Hi,
I started out eating raw whilst embarking on my journey to reconnecting my body and soul. For decades i neglected my body's nutritional needs - living by meaningless and destructive food rules that dominated my life....and by doing so i lost that intuition that is so fundamental to wellness. Only now, am i beginning to listen to my body and give it what it asks.

But the subject of 'eating healthily' is one that sparks so many disputes with theory after theory ....and yet more rules: The 80/10/10; the fruitarian diet; the strictly no grain diet ....; he who eats no 'hybridized' food....the list goes on.

But i cant see how these diets are particularly valuable....since it leads one away from relying on one's intuition......

Im confused by all the rules about eating....i mean why would we avoid grains? What is it in them that are inferior?

Another thing is teeth.....eating so much fruit can surely affect your teeth? Doesnt it eventually?

look forward to hearing what you think....

Big love,

As many of us have said before regarding this lifestyle: Be Your Own Guru! Try a variety of raw foods, combined or uncombined, and gauge how you feel after eating them. Refine until you get to where you are feeling pretty good most of the time. Make alterations with time, as necessary. I've used the regimens of the various raw foods proponents as guidelines, but tend not to slavishly follow any regimen because then my self-direction goes astray, and that's not the optimal way to go through life!

Eat grains if you thrive on them. Brush your teeth regularily, no matter what you are eating. Eat whatever makes you feel vibrant, happy, and satisfied, and you should be OK. This doesn't have to be at all mystical; it should be sensible. It should make sense to your particular organism, and you learn this through experience. Good luck

Thanks Tamukha....its all about being true to yourself i suppose. Thanks x x

It should always be a combination of both, but really you should create your own rules. The longer you are raw or just eating healthier, the more you can distinguish what your body needs. Anything that can cause issues if you eat it or have too much is something to have very little of or eliminate ie: high fats. Grains are usually hard to digest, but as with anything there are exceptions.

Always be sure to balance fruit with minerals such as fresh greens or green supplements and you shouldn't have any teeth issues from eating it with good hygiene.

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The problem with rules is that they are all so contradictory. Macrobiotics recommends a lot of cooked brown rice and little raw food.....some places say soya is the best thing for women and others that it is a poison, similarily with flax seeds....some say Himalaya salt is a great health tonic but on this forum I've heard people say avoid it....and some people say eating a lot of fruit aggravates candida and others that it cures it!!!
So I think the only way is to try out different ways and stick with what makes you feel good and also eat everything in moderation...intuition seems like the best thing but how can we develop true intuition and distinguish it from what are cravings due to addictions?

I have 2 rules: Stay vegan, stay raw.

I have other temporary rules like: fast once/week, always soak peanuts before eating, etc. But I don't mind breaking those rules.

It WAS my intuition that led me to go grain free. Grains were further destroying my already messed up system and probably leading to an early death for me, so in some cases, specific diets DO matter. If you don't understand why people would go grain free you've got a lot to learn. I mean that with no nasty tone what so ever, just that you literally do have a lot to learn. We all are learning.

As Merry said, there is a lot of contradictory info out there, but I think that is where the intuition comes in.

I think merry has a good question: "how can we develop true intuition and distinguish it from what are cravings due to addictions?"

My opinion: there are some foods that we know we can exclude from our diet - whether we crave them or not - because we know they're not nutritious. Those include stuff like doughnuts, potato chips, etc.

And then there are some foods that we can choose to exclude - whether we crave them or not - because they're animal products, and we have ethical concerns.

And then - for whatever reason - we can also exclude cooked foods from our diet.

What's left is whole, raw, vegan foods. If we allow our intuition to play a fuller role, but only within that realm, I think it works OK - especially after sticking to raw food exclusively for long enough to lose the old cravings and develop new ones. But that's not to say "intuition" can or should ever be our only guide to what we eat. Common sense has to be included, but I think we can allow ourselves to question our perceived "common sense", if we are excluding raw vegan foods that we are consistently craving, or if we find we're not satisfied with our current raw food choices.

(that's my theory, anyway)

My experience with grains is similar to corathegreen's. Cooked grains make me feel terrible. I can handle raw grains (sprouted or raw wheat germ) occasionally.

Others may have a different experience, and may have come to different conclusions. That's OK.

"And then there are some foods that we can choose to exclude - whether we crave them or not - because they're animal products, and we have ethical concerns. "

I do not follow vegan diet because of ethical reasons. My logic is mostly practical - what we are made for. Dogs eat raw meat, they are made for it. I don't think I am better because I don't eat meat, I just thing that we are not made for it, and we should not break the natural harmony.

IMO We need to remember that we are all different, this has been my experience spending many months at Hippocrates Health Institute and listing to many people over the years express their feelings and challenges there and in my life. But listen to people like Brian Clement and other credible resurchers. I don't know about that Wolf guy he seems to be selling the lifestyle and not teaching people the truth like Brian Clement, Ann Wigmore and that Victoria guy. Remember we are all not that bright in my opinion and tend to ignore our state of health just because we seem ok enough. Lets take it to a higher level and stand up for ourselves. Don't follow the crowd let them follow us. I truely believe we are an inferior species or something, because we are so clueless. There are so many studies that prove things are not good in this world concerning diet and lifestyle but we ignore them. Use the technology to make this a better world not as an addiction.

You can learn a lot by observing your body signals. Try, when hungry, putting a handful of grains in one hand and a few chunks of watermelon in the other. Which hand is really keen to get to the mouth?

Eating fruit has a fantastic effect on one's teeth. The hydration level one can achieve on a fruit-rich diet does wonders to one's gums, teeth, as well as skin and the whole body.

Of course, if you eat your fruit unripe or dry, this can potentially damage the enamel. But fruit is meant to eat fresh and ripe.


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Hi rawgosia! Nice to see ya.

Hi! Nice to see ya 2. ))


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when eating a fruit based raw diet, be sure to brush your teeth, floss, and use a hygenic dental rinse. You don't want all that sugar on your teeth when you go to bed.

[content.karger.com]

The aim of the study was to investigate the frequency and severity of dental erosions and its association with nutritional and oral hygiene factors in subjects living on a raw food diet. As part of a larger dietary study 130 subjects whose ingestion of raw food was more than 95% of the total food intake were examined. The median duration of the diet was 39 (minimum 17, maximum 418) months. Before the clinical examination, the participants answered questionnaires and recorded their food intake during a 7–day period. Dental erosions were registered using study models. As a control 76 sex– and age–matched patients from our clinic were randomly selected. The raw food diet records showed the median daily frequency of ingesting citrus fruit to be 4.8 (minimum 0.5, maximum 16.1). The median intake of fruit was 62% (minimum 25%, maximum 96%) of the total, corresponding to an average consumption of 9.5 kg of fruit (minimum 1.5, maximum 23.7) per week. Compared to the control group subjects living on a raw food diet had significantly (p?0.001) more dental erosions. Only 2.3% of the raw food group (13.2% of the controls) had no erosive defects, whereas 37.2% had at least one tooth with a moderate erosion (55.2% of the controls) and 60.5% had at least one tooth with a severe erosion (31.6% of the controls). Within the raw food group no significant correlation was found between nutrition or oral health data and the prevalence of erosions. Nevertheless, the results showed that a raw food diet bears an increased risk of dental erosion compared to conventional nutrition.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2011 08:49PM by pborst.

IMHO:

Good advice from rawgosia: Don't eat unripe fruit!

Good advice from pborst: Keep your teeth clean. I like to brush after each meal if possible, plus floss and waterpic before bed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2011 09:49PM by suncloud.