Dear all,

I am thinkng about this for some time now.. All my family are cooked vegetarian and I have always thought that vegetarian (although cooked) is a superior diet and healthy diet. But lately, I have been hearng from several relativesin my family and also some distant relatives, about various illness they are having..

Like my mom, she was recently diagnosed of a heart condition. She is a cooked vegan and has never had meat in her life. She also does not eat much of packages and processed junk either. all she eats is cooked rice or whaet and vegetables and lentils and soup etc. They are all cooked though. But she got a heart condition and also high cholesterol and high blood pressure. She was hospitalized and now is gettung better slowly, with lot of medicines taken every single say.

Another relative died recently of prostate cance. Cooked vegetarian his entire life and has never had meat or processed junk in his life - I know this personally.

Another relative has severa stomach and gastritis problem - also cooked vegetarian.

Another younger relative, cooked vegetarian - no proceesed packaged foods, has extreme sinusitis, that she is not able to manage day to day life..

The list goes on and on.. These people drink some milk with their coffee but are not big dairy eaters either. Just a little bit of milk with their chai tea or coffee.. Other than that just cooked vegetarian food - home cooked... thats it.

I used to think that being a vegetarian diet is the best in the world. when I became cooked vegan I thought thats it. I have it.. But only after I became raw, I understood what a difference that is.

I think now that I have one of the best gifts from God. Just looking at the family members and their illnesses, I see now what a difference this raw food has made in my life.

I know it is good that vegans avoid all the meat and dairy in their diet, but that does not seem to be helping at all - atleast in our family, lots of folks are NOT doing well on that diet.

I just wanted to talk about this to you all and tell you what a beautiful gift we have in our lives. God is good.

Take care
A Iyer

anuiyer7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > I used to think that being a vegetarian diet is
> the best in the world. when I became cooked vegan
> I thought thats it. I have it.. But only after I
> became raw, I understood what a difference that
> is.
>
> I think now that I have one of the best gifts from
> God. Just looking at the family members and their
> illnesses, I see now what a difference this raw
> food has made in my life.
>
> I know it is good that vegans avoid all the meat
> and dairy in their diet, but that does not seem to
> be helping at all - atleast in our family, lots of
> folks are NOT doing well on that diet.
>
> I just wanted to talk about this to you all and
> tell you what a beautiful gift we have in our
> lives. God is good.
>
> Take care
> A Iyer



Oh wow A Iyer, thank you for sharing this. I'm very sorry to hear of your relatives' illnesses and I hope your mother responds well to treatment. My own Mom who eats SAD has heart disease.

What you've written is profound and I've come to similar realizations of just how synonomous raw foods and good health are. We are indeed blessed. I, too, was cooked vegetarian and vegan at times for over 20 years. I thought I was doing the best things for my health. Ironically, this topic has come up with my own (SAD) family when we were discussing a friend who was a life long vegetarian. She passed a few years ago from ovarian cancer. They were trying to imply that my diet wouldn't matter in the end - it was their logic. I guess when you get right down to it there are so many other things I've incorporated in my life that contribute to my good health: ridding myself of all chemical toiletries and household products, being aware of the environment and eating raw foods to name a few. There are many components to good health, but certainly the fuel you choose to use makes a big difference. Whether or not this same fuel is acutally fueling your body and providing actual nutrients to your cells is HUGE. The more living foods you eat, the more direct nutrients you're receiving I would think and the commulative effect could result in a significant reduction in illness experienced later in life. Your body becomes resilient, healthy and strong for the vast amount of raw fooders in my opinion.

I also have to add and I don't want to morph into another subject entirely, I believe our health has a great deal to do with how we perceive it. If we don't think it's a good diet no matter what we're eating, I wonder if this negatively impacts us later in life as well. A key component would also seem to include living a stress free existence, positively vibing as much as possible and not letting negative energy deter you. I think it's stress and poor diet that is the seed of all illness in the body.

What a powerful post and again I'm sorry that your family & friends are enduring health challenges at this time. I hope that they will follow your lead in being a rawbie perhaps.

Blessings.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2008 06:59PM by rawangel.

Thank you for sharing Anuiyer7. The great thing about this particular path is its simplicy: Eat a progressively higher lifetime % of fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. Simple in concept....enlightening in application.....life changing in practice.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I agree that cooked vegan is far from ideal. Perhaps, because then the primary food group is grains. I remember being cooked vegan and eating a lot of sandwiches and pasta, two habits which were very hard to break, but I did it, it took about a year.

Now I haven't had cooked wheat pasta for a long, long time and I used to eat a big bowl of it every single day for dinner. If I want pasta now, I put pasta sauce on popcorn or sometimes on rice patsa.

When I was a cooked vegan I was grossed out by fresh produce. The thought that it had been near dirt, had bugs crawling on it, had seeds, and I had memories of cutting open produce to find it dacayed, these were all yuck factors I had to get over.

I don't think whole grain based veg*n diets are all that. I did it myself for, lets see, um, about 1990-2002. But then I got smart.

If they substituted sweet potato and winter squash for their cooked starches, that would probably have made a big difference.

And added a lot more f+v, but that's a change most people would not be willing to make. Even McDougall makes cranky statements about high f+v vegan diets. He says people don't eat like that.

I think the type of diet really matters. I know first-hand that alot of vegetarians make up for their lack of meat with WAY MORE DAIRY AND CHEESE than the average person would eat.

I know first-hand that alot of vegans live on junk food and processed chemicals, AS LONG AS IT'S VEGAN.

Neither of those are healthy. I have yet to meet a true vegan who eats only cooked vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Most that I know end up eating no variety, and few if any greens. They eat bread,soda, vegan pizza and....you see what I'm getting at.

It's hard for me to tell if the OP was saying that her relatives were true cooked WHOLE FOOD vegans.

Oh, and it could be that the high cholesterol was due to lots of cooked fats, which almost everyone, raw or not, see's as very harmful and carcinogenic.



What is F+V?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2008 02:46AM by SmilingRawDancer.

f+v= fruits and veggies : )

All, Thats what confuses me. My mom just eats home cooked very simple meals. She does not eat processed packaged junk at all. Here's what she typically eats:
coffee in the morning with little milk - thats it for milk
breakfast: Steamed rice cakes and lentil soup or chutneys
lunch: Rice, lentils and vegetables
snack: again a small cup of chai tea - with very little milk
Dinner: Again rice and vegetebles

This is how I ate also when I was a kid - this is typical of most vegetarian middle class Indian families. A lot of the relatives that I talked about are ill on this type of diet... It is very rare that my mom would even eat a packet of chips. She never even goes near candy or soda.

But I have to admit that she does not even eat a piece of fruit or a salad.

Everything she eats is cooked - although I used to think that this is healthy cooked vegan food.

Is cooking then the toxic part of the diet? I felt said that these folks who typically eat simple foods like I described would get soooo sick.. My mom is only 64. I used to think as long as I avoid meat and processed junk then I am ok...

I feel bad and some how want to reach out and help. I can share with them what I know.. But no one wants to listen and I have stopped trying with my mom.

I tried to explain to my dad that this diet is not working for my mom, even before she got the heart condition and told him to just eat fruit for breakfast - to atleast start with that. He just told me and (not very nicely) that they are not interested in this type of diet. I just stopped after that.


To this aunt, who eats cooked (no raw food at all) - although she too eats very simple meals like my mother, she has a serious gastritis problem and needs to be on medication. Also, she has very mild osteoporosis.. I tried to tell het the same thing - just eat raw breakfast and see if that helps, then can increase raw and reduce cooked - she point blank said to me, "listen to me Anu, what you say is not practical and no one eats like that"
I explained to her that I used to eat exactly what she eats now and was sick with the same gastritis problems and also ulcers and acid reflux etc., and in two months on raw, I removed all meds and I am now free. She didn't even listen to all that.

Anyways, wanted to share with you what I see (atleast in my family) - cooked vegeatarian (with very very little dairy) is certainly NOT working. It seems like bodies work much much better on raw fuel than cooked.

I hope I am able to listen to my body and my heart and do the best for that.

Take care
A Iyer

A lyer it's hard sometimes when you can see the truth and others do not. I had the same reactions from my family who is SAD when I explained just incorporate more raw foods, fruit and veggies. My Mom is actually good about getting her salads, but she still eats processed junk like ice cream pops and stuff like that...every night.

You have done the best you can by sharing, recommending and demonstrating with your family. It sounds like some of your family members have it deeply imbedded in their consciousness that cooked vegan is healthy and raw perhaps doesn't seem natural. When you look at it from a distance, this is of course nuts. How natural can you get in choosing raw foods? My sister is the same, I had some raw foods and my 2 year old nephew was interested in having some. She actually said to me, don't give him that, it's not real food! She wasn't trying to offend, it's what she believes. What is encouraging is my nephew is pushing meat off of his plate and loves the fruit and raw treats I give him when I have extra. He loves raw vegan food and doesn't like cooked, he spits it out! Innately, he gets it as we are born with this knowledge I believe. Somewhere along the line there is a lot of programming as to what is healthy or not and we get away from trusting our intuition. Over time I think this may impact my nephew. But I'm witnessing up close and personal him gravitating to raw foods without anyone pushing them on him.

I hope that everything will turn around. Prayers are with you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2008 03:59PM by rawangel.

You can eat the greatest diet in the world, but stress and no physical activity can cause unhealthy results. There are other variables to consider as well. In addition, a rawfoodist can make unhealthy choices while remaining 100% raw and see unhealthy results.

Also, alot of times a healthy diet and a person's good health can be more sensitive to smaller unhealthy additions that would not effect others surprisingly.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2008 04:04PM by tanawana.

anuiyer7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All, Thats what confuses me. My mom just eats home
> cooked very simple meals. She does not eat
> processed packaged junk at all. Here's what she
> typically eats:
> coffee in the morning with little milk - thats it
> for milk
> breakfast: Steamed rice cakes and lentil soup or
> chutneys
> lunch: Rice, lentils and vegetables
> snack: again a small cup of chai tea - with very
> little milk
> Dinner: Again rice and vegetebles

Not enough variety, any nutritionist, even a sad nutritionist would say that.

- rice at all three meals
- vegetables at all three meals
- lentils at two meals.

It's reasonably healthy, I mean she could do a lot worse, my mom isn't even vegan so your mom is awsome on that issue, but there is a real lack of variety here. It almost sounds macrobiotic.

If this was my mom, I would buy her the best bottled apple juice I could find, to get her used to fruit and because apple juice is really cleansing. I can get brown, unfiltered apple cider at my store, even though it is pasturized it is not that bad and it's just about the only juice worth buying.

Or maybe even some lemon juice concentrate would help a lttile. I'm assuming that you don't live with your parents so that's why I'm suggesting all this cooked stuff.

How about framed pictures of the types of food that you want them eat (subtle reprogramming of of their ideas of food) I know that Victoria Boutenko would reprogram her family by leaving quotes or statistics on the bathroom walls where they HAD to read them ;-)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2008 04:32PM by Lillianswan.

anuiyer7,

Look at how few fresh foods are in your mother's diet. Her entire diet is composed of cooked foods. Also most of the calories are coming from cooked rice. And she takes 2 stimulants a day, probably because she needs it based on the foods she is eating.

Arugula proposed excellent modifications to a cooked diet that would improve the nutritional value of the diet without giving up cooked foods and going all raw.