Darius:
>The remark in question was that 100% raw diets are not for everyone and
>that everyone should eat whatever gives him optimal health. Well, in my
>view, optimal health is very difficult to determine (that's short-term
>health; it becomes nearly *impossible* to anticipate the effects of a
>current diet on one's health on a long-term basis). A diet that may seem to
>work now, could cause problems to the person's health in the future.
This is a valid point and one that should be considered when evaluating an
all-raw regime as well. Unfortunately, there is almost zero academic
research regarding the long-term effects of these types of fringe diets,
making anecdotal evidence all the more precious.
>While I agree that no one should view 100% raw as a dogma of some sort, I
>don't find it good advice not to look at other people's experiences and
>strictly do your own. Simply because this may not produce the desired
>results in the long run.
IMO it appears you are mis-reading Mr. Billings. He is precisely requesting
that people open their eyes to the anecdotal information which is revealed
on these mailing lists and elsewhere; that they take heed of what others
have encountered and not fall victim to dogma. It is very hard to validate
the claims of 100% rawists (whether as to their true diet or their health).
On the other hand, when a long-time rawist reports trouble it is a bit more
believable.
Going 100% is probably not possible without a little "zeal" to get one over
the hump, but that shouldn't mean that someone becomes blinded to their own
(or other's experience) in the process.
>Furthermore, I'm still not sure why there would be a person for whom a
>100% raw diet (a well-balanced one, that is) would not work.
There are at least four important (and overlapping) reasons:
1] Our ignorance: The modern form of our species evolved in turns, and in
concert with global ice ages. Some of our progenitors may have primarily
depended on animal foods during the course of winters, droughts, etc. The
idea that fire was not used to cook (and thus make less than ideal
foodstuffs edible) during these periods is very hard to prove. The dates
and extent of our ancestors' cooking behavior is not at all clear from the
fossil record. Neither is the rate of genetic adaptation to such novel
cooked foods clear. Can it be done in 10,000 years, 100,000 years,
1,000,000 years? Until both of those issues are proven (whether they end up
supporting an all-raw diet or not) declarations about how a 100% raw diet
should work for everyone are way overboard and based on wishful thinking.
2] Our doemstication of foods: The foods we are eating raw today are quite
a bit different than the wild foods we cut our genetic teeth on, so to
speak. While this may not argue _for_ a less than all-raw diet, it is an
argument for why an all-raw diet may not work for everyone.
3] Our domestication of ourselves: Natural selection of humans has given
way to a grand experiment in changing environments. Disregarding everything
but food (part of the changed environment) for the moment, we are still
left with dozens to hundreds of generations subsisiting on agricultural
foods (most dramatically: grains, dairy), nearly all of which are processed
in some way. We seem to be approaching a second generation of junk food
cultures. These radical departures in the human diet may well act as
"bottle-necks" in which those who survive and reproduce do so with
significantly different genetics. Perhaps they "require" some cooked food
input for optimal development. Who knows? Nobody, really. And certainly not
the authors of self-published "raw foods will save humanity" books.
4] Our denatured childhoods: Whatever our DNA-directed metabolisms did
early in our lives to succeed (to varying degrees) on the grains, cooked
dairy, and other denatured foods, it worked to a degree or we would not be
typing posts about it. To what extent it is possible or even beneficial to
undo such a metabolism is an absolutely _open_ question--except, of course,
to the fanatics. Surely most people would benefit from a simpler diet than
SAD and many (but by no means all) experience a rejuvination on an all-raw
or highly raw diet for a time, but jumping to the conclusion that 100% raw
must be best for everyone is rash, to say the least.
There are my further musings which I posted months ago as "cooked veggie
hypothesis" or something like that--should be in the archives. Nothing
definitive at all, but it does question the utility and possible
superiority of steamed veggies and greens over raw ones.
>What are
>the basis of the statement "100% raw is not for everyone?" Is it
>implying people whose health has degenerated to the extent where a raw
>diet might actually cause more harm than good? Surely, a reasonably
>healthy human being cannot not be able to handle and live on only he
>foods that he's been genetically designed to eat (let's assume that the
>genetics part is true for a moment).
The term degeneration is bantied about as some sort of excuse for not
succeeding all-raw and/or eugenics. Surely the human DNA is "struggling"
and failing to keep up with the changing environment (more and more
denatured food). To my mind it is clear that junk food is not useful to
anyone, grains probably not useful to most folks, dairy (even raw) probably
not useful to many folks. Beyond that? I'm not sure. The paleo-dieters get
similar results to rawists (though they seem in general stronger) with
conservative cooking techniques and plenty of what we would consider
"exceptions". Is this simply due to their avoidance if grains and dairy?
Don Wiss asked me the reverse of this recently: How much of rawists'
improvement is due to the raw food, and how much to avoiding all the
chemical shit, and how much to being low in grains (and assuming sprouting
gets rid of most of the toxic part? I don't have much of an answer to that
at this point, and doubt that anyone does given the absence of real
studies. One way I can imagine proving to one's self that a 100% raw diet
is better for one's self than, say, a 90% raw diet is to go all-raw for a
time and then back off to 90%. Going 90% for a time and then upping it to
100% (as many many people effectively do with constant exceptions) might
work but it seems that it would muddy the water. Simply the fact that most
people who want to eat 100% raw, are unable to do so should speak to the
idea that all-raw isn't for everyone. That is, unless you are going to
blame and/or belittle an aspiring rawist because they "fail" at sticking to
an all-raw diet which is Perfect, but the dieters are not.
How about a thought experiment: let's pluck several thousand newborn
infants from suburban American cribs and let them be raised by A] a
pre-fire ancestor, and B] late paleo-lithic (presumable a post-fire
ancestor), and a pre-industrial agrarian culture. How will the different
groups of infants do? I don't know, but doesn't it seem like wishful
thinking that the A group is flawlessly healthy and B and C not so? Surely
there will be individual variation!
Or take the reverse: let's pluck Stone Age pre-fire infants form prehistory
and let them be raised by A] vegan rawists, and B] instinctos, and C]
instinctos with severely limited fruit, and D] macrobiotics, E] SAD ---or
whatever groups you want. What would happen?
There has probably been _some_ sort of genetic change since our pre-fire
ancestors. This change is not clearly "degeneration". Our species was never
Perfect in some distant past, but always reproducing and changing in
concert with a changing environment. Anything, plant or animal succeeds in
Nature if it is "Good Enough" not Perfect. Compromise and double-edged
swords are probably endemic; perfection an unattainable ideal. The
environmental changes (the result of "cultural selection") have clearly
outpaced our genetic ability to deal with the resultant denatured food. But
jumping to the conclusion that everyone would be better off 100% raw
regardless of personal and cultural history and the unknown genetic
selection pre-history and agriculture is jumping a bit far. I have jumped
there myself--but it appears false-to-facts and experience.
>Has a not-all-raw diet become somewhat of a dogma to you perhaps, Mr.
>Billings?
If Person A argued that everything is either black or white, and Person B
said almost everything is actually somewhere between black and white
(gray), and further Person B was supported with the vast majority of
evidence available (well over 90% of the anecdotal evidence speaks to the
failure of all-raw diets), how could you call Person B dogmatic in reverse.
If Tom (or I or others) seem on a bit of a crusade ourselves sometime,
please remember it is a crusade against ignorance and mis-information and
black/white. Our central message is "it is not black and white" or more
specifically "your mileage may vary, so don't get boondagled into ruining
your health". That can't really be considered _dogma_ can it? The zealots
seem to deify themsleves and any of the other less-than-10% who can
supoosedly stick to an all-raw diet for a time while ignoring or belittling
the other 90+%. For Tom to point out some reality to over-idealistic folks
is hardly dogmatic IMO.
>Or if you're speaking purely from experience (which is
>probably the case) then why do people fail on all-raw diets (again,
>*well-balanced* raw diets)
This is for the zealots who claim 100% raw is best for everyone to explain,
not for people, like Tom, who respects 100% raw folks _and_ 80%ers _and_
10%ers. Face it, perhaps the vast majority of people fail on all-raw diets
because they aren't the proper diet for those persons. That is the simplest
explanation. Surely there is some trouble in giving up "bad" foods which
one has grown accustomed to, but that in and of itself doesn't explain why
so many people fail. If all-raw were perfect it would be sweeping the
planet instead of being the "intellectual" property of zealots.
>put another way: why would there be a *need* to
>eat something that is not raw?
That is definitely putting it another way ;)
But the answer may lie in our personal history, our cultural history and
prehistory and its effect on our genetics. It is very likely we won't have
a satisfying answer to that question in our lifetimes, but we really don't
need one--not when experience shows us overwhelmingly that the minority
succeed on an all-raw regime. For the record, succeeding on an all-raw diet
doesn't prove that it is the _best_ diet, but unfortunately some all-raw
folks tend to self-style themselves as gurus and enjoy looking down on the
less-than-all-raw folk. If these gurus could only get others to believ and
do what they supposedly do then they would not be lonely anymore, eh? They
would have a Perfect Community. Since there is never a shortage of newbies
around who aspire to an all-raw diet (often based on the overboard writing
of the gurus) they can be easily manipulated. The newbies want what the
gurus supposedly have: perfect health and all-encompassing happiness with
food and the universe. The knowledge that raw foods won't give you those
things is not welcome news to some, but still it is true.
When Tom starts to bully people, to show a closed-minded arrogance, and
dismisses other's experience when it doesn't fit into his theories--then
you can call him a zealot. Until then anti-zealotry does not equal
zealotry. It is by definition "against zealotry".
Cheers,
Kirt (trying to give Tom a breather but growing weary myself ;))
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