Transitioning to a Healthy Raw Diet, the Easy Way
by Dr. Douglas N. Graham
There are two, well-travelled roads to raw, and several other lesser paths. There used to be just one main route. It was via the SAD (Standard American Diet), vegetarian, (sometimes accompanied by a side trip into macrobiotic), vegan, and eventually raw-food styles. A lot of people have travelled that road. When they were on the SAD, they had no idea that they would ever change their diet. When they became vegetarian, they had no idea that vegan was in store for them. Upon going vegan, most would have argued that, “No way” was raw in their future.
Today a new shortcut has become the preferred route for many raw-foodists. It is best described as the “cooked, not cooked” route. On this route, many of the detours to successful raw-foodism are avoided. Many, however, are not. (And many new obstacles have cropped up. We will look into these obstacles and their solutions in a future article). On this route, the primary consideration — and detour — often becomes, “Is this raw?” rather than, “Is this healthy for me?”
Backsliding has always been an issue surrounding any diet change. As new dietary habits become ingrained, backsliding becomes less severe, less frequent. People get back on track more rapidly. When someone goes from the SAD to a raw vegan diet, with little or no transition, the backsliding can be quite severe. This is not only hard on us physically, it can pose difficult challenges both mentally and emotionally. Successes on the raw road invariably lead to more enthusiasm and better adherence to the raw food way. Successes provide such positive feedback that they often encourage more experimentation with raw. Failures, or even perceived failures, often leave novices feeling like quitting, as if the rewards simply aren’t worth the effort.
There are many challenges in going raw. Family and social pressures, learning about new foods, finding quality foods that are ripe, creating tasty recipes, mastering food prep techniques and nutritional concerns are just a few of the obstacles to be overcome. The biggest challenges, in my opinion, revolve around learning what foods to eat and developing the skills required to eat those foods.
Whatever our eating style, we tend to take our eating habits with us. Overeaters continue to overeat, comfort eaters persist in using foods as drugs to numb themselves, and picky eaters are still often very picky after going raw. The SAD is composed of approximately 42% carbohydrate, 42% fat, and 16% protein, a very unhealthy mixture that leads to diabetes, chronic fatigue, candida and overweight. When we go to raw, we usually continue eating this unhealthy mixture of caloronutrients. Changing this nutritional formula to the healthier ratio of 80/10/10 is the raw foodist’s biggest challenge, yet in many ways, it is the easiest.
Many of the healthiest and fittest Americans have switched to the “high carb” diet. Doing so on a raw regimen is challenging, for three basic reasons. Let’s evaluate each and see how they can be easily overcome.
The SAD is a very low fiber diet
Animal products supply no fiber and most of the grain products consumed in America have their fiber removed. This lack of fiber means that there is also a concomitant lack of volume. When we switch to the raw diet, we are not practiced at consuming healthy amounts of volume, hence we often undereat. The resulting weight loss may be viewed as a positive, but being constantly hungry is not encouraging to recently initiated raw foodists As they search for a way to consume sufficient calories, the concept of removing fiber creeps back into play, as a way of concentrating the calories. Removing fiber is known as “refining.”
Whole foods are considered inherently more nutritious than their refined counterparts, and rightly so. Still, refined fruits, vegetables and fats are being touted as “health foods,” in fact, the healthiest foods. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fiber is an essential nutrient. Removing fiber to make fruit juices, vegetable juices or free oils or fats is removing an essential nutrient, hence removing essential nutrition. Juicing may remove the fiber and hence lower the overall volume to be consumed, but this can in no way be considered a health practice.
Only through the practice of eating whole foods will we develop the habits and abilities to make entire meals of whole foods.
The SAD is a very low water diet
This lack of water also contributes greatly to the inherent lack of volume in the SAD. The diet is so low in water, in fact, that a person on the SAD needs to consume almost a gallon of liquids per day to fulfill his water needs. Raw-foodists, on the other hand, get most of their water from their foods.
The process of cooking is the main way that most people remove the water from their foods. Foods cooked at 400 degrees for an hour will lose much of their water. So will foods “cooked” at 100 degrees for 40 hours! The practice of dehydrating, endorsed by most raw-foodists as a viable method of transitioning to raw, actually simulates the low-water-content foods that cooked-foodists eat. The use of dehydrated foods actually holds the eater bound to the low-volume foods that he is used to, a captive to the cooked food mentality.
Water-rich foods are also very filling, if only because of the sheer volume they provide. To develop the skills necessary to eat high-volume, water-rich foods, one must eat exactly and only these foods.
The SAD is a very high fat diet
The SAD is, on average, comprised of about 42% fat. Many people on this diet eat over 50%, even 60%, of their total calories as fat. They have learned to satisfy their appetite with fats. This is not what our physiology is designed to thrive on, however. A diet dominated by the simple carbohydrates found in fruit more closely matches our physiologic needs. When going raw, most people continue consuming the high-fat diet. As they eat more vegetables, they get hungrier, and eat even more fat to satisfy themselves. The simple carbohydrate deficit accrues with almost every meal.
When prospective raw-foodists go off their raw regimen, they almost invariable find themselves eating cooked, complex carbohydrates. Until they learn to consume high amounts of sweet fruits to fulfill their carbohydrate needs, they will invariably fail in their health and raw food efforts.
The high-fat, raw-food diet is a recipe for failure, both in regards to health and to staying all raw. Utilizing the high-fruit diet is the ideal, logical and healthful method for achieving the low-fat, high-carb diet that every health practitioner on the planet recommends. Simply by increasing, slowly, but surely, the quantity of fruits in your diet, you will reap huge health benefits. Remember, life is meant to be sweet.
Original source: health101.org
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