hi michael!
i haven't looked into the raw diet too much before. occasionally i frequent a raw restaurant but it pretty much stops there.
do you find it takes a lot more preparation?
can you give an example of your daily diet?
i'm just trying to get a sense of your nutritional scope and gauge the level of difficulty with putting it together.
thanks,
max
p.s. it's good to "see" you.

hey there michael. i dont know how old this post is, or if anyone will read this, butt in the event one does...

this is my first 15 seconds on tribe.net...just stumbled across it. this is also the first post of mine...feel chosen. :)

anyhoo, i am a raw food vegan chef in santa monica (the birthplace of the Raw Movement). u have chosen well, my friend. there is no healthier diet on earth. for so many reasons, energetically if for no other, that raw foods are key to health and ongoing vitality. think of this: humans are the only animals on earth that cook their food. and it wreaks havoc on the body. 80-85% of the mineral content of food is destroyed when cooked. 100% of the living enzymes are also destroyed. this means your body needs to give up its own enzymes in order to digest it. over years of three meals a day, this takes its toll. (think of all the debilitating signs on aging).

also, the water content in food is lost through steam, and since your body must liquiefy everything before it can digest it, it further dehydrates you by sapping your body's water supply. probably the worst thing about cooking food is the death of the lifeforce of the food. if you've never heard of kirlian photography, check it out. it takes pictures of the energy fields, "lifeforce", of different things. if you hold a picture of say, an apple, up against that of a cooked apple, then you really get a clear picture of the damage done. normally there are glowing, ephereal fields of energy radiating out of the apple, while the cooked apple has barely a shimmer. simply mindblowing stuff.

anyhoo, hate to lecture, just wanna pass on the knowledge. i myself dont follow a 100% raw diet. my boss does and where i work, we do. but as for myself, a little brown rice and tofu are my follies. but hey, anything is better than beef, yea? :D

take care and good luck!

ps eat organic and only organic.

In my limited experience, I have felt great when I limit my diet to raw fruits and veges. My metabolism isn't that fast though. I am hypoglycemic and so I have to be careful not to drink too much fruit juice. Despite what the labels may say on other brands regarding their 100% naturalness, Odwala OJ has been the only juice brand that I can drink without getting all sugar-doped outfor whatever reason. I'm not sure if Odwala would be raw- does pasturization count as cooking? My friend tried to eat raw but he's alot more allovertheplace than me- he was always hungry-and he's super gassy. But, I think he's gassy anyway :) All in all I think raw foods really work. Just watch out for those nuts- they will make you fat like me :)

I've been into raw foods for four years, and have been 100% for almost two.

Hey There Michael...

I'm a little behind on this post, LOL...But I just couldn't resist chiming in.

I love Raw Foods. I just got into it a little over a year ago, and I have to say that when I was eating nearly 100% raw, I felt great, my skin looked outstanding, and my energy levels soared. Although I try to incorporate as much Raw Food into my diet as possible, it is hard finding organic produce where I live during the off seasons, so I do a lot of juicing, and I occasionally treat myself.

Keep up with the good work! You inspire people like me!

Peace

Timmah

Hey I dunno whether you're still interested or likely to check this as its been over 3 years since yu originally posted this, but I thought Id put in my 2 cents.

Im really into raw foods. Admittedly Im not 100% raw anymore, though I was a fruitarian for a year and felt fantastic. I will definately do it again, but most likely when I move away from the UK. I find its really difficult to get cheap and ripe fruit here. Or it became difficult.

I tend to favour Dr Doug Grahams approach to raw foods over anyone elses. Mainly because I got into raw foods because it seemed more natural...and most other approaches are vegetable based and take heaps of preparation. Plus raw veggies are much blander. I tend to trust intuition, and for me, I think fruits smell and taste great for a reason, and you can only eat and enjoy so much raw unflavoured veggies for a reason.

Dougs approach is (or at least was...hes getting into low-fat gourmet junk food now to entice more people to eat raw; and to compete with the high-fat gourmet approaches) Do it like the animals...Eat whole fresh ripe raw organic plant foods, one type of food at a time, when you're hungry til you're full.

I find its alot easier to maintain caloric intake and weight with this approach than other raw approaches too. Since fruits are higher in calories than veggies.

Typical day for me when I ate 100% raw would be:

morning breakfast: 5-6 mangoes or a whole watermelon, or sometimes one or two melons of some other kind.

Lunch: 12-22 bananas (usually about 16 tbh, but each day it depended how hungry I was and how physically active I was.) Some days Id have a few stick of celery with it as well.

Dinner: 8-12 nectarines or oranges as a starter
then Huge Salad, pretty simple, just with some Romaine or batavia lettuce, occassionally some Kale. Lots of tomatoes and cucumber, and half an avocado or so. The other half I would either not eat if I didnt want it, or would blend up with some tomatoes or oranges or lime to make a dressing for the salad.

Occassionally (1/week, sometimes 1/fortnight I would pop some hempseed powder in with a smoothie. Other times I would just blend up the whole salad in the evening into a raw soup/drink. To do this, I would mix up the acid fruit and the avocado first, as this helped to emulsify the fats, then throw in the vegetables. That was really yummy.

Mmm I need to move abroad soon. Maybe Ill go raw for summer.

These days I still eat lots of bananas for lunch, though usually only 4 days a week, and I dont bother with breakfast.

Hope this helps

Take Care

Adam x