When it comes to healthy eating, this is what really matters!

Someone emailed me this question on my blog and I really wanted explain the answer so everyone understand where I am coming from. I don't expect everyone to agree and I understand because I once made many mistakes also about the raw diet.

Question:

Hey Paul!

Great blog! Can you post on your blog what you eat in a typical day, or recommend in a typical day? I'd like to prove to others that your diet/Hippocrates/Bisci Diet is better than Graham's 80-10-10 diet with all that sugar, but I don't know what the EXACT breakdown of particular foods are. It would be neat to be able to quote particular percentages of nutrients.

Answer

Thank you for your email. In the future, I will post what a typical day of eating looks like for me. I am hesitant about doing this because there will be certain people who will want to compare what I eat to what they eat, but that is not logical. Some people, especially the 80/10/10 people, have no idea what they are doing or saying. According to them, if I eat nothing all day but 4 ozs of almonds, they will claim my diet is 99% fat. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like eating chocolate. Thinking it’s healthy to eat tons of bananas a day is also really out there. We are humans, not apes. When it comes to healthy eating, this is what really matters:

A. Are you getting the nutrients your body needs?

B. Are you digesting the food you are eating in a timely manner?

C. Health will begin to return to the body when you leave out from your diet the processed foods that are causing the issues.

I feel blessed to know I’ve been part of the raw food diet revolution. The movement started long before I was even born, but my first book “The Raw Life” has brought many people to make the decision to go raw. Almost 10 years have passed since I published “The Raw Life,” and the raw food movement continues to grow. More people are writing books about eating raw, people are sharing their stories on the Internet and restaurants continue to add more raw food options to their menu. Still, people contact me thanking me for “The Raw Life,” letting me know how much it influenced them to go raw. It is very encouraging to know a book I wrote has helped changed so many people’s lives, and I believe it saved a few as well.

As good as it all seems, the raw movement is not all it could be. Something scary has happened over the years. I’ve seen a big problem developing since I got involved, and it continues to get worse. There is division, confusion and disagreement about what raw way to eat is truly healthy, and which way is not healthy. I learned the split decisions are nothing new. Health writers have been in disagreement about what remedies are truly good and which ones are dangerous trends that will hopefully pass. But to me, the raw food diet was supposed to be different. It seemed so simple. When I first learned about it, it was hard to believe people could ever have different views about the raw food diet. I soon found out I was wrong.

For me, the absolute difference came when I read that there was a group of people living together in Hawaii who were all raw foodist. After more study, I found out they were eating animal meat raw. Now I have heard of raw sushi and even heard of some other fish being eaten raw, but that’s not what these people were doing. They were literally killing land animals and eating them. I found out it wasn’t only being done in Hawaii. There was a group in France doing the same thing. I knew eating food uncooked was great, but this just seemed to be taking it too far.

It’s a good thing the idea of eating raw animals has never really caught on. That was the beginning of my discovery that there will be many more differences to come in the raw movement.

When I first got involved in teaching about the raw food diet, my message was very simple: just eat raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, as much as you want, anytime you want. As long as it’s raw, you will be fine. That was a long time ago and I’ve learned so much over the years. I now have a very different outlook on what I once promoted. Someone suggested that I’m not a good teacher because I change my message too often. People started to ask me when was I going to stop changing my mind about the best way to eat a raw diet. My answer then is the same answer I give today. I will change when I am perfect! I don’t claim to be perfect today or in the future, so I guess I’m going to keep changing.

However, I am sure I keep changing for the better. I have discovered some key components to health and eating that many of the health teachers today are missing. I have found out that we need to focus on the quality of the food, and raw, ripe, fresh and organic is the highest quality. I have also found it’s not only the food we eat, but how and when we eat it that completes the health puzzle.

Still today, within the raw movement, people are disagreeing more than ever about what the ideal way to eat a raw food diet is and I feel very confident saying they are all missing an important key element. Not only do I feel confident, I know people will never achieve the highest level of health eating a raw food diet the way many of the teachers are suggesting.

I do have a concern that what some of them teach can become harmful by making an idol out of their “raw way” of eating as opposed to someone else’s. Even more concerning is making an idol out of the people teaching the message.

Where has all this division left us? Some people eating a raw food diet are achieving great results, but the majority of people eating a raw food diet after a few years become worse than when they started. Many of their conditions worsen, they become addicted to a concept, and they are left more confused than ever.

When I learned about health from the Hippocrates Health Institute and other classic health writers, they preached fresh fruits and vegetables. They would laugh at the idea that anyone would suggest things like chocolate and other processed foods found in a box or can as a health food.

Let’s get to the real issue: overeating! Eating too often and at the wrong times is not healthy. The body can handle most junk foods and processed foods if eaten in very small amounts. But in larger amounts, it can be deadly. The worse the food, the less the body can handle it. If you are consuming high-quality food, but eating too much, and at the wrong times, damage is still taking place. You may not notice it right away. Stressing the body organs in any way adds to sickness and disease. I am not promoting eating junk foods, but alerting people to the fact that overeating is the real issue we need to overcome!

Raw Food Author and Nutritionist Dr. Fred Bisci has been eating two, medium-size meals a day for more than 40 years and thriving. Fred explains why the concept of eating many meals throughout the day is mistakenly believed to be best, but it is not. He states the three errors people make.

One being the virtue of maintaining blood sugar levels by snacking which is only (somewhat) valid if your diet is high in carbohydrates and creates insulin spikes followed by low blood sugar levels, in which case it is advisable to raise them again. But Dr. Bisci says, why correct a “wrong” with a “wrong”? The healthy choice is to turn the first “wrong” into a “right” and establish an eating lifestyle that maintains blood sugar levels between meals.

Second, snacking leads to food fermenting in the digestive tract, because the previous snack, still only partially digested, impedes the progress of the food following it.

Third, and most harmful, eating too often prevents the body from going through a detoxification process, which it must do on a daily basis if a person is to live a long and healthy life. By eating too many meals a day, you never give your stomach a chance to empty out, and so your body is unable to detoxify and keep you clean on a cellular level.

Dr. Bisci just wrote an excellent book that tells a person what to do to get well. It works for everyone because of these three things:

1-Health will begin to return to the body when you leave out from your diet processed foods that cause the issues to begin with
2-Don’t overeat. Fred doesn’t each much food and is in great shape. When the food we eat is fresh, we do not have to eat much to get what we need.
3-DO NOT EAT AT NIGHT TIME!

Dr. Bisci does not have any rules people must follow or numbers of how much a person needs. According to Fred, there are so many variables to consider, so saying every person needs to do everything one way or else is a mistake. You have to look at each person on an individual basis.

I agree 100% with Dr. Bisci. I am just now finishing a book “The Daylight Diet” that talks about the three things Fred mentions above, along with many more great things I’ve learned from health teachers of the past that teach a similar message. Stay tuned for more information about when “The Daylight Diet” will become available.

Thanks very much Paul,
A very good read,
I agree with everything you said, but im not sure about ''do not eat at night time''
Would that include a meal early eavening 7pm or 8pm
Thats if you have been fasting all day, and had a healthy breakfast before. ?

Take Care,
Paul

Paul,

I do not dispute most of what you say. However, and even considering your great reverence for him as a mentor, your constant references to Dr. Bisci are puzzling. As anyone who has dealt with the elderly knows, as one's body ages, one's calorie and nutrient needs necessarily diminish, as does melatonin production. What is right for the septaugenarian is not right for the 30-year-old. What is the biophysiology-based rationale for panadvocating food restriction and meal timing for everyone? I don't recall Dr. Bisci making this his "cause" way back when, but I could be mistaken. Also, he takes an awful lot of enzyme and other supplements, no? Aren't these a main contributing factor to the success of his regimen?

Paul Nison Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you for your email. In the future, I will
> post what a typical day of eating looks like for
> me. I am hesitant about doing this because there
> will be certain people who will want to compare
> what I eat to what they eat, but that is not
> logical. Some people, especially the 80/10/10



Well, if you ever decide to share this or the Hipp. daily diet - PLEASE do not be vague as you have done before. For example, don't just say I eat a large salad for dinner and leave it at that. That can mean sooo many different things according to volume, ingrediants, etc. Also, don't just say you have an almond drink as your breakfast then don't mention even the size of it at least.

If you need to get the idea of eating less across don't confuse people like this without backing it up with no more than your vague descriptions. Many are eating less and adequate amounts now, but you come along and all of a sudden they think they are eating too much. Be responsible please.

And yes, you will have people try to tear it apart and miss the point of it, but you know that is to be expected.

Paul,

When measured calorically, 4 ounces of raw almonds is almost 99% fat, that's just the truth. There's no judgement inherent to that number.

To say that it's somehow misleading is to react defensively to a statement of fact.

So the question is, why would you feel defensive when someone points out that a 4 oz almond intake is 99% fat? Is it because the number feels disturbing to you?

As vegans, we must all be fairly comfortable or familiar with others thinking our diets are strange, wrong, or bizarre. So the fact that another raw vegan would disagree with your diet shouldn't bother you.

Yet, it seems to make you uncomfortable when anyone points out that your recommendations will inevitably result in a diet consisting of a very high percentage of calories from fat.

I can only assume that this is because something in your own intuition is telling you that these numbers are disturbing.

Your refusal to define or quantify what "overeating" is, is also disturbing and renders your message virtually useless, as it is impossible to formulate an approach with such vague admonitions.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2009 08:57PM by doghouse reilly.

dr - is that questioning for me??

Not at all tanawana, I am addressing Paul Nison with my remarks, not you!

If you want your answers. If you want to hear what overeating is. I'll be addressing all that tomorrow live at 1pm here's the link


[paulnison.blogspot.com]

I'll address as many questions as I can in the time I'm on.

doghouse reilly Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Paul,
>
> When measured calorically, 4 ounces of raw almonds
> is almost 99% fat


no it isn't

12% protein
15% carbohydrate
74% lipid

sorry CB, I accidentally hit the PM buttom instead of the quote button.

And I think what Paul Nison means is, if he consumes nothing but almonds one day, his readers cannot extrapolate from that that his general diet is 99% fat. Which, as we see from cb and arugula's breakdown, it isn't anyhow.

The man does it yet again! I bet there'll be dozens of diverse responses to the original post by sunup tomorrow!

Yeah, bit of dyslexia there for a moment. I looked up almonds and saw that out of 161 calories of almonds, 116 come from fat, misread it.

Anyways, the point remains. Nobody extrapolates anything from what he says he eats, because he doesn't tell us what he eats. He just provides vague admonitions and threats of dire harm to be experienced if we "overeat."

And when we attempt to obtain further information, he simply tells us to wait until his book comes out, or to wait until "1 PM tomorrow" or something when all will be revealed.

I think it's pretty obvious to most that there are easier and clearer ways to obtain information about a raw diet than Nison and Bisci.

Reading his new post its pretty clear that his target audience is "late night nibblers and bingers."

That makes sense, because if you follow his advice to not "overeat," and yet somehow also not eat a high fat diet, you will pretty much be certain to nibble and binge later in the day.

Most people eating a balanced, nourishing raw food diet, with sufficient caloric/energy value have absolutely no issues with late night nibbling and binging.

All the same points stand whether almonds are 99% fat or 74% fat. He still doesn't want to address points clearly, which is fine, but for him to pretend that he's offering some kind of useful advice is sort of amusing.

What paul nisan is writeing is the same as what Tanya Zavasta writes in her book Quantum eating, I am reading that most raw foodists are evolving to eat less and stop eating in the evening. The body needs to rest and heal and does this in the night time. The late ann wigmore suggests that people not overeat especially in fats and fruits. she suggests eating only 1/4 th of an avacado in her blended food soup. I have read Fred Bisi state concerns with people eating way to much fruits and eating them in the evening time. He appariantly saw many people with burned out adrenal issues.

I believe we should practice listening to our bodies needs and understand just how the foods we put in it make it feel.

As for the over eating issue I feel that the foods we purchase in the supermarkets are very inferior and are lacking the nutrients so in many ways we might need to eat more kale or bell peppers to get the nutrients are bodies need.

I am not familuar with the doug graham books but does he recomend eating 30 bananas? Just who recomends eating that many bananas? I think to make blanket statements causes lots of ruffeled feathers.

Wheres the love?

Most long-term raw fooders like Paul Nison do know something! And it may be something that I don't know.

I like the part where Paul says that he's still learning too. IMO, that's the best attitude to have, for maintaining a successful long-term raw food diet.

After all, it nothing else, our bodies are changing all the time - as we become older, as we increase and decrease our exercise level, when we move to another climate, and as we become further removed from SAD.

I may not agree with EVERYthing Paul says, but hey, I'm listening Paul!

(from another long-time raw-fooder)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2009 12:08AM by suncloud.

Just another books to promote that's all.

Keep reading these books and you will be more confused.