More Raw Truth About Raw Vegan Diets

[Ian David]

Raw fooders like to point to other primates as evidence that humans should eat a raw plant food diet.
For example, Steve Pavlina :

“There’s very compelling biological evidence that a high fruit diet is optimal for human beings. I can’t share the volumes of info I’ve read about this, but one of the more convincing points is that the nearest animal species to human beings, including gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos all naturally favor a high fruit diet, meaning that when fresh fruit is readily available, they’ll get the vast majority of their calories from fruit. How they get the rest of their calories varies (nuts, seeds, insects, or even other animals), but a clear preference for a high fruit diet is something they all have in common.”


Like other raw fooders, Pavlina here confused quantity consumed with preference. The fact that chimps eat more fruit than any other type of food does not indicate that they prefer fruit to all other types of food, any more than the fact that Chinese eat mostly rice means that they prefer rice to all other foods. In fact, chimps prefer to eat termites over fruit, and always start their foraging looking for insects, only moving on to fruits after they have exhausted their insect supplies. The preference for animal matter occurs in other apes; see "Omnivorous Primate Diets and Human Overconsumption of Meat" by William J Hamilton in Food and Evolution edited by Harris and Ross.

<snip>

Pavlina's experience confirms previous research showing how much difficulty humans have getting adequate energy from raw vegetal foods. For example, Koebnick et al found BMI below 18.5 in 14.7% of males and 25.0% of females eating raw food diets. Among these raw fooders, the more raw food they ate, and the longer they had been eating “raw,” the lower their body mass. Beyond body mass, Koebnick et al also found general malnutrition among the raw fooders resulting in young women losing their menstrual cycles:

More:
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2011/02/more-raw-truth-about-raw-vegan-diets.html?utm_campaign=Skeptic&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_source=SNS.analytics

Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/SkepticViews/status/36290896395767808

[pipoman]

1. I've always found it interesting when the militant vegan

community cite the preferences of other species as proof of the right diet for humans while disregarding the preferences of actual humans.

[cleanhippie]

11. EXCELLENT point.

:applause:

[trotsky]

2. There is pretty clear evidence to indicate...

that we would not have been able to evolve our big brains if we hadn't started eating cooked food, which makes far more nutrition and energy available to us.

[phylny]

3. In addition,

where would I find fruit in the winter where I live? There are no fresh fruits here in February.

[Odin2005]

4. Raw-foodism is dangerous. humans are ADAPTED to eat cooked food.

For example, humans are much more resistant to the carcinogens in grilled food than chimps are, and out guts are much shorter than those of chimps.

[Codeine]

5. Raw fooders are idiots, be they vegans or omnivores.

I'm a vegan, and I cook my food so as to make it digestible and enhance the bioavailability of the nutrients.

Besides, raw basmati rice hurts my teefs!

[Confusious]

8. mm tofu

mmmm basmati rice.

Mmmm curry.

mmmm?

[Warpy]

6. Raw food diets are great to try if you've got a lot of weight to lose

because I've never met anyone who attempted it who didn't lose a great deal of weight. The problem is that most of them didn't have it to lose and ended up in the hospital.

I've also seen a lot of fudging among non vegans, substituting a day or two in a sous vide bath for an hour or two in an oven to denature protein and achieve nearly the same results, nutritionally speaking. The $500+ they shell out for a sous vide setup just adds glamor to the whole thing.

It's basically a gimmick diet, one that sounds great on paper but doesn't do really well in practice. Fortunately, most people crack and start to eat sensibly before they destroy their health completely.

[Confusious]

9. I like a good salad most of the time

Then I crack and get chicken curry and beefy tacos.

[HuckleB]

7. K & R.

Thanks for sharing.

[LeftishBrit]

10. Raw food only? Wow.

This is one recommendation I was unaware of!

'Other primates' - then should we also not wear clothes or use language?

'We'll sit in the trees and eat bananas all day,
Just like an apeman!' (The Kinks)