

Ask HN: What do you think about the raw food diet? - burnedouthacker

This is aimed towards knowing what do think about this diet. Do you follow it? Has it improved your being in any way? Do you think its just a fad diet? Does it work? Is it unhealthy?...
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systemtrigger
I'm bound to make mistakes when talking about this stuff but my wife got her
masters in nutrition, is published in journals and for what it's worth she's a
big fan of the raw food diet. We both followed it closely for about 6 months
but eventually we decided it just wasn't convenient enough. There were
certainly some benefits to it that I miss but I phrase these much more
conservatively than what most gurus would have you believe. For example, I
never felt any sort of natural high or extreme mental clarity - just comforted
knowing that I wasn't poisoning my body with HFC etc. YMMV.

Here is my best argument for why a layperson should go raw: it forbids you
anything that even resembles junk food. Raw may be flawed but clearly it's
_way_ healthier than how most people eat. You can say it's a crutch or
psychosomatic or whatever but for me once I got into the mindset of it I just
stopped noticing unhealthy food. Almost everything in the modern dining world
is cooked.

The major downside - because it's so damn restrictive (plus we're practically
vegan) is that raw gets to be time consuming. It's really impractical for
people on-the-go. Sure you can always just eat an apple or some carrots but
that gets boring and so you end up dehydrating your own bread etc and turning
down practically every social dining opportunity. In a way that is a Good
Thing because there is a lot of harmful junk in modern food, right? But it
takes real dedication and eventually we decided a totally raw intake just
wasn't worth all the effort.

A cooked food diet opens up the floodgates to all sorts of unhealthy
temptations. But in the end it came down to priorities like _convenience_. If
you're thinking of going raw your best friend is the blender: there are a
million nutritious ways to mix a surprisingly delicious smoothie (secret
ingredient: jalepeños).

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tokenadult
It is not evolutionarily warranted. It is very clear that by the time the
species Homo sapiens came around, hominids in the human ancestral line had
already been eating cooked food for a long time, and many physiological and
anatomic differences between humans and chimpanzees are adaptations to eating
cooked food.

<http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wrangham/wrangham_index.html>

[http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1...](http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13139619)

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mahmud
What do I think of sun-bathing as an alternative to the wasteful water-based
shower?

What do I think of roofless habitat, living in nature as God/FSM intended and
having sunflowers for a pillow?

What do I think of human-fur as an alternative to soul constraining fabrics
that bind me in slavery to my own comforts.

Also, when dipped in animal fat, your nails can be strengthened to sharp claws
for defense and excellent hunting tools.

~~~
rafa8a
So... what do you think of it?

~~~
mahmud
It's just a friken, unsubstantiated and abnormal fad. Just like Polyphasic
sleep, the master cleanse all liquid diet, and James Bond life-style advocated
in the 4 Hour Work Week.

These are extremist ways to alter one's lifestyle, and it's usually done by
people who want MORE than they already have, not people who are forced by
circumstances to eat raw foods, or sleep 2 hours a day, or work 4 hours a week
or only consume liquid diets.

And from my experience, people susceptible to these fads make for awful
companions and hangout buddies. Sure, Voltaire might have advocated for the
Noble Savage who lived in harmony with nature, but the SOB was writing praises
to nature and animal-like living when he was himself collecting royalties,
living in castles and rubbing shoulders with European nobility.

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mindviews
Something to keep an eye on in general - a raw food diet is used and promoted
in anorexia circles and can be cover for an underlying eating disorder. It can
be hard on this diet to eat enough calories to be healthy. The "legitimacy" of
the diet can be a way to hide an eating disorder from family and friends (when
it is in fact being used to restrict calorie intake).

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bgutierrez
I did the diet for about a month while I was poor. This was a bad time to try
it, since finding raw nuts and other things is difficult on a budget, even in
San Francisco.

I lost weight, I was often hungry, and I couldn't stop craving meats and
cheeses. When I looked at pictures of people that were also on the raw diet,
they looked gaunt and unhealthy. So I decided it was all bullshit and gave it
up.

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st3fan
From what I understand it is a dangerous diet. Some foods are not to be eaten
raw. Simply because our bodies can not handle that. Some raw foods (specially
meat) contain bacteria that you certainly don't want in your system.

Personally, I think there are better diets.

~~~
HalcyonMuse
Better diets = ?

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monkeybusiness
I think it temporarily changes the way you feel emotionally - because our diet
is tied into our mood. Some people who embark on the diet - including some
people very close to me - read more into their altered mood than they ought
to.

