4 Big Problems with the Raw Food Diet

[John_Doesnt]

Fad diets are everywhere and have been around for a long time. We see a relatively new fad with the raw food diet sweeping across Western society. But it's unscientific and doesn't have any actual health benefits when it is scrutinized by a peer-reviewed study. Sure you can pull up a claim from a .com site or WebMD about the "benefits of raw food", but it would never stand up in a scientific study. I know that many will say "it's not hurting anybody" and "why are you being a cynic?", but spreading ignorance is always hurtful and this is my argument against it. Here are 4 big problems with the raw food diet.

1. Definition of “Raw”

Typically, when people say “raw” they define it as being “uncooked”, but the process of cooking is actually defined as preparing food so that it is better to eat in some way. Your ancestors discovered cooking when they chopped up slices of meat into bite size pieces instead of biting through the fur of an animal. So simply chopping your veggies would be “cooking” them.

Okay, so what if you define raw as something that hasn’t been heated. But again that could be defined in a number of ways because if you take food out of the fridge it becomes heated to room temperature. If you touch the food you are heating it with your own body heat. Lastly, all cold food is eventually heated when it is digested in your body.

This is when raw food diet people just say “screw it” and make up their own definitions of raw. But making up your own definition isn’t science.

2. Cooking food has always been good for humans

Ever wondered why you naturally enjoy the taste of hot food? Because your ancestors who heated their food lived longer than the ones who didn’t. Heating food makes it easier to digest, makes it safer and in many cases makes the food more nutritious. Properly cooking grains and legumes not only improves their digestibility, but it also reduces the number of anti-nutrients they contain. Anti-nutrients are compounds that inhibit the body's ability to absorb nutrients in plant foods. Humans discovered fire and cooked their food because it’s the smart way to go.

3. You’ve never eaten “nature food” in your life

Unless you lived in a third world country all the food you’ve eaten is the result of artificial selection and breeding. Everything from tomatoes to bananas to nuts are completely different from the version that came straight from nature. Take a look at this poisonous and bitter banana from nature:

Nothing like the healthy yellow banana you’re used to eating. There is very little nutrition and eating it “raw” would likely make you sick. Or what about a tasty watermelon? Completely artificial compared to the one from nature. This is a painting of a watermelon from the 1600’s:

So many seeds, much less sugar and just plain ugly compared to the watermelon of today.

4. No, your ancestors did not live on your diet

Many raw food diet people like to claim their ancient ancestors would have eaten raw potatoes and foods like they do now. But a huge problem is that most of those foods didn’t exist for people in Europe and Asia until the 17th century when the Spanish brought them over. In fact the potato was illegal in France and considered “evil” for many years because it “wasn’t mentioned in the bible”. Your European ancestors didn’t have artichokes, avocados, beans (kidney and lima), black walnuts, blueberries, cacao (cocoa/chocolate), cashews, cassava, chestnuts, corn (maize), crab apples, cranberries, gourds, hickory nuts, onions, papayas, peanuts, pecans, peppers (bell peppers, chili peppers), pineapples, plums, potatoes, pumpkins, raspberries, squash, strawberries, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, tobacco, tomatoes, turkey, vanilla, wild cherries, wild rice. And many foods had to be artificially evolved from weeds before they even existed like cauliflower.

Conclusion

The raw food diet isn’t closer to nature; in fact you couldn’t be farther from nature because the actual raw food from nature wants to kill you. Cooking our foods made humans the superior race and allowed us to live much longer than our ancestors who died of old age at 25.

[SaltyBooze]

1. Definition of “Raw”: ill mark that up as a sin. you're just fidgting with the concept of the word "raw" and not making any sense while doing so. raw is: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raw . trying to beat around the bush with the concept is just proving your arguments are going to be flawed. but lets try to keep an open mind.
2. Cooking food has always been good for humans.
ill take that as a half lie. processed food is cooked food, and its bad for you. hell, that means that food can be good for you if cooked PROPERLY.
3. You’ve never eaten “nature food” in your life.
by your standards, yep. never. but theyre still food that comes from nature. we did do selective breeding to enhance things we found the best in our food, but guess what? that actually helped more than it ruined us. it provided a clean source of nutrients that in most cases is not too damaging.
4. No, your ancestors did not live on your diet.
eh. im a mix-breed from several ethinic groups that come from several diferent backgrounds, but still eat ethinic food from my home country. i dont know. by your way of thinking i damaged by everything, or im immune to all shit.
Conclusion:
"Cooking our foods made humans the superior race and allowed us to live much longer than our ancestors who died of old age at 25". that was actually medical development. As in... knowing what bacteria is and how to counter-act it... or perfoming surgeries on really stupid things that would get us killed because we couldnt treat it otherwise. or heck, just by the fact we dont shun people because they contracted dermatitis and we thought it was leprosy...
i do cook my steaks at around 85ºC for about 5 min... and i do so to prevent parasites. if all beef was 100% clear of parasites, we wouldn't need to cook it. i mean: it TASTES better, but it actually loses nutrients when cooked. protein gets destroyed, juices get spilled, etc. cooking is mostly a safety measure (or to make unedible items edible, like in grinding or boiling seeds), and whenever there's no need for such things, there's no damage in eating it raw. thats why we eat raw bananas. that we basically breed selected. because they were horrible. and we really needed that potassium.

[John_Doesnt]

A sin? Do you mean a sign or do you actually mean the bible crap about sin?

[Kurαȷ]

Humans started cooking food because it tasted better and lasted longer since heat tends to remove moisture, that is all there is to it.

The fact that cooking some foods makes them more palatable and reduces their antinutrient content is the reflection of the fact that we simply aren't supposed to eat those foods because our digestive system is not equipped for it. (vegetables, grains, legumes)

Not to mention that this isn't even true, there is always a better alternative to cooking, which does, in fact, reduce a lot of nutritional benefits, in spite of your claims.

Also, more digestible doesn't mean better.
Carbohydrates are the easiest macronutrient to digest, and also the only non-essential macronutrient that provides us with no nutritional benefits, in fact their easy digestibility is what makes them BAD for you.

[John_Doesnt]

So why does it taste better? We didn't start out enjoying hot food, we evolved to enjoy it. Ask yourself why. Evolution is about survival and hot food aided our survival.

[John_Doesnt]

Also, saying carbohydrates provide no nutritional value is just wrong. That makes 0 sense. Your body's main source of fuel is carbohydrates. And just because you don't need something to stay alive doesn't mean it isn't healthy. I don't need both kidneys to live, but I wouldn't consider cutting one out.

[Kurαȷ]

Why does cooked food taste better? I don't know.
Why do some highly toxic berries and mushrooms taste good?

"Your body's main source of fuel is carbohydrates."
You clearly have as much knowledge on nutrition as those WebDMers.

[lilaqua]

Such a bad idea. I recommend watching this video by Unnatural Vegan on this topic. As humans we evolved to cook food since it released many more nutrients than the raw form. You have to consume so much food to equate the calories of cooked food. It's also super environmentally unfriendly (even if you're vegan) since you have to keep everything in the fridge, buy a lot more food, and have significantly more wastage. Also fucks up your metabolism apparently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u17DKuoM6yM

[John_Doesnt]

I appreciate criticism, but not from vegans. There's obviously going to be bias. And I definitely don't take advice from YouTube videos over scientists.

[Stephen5577]

But much of what scientists say is bullshit, just like the bullshit you are posting.

[lilaqua]

Ugh, what? i'm not criticising you, I'm agreeing with you. Unnatural Vegan is vegan yes, but she's incredibly well researched and is super anti-raw foodist, basically for the exact same reasons you are. Yes she's not a scientist but every point she makes she uses concrete research and evidence.

[Intuitiongirl]

Cooking takes away all the vitamins, you deffinitelly can't cook most of fruit and only food that needs to go through cooking or baking so that potential parasites are killed, is meat, and humans don't need meat. I am vegetarian for 6 years now and all that crap that we've been fed by media is simply very narrowed and majority of people don't know about ut as much as they think. The truth is, thete is a vug bussiness and serious money in meat industry so it's not in interest of the system to maje people aware what kind of bad choices they do with what kind of food they comply with.

Also this text show that its author is largely undereducated on topic of raw food.
For example, heating itself, is not considered cooking or baking. For to fall under category of raw, the item shall not go through higher temperature of 60 Celsius, but it for sure can be heated. Also, dried food is considered raw. Caramelised food is considered raw. Pickled food is considered raw and so on.

I would recommend books "Green for health" and "12 steps to raw diet" both by Viktoria Bouschenko, and a "Guide for vegetarians" by three german authors, all of which are doctors of medicine, who have their own "Natur-klinik" where they heal people from everything solely by changing their diet for three months by cutting off meat completely and feeding them mostly with fruits.

The only problems of raw food is that its expensive for majority of people, and that it's currently NOT MAINSTREAM.

[Intuitiongirl]

Also the statement of "artificial selection" and the claim that "natural fruits and vegetables are bad *take a look at this poisonous banana*" is also extremely undereducated. The author of this myTake obviously does not know there are many different species under same gender in the system of classification of plants, and that not all of them are eatable.

[Peanut127]

my take is eating CLEAN. yes, im a good 90% vegan. why? bc animal protein causes inflammation. if your sick and in pain a lot, red meat/pork could be a huge contribute to it.

agree that some veggies are better once cooked but then there's things with more protein if ate raw/uncooked.

wanna diet? just stop with the fast food, processed boxed meals, etc.

just my two cents :)

[Pamina]

Completely agree on every single point. I would also add that cooking food is basically what kicked off human civilization. By cooking food they could eat way more efficiently and didn't need to spend so much time on eating anymore and therefore could start focusing on other things.

[SirRexington]

Interesting. My mom has been obsessed with it lately; I'm gonna show her this.

[Stephen5577]

Load of horse shit. Carry on eating your meat and dairy. You'll be fine.

[Anonymous]

Your problem #4 can be both true and false, depending on where the reader is from.

[levantine99]

ignorant nonsense corpse munchers use to rationalise their lifestyle. humans are frugivores. and raw diet heals most diseases.

[John_Doesnt]

What? Are you joking about "heals most diseases"?

[Stephen5577]

Ignore John. He is quite famous for spewing ignorant bullshit.

[captainw0ww]

#4 can be true and false

[John_Doesnt]

I understand your opinion: your boyfriend turned gay.

[your_ego]

John Rose (YouTube). Educate yourself.

[John_Doesnt]

Again with the YouTube videos. Find me a peer-reviewed article and I will gladly read.

[your_ego]

You're missing out my friend.

[COCOCHANEL]

very true

[lazermazer]

Informative take.

[Anonymous]

i prefer vegetables to eat raw but not meat

[John_Doesnt]

You should try sashimi, it's raw thinly sliced fish. A Japanese delicacy.
www.manusmenu.com/.../...i-with-Ponzu-3-1-of-1.jpg

[Revolver_]

These are 4 big problems with the raw food diet

[Tohhru]

Nice, that watermelon ugly tho 😂

[LegateLanius]

Jawsome

[Kandy-Kane]

Interesting take

[CT_CD]

Interesting myTake

[Anonymous]

Yeah