Raw Food Diet

Since I already mentioned in my last blog post about why I am eating mostly raw food now, here are some more details about that and what has been working for me.

What is raw food?

A raw food is a fresh, whole, unrefined, living fruit, vegetable, seed, nut, dairy, or animal that has not been processed or cooked (heated beyond 118 degrees Fahrenheit). Sprouted grains fall in there somewhere as well - I am still looking into this, though. Heating food beyond this point causes documented changes to the chemical and molecular structure of food, which removes valuable nutrients, enzymes, and creates toxins such as carcinogens and free-radicals which cannot be easily eliminated by the human body. These toxins continue to build up as you consume your cooked meals and this can skew the acid/alkaline balance in the body, which can lead to disease and weight gain.

One of the important aspects of the diet concerns enzymes. Enzymes are important in the body for digestion of food, cell division, effective vitamin and hormone activity and a healthy immune system. All foods naturally contain enzymes; however, cooking destroys these natural enzymes and that means the body has to work extra hard to digest the food. Sometimes the body is not able to digest everything, which causes arteries and digestive tracts to get clogged up by undigested proteins, fats and starches.

What about how TCM recommends cooking your food?

My acupuncturist had told me many years ago that it was easier for my body to digest food when it was cooked, as does this acupuncturist (when I googled "raw food diet" this article came back high in the list of results): http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-13454/3-reasons-no-one-should-be-on-a-raw-foods-diet.html

That article explains why Traditional Chinese Medicine advocates cooking your food, and why I cooked most of my food for many years now. But the funny thing is that in general I feel a ton better - and like my body digests food better - when I eat it raw! Now I understand why.

I remember telling my acupuncturist a couple years ago that I felt great when I ate sushi. He told me that I shouldn't eat much sushi because it is hard for my body to digest. But my experience has been the complete opposite!

What does a typical day's food look like?

Breakfast is either:

• A green smoothie
• A bowl of fruit with nuts and seeds
• A parfait (yogurt, sprouted granola, fruit, nuts, seeds)

Lunch is the meal where I allow myself some cooked food (and take digestive enzymes):

• Fish (salmon, halibut, or oysters) and vegetables
• Ezekiel bread with either vegetable soup, or avocado/tomato/cilantro/olives
• Miso soup, brown rice and steamed vegetables
• Mashed potatoes using coconut milk and butter, with sautéed mushrooms in tamari sauce and a small salad
• Brown rice, sautéed mushrooms in tamari sauce, small salad

Dinner is either:

• Big salad
• Fresh green juice

Simple, right? And delicious! Switching to eating this food has not been that hard. The most difficult thing for me has been what I've had to give up: tea/coffee, alcohol, and sugar.

I do not do a perfect job at avoiding tea/coffee (caffeine), alcohol, and sugar. They are so abundant in our food supply, and a staple of socializing with people. So I try to limit these things as much as possible, but allow them occasionally. Every once in a while I allow myself a cup of tea or coffee, a glass of wine or beer, and a cookie/dessert otherwise I would go crazy!

Fermented Food

Dr. Loren Cordain's book, The Paleo Diet, says that fermented foods were not part of our primal ancestors' diet. But in his new Paleo Diet blog he has mentioned fermented foods and probiotics in a positive light and recommended them in some circumstances.

Specifically, here is a quote from a Q&A on The Paleo Diet Blog explaining why probiotics can be helpful to us today, even though they may not have been a part of our Paleo ancestors' diet:

Q: In your book, you said not to consume fermented foods. However, in the new Paleo Diet blog (which is great, by the way), I've seen probiotics recommended a couple times.
So I'm wondering ... did Paleolithic man consume fermented foods? 

A: Yogurt, leavened bread, alcohol, pickled foods and other fermented foods clearly require technology to produce and consume. However, pre-agricultural humans ate plenty of fruits and vegetables (good sources of soluble fiber), which encourage growth of gram positive gut bacteria. For most people, after years on a low-fiber high-glycemic load diet, probiotics have been demonstrated to have many therapeutic effects, perhaps because they restore the gut flora that likely would have been present had they been consuming large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables throughout their life.

Being that I have eaten many foods over my life that encourage the growth of bad bacteria (for example: sugar, grains, processed food) as well as been exposed to stress, pollution, and taking antibiotics, I decided to look into the positives and negatives of eating fermented foods - to help my gut flora be in balance - while I am trying to follow a Paleo Diet.

First of all, what are fermented foods?

Wikipedia has a nice definition that says:

"Fermentation in food processing is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids using yeasts, bacteria, or a combination thereof, under anaerobic conditions."

And the benefits of it include:

"The primary benefit of fermentation is the conversion of sugars and other carbohydrates into preservative organic acids, e.g. converting juice into wine, grains into beer, carbohydrates into carbon dioxide to leaven bread, and sugars in vegetables. 

Food fermentation has been said to serve five main purposes:^[12]

• Enrichment of the diet through development of a diversity of flavors, aromas, and textures in food substrates

• Preservation of substantial amounts of food through lactic acid, alcohol, acetic acid, and alkaline fermentations

• Biological enrichment of food substrates with protein, essential amino acids, and vitamins

• Elimination of antinutrients

• A decrease in cooking time and fuel requirement"

- Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_foods

Basically, fermented foods have been around for thousands of years in cultures all around the world, as a means of preserving food. For example, here are a few traditional fermented foods from different cultures/countries around the world:

• Korea: kimchi
• Japan: miso
• China: pickled vegetables, kombucha
• Middle East: olives, wine, yogurt
• Rome/Germany: sauerkraut, beer

One of my personal favorite probiotic foods is kombucha. So when I learned (from numerous sources) that 70-80% of your immune system resides in your gut (!!!), and that it can be helped by consuming probiotics, I decided to put this to the test with kombucha.

Here is my story of how I did that.

Since I am a type 1 diabetic, I am at higher risk for developing the flu and it becoming fatal. So the Western medical community recommends I get a flu shot every year to help avoid this sort of thing. But according to one health researcher (and author of the "Great Taste, No Pain" food combining method), Sherry Brescia, whose food principles I have found to be generally sound and whose e-newsletter I receive each week, stated recently:

"despite what the drug companies claim, there are simply NO studies that PROVE flu vaccines significantly decrease numbers of flu cases or mortality (deaths) from the flu. All studies prove that they don't. Flu vaccinations repeatedly come up short in study after study when it comes to having any measurable impact on reducing illness and death from the flu."

I ran this by my doctor and acupuncturist and neither disagreed with what she said. So I decided to not get a flu shot these past 2 years, and instead increase the amount of probiotics (foods and drinks -- but mostly kombucha) I consumed to help give my immune system a fighting chance.

And do you know what happened?

I haven't gotten sick in 2 years!!

Now it helps if you know that every single year before these past couple years I got sick at least 1-2 times every year. So you can imagine how happy I am to not be getting sick or needing to take antibiotics anymore. And all of this is because of one dietary change I made: drinking 2-3 bottles of kombucha per week.

I would make my own homemade kombucha because it is so much cheaper to do this this way (only 50 cents per gallon!) but since I have an autoimmune disease I am more "delicate" and need to drink the store bought stuff. The reason for this is because store bought kombucha is more highly regulated/controlled, with less risk of any bad bacteria growing in the drink (and my immune system not being able to fight it off). In most cases, the acidity of the drink prevents growth of unwanted contaminants. So I would highly recommend to make your own kombucha unless you, too, have an autoimmune disease.

Another benefit I have found to kombucha is that it helps my digestion greatly. For awhile I had to drink straight vinegar (2 Tbsp) before every meal to help me digest my food. This was so disgusting to me and stripped my teeth of enamel. Fortunately, around this time I discovered kombucha, and that drinking a little bit of it before every meal had the same positive effect on my digestion as vinegar! And I think (most) kombucha tastes DELICIOUS. It is like drinking a mild beer in my opinion. My personal favorite type is GT's Multi-green flavor. Not everyone I've talked to likes this particular brand/flavor so I would definitely suggest trying a few different kinds until you find one you like.

So that's been my experience with this "wonder" drink with 2,000+ years of tradition behind it. How has it helped you?