Raw Food Vegan Diets

(Last updated July, 2010.)

Contents

• Introduction
• I was a Twenty-Something Raw Foodist
• History of Cooking Foods
• Is Cooked Food Toxic?
• Enzymes
• Is Raw Foodism Healthy?
• Inconveniences of Being Raw
• Orthorexia
• Conclusion
• Response from a Reader
• Note on BeyondVeg.com
• References

Introduction

Raw foodism is the philosophy that most or all of one's diet should be uncooked foods. Raw foods diets are usually vegan and vegan raw foodism will be the focus of this article. As I understand it, the trend in raw foodist circles in recent years has been to emphasize eating at least 80% of your food (by volume) as raw, rather than 100%.

A quick note for animal advocates: Many of us do not want vegan diets associated with raw foodism because one of the main points we are trying to make to the public is that you do not have to eat "rabbit food" to be a vegan. Others think that the health benefits to eating raw foods diets are so great that they are enough to counteract the concern that they could make a vegan diet appear uninteresting and unsatisfying.

I was a Twenty-Something Raw Foodist

In 1993, I became interested in raw foodism. I had been getting cavities in my teeth fairly regularly for the previous few years and one of my co-workers at a natural foods cooperative distribution warehouse told me it was due to eating my food in an unnatural state. He said that wild animals do not cook their food and they don't get cavities.

At about the same time, I met a couple who were gung-ho into raw foods and they introduced me to a lot of literature and gave me moral support. They, like me, were animal advocates, and were also quite vibrant and active, so they served as enticing role models.

From the fall of 1993 until 1995 I ate about 90% of my foods raw. I also read any and every book and article on raw foodism that I could get my hands on. They contained story after story of people curing their heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases through raw foods.

The diet simply made sense. Since humans are the only animals who cook their food, we'd have to be better off eating a more natural diet of raw foods...wouldn't we?

It didn't go so well. I had low body fat to begin with, and on the raw foods diet my weight dropped from 138 to 128 lbs. As a regular weightlifter, I noticed my strength decline considerably. I got frequent colds (some say this is the body "detoxifying"). I constantly thought about how much I wanted to eat cooked food. The couple who mentored me were also struggling with the diet.

One day, I had to admit that it wasn't working. I slowly weaned myself back onto cooked foods to curb my cravings. Though I tried to resist, my diet became more cooked all the time. One day in 1997, I decided to follow my cravings and eat as much cooked food as I wanted. Since then I've eaten most of my food cooked and have felt much better.

The experience turned me to science, relying more on published scientific research and much less on popular theories and anecdotal reports. As I read more mainstream nutrition science, it became clear that many of the claims made by raw foodists were not true.

History of Cooking Foods

Some raw foodists say that humans have only cooked food for a relatively short period of our history. In their 2003 article, Cooking as a Biological Trait, Harvard University anthropologists Richard Wrangham and Nancy Lou Conklin-Brittain cite research that indicates, in their words, "Cooking is therefore widely accepted back to at least 250,000 years ago." (3) Some evidence points to 1.6 million years ago. They also argue that it takes only 5,000 years or less for the human body to adapt to different methods of eating. The implication is that humans have been cooking long enough to have adapted to a diet of cooked foods. This could explain why many people who try raw foodism fail to thrive.

Richard Wrangham's theory that cooking food is what allowed early ancestors of humans to grow large brains is discussed in the June 15, 2007 issue of Science (Food for Thought: Did the first cooked meals help fuel the dramatic evolutionary expansion of the human brain?). By cooking food, we were able to make it more digestible (by breaking down plant fiber and muscle tissue) and therefore eat more calories with less digestive effort, resulting in a smaller digestive tract and more energy for developing our brains.

A 2010 article Chew on this: thank cooking for your big brain, also discusses Wrangham's work. They suggest that the smaller molar teeth in Homo erectus and Homo sapiens might be a result of cooking food.

Is Cooked Food Toxic?

Some raw foodists claim that cooked food is toxic or poisonous. A good article examining this question is, Is Cooked Food Poison?, by Jean-Louis Tu, which concludes:

Cooking creates some toxins, neutralizes others. All plants contain at least some amount of "nature's pesticides." There is no such thing as a toxin-free diet. Within a normal range of consumption, toxins resulting from conservative cooking techniques can be safely handled by the body's normal mechanisms, and do not seem to increase the incidence of degenerative diseases.

Cooking has both negative and positive effects. Cooking, especially for long periods, can damage some vitamins. Boiling and steaming causes some vitamins and minerals to seep out of the food. Chemicals thought to cause cancer are formed when food is burned or oils are heated above the point at which they smoke. Deep-frying foods causes trans fats to form.

On the plus side, cooking can break down food components that would otherwise bind minerals and prevent their absorption. It can soften fiber which allows more food to be eaten. Cooking liberates some nutrients, such as beta-carotene and other antioxidants, for easier absorption. It denatures proteins, essentially flattening them out, which can aid digestion. Cooking destabilizes toxic components of some foods, such as goiter-promoting properties of broccoli. It makes many foods more edible.

While fiber is a good thing, and most Americans should eat more of it, some vegan diets can be too high in fiber. Fiber provides very little energy while filling you up, and vegans with high energy needs might benefit from having a high percentage of cooked foods. On the other hand, people who want to lose weight could help themselves by increasing their intake of high-fiber, raw foods.

Not much research has looked at what proportion of raw foods will prevent the most disease, and there have been no studies measuring the disease rates of raw foodists.

Enzymes

Digestive enzymes aid in the breaking of molecular bonds in food. Some raw foodists say that eating raw foods will extend lifespan because raw foods contain digestive enzymes which digest the food and prevent the body from using energy to create its own digestive enzymes. Some say that the body has a limited capacity to produce enzymes and once that capacity has been used up, you will die.

Stomach acid destroys most of the enzymes in raw food before it can do much to digest the food. Because they have such a small effect on digestion, I am skeptical that enzymes from raw foods do much to increase longevity. For more details about enzymes and raw foods, see Do "Food Enzymes" Significantly Enhance Digestive Efficiency and Longevity?.

Rather than saying people will die from a lack of digestive enzymes, it's probably more accurate to say that their ability to digest food will diminsh over time as their ability to produce digestive enzymes decreases. At the link in the paragraph above, the author mentions that there are other physiological processes that have more to do with the body aging than a lack of enzyme production.

In any case, I eventually decided that I felt too famished on a raw foods diet to want to prolong such a life any longer.

Is Raw Foodism Healthy?

Many people who try raw foods diets, such as myself, fail to thrive. Others appear to do much better, such as Giacomo Marchese. Here are some pictures from raw foodist retreats that you might want to check out before getting too invested in a raw foods diet (one, two).

The following are some long-term nutrition concerns that I have about a raw foods vegan diet.

Vegan raw foodists should pay attention to the recommendations for all vegan diets, which are summarized in the table, Daily Recommendations for Vegan Adults.

Raw foodists should make sure they get enough vitamin B12, and not rely on natural sources such as seaweed or fermented foods. Studies showing raw foodists to have poor vitamin B12 status can be read about in the section Raw Foodist Vegans of Vitamin B12: Are You Getting It?.

My main concern about raw foods diets is regarding bone health. The most important study to date on vegan bone health found vegans to have a higher rate of fracture if they did not consume at least 525 mg of calcium per day (see here). I highly recommend that vegans, including raw foodists, get at least 700 mg of calcium per day (the DRI is 1,000 mg for adults under 50; 1,300 mg for adults older than 50). In a 2005 study, raw foodists were eating an average of 579 mg of calcium per day and they had a lower average bone mineral density than a control group of non-vegetarians (2).

In addition to calcium intake possibly being an issue for bones, raw foodist women often have such low body fat that they do not produce enough estrogen to continue menstruating, a condition associated with poor bone health. A 1999 study showed that 30% of raw foodist women in their study had partial to complete amenorrhea (1). Raw foodist women should make sure they are eating enough calories to prevent amenorrhea.

Protein might be an issue for many raw foodists. The amino acid lysine is quite limited in plant foods other than legumes and legumes are generally not eaten in large amounts in raw foods diets. The idea that protein is important is often scoffed at in vegan and raw foodist circles, but long-term, mild protein deficiency could have an impact on bones and possibly other important tissues. If you are a raw foods vegan who eats less than 100% raw foods, you might want to include ample amounts of legumes as your cookded food.

Finally, the reason I originally became interested in raw foodism, to prevent cavities, turned out to be without much merit - a 1999 study found that raw foodists had significantly more dental erosions than did a control group (4). By not eating extreme amounts of dried or citrus fruit, and paying careful attention to dental hygeine, this problem could possibly be prevented.

Inconveniences of Being Raw

A raw foods diet can cause problems for relationships when you cannot eat similar food to those around you. Of course, a vegan diet can also do this, but I think these inconveniences to non-vegan family and friends are justified due to the suffering and deaths of the animals involved. In the case of the dubious health benefits of eating raw, the imposition is less understandable.

The most extreme example from my own history was the Christmas when I was eating only mono meals and had only a few tomatoes for Christmas dinner. My family survived but it is not one of my proudest moments.

Of course, I could have provided some extravagantly prepared raw food dishes for everyone to enjoy, rather than just sitting there with my plate of tomatoes. At the time, I thought not eating just mono meals could somehow compromise my health.

Which brings me to my next topic...

Orthorexia

Orthorexia is a concern for people who consider cooked and/or processed foods to be toxic. Orthorexia is a term coined by Steven Bratman, MD, to describe an eating disorder characterized by excessive focus on eating healthy foods. In rare cases, it can lead to severe malnutrition or even death. Here are two clips from an 20/20 story on orthorexia, that I recommend anyone considering raw foodism, or even a 100% whole foods diet, to watch.

Part 1
Part 2

Conclusion

In summary, fresh fruits and vegetables should be eaten regularly. I would suggest a few servings of raw foods a day. Above that, I would listen to your own body - if you feel like eating most of your foods raw then just make sure you pay attention to the concerns listed above. If you only feel satisfied if you eat mostly cooked foods at each meal, then I suggest you do so -- without guilt.

For more information, BeyondVeg.com (a site providing a critique of raw food vegan dogma) has created a list of peer-reviewed studies and abstracts relating to raw foods diets. Note on BeyondVeg.com.

Response from a Reader

I'm sure many people know by now that what works for one does not work for all. Otherwise we wouldn't have the plethora of dietetic literature and regimens that we have. However, I think the type of diet that a lot of vegetarian and vegan societies promote is essentially a variation of a macrobiotic diet, with a very heavy emphasis on protein, especially soy.

It wasn't till I got into raw foods diets that I was able to become a successful vegan, both healthy and dynamic. When I followed the diets heavy in tofu and soy products, I was invariably unhealthy and sluggish, with heavy reliance on caffeine. Actually not much different than when I ate meat. Thanks to caffeine, the sluggishness was totally masked and most people would have thought I was fairly dynamite.

I don't follow a 100% raw foods diet now, more like 50% in the winter, mainly due to economics, and a lot more raw food in the summer, when it is fresh, ripe, local and economical.

The type of diet you promote, though well intentioned and providing a good experience for you, does not work for everyone. Neither does any diet. But I think for veganism to be properly presented, it has to be devoid of dietary dogma, a sort of separation of church and state.

Lots of people, upon learning that I am vegan, say something like, "Oh, I couldn't possibly handle all those soy products and beans." When I tell them that while some vegans eat that way, I don't eat any of those things and haven't since the start of my third attempt at being vegan, in 1986, they change their tune. And many people have been positively influenced in this way.

Pretending that one type of vegan diet represents veganism is not in the best interest of veganism. And if people take veganism as being one type of diet, we get less converts to veganism. It makes me sad to think that I could have been vegan many years earlier, had I not first gotten my hands on all this literature that promoted heavy protein, soy, and bean-based diets, and thought that that's all there was. I tried really hard two other times, and it didn't work. A raw foods diet was what made it possible for me to lead a vital, healthy and cruelty-free life.

Note on BeyondVeg.com

I link to BeyondVeg.com because it contains some of the best articles on raw foods diets and comparative anatomy and physiology. Tom Billings, one of the site owners, is a longtime vegetarian and personal friend. He has provided considerable research assistance to me, and we share a concern for going beyond dietary dogma.

References