raw food has up sides and down sides

Penny, I agree with you. What entity or belief is giving gold stars for any 'purity'? We are designed to eat both raw and cooked foods.
I need to cook my vegetables because my teeth are too poor to chew them enough. Fermenting plant foods allows them to be eaten raw more often and in delicious, softer forms.
I enjoy many meats raw because freezing them 2 weeks at 0' or -10' effectively kills all stages of most parasites. Fermenting makes many meats softer, delicious and safe to eat. The Inupiat (eskimo) food technology has raw meat consumption beautifully refined. They have survived where fuel is scarce with often only meats and fats to eat, and temperatures sometimes down to -60'. Eating raw, frozen, (usually aged a bit or a lot), fish and most all meats remains a time-honored fast food still relished today across the arctic.
The recipe goes like this: take meat from freezer, shave off pieces, dip each in oil (or eat with some fat), may add salt, other seasonings, raw vegetables, garlic, etc. Eat until full. Put part you didn't eat back in freezer, wipe knife, cutting board, oil dish, hands clean.  This is the fastest, most nutritional food you could find, ranking along with eating a banana or apple.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:I wonder if it is proportional? Meaning, if I go 90% raw and 10% cooked, would that give me the upsides and downsides in proportion? There was a time in my life when I ate a lot of veggies raw, plus the occasional steak tartare, and I did feel much better and lost a fair amount of weight. with marriage, a lot of thing go by the wayside, and this was one of them: I started doing more cooking, and so did my hubby. the weight and sluggishness went back up...

It is not exactly proportional...  you do get more benefits the higher % raw vegan you eat, but it's supposedly more on a logarithmic scale, according to raw food pioneer David Avocado Wolfe.  In one of his earliest books his favorite quote was: cooked food is poison.  Since cooked food is denatured and the digestive enzymes killed off, the body sees it as "not food" and sends white blood cells into the digestive tract, and inflammation ensues.  So if one wants to eat both cooked and raw food in the same meal, it's better to eat the raw first so the stomach sees "food" and starts properly digesting before the cooked stuff hits it.  (That's pretty easy if you eat a salad before dinner that is all raw vegan, no roasted nuts, cheese, egg or croutons, oh and only homemade raw dressing if you use any.  Or put out a fresh veggie tray appetizer with a homemade raw dip.  Pop some fresh berries into your mouth or have a glass of fresh squeezed juice before your eggs, toast and bacon.  Eat a handful of raw nuts or a banana or apple before your turkey sandwich.)  

If you're happy eating basic fruits, veggies and nuts plain, then a raw food diet (which in its pure form is meant to be vegan, although many add honey) is very quick and easy as long as you have access to fresh produce.  The time suck comes in when you try to prepare "gourmet" raw dishes that mimic traditional cooked foods, either because you miss them or because you are trying to entice family or friends to try raw.

My parents got into raw back around the turn of the century (and doesn't that make it sound like a long time ago, LOL!) and gave me a David Wolfe book to read.  I got into it and went to a retreat he put on.  They served professionally prepared raw vegan buffet meals, three a day, with snacks.  It was truly delicious food!  I managed to stay raw vegan for about six weeks, and lost almost 30 excess pounds.  I felt amazing and my attitude was great.  I did my very physical factory job without any problem.  People asked me what I was doing.  But the holidays came around, and co-workers brought in all kinds of baked treats to work to share... I fell off the wagon and eventually gained the weight back.  

I've tried several times over the years to get back to that diet, but it never stuck for long.  (Note: going back and forth between all raw and cooked/meat/starch diets causes pH swings in the body that can be unpleasant.  I got a UTI after doing that a day or two on then a day or three off, back and forth several times.  So I stopped flip flopping and just moderated my eating through each day.)  Cooked food, starches, sugar, and junk food combine into an addiction that is not easily shaken.  Being somewhere near a group helps a lot, but I prefer to live rurally which means I'm on my own.  I do love my hens' eggs cooked these days, and I like a filet mignon every so often, and some fish, along with occasional cooked potatoes, lentils or quinoa or gluten free pasta, and whole grain bread.  My guy loves his meat and potatoes, and really fussed when I tried to feed him raw years ago.  He admitted he liked the taste of the raw gourmet stuff at first, but he still had cravings for cooked food and junk food, which made him miserable if he didn't get some junk pretty much every day.  So he subtly sabotaged my raw journey as much as possible and threatened to go eat from fast food drive throughs most days if I only prepared raw vegan meals, claiming he "didn't like them" even though we both knew it was because he desperately craved the junk he was addicted to and what that junk did to his brain chemicals.  He's never been able to get off the junk completely for long enough to detox/reset his brain/get through the withdrawals and start appreciating a whole food natural diet, raw or cooked.

There are excellent recipes for raw vegan burgers, lasagna, awesome desserts, crackers, soups, pizza, (and even faux tuna salad, ground beef taco filling, and scrambled eggs!) and you can eat sprouted lentils or chick peas in things for the starchy feel, but these things do take a lot of prep work.  I was going to visit my parents for my dad's birthday, and decided to make a raw feast to take with me.  It took me a long full day in the kitchen to do all the things to make raw vegan lasagna and a raw vegan turtle (chocolate and caramelly pecan) "cheesecake."  The lasagna was warmed to 105 degrees F in my parents' dehydrator so it was warm when we ate it.  It tasted every bit as good as any cooked meaty cheesy lasagna I've ever had.  The cheesecake was actually better than most "real" cheesecake I've had.  If I go raw vegan again I'll probably not bother with all the gourmet stuff very often, maybe just for holidays.  I've never been much of a breakfast person, so fruit for lunch, big salad for supper, then nuts or an avocado with sea salt for a snack, and raw veg with raw dip if more is wanted.  I never had an issue getting enough calories, but then again I was overweight and didn't stick to it long enough to get down to my completely lean weight.  But things like nuts and seeds and sprouted lentils and avocados provide protein, fats, and calories.  You can also get raw oats and make granola to eat with raw almond or cashew milk.  One well known raw foodist woman never did lose all her excess weight because she made so many dishes heavy with nuts and seeds!  

To one of the original posters who mentioned not liking raw green beans, you can marinate and partially dehydrate them at 105 degrees F, which softens and warms them, making them reminiscent of cooked ones.  You can do this with other veggies too, making them seem lightly steamed or roasted.  If you freeze and thaw them, they are softer too.  Freezing supposedly destroys about a third of the natural enzymes in food, so for most raw foodies using some frozen foods is perfectly acceptable.      

I cannon do raw foods in the winter.  When the weather is warm about 50 percent of my diet is raw.  This is what works for me and roughly follows Ayurvedic principles for my body type.  Individual approaches to food are going to be more successful.  Experiment.

Randy Eggert wrote:

Madeleine Innocent wrote:You can't standardise anything as we are all very different.

… a world class cross country skier who was persuaded to try a high protein/low carb diet and discovered he no longer had enough energy to train)….

i agree that we each could experiment to see what works best for ourself;

when it comes to switching from the s.a.d. of high carbs (for fuel) to what could be high non-toxic animal fat foods… it takes a period of time for our bodily systems to aclimate to the change, and it is the fat that does the fueling (not the protein); protein is the building blocks to replace and/or regenerate the previously damaged/decaying cells due to the toxins/poisons previously exposed to.

I have a lot of what I eat being raw or slightly heated anyway. But each day there are some vegetables along with grain product that really need cooking, though I keep it minimally cooked. Protein is yet in all my food. Even if each item is not "complete protein" with some essential amino acid not present that one or another will be in another item, the essential amino are all present in a good variety such as I use. Around ten years I eat this way and do not suffer from a deficiency.

I became a raw-vegan right after my 3rd child was born. I was borderline diabetic during that pregnancy, so I chose to nip that in the bud.
The raw-vegan didn’t last as long. At that time I was taking supplements because there wasn’t getting enough of a few vitamins and minerals in my blood. My raw-vegan friend does well with it, but my omega 3, 6, and 9 were very low. Guess what I became- yep - a pescatarian. I still do a mostly raw, but my fish and poi are in my blood.

Thea Morales wrote:I became a raw-vegan right after my 3rd child was born. I was borderline diabetic during that pregnancy, so I chose to nip that in the bud.
The raw-vegan didn’t last as long. At that time I was taking supplements because there wasn’t getting enough of a few vitamins and minerals in my blood. My raw-vegan friend does well with it, but my omega 3, 6, and 9 were very low. Guess what I became- yep - a pescatarian. I still do a mostly raw, but my fish and poi are in my blood.

Getting Omega 3 oil was a concern to me when I saw reasons enough to give up animal products, and I had been getting fish oil supplements. I am glad since then that I read in vegetarian literature, and I was vegetarian first before becoming vegan, that seaweed is recommended, for benefits that were listed. There is omega 3 oil in edible food from various plants, and minerals in seafood is from minerals in seaweed and the various sea algae that fish and sea animals eat. And nuts provide good oil too. I came to having whole food from plants in early 2016, and have stayed with this way, and just supplement for vitamins B12 and C now. It has been enough, in this locality, but I will start with vitamin D supplements soon.

There are foods from plants with that good omega 3 oil, and I can say avocado is one really good source for it.

Depending on where I go, that I will grow things for food, medicinal herbs, and materials, my plan is that if I can have it grow there I will have it growing there. For having avocado though it should not be at a higher latitude than near to the latitude of my location now, though I would move from here to where I can grow everything, nor should it be at a high altitude.