>Hey Ric! Loved your informative post about your "routine"--not tremendously
>unlike my own (minus some minor "details"). Thanks for sharing it!
My pleasure. (Ric)
>Ric:
>>Obviously there exists a great diversity among our individual metabolic
>>configurations, and this surely must have a lot to do with why some people
>>seem to thrive for a long, long time, on a raw diet with certain foods that
>>just don't seem to work for others.
>Kirt:
>Is there any room for the idea that all-raw maybe isn't ideal for some
>(perhaps most) folks? The "Raw is Law" bit is a catchy phrase, but I worry
>that any law has it's problems--kinda the nature of laws, so to speak.
The "Raw is Law" number is said with a twinkling eye, but deep down am
convinced it's the truth. One of nature's laws, but mighty important,
since every culture with which I'm familiar, and the others with which I'm
not, are into big time food destruction via cooking. We're clearly the
only species of organism that literally destroys it's natural foods with
such thoroughness prior to consuming it...and we have, I suspect,
expectedly paid the more than unpleasant consequences.
To me the "law" is one sticky wicket for sure, but as Hegel put it:
"Perfect freedom is perfect obeyance to perfect law...." Since other
mammals in their wild state are basically free of the diseases of
"civilization," and get them quickly upon having their normal food simply
cooked, I think it's not too unreasonable to at least suspect that there
may be some sort of "law" operant in nature that establishes certain
"specifications" about the fuel our bods were designed to require for
proper function. Trouble is, we have primarily animal examples to go on,
since no known cultures advocate a sort of sacred respect for not damaging
food by fire and other similarly destructive processing. But what's the
matter with what the animals show us? No placebos even required in their
scene, since they don't seem to be plagued by the kind of intellectual
dishonesty and confusion that plagues our species.
>>Meantime, however, things aren't at all gloomy, since it is more than
>>obvious to those of us who've persevered at this all raw routine, that "Raw
>>is Law;" whether one is vegan, vegetarian, or instincto; the main thing we
>>need to do to support and obtain superior health, is to reject any cooking
>>of one's food. It sounds so radical to hear the three musketeers claim it,
>>but there's certainly far more hard science to support their allegation
>>that, "Cooked food is poison" than otherwise!
>The message of the power of raw foods is not really radical--at least to
>most of us on raw-foods. The NFL rhetoric, however, seems to some as simply
>aggressive and...well, I don't want to get into it all again, but cooked
>food isn't _poison_, is it?
Honestly? Yup, I think they're right on that one. If a car is designed to
operate properly on a certain specified grade of fuel and we introduce a
lower grade...it's "poison" in the simple sense that it ain't what the doc
(design engineer) ordered. The car may run for a very long time, but will
it perform as designed? If the fuel is "cooked" badly, then the car may
come apart very quickly...so the "poison" aspect is surely relative...but
poison is poison someone said. I honestly think we rationalize when we
allow otherwise. I did it for years.
This is in no way to assert that uncooked food is the only way to
live...nor is it the only way to live in good health...since I think there
are many other requisites (laws) for optimal health that, when ignored,
also have the power to mess us up, and often truncate our lives, even when
we consume only pure ideal raw food.
But, in summation, I think that the principal common denominator to ill
health the world 'round is found in how we cook (destroy) our food's
quality, converting it into something different from what nature, in its
infinite wisdom, created. Nature gave us the pure item, we use heat to
covert it into another chemical substance. Just like in beginning
chemistry...the big magic we first saw when we applied heat from that
bunsen burner to the various vials to achieve such astounding changes.
>Do you really think that a less than 100% raw
>diet is "not right", and that any cooking should be rejected verbatim? You
>sound so reasonable, but there is a creeping edge of "rigidity" that comes
>through sometimes.
Call me rigid or absolutist...and maybe be on mark. But that mental
rigidity is only applicable to my _own_ status...not anyone else's.
Relativism is safe...and temporarily quite comforting... when one is in a
fog or suffering from insufficiency of evidence, but to me the facts are
blatantly visible, so why go around, as we humans are so expert in doing,
in our incessant state of denial? I think most of us are born with the
logical tools we need to perceive the truth, whatever that might be in this
area of our concern. It's not at all like the fundamental religionist who
"knows" he or she is privy to the only truth. Their "knowledge" of that
"truth" is almost always derived from what they have been "taught" by
others, usually "experts," but, in the final analysis, their belief is
predicated on "faith" in the interpretations and other traditions passed
down to them...often from ancient times, no less. This food issue is
entirely different. The evidence is not hearsay, or needn't be, since we
can look all about us and see the fresh facts.
We get our emotions into an otherwise starkly black and white picture, at
least as I see it, and ascribe all sorts of shades of gray or even color
where they don't even exist.
Notwithstanding humankind's suffering and turmoil on this planet, I still
have "faith" that there are "laws" behind the fabric of creation, laws
that, when violated, have consequences. It's cause and effect at work. To
me, it's perfection itself. The old saying that, "ignorance is not an
excuse," really seems to be the rule on these "self evident" laws. If they
weren't so obvious to our HONEST perception; were actually hidden by other
than our own chosen blindness or denial, then a perfect creative force
would not even be just...and my intuition (subjective trait, you're right)
just doesn't encourage me to believe that this magnificent universe could
be created by any power short of perfection itself...that means creation
MUST be Justice itself, balance to perfection.
To this minor observer, the very infinite aspect of our creation, and the
universe we appear to have all about us, speaks the immensity of the
mystery we will doubtfully ever even begin to comprehend...BUT, on the
other hand, and consistent with this sort of awesome perspective, how could
a Perfect Creation be so imperfect as to hide from our faculties the
inherent laws we must obey in order to be "free" (from illness, etc.)?
Nope, Kirt, if mother or father nature created us, then obscured the laws
we must obey to enjoy our clearly designed capacities for health and the
freedom that such a condition entails, then nature is one mighty perverse
and wicked (oops, an emotive value term!) master indeed!
Again, I just don't believe it. Do you?
Humankind's "laws" are usually not even remotely connected to the absolute
(oh, oh, I said it) laws of nature. Unlike natural laws of health, human
laws are complex, illogical, convoluted, designed most often for more
nefarious reasons than not, and tend to be extremely obscure in their
proliferated state, anyway. Here in California just last year the
"conservative" legislature actually passed over 1000 new laws! Do you
think even a brilliant attorney can keep abreast of this sort of explosive
insanity? Heck, the "lawmakers" themselves don't even have the time (nor
inclination) to read, let alone evaluate and understand this crazed
proliferation of the net designed to capture our lives. It's not even
possible to live a strictly "law abiding" life anymore here in the
states...and most other "civilized" nations, for that matter.
This is our fellow human at work...not nature. While we may well always be
thrilled by the "discovery" of new laws presented us within the fabric of
creation, I seriously doubt those who would assert that nature's BASIC laws
are not yet discovered. I don't speak about the laws of aerodynamics,
nuclear physics or even basic gravity...I only address the laws applicable
to our own health. Creation gave us uncountable companion animals to
observe, should we be too blinded by our own myopia concerning our own
relationship to our environment...and HONESTLY observing these
animals...how they are born, live and die...ought teach us what we need to
know in order to also survive in the free state of good health enjoyed by
our "lesser" creatures.
When you say, "Do you really think that a less than 100% raw diet is 'not
right,' you get to the crux of the real issue.
"Right" is a value marker, isn't it? Now we are in an entirely other arena,
aren't we? This is the venue of ethics, morals, in general; in the league
of our "belief constructs" and other emotionally based perceptional issues
and considerations.
People have oft asked me similar questions about whether or not they have
to be "all raw" in order to enjoy their optimal health. I most usually
tell them something like, and speak from my heart, this... "It's not very
easy to commit to an all raw diet, but isn't it sensible to simply try and
eat the highest percentage of your food as you can in its natural (raw)
state...the more raw food you can consume in your life, the more you should
appreciate an improvement?" It's that simple, even notwithstanding the
situation we too often see where someone cannot tolerate much raw food at
all. I've had all kinds of people report back to me that they feel much
better just by increasing the percentage of raw food...not by going 100%,
but just be increasing their intake of "real" food. I've also had others
report back that they thought they were going to die when they went cold
turkey and jumped right into 100% But you know why this happens...and I
try to explain it to them, of course...but the suffering they experience
often is used as their "proof" that raw food isn't the trip for homo sapiens.
>>The many anthropological observations that have been made over the ages
>>made me believe we just aren't equipped with the special equipment birth
>>righted to carnivorous critters.
>Any details about these observations, or do you mean the appendix chart in
>NFL--that kinda thing?
Haven't yet finished the book, but will report back in when I do.
I've heard many complaints from readers of the NFL book about that chapter
ending, "Cooked food is poison," but I frankly love it. They are really
clever and I applaud their creative use of that shocking statement. It
sounds radical...and it is. This kind of calling a spade a spade is
probably, in my mind, the only way we can wake up our fellow humans to the
insanity (my honest opinion) of cooking (destroying) our food before eating
it.
All this said, I am aware that Natural Hygienist practitioners (at least
those now on the "inside" of the ANHS) are lock step against the "raw is
law" dictum, shaking their fingers at us with grave warnings about all the
damage we will do to ourselves (their examples I find very anecdotal,
superficial and reeking of hearsay and missing data).
Even that co-founder of the ANHS, Dr. Benesh, advocates a standard diet for
about every condition he encounters, that includes cooked foods, even
though he has little, if any, use for the young upstarts that have taken
over the reins of Herbert Shelton's organization and made it into a good
self-promoting business enterprise.
I just glanced at something off the web the other night...was it by Dr.
Bass...that read with the title of a Raw Food Diet Regime...or something
similar. As I skimmed along I noticed that he had some cooked food recipes
in the mix! Now how is cooked the same as raw? Reminds me of the
government's clever use of the euphemism to hide the hard realities;
calling death insurance Life Insurance; talking of our Health Care System
rather than our sickness care system, etc. Subtle but effective. The
techniques of brain-washing are alive and well all about us. Bass, or
whoever it was, didn't say that these cooked items were inserted because
it's better to move slowly into an all raw diet...or at least, if he did,
my skimming overlooked it.
>>Don't know what else to add at this juncture, but hope that this message
>>gives you one more person's experiences to put into your portfolio of
>>considerations.
>The more the merrier...
>>Again, Axel, I suspect that this sort of question is very personal,
>>therefore I think you'll have to continue to experiment and study. With so
>>much more information available (and so readily via the internet) than I
>>was blessed to have when I made the switch to all raw, it shouldn't take
>>you too long to target more closely on the ideal dietary for your own
>>physiological, psychological and ethical needs. Keep in mind, too, that at
>>various junctures in your evolution you may find it appropriate to change
>>and vary your traditional or habitual raw routine...more or less shift your
>>gears to meet the changing challenges in your journey, just as we need to
>>shift gears when driving through the mountains.
>Words of wisdom in there!
Of course, what else! ;))
>>So, Axel, it would seem there is probably not just one narrow healthy path
>>to follow...as long as it's raw (and that's the LAW!), and that will surely
>>be music to the ears of you instinctos.
>It's music to _my_ ears. Have you taught the three musketeers to whistle it
>yet? BTW, were any of the over 100 enthusiasts at the big bash admitting to
>any RAF consumption?
Didn't encounter that sort of statement, but suspect (I'm paranoid, you
see) there were instinctos lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce.
Sorry, no time left to proof this one. Phew!
Cheerio,
Ric Lambart
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