I love eating raw food, I love educating people about increasing the amount of raw foods in their diet and I love doing raw retreats and detoxing with a bunch of great people!
What I don’t love is the aspect of raw foodism where people turn their diets into an almost religious fervour of righteousness and slam other people doing a slightly different version of “raw”. I think we’ve proven time and time again that the human body has incredible powers of adaptation and that there in no one perfect “right” diet. At different times in our lives we will have different needs as we deal with growth stages, changing stresses, environments, pollution and toxins, aging etc.
To say there is only one “right” diet is like saying that there is only one “right” religion – and we know where the state of the world is today from that particularly harmful philosophy.
What I have found over years of trial and error, experimentation, reading hundreds upon hundreds of books, studying naturopathy and consulting with thousands of patients – is that a diet which encompasses real whole foods as found in nature, is an incredible step up from the processed junk that most people eat.
Within that realm of whole foods, whether some is cooked a bit, whether you have higher fruit or higher protein, isn’t the issue. Once people have made the transition off the fake food – then they need to experiment with a variety whole foods, tune into their bodies and how they feel, and find what suits them best over time.
Many people are still functioning in the old religious paradigm of “do this the right way and you will be saved” – nothing more than a transference from religion to food. And that isn’t healthy! We have a huge amount of information on how to use food to prevent and reverse chronic illness and live a vital, energetic and healthy life – but there is no holy grail!!!
Some of the longest lived cultures in the world eat animal products. My partners grandmother turns 102 in January and she hasn’t eaten a green leafy vegetable in her whole life – she doesn’t even know what raw food is!
So before we get carried away slamming other people who are trying to just expand the public’s knowledge of what is real food and what is not – we need to look at our motives and our reason for needing to be “right”. There is of course, room for healthy debate, but a lot of what I find on raw food forums is not debate – it is just plain nasty and there is no need for it.
Leisa
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