1. While contemplating the concept of eating the high-greens diet so many swear by, I wondered if there might actually be a season for eating high-greens.

Imagine being an early vegan human and it's spring, there isn't much fruit about, your winter stores (if any) are low, so what is there to eat? Early Greens.

Like dandylions are at thier most edible stage in the spring, most greens would be quite succulent in spring and then become dryer and inedible as the summer came on.

So, maybe the high-greens diet actually had a place in our ancestors diets for a few weeks in early spring before the fruit got ripe. I doubt they ate like that all year though.

I also bet that this "famine" period is how the concept of milk eating started, since most animals are born in the spring, there would be a lot of milk around to steal.



2. Just wondering how all you high-greens people eat your greens? You never seem to post recipes. Now the way I would make a salad would be with greens and a sprinkling of Brewers Yeast and then I would add toppings like:

Tomatoes
Avocadoes
Olive Oil
Vinegar
cucumbers
Lemon or Lime Juice

All of the above list is FRUIT based! By volume my salads would be 50% greens and the rest fruit, by calories its probably more like 90+%.

Come on, admit it. You are a closet fruitarian!!!!!!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2006 12:34AM by tropical.

Here is how I ate my greens today:

4 cups romaine
2 cups greenleaf lettuce
1.5 cups spinach
1.5 cups turnip greens
0.5 cups arugula
1 cup alfalfa sprouts

the above, finely chopped.

I added to this mix:
1 tomato
0.25 florida avocado
0.3 green bell pepper
0.5 purple onion
1 scallion
3 chives
2 t olive oil
1 T pumpkin seed
2 walnuts freshly shelled
0.5 cup cooked blackeyed peas
more red wine vinegar
tiny bit of salt
black pepper

It was really delicious. But as you can see, I am not 100% raw, and I use salt and pepper.

More kcal in the nonleaf/nonsprout part, definitely. I try to get between 1 or more lb of greens in my food every day, but it doesn't amount to much more than 150 kcal usually (at most 10% of my kcals).

Cucumbers & peppers are the only fruit that enters
my salad concoctions.
And yes, I do eat more greens than fruit......


Why Vegan?
Because I have the most love and admiration for all animals of the earth!!!
a rawvegan hopeful, rawdev4life!!!

rawdev Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Cucumbers & peppers are the only fruit that enters
>
> my salad concoctions.
> And yes, I do eat more greens than fruit......

How do you do that? Do you mind sharing a typical daily menu for weight maintenance? I would guess that your diet must be at least 70% fat because it takes an enormous quantity of greens (3-12 cups typically) to equal the kcals in one nonfatty sweet fruit. An entire one lb head of romaine lettuce has only slightly over 100 kcals. A cup of kale has 33 kcals, but you can't eat too many cups because eventually it would give you thyroid problems. A cup of spinach or chard, about 7 kcals, but again, you can't eat too much because the oxalic acid would give you intense GI distresss if you did. Lettuces are mild but one cup is about 8 kcals. So to get most of your kcals from lettuce, you'd have to eat a minimum of 6 entire heads of romaine per day and that would work only if you were a very small inactive person. Greenleaf and redleaf are even less calorie dense.

Most people have trouble getting much more than 3-5% of their kcals from greens because they are so bulky.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2006 11:43AM by arugula.

My guess it that rawdev is talking about volume of greens, not calories. Or perhaps rawdev has another source of calories besides just greens. Arugula is right, that a high greens diet in terms of calories for raw foodists is close to impossible, except for those who can thrive on a very low calorie diet.

Cooking greens like kale will increase calorie density as cooking releases the water out of the kale, and the calorie density increases. However, this doesn't help raw foodists.

What happens to the nutrient density of a greens meal when fat is introduced into the picture? The density of nutrients shrink as one adds more fat, because the fats often don't contain nutrients other than fat.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2006 12:17AM by Bryan.

Thanks arugula for your highly detailed salad recipe! It seems really tasty!



I'm done with Greens vrs. Fruit

No one LIVES on high-greens. There may be a lot of greens in your diet but it's not your energy source. And if fruit is not your energy source, then all that is left are things like nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, oils and root vegetables. I find fruit more digestable than those.

I would like to thank everyone who promoted a high-greens diet, especially the Herbivore Trolls who were probably eating pizza while posting, I think I eat more fruit thanks to you! (there were probably a few of those but I also know that there were many serious people as well). It also prompted me to do a lot of reading and I have learned so much from all the research I did about various types of food.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2006 12:00AM by tropical.

tropical Wrote:

>
> I would like to thank everyone who promoted a
> high-greens diet, especially the Herbivore Trolls
> who were probably eating pizza while posting,

LOL!

I think 20% greens is a feasible upper limit for a human. I am not sure why anyone would want to go higher than that, or even it it's healthy. A third of that would be pretty difficult for most anatomically modern people.

But it seems to be pretty good for rats, provided that the greens are lettuce.

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

I guess you could make it work easily with a dehydrator. But that would consume an enormous amount of energy, negating many of the environmentally-friendly aspects of raw veganism.

Many people on this planet make their diets based around one or two starch-based staples with reasonable quantities of fruit, leaves, etc. That eliminates the problem of having to consume copious quantities of plant foods. I wonder sometimes how much buik is really appropriate or necessary for optimum because sometimes I feel I overdo it.

Try reading Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko. It is an excellent book and she has recipies for including lots of greens in smoothies.

I had a half head of Romaine this morning juiced with half a cucumer, 3 carrots, whole lemon, 1 apple. Delicious! Then I blended it all with half an avocado. Very filling! The rest of the day will usually finds me eating green salads with lots of celery, purple onions, grape tomatoes and (Ugh!) bottled dressing! Sometimes I add regular croutons (ugh again!). But I am gettig there and am feeling terriffic!

In fact, the less pressure I put on myself to be a raw purist, the better I feel and the easier it is to eat what I should. I have decided that it is in my best interest to take it slow and easy and let my body's intuition lead me. I can't wait to have another smoothie and a salad!!!! I am already craving them!!!! Can't get enough.

arugula - So 20% greens (by volume I assume) would be a high-greens diet? That's totally doable, I guess when I thought high-greens I was thinking almost nothing but greens.

That was also a fascinating link about rats and lettuce. I'll have to remember that greens will inhibit cholesterol absorption when I eat cholesterol laden foods. It also helps with cholesterol excretion, so a high-greens diet would be really great when transitioning from SAD to raw.

Regarding the dehydrator, I only run it once or twice a week. I'm eating mostly fresh fruit, meaning I buy it and it sits in the fridge or on the counter until it gets ripe and then it gets cut up and eaten. I recently have been trying to make my own dried coconut for fudge I make with raisins and figs and I ran it. I threw a few chunks of pineapple in too and dried them to see how they would turn out and they are GOOD, I never had naturally dried pineapple before and it really beats the store bought stuff with sugar on it. I'm on a mission to get another pineapple, hopefully today, and try it again. :-) Maybe I'll eat dried pineapple before I go to holiday functions this year so I don't indulge too much in the SAD treats.

And during the summer I agree that it would be a big waste of energy to run a dehydrator but during the winter it's actually an efficient dual use of energy because it helps to heat the house too. I have one of those round dehydrators that can be easily moved, and for few months last winter I put it in a cold bedroom to heat it! I will also start my distiller during the cold part of the day because it will heat the house.

mtnkathy - Thanks for recommending Green for Life, I have been thinking about getting that book. There is a lot about green smoothies on the Boutenko's site that I've read. I really thought it was interesting how blending greens will improve digestion and absorption.

I'm glad you're feeling terrific! Your recipe sounds mouthwatering and reminds me of a time when I couldn't get enough salad because I had this great dressing I loved!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2006 06:37PM by tropical.

Hi,

Here, on an electricity-less, boondock farmette in eastern Kentucky, USA, I must live on stored foodstuffs from a pantry and/or root cellar for several spring and winter months because winding, steep roadways are icily or mudishly impassible.

I'm a Natural Hygiene enthusiast, preferring home organically grown (50%), vegan seeking to boost raw food % (presently maybe 40%) component of diet. The macro and micro climate, soils, hand tool cultivation techniques, and predator/insect presence foster growing the following foods which are storable: peanut, winter squash (butternuts), green soybeans, black-eyed peas, white and sweet potatoes, and various root veggies like carrots, beets etc. Plus I add store bought organic grains and dried legumes (mostly sproutable).

The problem is this: Dr Howell, Enzyme Nutrition, has painstakingly brought to light the important nutritional truth of enzyme inhibitors built in to to seeds nuts, grains, legumes, root veggies, potatoes winter squash, etc by Mother Nature. Neutralizing those inhibitors is digestively and nutritionally important, but so is enzyme consumption. Sprouting is (except for potatoes and squash) a possible solution for me, but the expert advice from rawfooders and sproutmasters is confusing and contradictory.
Mark Braunstein, Sprout Garden, and others say "sprouting legumes only partially neutralizes inhibitors, hence peanuts, soy and other big bean sprouts still need 20min steaming. Smaller beans like mung and lentils need cooking also because of natural toxins. Rice needs cooking after sprouting and the hulled millet available in USA is usually very poor at germinating (50%)"
Ann Wigmore, The Sprouting Book, and other rawfooders ignore inhibitors and eat all bean, grain, and seed sprouts raw (except soy and peanut which she does not sprout or eat)
Steve 'Sproutman" Meyerowitz, Kitchen Garden, says all big beans like soy, mung, lentil, black-eye, and adzuki need cooking. He mentions nothing specific about inhibitors and doesn't worry about enzyme-destroying cooking requirements of grain, seed, and big bean sprouts.
Some rawfooders claim the white potato is perfectly OK eaten raw, contradicting Howell's research and other's strong opinions elsewise.
Other rawfooders, similar to Wigmore, advise me to not grow or consume dry peanuts or their sprouts, dry soybean or their sprouts, potatoes or winter squash at all, but soaked seeds and nuts are OK.

Anyone want to offer pointers/links to top-of-the-line research/books concerning the above controversies?

Tom

When one uses the standard (by calories) definition of "high-something-diet", then if the bulk of calories is fruit, then one eats high-fruit diet, if it is fat, then one eats high- fat diet. Similarly, to eat high-green diet would have to mean to eat the bulk of calories from greens, by volume that would have to be in the proximity of 100%. To be more specific, say that daily requirement for calories is 2000, and that about 80% of this is coming from greens. Translating this into say lettuces, this equals to about 18 large heads of lettuce. Alternatively, it is about 49 cups of chopped kale, or 22 bunches of spinach, or 14 cups of peas, you get the idea. 20% greens by volume is only a few %s by calories. So, high-greens by volume can at the same time be either high-fruit or high-fat per calories.

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

Tom,

From the diet you seem to be describing, it seems like what you eat is more in line with the hippocrates/wigmore camp rather than the natural hygiene style diet. I am a hygienist, and the bulk of my calories come from fresh fruit. Are you eating your sprouts in a hygienic fashion, without condiments and spices?

LOL I love ya tropical.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2006 04:53AM by coconutcream.

20% is by kcals, not volume. Greens are mostly water by volume.

Boutenko does not advocate a high greens diet by kcals--nobody does. She certainly does not eat a high greens diet by kcals because there is no way that high greens could maintain her obesity. She, like many others, advocates adding more greens to the diet. There is a very big difference. Adding a handful of parsley or kale to a fruit smoothie still gives you only a tiny percentage of greens to your diet. I heard her on an interview claim to have increased her greens intake by over 400%. If she went from 1% to 4.5% that's not saying much by energy but that is in line with more typical amounts for people who have large salads daily (or twice a day). It may seem like an enormous quantity of greens but the energy contribution is still minimal.

Those raw vegan foodists who advocate limiting fruit such as Cousens are advocating high fat. There is no other way with raw. If you wish to avoid both high fruit and high fat than you must incorporate either cooked plants or cooked or raw animals/animal products, unless you are on a weight loss regimen and a semi-starvation diet.

Greens are so kcal sparse and concentrated fat sources so kcal dense that if one eats mostly leaves by kcals 6 days a week and then goes on a binge one day a week, the overall result might still be getting most of the kcals from fats. People often misrepresent their diets, either on purpose, or accidentally.

I'm still waiting to hear from the person who maintains a healthy body weight and gets the majority of his or her kcals from greens. Not just a day or two here or for a short time but on a long-term basis. I'd also like to know how much such a person is spending on groceries and how many refrigerators they own to store the roughly 120+ heads of romaine lettuce per week they must be consuming.

Hi Coconutcream

Thanks for your analysis arugula, it was informative and right on. Boutenko is gaining weight!?!

I'm learning so much from this thread:

High-greens means an emphasis on greens. It does not mean eating mostly greens - as in grabbing a 5 gallon bucket and heading out the door to the lettuce patch to pick greens alongside the herbivores like horses and cows (who have four stomachs to handle a high-green diet).

No one gives up fruit for greens, they give up fruit for fat.


I did dry another whole pineapple yesterday and it didn't turn out the same - it was sour. The first time I dried the pineapple it seemed sweeter. The difference was it had been frozen first, I had pulled fruit out of the freezer just to fill up the dehydrator trays. I have noticed that freezing pineapple will diminish the sourness that affects my tastebuds for hours after I eat pineapple. .



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2006 06:49PM by tropical.

Hey tropical! Yup, you're right. I AM a closet frutarian! Once I realized that tomatoes, cucumbers, red bell peppers, avocadoes, zucchini and olives are fruits, I also realized that I was high fruit.

I don't really like sweet fruit very well. Actually - it's not that I don't like sweet fruit - it's that I LOVE non-sweet fruit.

I used to pass on cake or pie after a meal in order to have another helping of salad. I have to pretty much make myself eat sweet fruit - which I do in the form of smoothies.

As for greens - I have found that putting greens - romaine, kale, chards, spinach, etc in my food processor and chopping them up finely allows me to eat more greens. I don't go through 120 heads or bunches per week - but I manage to eat at least 20 per week. I eat parsley as a snack. I often have a bunch of parsley on a paper towel on my lap when I'm on this site - just munching. I believe I was a cow in a former life!

Life Is Good!

alive!

I'm thinking that there is probably more overlap in our diets than we realized.

We all get a lot of our calories and fat from avocados, nuts, legumes or seeds.

We all eat some greens (except for strict fruitarians).

We all eat some fruit.

Beyond this, and maybe it is only 25% of our diet, we eat according to our personal preference.