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  and plant based foods?

Enzymes and nutrients

You’ve all probably heard the basic claim: heating food above 118 degrees destroys the natural enzymes in the food. Enzymes are substances that contribute directly to the breakdown of food (so, they help us split fats and break down proteins, among other functions). Our bodies produce both metabolic and digestive enyzmes on their own, but there is some evidence to prove that food-sourced enzymes can also help us digest more efficiently.

Many foods lose natural vitamin and phytonutrient content in the cooking process: water-soluble vitamins (including B vitamins and vitamin C) are especially susceptible to depletion via heating . There are naturally some nutrients that are enhanced by the cooking process, too: lycopene in tomatoes, a cancer-fighting compound, released by cooking, and so is the phytonutrient content in broccoli. For this reason, I recommend that all people consume both raw AND cooked foods. But the truth of the matter is that most of us could significantly increase the nutrient density in our diets by consuming more raw foods than we do.

Alkalinity

Remember your high school chem class, when you learned about the PH scale? Well, our bodies also exist in a delicate balance between acidity and alkalinity. Or kidneys do an excellent job of maintaining that balance for us — they don’t let our blood pH waver substantively. Constant consumption of highly acidic food takes a toll on the kidneys, which need to regulate our pH for us. It’s been proven that highly acid-forming foods—and this includes meat, dairy, cheeses, and refined sugar, as well as nicotine and caffeine—stress the 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).

Our lungs, kidneys, and other organs work to neutralize highly acidic food and excess protein 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. 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 plant based diet—leafy greens, seaweed, vegetables, fruit, and quality grains—are all highly alkalizing. So dig in!

Digestive Health

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 and often with tremendous effort. They can, in excess, exacerbate IBS, Crohn’s disease, and other digestive complaints.

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” within each meal. We DO have to get all of our amino acids, but our bodies help us do it: they assemble, store and release amino acids as necessary. So if we get a well rounded sampling of the necessary amino acids each day, we’re going to be fine. 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 avocados, 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 such carcinogens as benzopyrene . 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. There are certainly oils and fats that withstand cooking nicely, but it’s important to be selective.

A word about 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 that are nourishing and whole, 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