I stayed with a friend once who is a raw-foodist, he made delicious salads, with lots of nuts and fruits and vegetables. When I came home and tried to reproduce his salad, I failed hopelessly. As far as satisfaction goes I could live of it. It’s just much more discipline.
I would try it pure just for a few weeks.
Maybe…
Look at any toxin and theres huge variance between individuals ability to break down X. Lets say some raw vegetable prevents Iodine uptake to your thyroid, some humans will stomach that and they will absord Iodine…
most won’t. Most will sicken or grow up retarded. You eat more of the vegetable your liver produces more enzymes for NEXT time, but our liver may never get “good” at it, just ‘better’
depends on the raw vegetable, depends on the person. Its not safe enough to *depend on, as all the time you can’t get needed iodine. Actually building that resistance is dangerous and prob won’t really work well.
I’m fairly educated about plant toxins because it is an area of evolutionary biology which intensely interests me as much of plant evolution does, but the combination of plant evolution, poison and human biology screams for my attention. I’ve read books on this subject.
I wouldn’t trust myself to avoid these diverse toxins with a raw food diet, they are everywhere* The more you educate yourself on vegetables toxic defences, the more ubiquitous they seem.
As to carrots or watermelon seeds, i’d say they were safe, but I never looked it up to know for certain. Carrots belong to a family of plants which have potent toxins but our modern carrot has a lot of selective breeding to make edible.
They are probably like potatoes, thanks to the efforts of farmers we have nonpoison potatoes, but wild ones are highly toxic. I’d stay clear from anything carroty or parsnippy in the wild.
I ate a lot of raw food one summer for a little while. After a couple weeks I started to feel pretty bad.
I’m a fan of the TCM orientation towards diet, where the health of the body is assessed with respect to balance. So TCM doesn’t recommend the same things to all people. Some people can benefit from more “cooling” foods and some people can benefit from more “warming” foods. Whether food is cooked or raw contributes to whether it is warming or cooling.
The idea that all people can benefit from the same dietary recommendations is misguided I think. We’re all told that we need to eat less salt, less fat, etc., but some unfortunate people who take those recommendations to heart end up doing exactly the opposite of what their bodies need.
Like raw brassica, say broccoli, delicious right? I might even prefer raw broccoli, but it has glucosinolate, a potent toxin. Would it be safe or healthy to eat 1 big bowl a day? No…
my point is to get as many servings of fruits/veggies a day as humans need, its too much toxin to really handle safely.
Like how when attempting to combat malnutrition people brought food to this group of natives and they all got obese and many became diabetic fast. Off regular HEALTHY amounts of food. Apparently they had “thrifty genotypes” just a variance in metabolism due to historically low food conditions.
but there still is a one size fits all diet: EAT THE WAY OUR ANCESTORS DID, many diseases are because of a mismatch between biology/environment.
Eat like a hunter gatherer.
Thyroid diseases have increased since low salt fads, as Iodine added in table salt is a common dietary source, a primary one.
I’m not sure about that. Maybe. But modern commerce allows people to eat foods that might be good for them and might not have been available locally in earlier eras. I bet some people who ate a lot of whatever was available locally felt the worse for it.
Its true as hunter gatherers tend to avoid most chronic diseases associated with diet, also we’re adapted to eat like they eat. You under estimate their diets too, researchers estimate they might have drank way way more milk.
If hunter gatherers had less fruit then you can survive, thrive on less fruit. But they had a diversity of food, many anyway.
hunter gatherers had more starvation, but the survivors had robust skeletons that degraded as they picked up agriculture, you can watch as the peoples health deteriorates as they pick up agriculture. Things like vitamin C deficiencies are more common.
Today its excess nutrition which is the issue so eating more like a well fed hunter gatherer makes perfect sense, you should exercise like one too, minus a lot of their risks. The closer you get to a hunter gatherer’s lifestyle the healthier you’ll be, they died of risks we can avoid while simulating some healthy aspects of their lifestyle. They were, are, very very healthy.
Any reason?
What exactly is a hunter-gatherer’s diet?
Raw food diet is a failure. We need just more than raw. I tried and did not work. We are simply not anymore at those good times(!) or hunter and gatherers.
they say that 95 per cent of our existence we were eating raw… But the problem is that actually the last part of it is the most important. It is just conservatism to want to return back traditions, but good to know and discuss about it.
The best way would be to eat whatever you crave for, but without forgetting your need to “move”. I live like that and am very healthy with no fat, even if I eat a lot of cooked meat and fatty things. 
What my parents survived eating is what I need. If there is a new kind of food and you try and like, it is just pure trial and error method whether it works or not. Evolution principles…
Please look at the photos of those with raw food diet, you will see how starving they look like… They torture themselves, it is unhealthy to be an idealist.
Animals eat Raw food. If you thin you’re an animal-eat it. on the other hand, biologically human is an animal. So we have animal’s body and human’s mind…So will our souls become an animals’ souls if we eat raw food? I don’t think so, because animals don’t have soul! w00t
Did ou make an account just to say this? This is a Natural Sciences forum. Please leave comments about “souls” (Whatever those are.) out of here.
I was watching some show on the Science channel not long ago that theorized that when humans started to cook meat and vegtables our brains were allowed to grow bigger, due to a larger amounts of available energy. Anyone know how accurate that is?
EVOLUTION DOES NOT HAPPEN WITHIN A SINGLE GENERATION
Ooo, ok, there we go… Medication is the reason many, many humans now can live so long. Most who live HEALTHILY (without 14 different heart pills etc) to 80 or so eat a diet that consists of home cooked foods, usually with balanced portions of plant and animal-source foods. And there is usually exercise involved as well! If you choose a raw diet, you will need to be extremely careful on checking nutrient levels and should talk to a licensed dietitian for guidelines based on your lifestyle. Toxins, like most other things we eat, tend to get destroyed by stomach acid. The apple seed thing is true; eating apples seeds can kill you in large quantities, but watermelons and various berries are fine. Berries want to be eaten as it helps the seeds germinate. Don’t get advice for something this important on the net from a message board! Talk to someone who has invested in a number of years of school on the subject.
Most people mean well, but there are so many ideas on what to do backed by sketchy studies (control group missing? participants numbered at less than 100? never duplicated beyond the one testing?) that you can’t really trust them as 100% truth. Be very careful, you could end up hospitalized if you do something radical without double-checking.
I don’t eat a raw food diet but I do eat natural foods (nothing processed, as I have a wheat/gluten allergy) and people tell me that I must be SO healthy for it - I do feel I am missing out on the enjoyment that wheat-based foods bring, so I can only imagine how strict that those on a raw food diet are on themselves… 
Having a diet consisting of only fish, meat, eggs, shelled nuts, rice, potatoes, fruit and vegetables… is boring as hell, but that’s how it’s gotta be for health reasons, so why a person would restrict themselves to just raw foods out of choice is odd unless… unless perhaps they have too many allergies so as to have such a restrictive diet 
Mags, if you shrugged as much in real life as you do on ILP, your goddamn arms would fall off.
Ok, I have looked into “B17” or Amygdalin and Laetrile and I’m very confused on the conclusions everyone comes to. For starters, the cyanide that is in “B17”. One side states that when one digests this substance it can cause cyanide poisoning. The other says the opposite. An interview on the site that you posted said that the cyanide part of the molecular structure of Amygdalin only breaks off when it comes into contact with a specific enzyme. That enzyme, he says, is located primarily in cancer cells. When Amygdalin comes in contact with the cancer cells, it releases the cyanide and attacks the cancer cells. This is what that guy claims. He also uses the example of Vitamin B12 which also contains cyanide.
The truth is hard as hell to find and I’m wondering if someone could explain this to me.
My question is how can Amygdalin release cyanide into the body and how doesn’t B12 do the same.
Another thing. Does anyone know the medical history of the Hunza People. I’ve seen a lot of things saying that they live past the 100s on average and only until recently have they seen cancer in their society. I’ve tried to find information on them but there isn’t a whole lot I could find.
er…
Depending on the country which you reside, you would pose youself to health risk from parasites, good luck though.