What EXACTLY IS Raw Veganism?

Hey guys!

Today I wanted to address a question A LOT of emailers and people I meet are asking..."What the HECK is Raw Vegansim?!"

Well, there's no "easy" answer to that. It takes a little work on my part to tell people in a way they'll understand. So, without further adue, my definition is as goes:

Raw Veganism is the consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds whereby no cooking is required (actually kindly restricted). The only "tampering" in my diet happens when I soak my nuts (go ahead, laugh) in order to mimic springtime when they sprout and release all the nutrients in order to build a plant. You may be thinking to yourself, "wow your diet sounds easy"...and YES, it really is! Sure there are EXTREMELY tasty Raw Vegan recipes out there - that take a little time, but not much more than your typical cookedmeal - , but I am pretty lazy and prefer to eat bananas, apples, mangoes, oranges, spinach, broccoli all by themselves - or combined in twos). Or, in the case of the green vegetables I will mix them with a sweet fruit in my mouth. I also like to incorporate red/green/yellow peppers into my diet because they activate the salivary glands (which produce saliva aka "spit") in order to break down the food in my mouth.

Now, you could be A LOT more technical than me and actually do recipes...but between school, work, and friends, I find it a little time-consuming to make "whole" dishes. So, I'll just eat these foods whole and one or two at a time. Not that the recipes are very timeconsuming at all, but I have recognized that "taste" is really only 1% of your physical reaction to food. Sure, you enjoy it while it's in your mouth, but you have to swallow eventually! After a while on Raw, you will all become more "in-tune" with your body's needs. You will start to look at eating as a way of "energizing" certain parts of your physical body, instead of just eating for taste and fullness.

The old saying, "If it sticks to your ribs, it's good for you!" IS COMPLETELY WRONG! Foods that give you a happy feeling in your gut are good, not foods that give you a "weighed down" or "full" feeling.

If you're going to embark on this Raw Vegan journey, be sure to start slow. I know time is of the essence, and you want to cure whatever ailments you may have as quickly as possible (disease, overweight/obesity, slow mind) BUT I literally converted to Raw Vegan in one meal! I remember reading about Bodybuilding Nutrition (one of my passions) and I came across an article talking about how Raw Vegans actually get MORE protein than most bodybuilders. Now I thought this was CRAZY because I actually bought into all the protein myths and wasted my money on various Protein Powders. But, as soon as I read that article (you may be able to find some to the right, where it says "Google Ads") it clicked. I instantly bought in to the concept. Next thing i ate a WHOLE stalk of broccolli! But after a few days of completely Raw Vegan foods, I experienced detox symptoms where all the toxins that have built up, were finally getting released. It's the same feeling as if you had a bad cold. Not life threatnening by any measure, but certainly not somethingyou want! So what I would reccomend is that you slowly incorporate more fruits and vegetables over a 2-week span where at the end, you are completely raw.

Now, I don't want you to feel guilty or ashamed by what you've been eating, because I've been there too. At that time, I was eating probably the worst diet a human could possibly eat. It was FULL of animal meat, dairy, and bad fats. I bought into the idea that if you reduce your carbohydrates and eatmore meat and dairy, you will get lean and mean! Well, now I know that was only partially right. As a society, we ARE addicted to processed sugar, but the thing is, we haven't been eating whole fruit sugar and we haven't supplented Raw Green Foods like lettuce, spinach, and broccoli into our diets.. and we're paying for it with our lives - obesity and disease rates are the HIGHEST they've ever been!

My theory is that we eat as if we were around 10,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago, we didn't have jobs and multi-tasking - all we had was our tribe and our food. And wecould spend all day under a shady tree, eating it's leaves or munching on wild flowers. About 25% of our diet was fruit because it gives your body effiecient, usable energy - so that it doesn't have to convert body fat into energy. We would eat these fruits if we had to hike, run, or chase something (or someone) out of our territory. It's just that we've dispersed to colder parts of the world that we rely on catching animals in the winter and maybe eating the vegetables and fruits in the spring/summer. The thing is, we've gotten completely away from the vegetable-eating part, and the sad part is that's where we get ALL the nutrition we would ever need.

And for people saying that we've adapted to cooked meat, to them I say, "If you adapted to death, you would be dead!" Because that's essentially what cooked food is. When you apply fire to a living thing, you burn it, right? Well, when you cook something, you are applying the fire of the stove to a pot or pan, which is transferred to the food. In my University Chemistry class, we learn all about how "fire breaks down minerals and releases them into the air". Now, unless you can inhale your food and get nutrition from that, then cooking is counter-productive towards your body! Then when you eat that food, it makes your body work excessively hard to break it down, and in most cases, it can not even digest it. A great example of this is meat. Meat has ZERO fibre in it. So what does that mean? Well, it basically rots in your guts and builds up as plaque that prevents any other minerals or nutrients you may ingest from being taken up into your bloodstream. Fibre pushes things through your intestines in order to be expelled as, yes you guessed it, POOP!

So I hope that summed up just a few of the points I try to make to people, but honestly, there's SO much more material I can post in this blog...for FREE to you! Just remember to subscribe to the right, bookmark me or homepage me and I'll be back SOON!

Good luck,

VV