The Truth About Raw Food

Which food is healthier? That’s not necessarily a fair question: There are a ton of variables in a meal that aren’t necessarily healthful.

And that’s why it’s so important to carefully select the food you eat. Is your diet healthy? Are your portions appropriately sized? Are you eating enough fruits and vegetables?

But if you’re the type of person who always thinks eating is about eating, well, let’s hear it for the raw food movement!

“Seemingly healthier foods come in all sorts of packages, which a consumer should beware of as all health claims and nutrients are based on a study,” reports healthline.com.

“Raw Food Doesn’t Taste Bad”

Indeed, those who follow a raw food diet swear that even raw fruit has a better taste than cooked fruits and vegetables.

“Even raw food products are healthy,” says John Watson, author of "Raw Foods for Health and Weight Loss" (CreateSpace, May 2008). “Adults may eat a pint of raw broccoli every day. For example, a study found that raw carrot sticks are 70% less likely to cause hypertension than potato chips. On the opposite end of the spectrum, raspberries contain no cholesterol, and raw blueberries are the best source of dietary fiber.”

If you are just interested in knowing which kind of food is better—heat versus eat or cooked versus raw—well, you’ll have to stick with boiled potatoes.”

Why Raw Eats Saved Her Life

Some people attribute a higher survival rate to their raw food lifestyle. Here are a few reasons why, according to Janell Hobson’s article on healthline.com:

Aseptic Processing: Surgical school graduate Jeri Kobrin says she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of blood cancer, in 2004. She also had reflux. “There’s nothing more debilitating than having chest pain and headaches that aren’t related to heartburn,” says Kobrin. “I was very scared. But because of this bad habit of eating raw foods, I lived nine months without any of the five most common side effects of chemotherapy, like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.” Other raw food cravings that helped her feel better included eating more vegetables.

Eggs: Jessica Morgenthaler's cancer was cancerous, but not life-threatening. “My treatment caused bad breath and bad digestion,” says Morgenthaler. “Before my treatment I wouldn’t eat much. My doctors told me I was only eating 1 cup of spinach a day.” While she dealt with a lot of nausea, she still had to eat vegetables to stabilize her immune system. Eventually, “I really didn’t like being sick,” she says. “But the best possible healing came from eating the raw foods that my body needed to digest what I was being given.”

All About Gut Metabolism: Jennifer Backus, a registered dietitian in private practice in Washington, D.C., says, “We eat for energy and nutrients.” Backus has a 20-year-old daughter with Type I diabetes. “I knew I needed to find foods that would support her recovery.” So she enlisted nutrition expert Gillian Roberts in a project called “Raw Food for Health and Weight Loss.” Backus already was an advocate of whole grains, but the way she is able to solve her daughter’s weight problems demonstrates how essential it is to avoid foods that go rancid.

Backus says her daughter drinks 4 gallons of milk a day; her diet is basically a gallon of milk every day. While that would require a fastidious diary to account for changes in milkfat content and calcium and vitamin D content, her mother’s whole-grain diet avoids the opportunity for those changes.