The Plant Based Lifestyle

What is veganism?

Veganism is a lifestyle that avoids the consumption of animal products–be they foods, clothing or accessories.

What are raw foods?

Raw foods are foods that have not been heated above 118 degrees.

Why should I eat raw foods?

Enzymes and nutrients

You’ve all probably heard the basic claim: heating food above 118 degrees destroys the natural enzymes in the food. People who support a raw lifestyle maintain that keeping those enzymes intact makes a dramatic contribution to digestive health.

What are enzymes? They’re substances that contribute directly to the digestion and breakdown of food (so, they help us split fats and break down proteins, among other functions). While it’s true that our bodies produce both metabolic and digestive enyzmes on their own, it’s also true that leaving the natural enzymes in food intact means that our bodies can digest more easily and efficiently. More efficient digestion means more energy for other bodily functions: cell repair, physical and mental activity, and immune function.

Cooking food can also deplete its natural vitamin and phytonutrient content. There are many exceptions: lycopene in tomatoes, a cancer-fighting compound, is actually enhanced by cooking, and so is the phytonutrient content in broccoli (which is convenient for me, since I definitely prefer steamed broccoli to raw!). For this reason, I recommend that all people consume both raw AND cooked foods.

Alkalizing Foods

Remember your high school chem class, when you learned about the PH scale? Well, our bodies also exist in the delicate balance between acidity and alkalinity. High acidity in the body has been linked to fatigue, depression, poor digestion, weight retention, and cellular degeneration. Many advocates of a plant based diet will tell you—and I agree—that it’s at the heart of most chronic health conditions.

It’s been proven that highly acid-forming foods—and this includes meat, dairy, cheeses, and refined sugar, as well as nicotine and caffeine—contribute not only to acid build-up in the body, but to stress on the renals, or kidneys (this stress is sometimes measured as “PRAL”—potential renal acid load). The same foods that are acidic are known as “high-PRAL” foods—meat, dairy, flour (especially white flour), processed sugar, and cheeses. Low-PRAL foods are vegetables, sprouts, low-sugar fruits, legumes, and certain grains (spelt, quinoa, and millet in particular).

There’s more bad news: our lungs, renals, and other organs work hard to keep the body’s acidity low. But when blood becomes overly acidic, the body tries to “neutralize” it by a process called buffering; this means linking the acid to a “base” mineral. These include sodium, potassium, and calcium. There’s now substantial research to prove that high-PRAL foods (which are typically also high-protein foods) contribute directly to calcium loss and over-taxation of the kidneys. Why? Because our body is trying to neutralize blood acid by leaching calcium from bones and into the bloodstream.

The good news is that the foods in a semi-raw, all vegan diet—leafy greens, seaweed, vegetables, fruit, and quality grains—are all highly alkalizing. Greens are just about the most alkalizing foods around. So dig in!

Digestive Health

You’ll hear me talk a lot about digestive health here at Choosing Raw. This is no accident: I suffered through years of near-crippling IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). No medical treatment ever offered to me was efficient . Switching to a semi-raw, all vegan diet was.

Most raw and vegan foods (vegetables, fruits, juices, nuts, seeds, and grains) are highly digestible, passing through our system with minimal effort. Meats, cow’s milk cheeses, poultry, and processed foods, on the other hand, digest slowly (it can take up to 8 hours to digest a piece of meat, compared with the three hours it takes to digest an avocado or an ounce of nuts). When we eat too many difficult to digest foods, we quickly accumulate waste. The buildup of waste and toxins in our systems leads to weight retention, low energy levels, mental fog, headaches, irritability, and, in worst case scenarios, digestive diseases. When we eat lots of quickly digestible foods, we eliminate waste and assimilate nutrients efficiently.

So, why raw? To put it simply, eating a diet that comprises fresh vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains, and legumes can contribute dramatically to vibrant health and well-being. Not to mention the fact that it’s fun, creative, and delicious!

Why Should I Eat Vegan Foods?

Three reasons:

1) Your health

2) The planet

3) Animals

Animal vs. Plant Proteins

Few topics in health and nutrition have been more distorted than protein and our body’s need for it. We’ve all been taught that protein is the key to vigor, health, muscle mass, energy, and satiety. This is not without some truth: we do need protein in our diets, and it can help many of us to feel satisfied. But we needn’t supplement our diet with high amounts, nor do we need to mix and match foods to get “complete proteins.” Our body assembles, stores and releases amino acids as necessary. In fact, about 1/6 of our daily protein use comes from recycling the body’s own tissues*.

The World Health Organization recommends getting 5% of our daily calories from protein. Think about it: for a 2000 calorie diet, this means only 100 calories of protein daily! Most plants supply at least 10% of calories from protein, and the amount is far higher in leafy greens.

In addition, there are dangers from eating too much animal protein (and most Americans, who consumer about 100 grams of protein daily (2), do). High consumption of animal protein has been linked directly to tumor growth (3), bone loss, cholesterol and heart disease, kidney damage, and more. As noted above, animal protein, along with caffeine, refined sugars and starches, and nicotine, has been linked directly to bone loss due to the heavy acid load it places on the body. The more you heat protein, the more acidic it becomes (4). On top of all this, most animal proteins are incredibly difficult to digest. Meat, as mentioned above, sits in the digestive tract for nearly half a day. Cow’s milk dairy, on the other hand, is highly mucous-forming, which means that it coats and slows down the digestive tract.

This is all a great reason to eat vegan!

1) Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Eat To Live

2) Ibid.

3) Brendan Brazier, The Thrive Diet

4) Dr. T Colin Campbell, The China Study

Cooked Fats vs. Raw Fats

People sometimes ask me incredulously, “aren’t you afraid to eat a whole avocado? They’re so fattening.” The answer is definitively “no.” I don’t fear fats, because I know that the fats I’m eating (avocados, nuts, and oils in reasonable amounts) are healthy for me. They’re the “good fats” we hear so much about: mono-unsaturated fats (like avocados), Omega-3 fatty acids (like flax and hemp), and polyunsaturated fats (like walnuts). The body digests these fats efficiently and seamlessly, and they will not contribute to weight gain.

Cooked fats, on the other hand, are less beneficial. Your body doesn’t recognize them, and so it doesn’t digest them as efficiently as it does avocadoes, cold-pressed oils, nuts, or coconuts. There have been some widely publicized studies lately on the effects of heat on oils. You might have heard that heating oil at high temperatures releases carcinogens, including acrolein, nitrosamines, hydrocarbons, and benzopyrene (one of the worst cancer-causing agents known). This is why some oils now list their “safe heating” temperature on the bottle. When we eat raw fats and oils, we avoid these fats, as well as trans fats and saturated fats.

High-raw vs. 100% raw

Some raw foodists pride themselves on being 100% raw. I personally believe that some foods are more digestible in their cooked form (this includes important staples of the vegan diet, like grains and legumes) and that certain vegetables should be eaten both raw and cooked. I believe that emphasis on one’s raw “percentage” is a silly, competitive way of looking at the joy of plant based dining. And I also believe that there are many cooked foods (steamed and roasted vegetables, for example, or whole grains) that are more optimally digestible than some of the very complex, fatty, and poorly combined raw dishes out there. I emphasize a diet that features a great many raw foods–mostly raw foods, if you’re comfortable with that–but wherein the emphasis is primarily on eating vegan foods in easy to digest combinations, and on incorporating as many uncooked foods as you comfortably can.

Learning More

Basic references on vegan and raw diets:

Dr. Neal Barnard, Food for Life
Brendan Brazier, The Thrive Diet
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, The China Study
Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Eat to Live
John Robbins, Diet for a New America
Dr. Norman Walker, Colon Health

Cookbooks and lifestyle guides:

I can’t recommend Ani Phyo’s cookbook highly enough. It’s both rich and delicious and simple: minimal prep required. It’s also fun to look at, colorful, and full of fascinating personal testimony.

Jennifer Cornbleet’s Raw Food Made Easy for One or Two People is a great investment if you (like me) are a single guy or gal or just cooking for two. It’s also among the most accessible and simple raw foods cookbooks out there.

Renee Loux Underloffer’s Living Cuisine is beautiful, detailed, and very handy for more elaborate meals. Renee is high-raw, so the book includes some gently cooked soups and blanched vegetable dishes. It’s a lovely resource.

Kristen Suzanne is, quite simply, awesome. Her website is an invaluable source of easy and accessible information on going raw. Her blog is compassionate, warm, and fun, with plenty of girly touches, such as advice on eco-friendly beauty products and makeup. Most of all, her very affordable e-books are sure to get you excited about raw foods. (My personal faves are Kristen Suzanne’s Easy Raw Soups, Kristen Suzanne’s Easy Raw Salads, and Kristen Suzanne’s Easy Raw Holidays.)