The Raw Topic

[nancy]

Here's a topic to discuss raw food.

I heard a rumour that Patricia (vegan chef) makes unbelievably delicious raw vegan Nanaimo bars, better than the real thing. Anyone heard about this?

[Christina]

I hadn't heard about it but I'd sure like to try it. Have you tried one Nancy?

[nancy]

No, I would also like to try them.

[Vanessa]

Where did the raw forum go? Is this it now?

[nancy]

Yup, the raw forum was not getting any postings, so it was deleted. Feel free to discuss any raw food issues here in this topic.

[Scott]

Hm, strange, no one wants to talk or ask questions about raw food.
Perhaps it's just a common sense sort of thing between us all, but aren't there newbies out there who are just learning about vegan/vegetarian/raw/etc.?

Personally, we have a HUGE garden packed full of all kinds of stuff. We usually stir-fry most of it depending on what it is. We're not too much into lettuce, if that's what you're thinking. Most of it can be eaten raw save the obvious things such as mushrooms, potatoes, and other things which need to be cooked due to natural toxins. Certainly there has been a lot of talk about the Chinese diet with that China Study. My wife is Chinese and in China, they really don't eat any vegetable raw, only fruits. Even lettuce, the only Canadian vegetable which is always eaten raw, is always cooked in China too. Basically, most things are stir-fried and there are lots of soups too, including lettuce soup, which is really good. We cook all of our grains too: rice, quinoa, millet, etc. (all done in the rice cooker -- still looking for a stainless steel inner pot instead of alluminum).

The greasy Chinese Restaurant food is really not traditional at all -- no where near. According to my father-in-law, food started getting greasy in the 60s.

Anyway, with all this vegetable talk, who has a garden? What are you growing? Certainly raw foodists need a garden. Not to mention, we save a FORTUNE by growing our own, and we know where it came from. Just think, for a few dollars you get 1000 carrot seeds. Spend $30 on enough seeds to last many years.

We have kiwi vine, grape vine, blueberry, currents, apples, plums, everbearing strawberries for fruit, not to mention all of the free neighbourhood pickings we get. The different vegetables we have are too numerous to mention.

We used to have a 10 foot garden and that was enough for two adults. Now we have enough to feed our friends and neighbours too.

[nancy]

I'm very impressed that you grow enough to feed 2 adults and friends, too.

In my garden I have kiwi (but no fruit ever seen yet), grape vine, blueberries, currents, apples, plums, strawberries, raspberries, various herbs, arugula and, in the summer, I grow lettuce, tomatoes and some other veggies. Unfortunately, the garden is not in a sunny spot. Only spot we have. That affects yield. But still I don't know how you get all that food out of a ten foot garden. I have a zillion strawberry plants, but still not enough to feed even me.

[AlisonCole]

Also in the Georgia Straight this week, an article about eating raw. I am unsure of the purpose of this article, as it first starts out with promoting the raw food diet by explaining how people do it, but then that's followed by a bunch of comments of naysayers about the diet. In any case:

Raw foodies shun the stove
By Carolyn Ali
Publish Date: July 17, 2008
For five years, Tanya Davediuk ate almost no cooked food. Her meals consisted of things like salads, smoothies, cold soups, raw falafels, and dehydrated cookies made with soaked, ground almonds.

In a phone interview, Davediuk tells the Straight that after a few months on the raw-food diet, her energy level skyrocketed. “I remember one day getting up and thinking, ‘I just have to run around the block,’ ” Davediuk says. “It was this huge boost. I just ran and ran and ran for the pure joy of it.…It was like unplugging your drain—all of a sudden everything could flow.”

Davediuk is now a yoga teacher, and although she resumed cooking several years ago to accommodate her teenage children, she still advocates the raw route.

“If I eat too much cooked food…I’m just not as with it mentally, not as happy,” she says. “I can be in the darkest mood, and I’ll juice a couple of beets, drink it, and within half an hour I’m feeling happy.” Her explanation? Cooked food “requires more energy to do that digesting, and that’s energy taken away from you for just feeling great.”

In Fresh: The Ultimate Live-Food Cookbook (Random House, $22), authors Sergei and Valya Boutenko also tout the benefits of going raw, claiming that it cured their family of myriad ailments, including arrhythmia, diabetes, asthma, and arthritis, as well as providing mental clarity.

So why do raw-food enthusiasts frown on cooking?

“When you cook food, it destroys all the enzymes that are present in the plant,” says Aaron Ash by phone from his vegan, raw-food café Gorilla Food (436 Richards Street). “That’s what helps metabolize all the nutrients into a usable form.

It’s kind of like the electricity of the plant, the life force, and that [cooking] destroys it.” (Raw-food diets aren’t necessarily vegetarian.) The board member of the Raw Food Society of B.C. says that raw foodies generally agree that food shouldn’t be heated past 108 ° F (42 ° C).

Rosie Dhaliwal, registered dietitian for SFU’s health and counselling services department, counters these claims. In a phone interview, she says cooking doesn’t kill enzymes necessary for digestion.

Dhaliwal explains that plant enzymes “can’t act when they’re in the body”. That’s because they get broken down by the acid and digestive enzymes in the stomach and intestines. The enzymes needed to help you absorb nutrients are already present in your body and are not provided by food.

According to Dhaliwal, cooking does not destroy vitamins if vegetables are cooked properly, to a tender-crisp rather than a wilted brown. Boiling is the exception, however, and it’s not recommended for vegetables “because you can lose nutrients through leaching”.

She cautions people to take testimonials with a grain of salt, and to consult a doctor or the Dietitians of Canada Web site (dietitians.ca/ ) and Canada’s Food Guide before cutting out cooking. “There isn’t any scientific evidence to support the superior nutritional quality of a raw-food diet,” she says.

Moreover, these diets may be unbalanced and deficient in carbohydrates, which fuel the body. Dhaliwal points to a 1999 study of raw-food dieters in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism that concluded that “a very strict raw food diet cannot be recommended on a long-term basis,” since many raw-food dieters were underweight and experienced amenorrhea (absence of menstrual periods).

“Heat has a definite beneficial effect in terms of food safety,” says Tim Durance, professor of food, nutrition, and health in the UBC faculty of land and food systems. People associate salmonella and E. coli outbreaks with meat, but vegetables are also susceptible. “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t eat raw vegetables, but they should be washed and taken care of and handled properly.”

According to Dhaliwal, claims of better digestion may stem from an increased fibre intake. “Increasing your fruit and vegetable consumption is an excellent idea, but not necessarily within the raw-food diet,” she explains, adding that Canadians generally don’t get their recommended 25 to 35 grams of fibre daily.

Gorilla Food’s Ash, who has been eating “98 percent raw food” for the last seven years, explains that he does so because “it’s the best food I can put in my body…food that’s in its most natural state.”

Nature’s bounty certainly is attractive in the summer, so perhaps now’s the time to start eating more fruits and vegetables—cooked or uncooked.


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Source URL: http://www.straight.com/article-153776/ ... shun-stove

[dsteele]

This seems a fair article to me. The criticisms of raw are legitimate. Personally, i think raw vegan diets, with appropriate supplements (especially B12) are tolerable for adults, unreasonable for children.

[nancy]

The article does not start out promoting the raw food diet. It starts out by outlining the claims of raw foodists and then it shows them to be false. It's fair if you believe that the claims of raw foodists are unsubstantiated.

[denise]

I thought Vesanto's new book on raw diet was out and ESC Bookstore was getting it. Has anyone gotten hold of a copy?

[Vanessa]

What's the book called? If anyone finds it let me know!

[Scott]

I've read similar articles in the Georgia Straight newspaper, one in particular I really hated; it was filled with lies, generalities, hearsay, and just plain made me angry. It's what newspapers do best -- people writing articles about things they know little about and don't have the time (or want) to do proper research, so they just throw around quotes to seemingly back up whatever it is they've decided to say about the subject.

Volume 36 Number 1811 Sept. 05-12/2002
Health section
By Gail Johnson

I found 30 issues with this particular article. 30 is a lot.

[Benjamin]

We should be getting Vesanto and Brenda Davis' new book into the Earthsave bookstore and library soon.

[denise]

That's good. I found their earlier books Becoming Vegetarian and Becoming Vegan each to be excellent references in their own right. I'm always refering back to the nutrition charts and other data in those two books. I expect the new book on raw diet to be a similar gold mine.

[Christina]

About gardens..this is what we have in ours and we eat it cooked or raw as we please, though I have never cooked lettuce!

Sugar snap peas, raspberries, blackberries, yellow potatoes, green onions, grape tomatoes, "early" plums, gravenstein/crab-cross/red wealthy apples, bartlett/winter/asian pears, green beans, Chinese cabbage, romaine lettuce, a few blueberries and for the first year, a few saskatoons.

[John]

Just so's you know there are people that silly... I do cook lettuce from time to time. ie. by adding it to something in the last few seconds of cooking, such as rice or miso soup. It brings out the earthy taste in the lettuce, which I'm quite fond of. Also fond of raw lettuce, cucumber and ginger in a smoothie.

[dsteele]

Doesn't sound silly to me. I think i'll try it. And, just FYI, starting with this week's 'issue,' there'll be a monthly raw recipe from Raw Rose in the Email Update. (And, for those who don't know how, you can sign up for our weekly news mailing at http://www.earthsave.ca/elists.html ).

[denise]

I believe cooked lettuce and cooked cucumber are much more common than their raw counterparts in China. Mind you most green vegetables in Chinese cuisine are only very partially cooked anyhow.

[John]

Are pickled ginger and wasabi powder (you know, the stuff that goes with sushi) considered "raw" ?