Raw Food: The Last Word In Nutrition

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For 1 month, I chal­lenged myself to eat a 100% raw food diet con­sist­ing mainly of fruits, veg­eta­bles and nuts; uncooked, unprocessed and in their nat­ural state (along with some fan­tas­tic gourmet raw cui­sine). I care­fully doc­u­mented my expe­ri­ence so that I could share the results with you in the event that you might be look­ing at ways to increase your over­all well being, energy lev­els and bet­ter man­age your weight.

The head­line of this arti­cle makes the bold state­ment that raw food is the last word in nutri­tion, mean­ing that if you want to expe­ri­ence what is truly pos­si­ble in rela­tion to sup­port­ing and max­i­miz­ing your entire sys­tems, mind/body/energy, you don’t need to look any fur­ther than raw food, because in my expe­ri­ence, there is noth­ing fur­ther. This blog post will be an intro­duc­tion to this “extreme” form of nutrition.

I cringe when I am forced to tag the word “extreme” to raw food. In a world where fast food empires have become the norm, eat­ing food that has been left alone to grow organ­i­cally in nature; uncooked, unprocessed and largely untouched by the ambi­tious, but often mis­guided hands of our fel­low man, is a rarity.

I don’t waste one sec­ond won­der­ing why the major­ity of the food we eat has evolved so far from it’s nat­ural state, instead, I focus on savor­ing each meal (raw or cooked) as though it might be my last. No mat­ter what direc­tion you decide to take your nutri­tion, please make it a point to enjoy your meals and more impor­tantly, the won­der­ful social aspects of break­ing bread with friends and fam­ily. How­ever, if you aspire to reach the high­est lev­els of health, energy, and com­plete con­trol over your weight, raw food is def­i­nitely worth explor­ing. Let’s do that now.

What is Raw Food?

Raw food sim­ply means food in its nat­ural state, ide­ally it would be organic (pes­ti­cide free) and locally grown. If left alone, every kind of fruit, veg­etable, nut, even sashimi (sushi) is raw food. There are a few other “rules” that make a food raw, for exam­ple, if you heat it past a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture scientists/experts say that it kills the liv­ing qual­i­ties in the food. I avoid these debates by not heat­ing up my food at all. You don’t have to be a vegan (no ani­mal prod­ucts) or veg­e­tar­ian (no meat, but some ani­mal prod­ucts) to eat raw. There is raw honey, raw dairy prod­ucts, raw fish (sushi) and raw meat (carpaccio).

The Ben­e­fits of Raw Food

Too many to list but I’ll try.

• Increased men­tal focus: When you are eat­ing raw food, once you cross over the ini­tial cravings/withdrawals from cooked food, you will expe­ri­ence that your mind is “on” all the time. I don’t mean that your mind is rac­ing either, I mean that your mind is sharp, razor sharp.
• Sleep Quota Drops: Com­bin­ing raw food with other key fac­tors allow me to stay active for up to 20 hours every day. This ben­e­fit could also be called, “Your activ­ity lev­els rise significantly”.
• The Body becomes Effi­cient: I’m speak­ing of diges­tion and regen­er­a­tion. Raw food passes so smoothly and eas­ily through the sys­tem that your body is always in peak form. This of course, depends largely on where your health lev­els are when you start eat­ing raw. The body is incred­i­bly resilient and it has han­dled all the dam­age we have done to it over the years, given the oppor­tu­nity, the body can reverse course just as fast and begin anew. Raw food, eaten con­sis­tently over time, will give you a new body.
• Never Full or Bloated: Have you ever had a won­der­ful meal con­sist­ing of a thick steak, silky smooth mashed pota­toes, veg­gies soaked in but­ter and gar­lic bread? Speak­ing for myself, many times. How do you feel after eat­ing this meal or some­thing sim­i­lar? A bit tired? slug­gish? men­tally dull? Maybe. Maybe not. After eat­ing raw food for a con­sis­tent amount of time, say 1 month, you will notice that you always feel sated but never stuffed or overly full. You walk away from your meal feel­ing ener­gized and ready for action.
• The Aging Process is Reversed: When I am eat­ing raw food, my hair turns a bit darker. In places where my hair is thin, some­how hair growth occurs. My energy lev­els sky­rocket to that of a child, I am alert and highly active all day and night.
• Sick­ness and Dis­ease become Unlikely: When eat­ing a diet that is raw, organic and grown locally, the entire sys­tem grows very strong. How fast you expe­ri­ence this increased “strength” all depends on what you have done with your health prior to switch­ing over to raw food. If I was ever to come down with a ter­ri­ble dis­ease, I would imme­di­ately switch my nutri­tion to 100% raw food before I even looked at other forms of treatment.
• Weight Falls Off Effort­lessly: Dur­ing the 1 month chal­lenge, I per­formed no struc­tured work­outs, I didn’t run on a tread­mill or lift weights. I walked my dogs twice per day and per­formed my daily yoga and med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, that’s it and I lost 11 lbs. If I would have taken up even a mod­er­ate exer­cise reg­i­men, I would have dou­bled my weight loss to 20–25 lbs in one month.
• The Fla­vors are Over­whelm­ingly Deli­cious: Once you reac­quire a taste for food in it’s nat­ural state, you can become addicted to the explo­sive fla­vor and nat­ural taste of food that has been left alone. It takes time to get to this point but if you eat raw food con­sis­tently, you can become hooked on it. It’s a nice vice to have.

[All of these ben­e­fits are from MY unique expe­ri­ence with raw food. I don’t guar­an­tee any kind of result and I’m sure as hell not a licensed health pro­fes­sional. Hav­ing said all that, please see that NO doc­tor, expert or licensed “any­one” can ever truly under­stand your expe­ri­ence of health. Take 100% respon­si­ble for your own well being, I did, and my health lev­els sky­rock­eted.]

The Draw­backs of Raw Food

• Socially awk­ward: If you are raised in a cul­ture like I was, eat­ing raw food is about as nor­mal as eat­ing tree bark. Nobody gets it and in some cases, it is viewed as insult­ing that you are not eat­ing the won­der­ful food that every­one around you is enjoying.
• It Can be Pricey: Con­versely, it can be much cheaper than eat­ing a stan­dard Amer­i­can diet if you plan your meals in advance and stay out of the deli­cious raw food restau­rants. How much you spend will all depend on your unique rela­tion­ship with money.
• Prepar­ing Raw Meals can be Time Con­sum­ing: Again, this depends on you. I per­son­ally don’t pre­pare a ton of gourmet raw food for 2 rea­sons: 1. I don’t really know how, and 2. I’m not that inter­ested in tak­ing the time to learn. The times I have attempted, there is some mea­sur­ing, cut­ting, chop­ping and blend­ing required. I guess it’s the same if you cooked reg­u­lar gourmet meals; To do it right takes time, and the more you do it, the faster you become.
• Crav­ings: Depend­ing on your cur­rent health lev­els, your sys­tems will expe­ri­ence some crav­ings early on in the process. For me, I had just come off of eat­ing every­thing in sight, includ­ing fast food nearly every day. The first week of raw was the tough­est. The sec­ond week was smooth enough and by week 3 my body, mind, and most impor­tantly, my taste buds had grown addicted to the raw. Look hon­estly at your cur­rent eat­ing habits and decide wisely how much raw food you can safely incor­po­rate into your diet.
• With­drawals: Com­ing off of cooked food, is like com­ing off of crack. Food is our hid­den addic­tion, it owns us. I put this down as a draw­back because I know that for most peo­ple it is a huge chal­lenge to change their eat­ing habits. The flip side is, when you get through the strug­gle, you will come out on the other side healthy and vibrant. This is no drawback.

I could write a book on this sub­ject, admit­tedly it would be a chron­i­cle of one person’s expe­ri­ence, but there is enough great info out there already and I will list some of my favorite resources at the bot­tom of this post if you wish to do fur­ther research. Let’s move on to see the tan­gi­ble results of 1 month of eat­ing raw food. These are for your con­sid­er­a­tion and enjoy­ment. I’ve said it a mil­lion times, but it’s worth repeat­ing, your results will be uniquely your own if you decide to exper­i­ment with raw food.

The Exper­i­ment

Weight Loss Results:

• Day 1: 160.7 lbs
• Day 4: 155.5 lbs
• Day 8: 156.5 lbs
• Day 15: 153.6 lbs
• Day 22: 150.4 lbs
• Day 31: 149.6 lbs

Total Weight Loss: 11.1 lbs

Energy Lev­els

• I lost 5 lbs in the first 4 days and felt very weak. I also had some major food crav­ings. Can’t stress enough, that you must closely mon­i­tor your entire sys­tems when you are embark­ing on any kind of nutri­tional change that is out­side of your norm.
• I adjusted my food intake to avoid starv­ing and hit my stride on day 5. My energy lev­els rose sig­nif­i­cantly after I increased the amount and vari­ety of my raw food. The change in vari­ety, sat­is­fied my men­tal and emo­tional needs.
• I required on aver­age only 4 hours per night sleep. Some days I got by on 2 hours sleep, other days I squeezed in 6 hours. Over­all, I felt my best on the days when I was excited about what I was doing, stayed active all day long and fell asleep with a smile on my face, only to rise 4 hours later.
• Dur­ing the first two weeks, there were times when I was tired in the mid­dle of the day, to rem­edy this, I took cold show­ers, a long walk with my dogs or hit a set of push ups to get the blood flowing.
• By day 17 I was no longer tired in the after­noon, it had passed.
• When I over-ate the “fancy” raw food stuff, I was left with a sim­i­lar feel­ing after the meal as eat­ing cooked food; a bit heav­ier, tired, indeges­tion, stuffy head and nose. Some of the gourmet raw food is dehy­drated (to make the bread and chips) and that of course, left me thisty. For me, the sim­pler the raw food, the bet­ter. A plate of mixed nuts, my favorite fruits, veg­gies sticks and hum­mus for dip­ping, avo­cado w/ lemon and of course, the most mag­i­cal raw food of them all…

The Mir­a­cle of The Green Smoothie

I made a video to show you how to make a beginner’s ver­sion of this super food. If I could rec­om­mend that you take only one “meal” out of this chal­lenge and incor­po­rate it into your daily life, it would be the green smoothie.

How Much Does Raw Food Cost?

It will depend on many fac­tors, but here is a blow by blow of what I spent:

• Day 0: Health Food Store– $45
• Day 2: Restau­rant– Gar­den Salad $10
• Day 4: Restau­rant– Raw tostada and gourmet salad $20
• Day 5: Restau­rant– Raw burger and gourmet salad $20
• Day 6: Restau­rant– Sushi grade Ahi Tuna over a bed of organic mixed greens $15 (a friend treated)
• Day 6: Restau­rant– Large gar­den salad with all the fix­ings– $6
• Day 8: Health Food Store– $45
• Day 9: Restau­rant– Raw burger and gourmet salad $20 (a friend treated me)
• Day 12: Fruit Stand: $10
• Day 13: Health Food Store– $90
• Day 16: Health Food Store– $41 (this includes an expen­sive pre-made raw food lunch)
• Day 20: Restau­rant– raw bread, hum­mus, veg­gies, and green soup $20
• Day 22: Health Food Store– $51 (The items I pur­chased on this day are listed below)
• Day 25: Restau­rant– spring rolls, raw “chorizo” wraps with a slice of tira misu for dessert. $25
• Day 27: Health Food Store– $25
• Day 30: Restau­rant– What else, a raw burger. $12

Health Food Store/Fruit Stand:  $307

Restau­rants:  $148

Total spent: $455

This to me, is way too much to spend. With this month’s exper­i­ment under my belt, I could eas­ily knock $100-$200 off that bill and be eat­ing opti­mal nutri­tion for around $250-$300 per month. Not bad. On the flip side, I could eat out every meal and run that bill to over a grand. If you are fru­gal and make all your own stuff you can prob­a­bly become a raw fooder for around $200 per month and around $500-$700 per month for a fam­ily of four (you will be buy­ing in bulk).

I often hear how expen­sive it is to eat organic/healthy. This is a short sided look at the issue. How much does pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions cost, health insur­ance pre­mi­ums, doc­tor co-pays? Can you put a price on feel­ing full of energy and vibrant all day ver­sus headaches, slug­gish­ness, and low energy? The qual­ity of my life is increas­ing as I age. To me, this is price­less and I know that eat­ing raw food plays a key role in the health lev­els that I enjoy. Eat what you want because you love it, don’t fool your­self into think­ing that it is more eco­nom­i­cal. I could eat 100% raw food and chal­lenge any­one to eat a diet of their choos­ing and I will spend less money. Guaranteed.

Sam­ple Gro­cery List (from Day 22)

• 1 Bunch of Black Kale $2.99
• 1 Bunch of  Spinach $1.50
• 1 Bunch of Red Boar Kale $1.99
• 2 Young Coconut @ $3.49 each
• 2 large bas­kets of straw­ber­ries @ $2.00 each
• 1 Pesto Dip­ping Sauce $6.99  (Pre-made and very expen­sive for such a small quantity)
• 1 Mint Choco­late Chip Pie $5.29 (Pre-made, hence very expen­sive for a sin­gle slice of pie)
• 1 pack­age of Green Olives w/herbs $2.32
• 1 pack­age Truly Raw Ched­dar Cheese $6.11
• 1 pack­age Whole Raw Cashews $4.65
• 1 pack­age Nori Crack­ers $7.99 (Pre-made = $$$)

Total Bill $51

I shopped as needed. If I was going to do it over again, I would prob­a­bly make a big food run on Sun­day, and then re-load on Wednes­day, if nec­es­sary.  I also ate out way too much and bought a ton of pre-made gourmet raw food from the stores. I would cut back on these extras and either go with­out or teach myself how to make them. This of course, assumes that my goal is to bud­get, which is not nec­es­sar­ily the case.

My over­all expe­ri­ence and what I learned

I got off to a rough start. Although I have exper­i­mented with raw food in the past, I did noth­ing in terms of prepa­ra­tion to get ready for this chal­lenge. I went to the health food store the day before I was sched­uled to start, picked up a few items to make green smooth­ies and that was it. Big mis­take. By day 4 I was down 5 lbs and feel­ing weak. I was expe­ri­enc­ing pow­er­ful McWith­drawals as I had just come off of a nice string of eat­ing fast food almost daily for the prior month. Soon after these crav­ings struck, I hit the health food store, stocked up on tons of raw good­ness and vowed to plan bet­ter. I added in coconuts, mixed nuts, and bought some fancy pre-made raw cui­sine. I also started going to raw restau­rants and my strength was back in no time.

After the first week, I got much more cre­ative with my plate pre­sen­ta­tions. To make my meals visu­ally appeal­ing, I fixed the plate to look bal­anced and in order.  I  pre­pared my meals slowly. I ate slowly. I ate out­side, and savored the nat­ural taste.  I ate with my right hand, to feel the food. I stud­ied my meals. I picked up my plate and exam­ined the food. I closed my eyes and inhaled the light, sweet scent of real food in it’s nat­ural state.  I gave myself to the process. In what­ever you do or aspire to do, if you give all that you are to your endeavor, the process itself becomes bliss­ful. It was like this for me with raw food.

The rest of the chal­lenge I faced minor stum­bles.  Things like not prop­erly prepar­ing my meals and as a result,  I had to go hun­gry for a few extra hours. No big deal. My fam­ily was serv­ing my all time favorite food of fried pota­toes and I had to pass. Things like this were a chal­lenge, but noth­ing like what I faced the first week.

If my only goal is to per­form at the high­est lev­els in all areas of my life, achieve opti­mal health and pre­vent ill­ness or dis­ease, then raw food is the way for me. Hav­ing said that, I have fun with food and get a kick out eat­ing what­ever I want from time to time. There is an unde­ni­able social and emo­tional aspect of choos­ing to eat “dif­fer­ent”, and when I eat raw food, I miss out on some group meals and most of the tra­di­tional food that I grew up enjoying.

Lastly, eat­ing all live food allowed me to expe­ri­ence a closer con­nec­tion to the life all around me. Powerful.

[For a “Behind The Scenes” look at this chal­lenge, includ­ing pic­tures of my body before and after,check out the month in pic­tures.]

Is Raw Food For You?

Yes. Well, kind of. Exper­i­ment, try and see. Please take into con­sid­er­a­tion that if you have eaten cooked and highly processed food your whole life, it will take your entire sys­tem time to adjust. The body can take any abuse we dish out (up to a point) and do what is needed to keep us alive and func­tion­ing. It devel­ops defense for the nor­mal food we feed our bod­ies and tries valiantly to com­pen­sate for our gen­eral lack of move­ment. If you go too hard­core and switch over to 100% raw, it could shock your body. Per­son­ally, I have abused my body, and con­tinue to do so by shock­ing it often (in a lov­ing way). I don’t rec­om­mend this as it can be dangerous.

Some­thing you MUST do, is add in a green smoothie for you and your loved ones every day. Start with 70–80% fruit and 20–30% mild greens (spinach). As your body nat­u­rally becomes addicted to the greens over time,  begin slid­ing the ratio to favor the greens until you reach a ratio of 70/30, greens to fruit. This may take months, years or weeks. How would we know, unless you exper­i­ment for your­self? Drink at least a quart of this every day. I don’t care if your other 2 meals are fast food. Enjoy every­thing you put in your body, and to say thank you, and let your body know that it is appre­ci­ated for all the years of mis­use, slowly start to inte­grate more raw food into your diet. Your body deserves it. So do you.

Raw Food Resources

My Friend Jonathan Mead’s 30 day raw exper­i­ment [Video] “Eat­ing should not be stress­ful, Health should not be stress­ful”- Love that quote. Jonathan talks about the social aspects of eat­ing raw food from his per­sonal experience.

The Raw Fam­ily [Web­site] My son has juve­nile dia­betes and Sergei Boutenko, a mem­ber of the “Raw Fam­ily”, over­came type 1 dia­betes (viewed as incur­able) through eat­ing raw food. Great all around resource for families.

The Life Regen­er­a­tor [YouTube Chan­nel] Dan’s videos are enter­tain­ing and awesome.

Photo By Geoff Peters