BASIC RAW FOOD FAQ
1. Why eat raw food?
2. What do raw foodists eat?
3. Why don’t raw foodists eat grains, meat, and dairy foods?
4. Where do raw fooders get their protein, calcium, etc.?
5. How does eating cooked food contribute to disease?
6. What are the other healthful habits one must practice to acquire and maintain perfect health?
7. What typically motivates people to go raw?
8. What’s the hardest part about going raw?
9. What’s the best way to get started transitioning to a raw food diet?
10. Is perfect health possible?
11. Why eat raw food?
For millions of years, humans had only our senses to rely on in selecting food. We were guided to eat fruit by our ability to see colors against a contrast of green, smell enticing fragrances and taste sweetness. During those millions of years, our bodies adapted to our environment and became entirely dependent on certain conditions for optimal health. The closer we can get to those ideals in our modern lives, the higher the level of health we will enjoy.
Humans have been cooking food for thousands of years. Nevertheless, our biological and physiological requirements were in place long before the practice of cooking food began. Evidence that we are flouting our biological heritage by cooking our food is plain to see. No other animal on Earth cooks its food, and no other animal besides humans (and the animals we feed) experiences disease on the scale that we do.
Heat changes the molecular structure of foods, rendering nutrients mostly unusable. Cooked and otherwise denatured or processed food is less digestible than raw food. Anything that is consumed that cannot be digested or stored must be eliminated as waste. Eating cooked food produces so much waste in the body that our eliminative organs cannot keep up, and waste accumulates. It is this accumulation that leads to an overall toxemic state in the body and results
in disease. Biologically-appropriate, raw food is almost entirely usable by the body, and provides all the nutrients that the body requires, as it does for all the other species of animals on the planet.
What do raw foodists eat?
For our purposes here at RawSchool. com, the term “raw foodist” refers to someone who eats a diet primarily or exclusively comprised of biologically appropriate foods. (Please see the next question for a definition of “biologically appropriate”).
Raw foodists eat fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. The ideal percentages seem to be 75-85% fruit, 10-20% green leafy vegetables, and 5% nuts and seeds. Most people who change to a raw food diet initially go through a period of eating very complicated combinations of foods as a way of replicating their favorite cooked foods. This is a healthy, painless way to transition. There are lots of ‘uncook’ books on the market now, with recipes for everything from raw lasagna to cookies and pies. These kinds of dishes can be very helpful in the transition process. At first, it is common to eat large quantities of food and to eat more fatty and dense foods like nuts and dried fruit, as these give us the “full” and “satisfied” feeling that we’re used to getting from cooked food. This changes over time. Eating cooked food for an entire lifetime causes our digestive systems to build up protective barriers to prevent too much absorption of the harmful, denatured substances in cooked food. A diet of raw, biologically appropriate foods allows the body to slowly and naturally shed that protection, thereby increasing its ability to absorb and assimilate nutrients.
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