Raw Food Diet

Is there actual evidence for this now?Linus Pauling postulated this years back, though he may not have been the first. He observed bacteria cultures in the lab; one culture had the ability to produce a nutrient removed. When it was placed in a solution containing that nutirent, along with another non-altered culture, the altered culture thrived and the non-altered culture died out. Pauling said that it seems to be less energy-costly if an organism can obtain nutrients from its environment. I think this was a big influence on his work with vitamic C megadosing.

Can I ask what your source is for this info?

Fruit, veg and nuts, good stuff.He also needs to be getting protein. As others here have said, there's convincing evidence that we evolved as omnivores. Meat and/or fish have probably been an important part of the human diet for millennia. Maybe 2 million years or longer -- anyone here please correct me if I'm wrong.It's also important to get enough of the healthy fats. Olive oil, coconut oil and butter are some of the best. Fish oil is good for omega-3. Here is an article with more details about fats: Know Your Fats Archives - The Weston A. Price Foundation You will notice that this site criticises the lipid hypothesis, which is responsible for the thinking that low fat = good.I have been on something called the Paleolithic Diet for a year and a half and my body loves it. It's recommended for healing in all kinds of ways, including for depression. As its name suggests, it attempts to reproduce a version of the way our ancestors ate. Generally. Of course diet would have varied from place to place.I have lots of veg, limited fruit, meat, nuts, and healthy fats. I don't eat grains of any kind, potatoes or legumes. Don't miss them. My carbs come from the veg, which I eat a significant amount of with every meal. I have a supplement regime too, which includes a variety of vitamins.I wonder if you could try to help your friend stop obsessing a little? It sounds like he is being a tad perfectionistic here and I would hazard a guess that his regime is going to fail after a while. And he will probably get depressed again because of it. Having said that, though, it's quite easy to fulfill many of the criteria you listed simply by eating a wholefoods diet and buying local produce where possible.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Thanks for these links Crashfrog. My interest in organic food is mainly because of its nutritional superiority over non-organic. I think that when I eat an organic carrot, I'm getting more nutrients. I pay for these things even though it hurts because I want to nourish myself and my family. If any convincing evidence surfaces that shows that organic foods do not have more vitamins and minerals than non-organic, I'll listen.

Double-duh. But there are people who don't think so. They say there's no proof that humans HAVE to eat meat. Know any vegetarians? Personally I think that if we evolved to eat a certain diet, that is the diet our bodies are programmed to have and it's taking a risk to deviate from that too far. That's interesting, I've never heard nuts described as fruits. I knew tomatoes are.I don't eat corn because it's a grain, and I stay away from grains these days.My favourite veg are broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, cucumbers (um, maybe those are fruit come to think of it), and celery. I eat large portions with every meal, including breakfast. If I don't then my body complains. I use other veg too but those tend to be my staples.

Broadly speaking, the diet I follow can be classified as a wholefoods diet. These have a number of general things in common. If grains are eaten, they need to be whole grains. No processed foods, no sugar. Lots of fresh fruit and veg.The Paleolithic Diet aims to duplicate a version of what our ancestors may have eaten. It's based on archaeological evidence, among other things, and is (or should) be subject to change if new discoveries are made. The idea being, as I said above, that the healthiest way to eat is the way we evolved to eat. Our bodies just haven't evolved to cope with things like sugar, white flour, Cornflakes, donuts, etc etc. The consumption of these products over the years can be a contributing factor to disease. It also means that if you are eating these things, you are by default eating fewer foods that are more nutritionally-dense, such as fruit and veg.Grains, legumes and potatoes contain protease and amylase inhibitors, which serve to hold them in suspended animation and which act as pesticides. These can affect the stomach enzyme pepsin, and the small intestine protease enzymes trypsin and chymotripsin. When grains, lentils and potatoes are cooked, most of the enzyme blockers are destroyed, but not all.Grains, lentils and potatoes also contain lectins, which are known to cause a host of problems in the body.Finally, they are bad for anyone with blood sugar issues. That is anyone who is insulin-resistant, not just diabetics.The Paleo Diet also excludes all dairy products, as these are a relatively recent addition to the human diet as well. I feel better when I avoid any unfermented dairy products, probably because of the lactose they contain, but I'm fine with butter, yogurt and cheese.I don't follow the diet strictly. First of all, it's possible to eat a variety of different things and be healthy. Secondly, it's based on educated guesses about what our ancestors ate, and I'm not aware that anyone can say 100% for certain what e.g. homo erectus was eating for dinner in Asia, Africa and anywhere else. Finally, indigenous cultures surviving in the world today that follow their ancestral diets tend not to get the host of diseases we associate with the modern Western world: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, and so on. And their diets don't match the Paleo diet 100%.So really, I think there's a lot of room for just saying, "Here are the nutritional guidelines, and I'm going to experiment with what works for me." What works for me is avoiding grains, legumes and potatoes completely, and eating fermented dairy products. I also like to cook with Tamari soy sauce and a bit of wine. What I do overall seems to work well, but I've tailored it according to what my body seems to need.If your friend listens to his own body, I think he's going to find that it ends up feeling pretty poorly. I wonder what set him off with such a regime in the first place?

I'm sure you're right. It's impossible to be a prurist about this. They're good, healthy veg though and they don't have some of the harmful things in them that grains, legumes and potatoes do.You say that sweet potatoes have been cultivated for 5000 years, and corn for twice as long. Yes, the cultivation of crops is what characterises the neolithic period. This is the Paleolithic diet. 10,000 years, in evolutionary terms, is not long (as I'm sure you're aware).Are grains, for example intrinsically damaging in themselves? I would say no. Wholegrains can play a part in people's diets, and those people can be healthy. If you've eaten healthily all your life, you will not have blood sugar issues. I ate sugar and chocolate for a long time and I'm lucky not to be diabetic. My body needs healing and I can't even eat something as natural as honey without getting problems. That's OK though, I can survivie quite happily without it.Problems also come when grains constitute too much of a person's diet, and also when they are processed. The nutrition is removed, and the process of digestion is altered. Dr. Abram Hoffer says that the only thing white flour is good for is wallpapering your house.Your points about indigenous cultures are all very true. It's just that I think diet plays more of a part than you're willing to give it credit for. Certainly things like exercise and lack of stress are also big factors in being free of disease. However, it often seems to be the case that when indigenous people switch over to a Westernised diet, they start developing the same diseases that are plaguing the Western world.Here's an article from Alaska about what is happening to the indigenous people there, as they switch over to the standard American diet (SAD): Page not found | Geophysical InstituteI've seen Paleo help people heal from depression, psychosis, and years of nutritional depletion and damage from taking a variety of medications. I stumbled across a website one day hosted by people who claim to have healed MS by eating Paleo, and they tour the US and give talks on this. It just seems to be good for the body.It's so easy to dismiss these things because you're not satisfied that they've been proved. Fine -- but have you ever considered doing some experiments and trying things for yourself? Experimenting with healthy food is not going to hurt anyone, so why not try it? If you don't want to do it, then why discount other people's experiences so readily? (I have to say, BTW, it sounds like the way you eat is already a lot healthier than the way most people in the US eat. I'm assuming that's where you're from?)Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

I was asking if there's evidence that an ancestor of ours was able to make vitamin C, but that the ability was lost somewhere down the evolutionary line. As far as I knew, it was just speculation.

Sounds great. Last time I was in the US, I was looking at the breads in the local supermarket (my husband has it, not me). Every single one contained high-fructose corn syrup or a similar sugar. I picked up a packet of tortillas, and the list of ingredients read like a lab experiment. No wonder people are getting ill, if something as simple as that has been turned into a non-food.It isn't as bad here in the UK, but it's bad enough.Much of the "ice cream" sold here has never seen any milk in its life. Even in the days when I ate ice cream, I avoided that stuff, which probably constitutes about 80% of the ice cream sold here, if you look in the shops. I remember one time my husband and I bought soft-serve ice cream cones from a van. They were oddly lightweight and yellow-coloured. I accidentally dropped mine on the ground and it did not melt. How scary is that?Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

You might think differently if you knew what it does in your body. Here is some info that my doctor passed on to me recently.Each 12 oz. serving of Coke has 10 teaspoons of sugar in it.Let's look at what happens each time one can of Coke is consumed.-- In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don't immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.-- 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat.-- 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your liver dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.-- 45 minutes: Your body increases your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way. Endorphins also rise as they do when one takes opiates.-- >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.-- >60 Minutes: The caffeine's diuretic properties come into play. It is now assured that you'll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that were headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.-- >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you'll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You've also now urinated all the water that was in the Coke, but not before infusing this liquid waste with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.
This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours (as little as two if you're a smoker.) Then it's time for another Coke.Good stuff huh?

Not sure where this list came from Nator. It sounds to me like someone's been doing some wishful thinking. Obesity on this side of the pond is skyrocketing and it's in the news every day. Scotland seems to have a particular problem.Having grown up in the US and knowing the kinds of foods sold in supermarkets and places like Wal-Mart, I would say that Americans still have the monopoly on junk food. But Britain is no great shakes there. My own husband, who tends to ignore my peculiar way of eating, had toast and a big bowl of sugary meusli for breakfast yesterday, followed by more muesli for lunch. I made sure I got some meat and veg down him at dinnertime, though he had to add bread to that. I've seen him eat no food all day apart from something at dinnertime, and it was some kind of fruit crumble. I asked him what he'd say if our daughter tried to eat like that but got no response.BTW have you ever heard of fish and chips? None of that is healthy. Unbreaded and unfried fish might have been at one point, but much of it is contaminated by mercury and other toxins now because of the state of the oceans.

Opiate-like effects of sugar on gene expression in reward areas of the rat brain.Spangler R, Wittkowski KM, Goddard NL, Avena NM, Hoebel BG, Leibowitz SF. (2004) Brain Res Mol Brain Res. 124(2): 134-42.FAB: HomeSugar triggers our reward-system. Sweets release opiates which stimulates the appetite for sucrose--insulin can depress itInstitutionen for experimentell medicin, BMC, C 11, Lunds universitet, S-221 84 Lund, Sweden. charlotte.erlanson-albertsson@med.lu.se http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...Oral sucrose stimulation increases accumbens dopamine in the rat.Hajnal, A. & Norgren, R. (2001) Accumbens dopamine mechanisms in sucrose intake. Brain Res. 904: 76-84. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.Edited by AdminAsgara, : edited long URLs to fix page width

I suppose you could argue that sex and exercise can be addictive for some people. There's plenty of evidence that sugar is addictive as well, and it's in just about every processed food you can buy. If you are insulin-resistant, as many people are due to poor diet, it can be a problem. I am not diabetic but I avoid sugar where I can, even most kinds of fruit, because they give me an insulin surge and a high. Having eaten Paleo for quite some time, then when I do have something sweet it feels like I've been drinking alcohol. I've had trouble with sugar addiction since I was young and was eating Count Chocula, or pancakes and syrup, or donuts for breakfast. And it is damaging to the body; it takes nutrients in its absorption, without giving any back. The opiate response makes it harder for people to stay away from the stuff. I gained loads of weight eating it while I was depressed because it took some of the awfulness away for a little while -- but in the end there's always a price to pay.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Not for everyone. I'm interested in anything it says. This article reflects what you said about animals having fewer nutrients in their bodies. And this one talks about vitamin and mineral depletion in vegetables.

Mainstream medicine sidelines journals like this one, and the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. I believe they are wrong to do so. We've had two whole threads now in which we discussed our respective views concerning alt med.