Vegan Raw Food

[eve]

sorry, of course I meant Vegan Voice! Thanks for pointing it out.

[Mystic]

I am by no means a raw-foodist, but when I was in America, I thought I needed to try real raw vegan cuisine. So on our first night, we headed to Alive in San Francisco and OMG, it was amazing!!!! Between my boyfriend and I, we polished off:

- Black Sesame Milk
- Young Thai Coconut Water
- Pizza Crisps (bite sized pizzas made from veggie crisps, cashew cheese, tomato and basil)
- Marinara Pasta (Sundried tomato marinara sauce, bell peppers, onions, macadamia cheese and shiitake mushrooms)
- Chocolate cheesecake (not on the menu)
- Raspberry cheesecake torte (raspberry cheesecake filling, cocnut whip cream)
- Blueberry torte (blueberries, lemon cheesecake filling, coconut whip cream)

Everyone has got to try this at least once! It is amazing what you can do with natural foods. I have never had a more delicious meal!

[abrennan]

I lived in a raw food diet for a coupla years quite some time ago.

[michelleraw]

Increasing local raw foods in your diet is the first thing you do, not cutting out 'bad cooked foods', at least that is what Paul Benhaim (www.alivefoods.com) says.

His new DVD shows how easy it is to prepare, over vegan or any other form of cooking, raw 'gourmet' meals- highly recommend www.notthecookingshow.com

[PumpkinGuy]

Banana,

I live not far from San Francisco and have been wanting to patronize the establishment Alive! Thanks for your experience. It makes me all the more eager to try it out.

There is another vegan restaurant is SF which advertises an 80% raw menu. They are called Cafe Gratitude. The menu looks delicious.

Has anyone tried Cafe Gratitude? Any reviews?

Peace

[michelleraw]

going to other thread now, but interested in why you stopped and how you felt on your changeover back to cooked?

[moochbabe]

I LOVE the chef Juliano (i think that's his restaurant Alive!) and he has a restaurant in Santa Monica called Raw that I absolutely love, i bought his "Un-Cook Book" but haven't tried making anything cuz eveything takes a supreme amount of time, i'm a product of society, i don't like to wait 20 hours for a meal

[BxDani]

I'm from nyc and there are great raw vegan restaurants and food markets here...I just wish more people would utilize them

[coconut]

I'm going to start finding out more about raw food. At the Birmingham vegan fayre this year I listened to a talk given by a raw food expert. It was about how raw food can help reverse illness. I can't remember much about it. I try to eat some raw food every day but it is surprisingly difficult. I'm a product of society too moochbabe and I just don't think raw food tastes as nice as cooked food But reading some of the enthusiastic reviews of raw restaurants in the States makes me think I should find out how to prepare raw food and make a tasty meal out of it.

[moochbabe]

it's funny, i like raw food prepared for me, and it's good when i follow the recipe, but they always take a really long time, and unfortunately, i am from a generation of microwaves, where i don't think about making my food until i'm hungry usually, lol

[StmpyElephant]

I've become besotted with raw veganism the past couple of days. I don't remember where it came from (perhaps stumbling across this thread?) but looking at shazzie.com and other places has got me keen to do this.

I've ordered some books from the library to have a look at, thinking about buying a couple also...and I'm hoping to do some kind of detox and delve into raw veganism in the coming weeks. I already eat a great deal of raw food...I shall miss vegemite, ginger tea and the occasional carbs though.

Anyways, when I'm all set I may be back in this thread with questions and whatever else that comes along the way

[thecounterspark]

yeah, definitely let us know how it goes and how the transition is and all of that. I'm getting more interested the more I read, as well. Though I don't know if I could ever go fully raw.. I do enjoy my soy milk, hot soups, stir-frys, tea etc. but I have been trying to incorporate more raw things into my diet.. replacing specific cooked veggies with raw ones and whatnot. perhaps I'm a bit ignorant, but there is no way I can afford a dehydrator or have the time to make all the types of 'raw' meals that I've mostly. seems to me that it would, personally, just be a difficult lifestyle to lead. who knows.. who knows.. looking forward to learning more, as always.

[lars2raw]

This is interesting I am a raw vegan soI think I can help and perhaps give some inspirational tips

[QUOTE=thecounterspark]

yeah, definitely let us know how it goes and how the transition is and all of that. I'm getting more interested the more I read, as well. Though I don't know if I could ever go fully raw.. I do enjoy my soy milk, hot soups, stir-frys, tea etc. but I have been trying to incorporate more raw things into my diet.. replacing specific cooked veggies with raw ones and whatnot.

Just eat gradually more and more raw foods, and calculate your calories. What is comming from cooked and what is comming from raw. Try to get as mush raw as possible.

perhaps I'm a bit ignorant, but there is no way I can afford a dehydrator or have the time to make all the types of 'raw' meals that I've mostly. seems to me that it would, personally, just be a difficult lifestyle to lead. who knows.. who knows.. looking forward to learning more, as always

.
I don't use a dehydrator. I had one but because I never used it. I sold it.
You can eat very simple when eating raw. You don't have to make all the fancy raw dishes every day. Maybe once in a while. Also be carefull about not getting all to much fat. When eating raw you won't consume alot of starches, so watch out, if you are eating lots of salads with dressings and skip the fruits, then you will end up eating 70%-80% fat!!!! That is not healthy, even if the fat is raw.
Fruit is giving you healthy calories from simple carbs. Veggies is rich in minerals but not so rich in calories.
Eat alot of bananas, persimmons, oranges, peers, mangoes.
Eat alot of fruit. If you still are eating cooked foods then eat the healthy raw food first in a meal and end with the cooked and fried. Then you cannot eat so mush of it.

[thecounterspark]

Thanks for the tips! feel free to share as much advice as you want, as I could always use it, as well as anyone else interested in incorporating more raw into their life, too.

[StmpyElephant]

Any raw foodists out there know how to obtain B12? And...what can you eat that will give one the RDI of B12?

Thanks for any help available!

[PumpkinGuy]

StmpyElephant-

The only good source I know of for b12 is sea vegetables like dulce flakes. Some others like nori sheets may but they don't list b12 on the package I have, nor does my package of wakame. I can't imagine they don't contain b12 as they come from the same sea as dulce.

As for the dulce, package states one serving is 1 Tbl which provides 17% of the RDA.

[StmpyElephant]

Thankyou so much PumpkinGuy! That was very helpful.

I was looking into sea vegetables, and also spiralina as blue green algae is high in B12.

[catmogg]

Im going to try and go raw. i need to finish up all the food i have left that needs cooking nd i was planning on taking it slow so my body doesnt freak out. Any hints, tips, anyone? I need simple, time free recipies but i obviously want to stay healthy.....

[catmogg]

p.s. What am i gonna do about chocolate??

[Tigerlily]

I know some raw foodists eat raw carob which is suppose to taste like chocolate, but I never tried it.

[Korn]

StmpyElephant-

The only good source I know of for b12 is sea vegetables like dulce flakes. Some others like nori sheets may but they don't list b12 on the package I have, nor does my package of wakame. I can't imagine they don't contain b12 as they come from the same sea as dulce.

As for the dulce, package states one serving is 1 Tbl which provides 17% of the RDA.

B12 is gradually destroyed when exposed to too much light. In order to contain active B12, it seems that how fresh a plant is is of higher importance than anything else. Also, fermented food like tempeh, need to be exposed to natural bacteria; tempeh produces in 'too clean' food labs doesn't have the same B12 levels as fresh tempeh produced in a natural environemt. It simply looks like if B12 becomes 'old' and dies / is converted to non-active B12 analogues' after relatively short time.

Chlorella, dulse, raw nori, coccolithophorid algae and other plants may contain B12, but since very few people eat this food fresh from the source, the only safe thing to do if you want to make sure you get enough B12, is to monitor your own B12 levels.

Some sites say that animal products are 'reliable' B12 sources, but studies both show that this is not the case. And: even if you consume food that is conisdered a reliable B12 source, you may still not be on the safe side, if you ie. also consume a lot of sugar, tobacco, certain medicines etc. (More here.)

Raw or not... we often don't know how fresh the food we eat is, and there is no or little research on how long time active, bio-avilable B12 is destroyed when exposed to B12-killers like ie. chlorinated water.

If I should give any advice at all about B12, it would be not to trust sources that claim that there are simple solutions to B12 deficiency. Wild, plant eating animals eat fresh food, leaves, grass, sometimes bark, and drink water from natural sources daily - all of which have been reported to contain B12. Most humans don't...

[Tigerlily]

Korn, the B12 guru, I live on an island with access to the ocean all around me. If I was to go out and collect the seaweed right from the oceans myself, would it be "fresh from the source" and a reliable B12 source?

[Korn]

Maybe.

[Tigerlily]

Okay, the ocean is ice now but in the summer, I will try.

[Korn]

Sorry for the short answer a couple of days ago...
The reason I said only 'maybe' was that everything I've come across regarding B12 and plant based food for some years now, I've seen that most people who at first seem to have very firm and convincing conculsions about B12 levels in plants, the relationship between true, active B12 and B12 analogues, opinions about how much B12 a healthy vegan actually needs, or why some people are much more affected bt B12 levels than others, often lack scientific basis for their concusions. They certainly have many quotes and references in their articles, but just referring to someone else who says the same thing that you do doesn't mean that you're right.

You may have read stuff like 'only tempeh from Singapore or Thailand contains true B12', but of course, tempeh doesn't know geographical borders. Or that algae is OK, but only from certain lakes. Or that Asian vegans living a rural life have better B12 levels than urban Asians because rural people don't wash their hands (ignoring dozens of other differences in their life style). And so on.

The sad thing about 'scientific' B12 info on interent isn't only that it's often based on assumptions. It's not even that people keep quoting each others assumptions ("primates have good B12 levels because they eat insects"). The real problem is that the research that would be needed to back of such statements hsan't been performed yet. Why? Because the vegan community isn't rich and large enough yet to raise any funds to pay for this research, and most other people eat animal products, and don't care if you can get enough B12 on a vegan raw diet or not.

Unfortunately, there's a (very!) small group of vegans that harms the vegan movement pretty much, and (unconsiously?) works hard to divide the vegan community, which makes it difficult for this movement (if we can call it a movement) to ever get strong and big enough to be able to perform real studies on what it is that kills B12, and what the real problems with B12 analogues may be, and what it is that 'converts' a true, active B 12 molecule into a dead B12 analogue.

(This is a bit off topic, but to give an example: after a few friendly members or The Vegan Forum suggested that they could share some of the expenses I've had in starting and running this site, a certain member here who runs another forum claimed (not here, there) that 'his site is for profit' and that I dearly love 'lobbyists and pseudo-vegans' (!!!!).

After we started to receive some donations - which has covered a great porion of the expenses - they even changed my avatar to a bunch of dollar bills and my user title to 'Gimme $$$' or something ike that. This isn't only wrong and extremely silly, it's destructive for the vegan movement. Since trolls are making it hard to raise enough funds to cover the expenses of a simple message board, it will be very difficult to raise the funds needed to perform real studies on B12 and plants. Real research costs real money - not only a few hundred dollars...

Some of us are experimenting a little on our own, but I won't recommend people to experiment with their own health. Real research require a lot of background info about the involved people, not only if they are vegan or not, but what kind of vegan food they eat, how long they have been vegan, if they smoke, user sugar, which medicines they may be taking, if they get enough sunlight and calcium, if they're on oral contraceptives, if they are exposed to pollution from cars, + info on water/chlorine/fluoride inatake, to what extent they are exposed to other B12 reducing elements...

Nevertheless, Tigerlily, if you find out something about the seaweed around your island, please let us know. Maybe some local lab can test it for B12 while it's still fresh. Or maybe, if you have taken B12 tests before you start to eat seaweed, you can take new tests after some weeks and compare the two levels.

[Tigerlily]

Thanks Korn, I'll look into it.

[thecatspajamas1]

I'm going to try eating raw/mostly raw for the next few weeks to see how it affects me.

[speedylemons]

Today i read a brand new book at the library that was hell bent set on telling the world that a raw foods diet is basically an eating disorder. WTF?!

They claimed that it was something like "orthorexia.." or something.. a newer developing eating disorder where one becomes obsessed with health foods with a goal of "purity, good health, etc" but what really ends up happening is foods continue to become "unsafe" for them so eventually they are eating pretty much nothing.


Stupid book. It made me mad.. and then i felt really cool because i was just standing in the middle of the library kind of huffing and puffing to myself and this book i had in my hands.. i got a few looks. Yeah, that should keep the boys away.

[ConsciousCuisine]

Today i read a brand new book at the library that was hell bent set on telling the world that a raw foods diet is basically an eating disorder. WTF?!

They claimed that it was something like "orthorexia.." or something.. a newer developing eating disorder where one becomes obsessed with health foods with a goal of "purity, good health, etc" but what really ends up happening is foods continue to become "unsafe" for them so eventually they are eating pretty much nothing.


Stupid book. It made me mad.

Yeah, I would definetly be diagonsed with "orthorexia" if I were to be evaluated by a stuffy and rigid shrink, even though I eat loads but have really high standards and am VERY particular about what I eat

[speedylemons]

i know.. me too. that sucks that people just think we are all crazy. I know my friends think i'm completely insane. I try to tell them about it, but they simply stare back at me with overglazed marbles holding a blank stare.. and then they usually muster out "it's just FOOD."



Either way, i can't imagine living a life unlike the one i do. I'm happy to eat heathly.. and to me, food plays a big role in my life. If i don't treat my body right, my life isn't going to go right.


SO THERE OMNIS. ha.

[Haniska]

Does anyone have a recipe for "Flax Cheese" ? I saw the recipe some years ago, I believe that it was fermented. If someone has any idea how I could ferment my own, like Miso, and if it would kill me etc.. I would appreciate it!

[Cairidh]

I'm a raw vegan. I fell into raw foodism by accident - I'd never heard of it. I was vegan, and couldnt kill or eat vegetables, and then I found out when they harvest grains they massacre all the fieldmice. So I ended up eating nothing but fruit. This was fine at first, and my looks improved enormously. I looked glowingly healthy and clean and fresh. You could tell by looking at me my diet was very clean and pure. But then after 6 months I started starving to death and I had to start eating something else. Not knowing about raw foodism I started eating "normal" food again ie cooked food and WHAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it made me extremely ill, every cell in my body felt extremely poisoned, head pain, mild fever, delirious, so illllllllllllllllllll
AND I suddenly had massive physical cravings for normal food - I'd never craved cooked food before but suddenly, blimey.

After 6 months on fruit I was completely unadapted to cooked food and completely unable to tolerate it. So now I have no choice but to be 100% raw. And even dehydrated food makes me ill and causes cravings though not as much as "cooked".

After being 100% raw for a few months I no longer craved cooked food, and it no longer looked like food to me, it looks like plastic. I see people eating pizza or bread and it looks as bizarre as somebody eating carboard. But if I have one bite of cooked food I crave cooked food terribly on a physical level, and it is very difficult to stop eating it again.

[Cairidh]

I don't need to read the opinions for and against cooking food being harmful because I've experienced the truth of this for myself.
However I do think most people are well adapted to eating cooked food and it won't harm them - with the exception of obviously dangerous foods like meat/dairy/eggs/alcohol/fried food.

Personally I think mans natural diet and the one that will best prevent disease is a 100% raw food diet including raw meat. Don't shout at me, I'm not advocating it, but I don't think man is physically designed to be vegan.

It's always harmful to cook food but I don't think eating only fruit, veg, nuts, seeds (some people have grains and beans but they do contain toxins) is the healthiest diet. It's not the lack of cooking thats the problem, its the fact that so few different foods are eaten, it's so restrictive. I don't think thats the best diet. However lots of people have managed to follow it successfully.

So I don't know whether a raw vegan diet, or a cooked vegan diet is the healthiest - there's no question cooking is harmful, but cooked vegans eat a wider variety of foods, and most people have adapted to cooked food.
It's certainly healthier to always eat your fruit, veg, nuts and seeds raw.

There's no question that a cooked vegan diet is healthier than a cooked meat diet.

If you want to make sure you're getting enough nutrients on a raw vegan diet make sure you eat a lot of leafy greens.
I know there are many differing opinions, but personally I believe the best raw vegan diet is made up of lots of fruit (including non sweet fruits), lots of leafy greens, and enough fat (avocadoes, olive oil, coconut cream).
Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, eat 50% fruit, 40% leafy greens, 10% seeds, veg, insects (for B12)

[Cairidh]

Cooking ruptures the cell walls making absorption easier but not as efficiently as juicing.
Cooking doesn't add any nutritional value to food. It kills nutrients, and creates toxins.
The only good thing is that it kills certain toxins for example in potatoes and grains that are inedible raw. But it also creates toxins in these foods that weren't there to begin with - such as acrylamide which is a deadly carcinogen, created when grains and potatoes are heated.

[DancingWillow]

Don't shout at me, I'm not advocating it, but I don't think man is physically designed to be vegan.

Cairidh, I agree with some of the points you've made about raw food, but I have to disagree on this one... Read this article for a start, and then you can find more in-depth readings on the subject if you're interested

http://www.alive.com/1338a4a2.php?su...read_cramb=463

[DancingWillow]

Are there raw ways to prepare potatoes, legumes, and other foods that are hard to eat if they are not cooked? I've been curious about this for some time, and you seem like you know quite a lot about raw food...

At this time, I personally prefer to eat a balance of raw and cooked foods.

[Yoggy]

There is a very good thread here that discusses the physical differences between herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. If you don't want to read the whole article, just skip down to "summary". It shows that we truly were designed to not eat meat.

[Tigerlily]

Are there raw ways to prepare potatoes, legumes, and other foods that are hard to eat if they are not cooked? I've been curious about this for some time, and you seem like you know quite a lot about raw food...

At this time, I personally prefer to eat a balance of raw and cooked foods.

Sprouting?

[Cairidh]

Thanks for the articles!! I love reading articles that say man is naturally vegan. I would like to believe this but but I'm afraid I still don't - while carnivores colons are much much shorter than humans, herbivores colons are much much longer. Humans cannot break down cellulose and cannot manufacture B12.
Frugivores all eat some kind of animal food.
Our nearest relatives chimpanzees eat eggs and insects, especially termites with their high B12 content.
Humans have been eating meat for millions of years - long before we finished evolving.
Moreover scientists discovered that the evolution of the human brain could not have occurred without eicosanoic acid (a 20 carbon oil). The ONLY source of this oil is fish and seafood.

I'm as vegan as they come - but I don't think nature is.

[Cairidh]

Are there raw ways to prepare potatoes, legumes, and other foods that are hard to eat if they are not cooked? I've been curious about this for some time, and you seem like you know quite a lot about raw food...

At this time, I personally prefer to eat a balance of raw and cooked foods.

Ancient cultures used to ferment many inedible foods which made them edible.

I don't think there's anything you can do to kill the toxins in raw potatoes but some people eat them anyway. The Dr who cured herself of cancer in the 40s with a raw food diet, and founded a hospital Hummlegarden to cure others, ate raw potatoes and encouraged everyone else to. Lots of naturpaths prescribe potato juice because it does have some healing properties along with the toxins.

You can sprout grains and then eat them. This makes them edible but they still contain some toxins - but then they do when you cook them.

You can sprout a few types of beans - mung, aduki, chickpea and lentil, but not the others.

[Tigerlily]

I bought a raw food cookbook. It doesn't call itself vegan--it calls itself "dairy-free vegetarian". They use honey in some recipes (but they said you can replace it) and offer raw eggs as a suggestion if the reader/cook isn't vegan. Eewww, raw eggs, can't those make you sick?

I have a raw food question!
What's a good subsitute for lemon juice? Almost every recipe calls for lemon juice, something which I'm sensitive too. I can tolerate a little bit once and a while but I can't have it every day...Anything I can replace it with? (I'm sensitive to all citrus, boo hoo). It doesn't have to be a 100% raw replacement.

[Yoggy]

vinegar is as acidic as lemon juice, maybe it would work...And maybe add a little sugar to substitute for the sugar in lemons. It's not a raw replacement at all, but it's the only non-citrus based acid that I can think of...

[Tigerlily]

Thanks. Apple cider vinegar is best?

[Yoggy]

At the bottom of this webpage, it says you can just use vinegar instead of lemon juice. It doesn't mention sugar, but I would have thought you should add it, since lemons contain sugar. It doesn't mention apple cider vinegar, so I imagine the ordinary white variety would be best.

BTW, what are you cooking that calls for lemon juice? Can I come over and try some when it's ready?

[Tigerlily]

I'm not cooking anything at the moment but pretty much every recipe in my new cookbook calls for lemon juice. I should have read it more carefully before buying.

[Cairidh]

I'd say vinegar too....you can buy raw apple cider vinegar from Braggs

[Seaside]

Our nearest relatives chimpanzees eat eggs and insects, especially termites with their high B12 content.

And their nearest relatives, the gorillas, are fruitarian.

Humans have been eating meat for millions of years - long before we finished evolving.

We aren't done evolving, and we won't be until we are extinct. We have already altered our development by depending so much upon cooked food that our jaws are no longer growing large enough to support our wisdom teeth. Though wisdom teeth were probably developed to chew on tough, fibrous roots and nuts, they were used by our ancient ancestors to chew on flesh during Ice Age conditions, when there weren't enough plant foods to survive on. Since we are losing space in our jaws for our wisdom teeth, we are evolving away from needing them to chew on flesh, and it could be inferred that we are evolving toward a predominantly plant based diet. We'd better be, or we will cause the next extinction event if we follow our present course.

Saying that it is natural for people to continue to eat meat because we managed to survive as a species during less then optimal conditions by doing so, is like plane crash survivors claiming that they must be allowed to continue to cannibalise their fellow humans because they survived being stranded in the wilderness by eating their fellow passengers. We aren't living in an Ice Age any more, and we do not need to eat dead animals in order to survive.

I'm as vegan as they come - but I don't think nature is.

It isn't supposed to be.

[veganblue]

Howdy Cairidh! I am pleased that a raw vegan diet is working for you.

I don't find veganism hard but I think that I would not last long on a raw food diet and an omni friend learning about it found vegan hard to comprehend before I told him about raw veganism... It actually made veganism seem simple.

I am curious that you struggle with cravings for cooked food when you have it and wonder where this comes into the idea of listening to your body tell you what it needs - like pregnant women tend to know instincively what nutrients they are lacking and what foods they need to get it?

Cooking of food does change it; it makes some nutrients less available, but it makes others more available. Too much cooking reduces the overall nutrient value of food, but light cooking can be very good by rupturing cell walls and denaturing endogenous defense enzymes. Grinding food in a juicer has much the same effect except the enzymes (proteins) are denatured in the stomach acid environment instead.

Cooking food makes it easier to chew and Seaside's point is a very interesting observation about teeth. Evolution by natural selection would possibly have knocked off the individuals that suffered from tooth problems as a result of the difficulties that wisdom teeth often give. With modern dentistry, Western societies are perpetuating a heritable character that will require dental work as normal requirement - or just push peoples teeth forward. (Note - I am not a dentist - I don't know the problems associated with unattended wisdom teeth that they pull out as a matter of course... )

Raw food is a very important part of the diet, but I personally feel that lightly cooked food is not only not ''poison'' but a useful part of a well balanced diet.

[cedarblue]

i would be really interested to see some raw recipes in the recipe section if you have any and also have the time to post??

thanks

do you visit any raw food (vegan) sites? can you recommend any?

[Blueshark]

I always considered the step to Raw from Vegan to be based on health.

There is no ethical basis.