I'm getting closer and closer to being a 100% raw foodie. Most days I'll only eat raw food and the exceptions are generally because I can't find anything else. It happens mainly by instinct for me. The thought of cooked food more and more makes me feel ill and if I do eat it I feel sick afterward and have tummy problems a day or two later. I have to say I feel better with every day that passes.

A few things are bugging me slightly though. I live in the uk at the moment and so in order to eat like this I have to get a lot of my food imported for a lot of the year. Part of the reason I went vegetarian in the first place was environmental. Even if you can except the cruelty to animals involved in meat mass production (I can't) it's hard to argue that it's in any way sustainable. But is a raw food diet sustainable either? One of the things that has propelled mankind to its present population is the abundance of food you can get if you cultivate rice/wheat/potatos etc. It bothers me that we're importing all these sackloads of bannas etc...

Also, I was wondering what supplements people on raw food only here take if any. The best of my reading suggests that long term a vitamin B12 is essential and a vitamin D might be good. I've heared people say a little raw goats/sheeps yoghurt is helpful but frankly getting hold of unpasturized milk in this country is practically impossible. Has anyone here been doind this for a *long* time and can share their experience? I'm talking 15/20 years at least.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated,
Rob

Hi.
I once read
"most organic farmers use manures for fertilizer. So where would these manures come from if everyone was an organic vegan?"
we all just do the best we can.

We're not starting from square one here, so we just do the best we can, as stated above, with what choices we do have the ability to make.

I would do a sublingual methylcobalamin and get about 15 min. of sun a day.

Cooking food uses more energy in general, but I don't know of any comparisons of a local cooked&raw diet to a non-local (or mostly non-local) raw diet.

phoeniximago Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> A few things are bugging me slightly though. I
> live in the uk at the moment and so in order to
> eat like this I have to get a lot of my food
> imported for a lot of the year. Part of the reason
> I went vegetarian in the first place was
> environmental. Even if you can except the cruelty
> to animals involved in meat mass production (I
> can't) it's hard to argue that it's in any way
> sustainable. But is a raw food diet sustainable
> either? One of the things that has propelled
> mankind to its present population is the abundance
> of food you can get if you cultivate
> rice/wheat/potatos etc. It bothers me that we're
> importing all these sackloads of bannas etc...

I think these are good questions. When I first tried to eat only raw food (1976), I lived on the Mainland US in a cooler climate. At that time, there wasn't a good variety of imported produce available in the winter.

Basically, I don't think the way humans in general are feeding ourselves is sustainable, no matter what we eat. For the past century or so, most of us have depended on someone else to grow all our food. This requires competition among growers that inevitably leads growing methods that deplete our soil.

Meanwhile, the human population continues to grow, fed mainly from grain and potato crops that either use up too much land and water or deplete the topsoil or both, especially when nonsustainable conventional farm procedures are employed. Just like fruits and vegetables, these crops are exported to wherever they can be sold.

And most cooked food vegans still eat fruits and vegetables too.

Unless a person moves to the tropics and grows all their own food, fact is they're making some sustainability compromises. I'm in the tropics, I grow most of my food, but I'm still making sustainability compromises. Nearly everyone does.

So which compromises leave the smallest footprint? Should a person living in a colder climate try to fill their needs with all locally grown foods, choosing cooked grains/potatoes over foods that can be eaten raw?

Well, for the most part, rice, wheat, potatoes, millet, oatmeal, beans, lentils, and soy are not grown and processed locally. Until more people are growing their own food, there won't be a large variety of food grown locally anywhere outside of the tropics, because farmers - expecially conventional farmers - tend to grow the one thing that grows best where they live (monocropping), and then they export it wherever they possibly can.

And not only are these crops shipped to the place where they are consumed, ground crops are generally never grown as sustainably grown as tree crops. Trees and their cropsrenew the soil; ground crops often deplete the soil.

Vegetables are a ground crop, but fresh raw hothouse vegetables can often be found growing locally, rather than imported, even in colder climates. Hothouses can be solar-warmed.

And a cooked vegan diet usually includes more processed foods, such as tofu, that often require more shipping between the grower and the processor, before it's shipped to the consumer.

Utopian Life mentioned cooking fuels. Cooked vegan grain and bean foods often require cooking for a fairly long time. The more cooking, the more fuel requirement. Consider the amount of resources, including arable land and wildlife habitat that's destroyed for obtaining fuels (think of coal mining, oil drilling, cutting trees for wood fuel).

If you're looking towards a future ideal lifestyle for humans on the planet, it seems to me that it would have to include a raw food lifestyle.

Kollie mentioned that most organic farmers use animal manures. That's unfortunately true. But that's in part because farmers - even organic farmers - have to grow enough stuff to sell to everyone else and try to make a profit. If most of us grew most of our own food, we wouldn't be growing as much as farmers grow. And - especially if we were also eating all raw - we could probably rely a lot more on wildlife to fertilize our trees crops, and on good farming practices for growing our vegetables - such as composting, ground covers, crop rotation, and the use of leguminous crops for binding nitrogen.

I don't personally believe that continuing to destroy our arable land by depending on soil-and-water-depleting grain/bean/potato/animal products is ultimately a sustainable choice. I do believe that being vegan is a giant step in the right direction. And being raw vegan is better still.

> Also, I was wondering what supplements people on
> raw food only here take if any. The best of my
> reading suggests that long term a vitamin B12 is
> essential and a vitamin D might be good. I've
> heared people say a little raw goats/sheeps
> yoghurt is helpful but frankly getting hold of
> unpasturized milk in this country is practically
> impossible. Has anyone here been doind this for a
> *long* time and can share their experience? I'm
> talking 15/20 years at least.

I've now been successfully raw vegan (meaning 99%-100% raw each year) since October, 1986. I take a B12 supplement and go out in the sun for Vitamin D. I've been to [www.nutritiondata.com] often enough to know what raw foods I need to have for filling other nutrient needs. I haven't eaten any dairy products in 23 years. I'm very healthy at 58.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2009 09:03PM by suncloud.

Seems like I made about a zillion grammatical errors in my post above, plus it was poorly organized and way too long (sorry!).

Basically, these are the points:

-Cooked vegan foods, or vegan foods that require cooking are often imported, just like fruits and vegetables.

-Cooked vegan diets usually include processed foods. Processed foods require extra shipping, because the grower ships the product to the processor before it can be shipped to a food distributor. Materials required for the processing must also be shipped to the processor.

-Cooked vegan foods like grains and potatoes deplete the soil and use more water generally (plus more herbicides) than tree foods like fruit and nuts that can be eaten raw.

-Cooked vegan foods require cooking, which uses fuels. Obtaining those fuels requires destruction of wildlife habitat and arable land suitable for agriculture.

-The best choice we can make for sustainability is to grow more food ourselves, learn how to store and sprout if we live in a cooler climate, and if possible, live where the greatest variety of locally grown foods is available. Other than that, if we have to buy imported foods, I personally believe it's better to choose foods that are grown sustainably and don't require the use of cooking fuels.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2009 12:05AM by suncloud.

Suncloud made some really good points.

Animal manure isn't absolutely necessary for agriculture; in fact 'veganic agriculture' which uses the plant cycle as its major nutrient source, is a growing practice.

Ultimately, importing food is never sustainable, and often very far from equitable; using up finite soil fertility and water resources by overfarming not to feed ones own population (indeed, much food is imported from places where poor people starve and are landless), but export to far away lands is a terrible legacy that I'm afraid can't last indefinitely, and certainly shouldn't. I find it absolutely terrible that even in Hawaii most of the population relies on expensive imported food from the mainland instead of growing themselves and experiencing the sustainable local diet (even cooked diet) that the islands can give.


I read this article recently, about these people I've met on an organic gardening forum who have tried their best to have a sustainable cooked vegan diet in Maine: they rely on fruit trees that they can make things like frozen apple cider from, and a big vegetable garden that they make raw pickles and krauts from to eat during the winter - you could add lots of winter squash which can keep for months to make raw soups and pastas out of in the cold months, for a hypothetical mostly raw local northern diet.
[www.motherearthnews.com]

I believe the book 'Forest Gardening' also describes a 80% raw person doing this in England without a greenhouse.

I'm trying to grow more and more of my own food where I live, but there are always limitations; some things will grow ten miles downhill that would not where I am.

Thankyou for your thoughts and the links which I shall read. I guess there're no easy answers here but it's nice to hear someone else has been thinking about it too.
Also great to hear suncloud has gone 23 years raw. Inspiring!

Wild-aloe, thanks for linking the article!

Phoeniximago, thanks for your kind words. For the sake of accuracy, I'd like to make a correction. From 1986 - 1990, I was more like 95% raw (not 99%). During those years, about every 3 weeks, I'd have a cooked food meal (usually a big one, with cooked grains and all kinds of vegan stuff). I'd feel awful afterwards.

I then started paying more attention to getting enough iron (from small quantities of sunflower seeds and other nuts/seeds). My cooked food days went to somewhere between 0 and 5 days a year, and now it seems I'm just eating 100% raw food all the time.

I think I'm a slow learner, but if I can do it, anyone can. And If my experience can help inspire anyone else, that's great!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2009 11:46PM by suncloud.