The Raw Food Diet: Does It Measure Up? (Weight Loss, Fitness, Wellness)

ABOUT THE BOOK

If you look up raw food diets online, you’ll find a long, long list of websites dedicated to telling you how amazing the diet is, how many miracles it can do for you, and how low the one-time cost is for buying their food secrets. They call it the garden diet, or the organic diet, or raw foodism. Some even call it rawism, which sounds more like something a cute cat would do.

The diet has had some high-class proponents (Steve Jobs used it during his battle with cancer), but when people start making claims about preventing cancers and or making wrinkles vanish, it’s easy to get suspicious. So many diets are fads, in one year and out the next, that trusting one enough to devote your whole kitchen to it takes a lot of trust.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Tyler Lacoma writes on business, environmental, and fitness topics, but squeezes in some time for fiction, too. He graduated from George Fox University and lives in beautiful Oregon, where he fills spaces between writing with outdoor fun, loud music, and time with family and friends.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

Raw food diets start with one simple rule. Do not process. This may generate some vague ideas about packaging and hormones, but what it also means the absence of any type of cooking. No baking, microwaving, or heating is allowed above a set temperature.

Depending on the plan, this magical number is between 92 and 118 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the strictest rule, but most raw food fans add a second commandment, too – don’t buy food that has been messed with. This translates to no genetic engineering, no pesticides, and no irradiation. The second rule is easier if you live in a place with access to local produce markets or a store that imports organic foods.

Why reinvent your diet to avoid cooking? Well, most advocates talk about enzymes, specifically the enzymes in raw plants. Enzymes are protein chains that have very specific jobs – usually breaking down a material into its component parts. Our stomachs need enzymes to properly break down food, and while our bodies can create these catalyst proteins on its own, we end up ingesting a lot of them, too.

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