Philosophical Vegan Forum

http://inourishgently.com/eating-raw-vegan/

i found this article and while i admit i dislike raw foods, i ve been on vegan diet for some time now (took off eggs and cow milk)/ (but still i cannot consider myself as one) since i think its a lot more to it..

What do vegans mostly think about raw vegan diets, does this article contain some truth to it ?

Thanks.

Avoid raw

http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/cooking

I don't think there's any proof to the claims in the article. I can find any at least!

At first I was open-minded about raw foodists, but now it's clear to me they're just a weird dogmatic cult. Freelee and durianrider are the most well-known raw vegans and almost all their advice is really bad. Maybe their advice is fine for endurance athletes who ride their bike 60km a day, but they make it seem like drinking 10-banana smoothies is something everyone should do

Absolutely avoid the raw dogma; it's a cult, as knot says.
Cooking increases the nutritional value of foods, and lets us eat more efficient crops.

Eating huge amounts of sweet fruit is not healthy, and it's not environmentally sound (fruit cultivation is much less efficient than beans and grains).

We should mainly eat cooked beans, vegetables, and nuts, and a moderate amount of grain (like oats and wheat). We should only eat a little bit of raw food. I usually say a couple fruits a day, max, preferably berries.

I seldom eat fruits, when i do i enjoy a banana or a pear, very rare an apple....yet i do enjoy the natural juice, i tend to mix carrots with apples the most and i like it.

Also i enjoy to cook and i ve did not tried raw except carrots and parsley, since those at least i enjoy them raw or cooked.

Unknownfromheaven wrote:I seldom eat fruits, when i do i enjoy a banana or a pear, very rare an apple...

I recommend apples instead, since they are higher in antioxidants.
But small berries are better, such as blueberries, raspberries, and especially blackberries.

Blackberries are actually so nutritious, and low in sugar, that you don't need to limit them.

Unknownfromheaven wrote:.yet i do enjoy the natural juice, i tend to mix carrots with apples the most and i like it.

That's a good mix. When fruit is used to add more sweetness to vegetable juice, I think it serves a better purpose of enabling nutrition compared to eating or drinking it straight.

It's like the saying "a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down"; that is the only context where sugar is useful, outside of extremes like starvation.
Fruit should be treated similarly, and used sparingly.

Bananas, for example, are good for adding sweetness and creaminess to a green smoothie (which is the best way to eat raw veggies, since without cooking it's hard to digest them, and blending helps).

brimstoneSalad wrote:I recommend apples instead, since they are higher in antioxidants.
But small berries are better, such as blueberries, raspberries, and especially blackberries.

Its only rare that i find a tasty good apple, since i got hit with market apples without any taste...my wife put one big red apple in the fridge for 6 months and it was still red and without decay...and i figured then (f... this). So when indeed i am able to spot a rare apple which has a sweet flavour, green or red) i should be able to have no restrains. For my juice with carrots i use small apples with some little taste that i dislike eating raw, but in the mix, its great.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Bananas, for example, are good for adding sweetness and creaminess to a green smoothie (which is the best way to eat raw veggies, since without cooking it's hard to digest them, and blending helps).

Among so many i love bananas, and in the past i used to eat ten a day. now i eat several a week.

http://futurism.com/10-strange-physics- ... ntimatter/ this left me jaw dropped when i found out that bananas generate antimatter )

I'd like to know what foods are better to eat raw rather than cooked. In general, boiled and steamed vegetables are more nutritious* than raw vegetables.

Cooking does, however, reduce vitamin C content. I'm not especially concerned about this though, because I eat enough raw fruits to get my DV of Vitamin C. I don't eat enormous quantities of fruits. 2 small oranges per day, or 1 large grapefruit per day, provides me with more than 100% DV of Vitamin C. Also, I like to eat broccoli frequently, which I think are a good source of vitamin C...

...unless maybe too much of it is destroyed by steaming broccoli (which is what I usually do)?

The B vitamins (except for B12**) are what I'd especially like to know more about, and whether or not cooking grains/legumes/vegetables results in the B-vitamins being harder to obtain. Vitamin C, and all of the B vitamins, are water soluble; so does cooking certain foods reduce their vitamin B content? Is this something that I need to worry about?

Also, does cooking foods ever reduce/damage their contents of vitamins other than B & C? Only C, and the B's, are water soluble; so maybe it's not a problem for A, D, E, and K?


*This is not a controversial notion on this forum, as I've seen much previous discussion about it. Furthermore, I have found the following study to be useful:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf072304b

**I think I already know enough about B12. It's produced by bacteria. It's not relevant to my concerns about acquiring adequate quantities of the B Vitamins from cooked foods, because I don't rely on food to get B12 at all. I swallow a B12 pill twice a week (with 1000mcg of B12 per pill), since this is the best source. Without supplements, the best "natural" sources include shit, and extremely dirty water, but I don't consume those for hopefully obvious reasons...