Raw Food Diet – What to Consider?

A raw food diet or raw foodism is the latest invention in the field of health and weight loss. As the name suggests, it contains raw, uncooked and unprocessed food. Of course, the types of foods may vary depending upon your lifestyle and for what you have adopted the diet. So, it may include veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts, fish, eggs, dairy products and meat. It may also include sprouts, cheese, yogurt etc, but not homogenized, pasteurized or produced using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, etc. Raw Food Diet has attracted immense fame as well as controversies. So, it is interesting to know about it.

Types of Raw Foodism

Raw foodism falls into three types:

1. Raw Veganism: A raw vegan diet includes raw plant foods heated not beyond 104 to 120 °F.
2. Raw Vegetarianism: Raw vegetarianism excludes foods like fish, meat and poultry, but allows other foods of plant origin like dairy and eggs, along with plant foods.
3. Raw Foodism: Raw foodism includes foods of animal as well as plant origin, which are not heated beyond 115° F.

What Exactly is the Raw Food Diet?

The raw food diet has numerous variations and even you can create your own. However, typically around 75% to 80% of your everyday food should be plant-based and never heated more than 115° F. If you want to gain the optimum benefits from the raw food diet, you should have proper knowledge of ways of preparing the food, like dehydrating, sprouting, juicing, germinating, rehydrating, chopping, cutting and blending. And you should have some special appliances too like a dehydrator.

Principles behind Raw Foodism

As it is obvious, raw food diet is against cooking or any type of processing of food. What are the principles behind this?

Cooking Creates Harmful Compounds: For example, cooking meat creates HCAs (heterocyclic amines) which cause cancer in animals, though whether they cause cancer in humans is not clear yet.

Heat Creates Toxins: Heat involved in cooking creates toxins like AGEs (advanced glycation end products) which when bind to the cells cause diseases like arthritis, renal failure, neuropathy, retinopathy, nephropathy and cardiovascular disease.

Microwaving Reduces Antioxidants: Microwaving has been found to reduce antioxidant content in broccoli and also vitamin B12 in milk, pork and beef.

Cooking Contributes to Global Warming: As cooking needs energy and releases gases contributing to global warming.

Drawbacks of the Raw Food Diet

Raw food diet may not contain enough vitamins B12 and D. It doesn’t also contain sufficient calories that growing children need, especially the raw vegan diet.

Therefore, before adopting the raw food diet, consult with your doctor and learn how you can get full nutrition from the diet.

PureRawFoods.com has full information on raw food diet, its pros and cons, raw food recipes, skincare and other beauty recipes, and much more. Don’t forget to go through this website if you are planning to adopt raw food diet of any kind.