8 Essential Facts and Fallacies
of a Natural Raw Food Diet
by Ellen Livingston

Fact:
A healthy raw diet is simple, exciting, deliciously satisfying, and fun!

Fallacy:
You need cooking, spices, salt, and herbs for food to taste good, and you will miss and crave the old diet.

Raw fruits and vegetables are beautiful, colorful, and naturally flavorful. They are fun to eat, easy to digest, and satiating. Cooked food needs spices to give it flavor, and our taste buds have been altered to expect unnaturally strong stimulation. Once you adjust to a healthy natural diet you will appreciate Nature’s more subtle flavors, and you will love the clean, light way you feel!

Fact:
A low fat raw, plant-based diet is the optimal diet for human beings.

Fallacy:
As long as it’s raw, my diet will be healthy.

Science has shown that humans are biologically designed to be frugivores. We are not by nature carnivores, herbivores, or granivores (grain eating). This is determined by observing anatomy, physiology, empirical evidence, logic, and common sense. Though we can be omnivorous when necessary for survival, our body’s preferred food is raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

It is important to note that not all raw food diets are the same! A healthy raw diet is based upon whole, fresh, ripe, raw, organic plant foods. Some nuts and seeds may be included, but a healthy raw diet is fruit-based, and low in fat.

Fact:
A properly balanced raw vegan diet supplies all essential nutrients needed for our health.

Fallacy:
For insurance, we need supplements and “superfoods.”

When you live a healthful lifestyle with an adequate fruit-based raw plant diet and regular vigorous activity, there is usually no need for supplements. Supplements and some so-called “superfoods” supply nutrients in a concentrated form. Consuming these processed, unnatural substances will invariably cause imbalances in your body. In special circumstances supplementation may be warranted, but it is always best to work toward correcting diet and lifestyle practices.

Fact:
A healthy diet gets no more than 10% of its total calories from fat.

Fallacy:
It’s okay to eat lots of plant fats as long as they’re raw.

While it’s true that raw plant fats are healthy for us to eat, fat is fat no matter what the source, and in excess of the body’s needs, dietary fat of all kinds is a major causative factor in disease. Too much dietary fat reduces our body’s ability to uptake, transport, and deliver oxygen and other nutrients to all of our cells, and reduces the number of healthy red blood cells. Many raw-fooders consume much more fat than is healthy in an attempt to get sufficient calories and a sense of satiation, when what they need to do is increase their fruit consumption.

Fact:
Our basic protein needs (no more than 10% of total calories) are more than amply met on a raw vegan diet of sufficient quantities of fruits and vegetables.

Fallacy:
It’s important to eat lots of nuts and seeds to get enough protein on a raw diet.

It’s a myth, perpetuated by segments of our financially driven commercial food industry, that humans need a lot of protein to be strong and healthy. As with fats, protein intake beyond our basic needs creates emergency conditions in the body which lead to toxicity and disease. All raw plant foods contain usable protein. Cooking damages the protein in foods, and makes most of it unusable and worse, harmful to the body.

Fact:
At least 80% of our calories best come from the simple carbohydrates supplied by whole fresh fruit.

Fallacy:
Fruit sugar should be limited in the diet.

As long as you are eating a low-fat diet, the natural sugars in fruit are able to move easily in and out of the bloodstream and fuel the cells, and there are no problems with high or unstable blood sugar. Too much dietary fat is the true culprit in blood-sugar problems.

Fact:
Sodium is good for you when it comes naturally packaged in whole plant foods.

Fallacy:
Celtic sea salt (and any inorganic salt), strong herbs and spices, and other stimulants are good for you.

Strong substances overstimulate and deliver toxins to the nervous system, irritate the sensitive tissues of the digestive tract, and distrupt delicate nutrient balances in your body. They can be described as “excitotoxins.” In fact, these substances often cause your body to produce extra mucous for protection. Extracted sodium chloride (salt), in any form, is especially caustic. You can get the organic salts and other minerals your body needs (in just the right amounts and combinations!) from eating a variety of fruits and vegetables in sufficient quantity.

Fact:
Eating raw is easy, quick, and clean, though it may take time, study, and practice to learn a healthy raw lifestyle.

Fallacy:
A healthy raw food diet is difficult to achieve, and time consuming to prepare.

Many people mistakenly believe that a raw diet requires lots of juicing, sprouting, and dehydrating. In fact, the healthiest diet comes straight from nature, in its whole, unadulterated form, as in whole fruits picked and eaten right from the tree! Because our society has strayed so far from its natural diet, it may take time and practice to learn (or re-learn!) a more natural way.

To find out more about these facts & fallacies, visit LivingYogaNow.com and join our free e-newsletter. Learn about locally available books, resources, and classes.