is a quick way of cooking.
Fruits and nuts are quick to prepare!

I believe that raw food can the be the ultimate for some health issues.
Or it can detox when you need it, so it can be a non-permanent diet.
As the ones who would do it in summer.

now what's about this wonderful idea:

eat raw what can be eaten raw.
do not cook (or not often!) what can be eaten raw
eat cooked what cannot be eaten raw.

No way to make me eat raw green beans!!!
And I love green beans with raw tomatoes (no way to have them cooked there!)
Chayamansa leaves are toxic raw.
Starch is not digested raw (and I do not digest it well even cooked!)
So, cook it or leave it! Or sprout it.

I prefer cooked meat, as I am sensitive to parasites.
And I cook bones longer (soup after soup when reheating) so that I can partially eat them (marrow and minerals).
Sorry, I cannot that much make such a profit of the animal (that I thank for his gift) if I was eating it raw.

Cooking fats?
Only saturated fats (solid at room temperature) are supposed to stand heat!
So I cook meat (it is fatty), and I will never cook any liquid oil.
oil is meant to be eaten raw IMO (I finally understood this strange word means In My Opinion!!!)