Hi,

I am transitioning into a raw diet and I'm currently about 75% raw. I'm enjoying the health benefits, new glow, and how energetic I feel it's like a miracle. My issue is that due to curent life situations it's very difficult to eat this way 100% of the time due to lack of transportation to pick up fresh produce sometimes, budget and almost no free time in my schedule. I want to keep the benefits and glow I'm seeing, but I do need to eat cooked food sometimes. My question is would it be healthier and more benefitial to stay vegan and supplement with bread products or supplement with organic meat and skip the bread based products. I do not eat or like beans or rice :-).

Please no comments regarding your personal ethical beliefs I am only interested in finding out which is best healthwise to keep the glow and health benefits I've obtained by eating high raw.

It is really a personal decision.
During transition period certain things are ok.
But most on this board do not eat meat.
But the choice does not have to be between meat and bread.
You can buy seed and they are more nutritious than bread.
You can even sprout them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2015 06:55PM by RawPracticalist.

This is a vegan forum.

[www.rawfoodsupport.com]

"My question is would it be healthier and more benefitial to stay vegan and supplement with bread products or supplement with organic meat and skip the bread based products."

Why do you feel like you need to "supplement" with meat or bread? Instead of beans and rice, you could opt for quinoa and buckwheat groats, which are better choices anyways.

Hi Trailrunner,

Perhaps 25% of the population is gluten-sensitive. Gluten can affect either the nervous system and brain or the gut. If you carry those genes and they turn "on", they usually don't turn off. My brain expert teacher explained that gluten tends to be inflammatory to brains, regardless of the sensitive genes. Therefore, the practice of sprouting wheat and even making sourdough all diminish the gluten content and is beneficial, but gluten is still present. Therefore, I would highly recommend finding other carbohydrates as your go-to, and minimize your bread product use. Nevertheless, if you want bread, consider Ezekiel 4:9 (sprouted grains and legume bread) or Manna bread.

Quinoa is very easy to sprout and can be cooked quickly. It has a higher protein content. Costco sells 4 lb bags from between $12-$18, organic.

Amaranth can also be sprouted and has a higher calcium content. Even after it is sprouted, it takes a longer time to cook, unless you blend.

Note that there are many kinds of rice, including black rice. Koji can ferment rice to make a sweet porridge. It must be cooked for a minute to kill the koji before eating. A dense, hard-to-digest rice can be turned into a liquid (after blending) that is easy to digest and much sweeter. I soak the black rice over night in water, and some people eat it raw like that. If you blend it with a citrus juice like orange, it can be eaten raw in a porridge state, with fairly ok but not great digestion. Anyway, some asians eat it as a desert rice with mango and coconut. There are other kinds of rice, like Bhutanese red rice. Whenever you "sprout" brown rice, you increase the GABA.

Raw vegan protein powders are extremely bioavailable in their protein content. Taking them with the addition of a digestive enzyme that includes protease increase the absorption.

If you don't want any ethical arguments about meat, I will say one thing: if you learn how to eat 100% vegan with excellent digestion, it will pay off in the future, even if you never stay 100% vegan. Why? Because anytime you are sick or diseased, it is much better to be vegan to get well. If you already know how to eat that way, you will recover much faster if you use a high raw vegan diet for recovery.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2015 07:34PM by Tai.

grow sprouts and greens at home, inexpensive and fast food, and lots of it

Unfortunately, I don't like foods that are similar to rice like groats and quinoa. I've never liked the texture or taste and have always steered clear of them.

Thanks, Ezekial is a better option. I'll switch to that. I also realized I can also switch to gluten free pasta as well which is a little better. I love raw protein powders, but I rarely use them because they're so expensive.

I'm leaning towards staying vegan instead of having meat, but the carbs I can tolerate taste wise seem so much less clean then organic meat imo. Bread, pasta and top ramen noodles which are fast and cheap, but definately not healthy.

When some of you mention growing greens and sprouting do you mean indoors? I rent an apartment and can't grow food on the grounds. How do you eat the sprouts? Is it filling or is it similar to something like alfalfa sprouts?

Thank you all for taking time to respond btw :-).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2015 08:56PM by trailrunner15.

TRailR...15 wrote:

I love raw protein powders, but I rarely use them because they're so expensive.

Tai:
www.nutiva.com sells 3 lb bags of hemp protein (15g) for $39, includes shipping. Brazilnut protein is the cheapest protein powder at around $5-8 lb, but it is high in selenium, so you can't have it daily continuously. The point is that if you buy directly from the manufacturer, you will usually save a lot of money compared to buying from a health food store.

Trail...15 wrote:
When some of you mention growing greens and sprouting do you mean indoors? I rent an apartment and can't grow food on the grounds. How do you eat the sprouts? Is it filling or is it similar to something like alfalfa sprouts?

Tai:
Yes, you can grow sprouts in your apartment near your kitchen sink. You can get a nice sprouting lid for a mason jar (or sprouting bag) and soak the seed overnight in water, and then drain and rinse and it should grow little tails. You may need to soak and rinse twice a day. Sometimes when I am so busy, I only do it once a day and it works for most things. You can sprout many things, like mung beans, lentils, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc. You should visit Sproutarian man's website for exact details.

trailrunner15, do you have a good raw vegan quality dehydrator? If you do, or can get one, I can give you some recipes for raw vegan breads which taste every bit as good as cooked dead bread ever did - not quite as cheap though. They aren't tasteless dried up old stale textured things, either.

A couple of hours on the weekend spent making them will see you through the week easily. A couple of more hours and you can dehydrate enough greens to powder for your own homemade protein powders. In the summer I use weeds and grass from my own yard even. And with a dehydrator you can buy greens on sale in large quantities and never have to throw out greens or fruit again. Just dehydrate them before they have a chance to go bad.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2015 12:53AM by SueZ.

Stay vegan with bean sprouts. They are less beany than regular cooked legumes.

If you are pressed for time you can get very cheap mung and soy sprouts from your local asian stores.

If you are looking for the best info, get Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis's book "Becoming Raw"--they are both RDs and will not lead you astray or promote magical thinking.

Rick and Karen Dina are also good, but they are chiropractors.

John Kohler has nice videos on healthy raw diets and gardening.

Some people use minimally processed protein powders. I don't think they are necessary. Methionine restriction extends lifespan, reduces rates of cancers, and increases insulin sensitivity.

That's incentive enough to stay vegan to me. But I will admit I am in it for ethical and environmental reasons.

As I recall the third author of "Becoming Raw" made the news not all that long ago by dropping dead while jogging through Central Park in NY, NY. He wasn't that old, either. The same thing happened, in the same park, one week later to his brother. May they both R.I.P.

Thanks, I did not know that. Rynn Berry. He was an asthmatic, aged 69 when he died. Mostly raw since 1994.

[en.wikipedia.org]

Try sprouting filling and "meaty" foods like sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, etc. Sprouted legumes are also a good choice for filling and nutritious fare. Sprouted seeds and legumes both have far more nutrients than breads and are also a much better choice than meat.

Lack of transportation won't be an issue because you can easily pick up a 10 or 25 pound bag at a time, and you can get the seeds for very cheap too. The only "drawback" is that you would just need to spend time soaking and rinsing them.

Quote

A couple of more hours and you can dehydrate enough greens to powder for your own homemade protein powders. In the summer I use weeds and grass from my own yard even.

It's awesome that you use weeds and grasses, but why not just juice them? Why dehydrate them and then (presumably) reconstitute them in water later? It sounds like an unnecessary number of steps to me.

Living Food Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A couple of more hours and you can dehydrate
> enough greens to powder for your own homemade
> protein powders. In the summer I use weeds and
> grass from my own yard even.
>
> It's awesome that you use weeds and grasses, but
> why not just juice them? Why dehydrate them and
> then (presumably) reconstitute them in water
> later? It sounds like an unnecessary number of
> steps to me.


I have an acre of grass and weeds so I don't have to choose between juicing or dehydrating. I do both at the same time. Dehydrating is mostly for winter use as I live in the north and the only fresh things poking out from under the snow that I harvest now are marshmallow and sage.

arugula Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks, I did not know that. Rynn Berry. He was an
> asthmatic, aged 69 when he died. Mostly raw since
> 1994.
>
> [en.wikipedia.org]


You're welcome. I see I was wrong about the park he died in. I was wondering why it took so long for his body to be discovered and that might account for it.

It's too bad Rynn Berry probably was unaware about the findings on bitter foods affects on lungs. Had he sprinkled powdered dehydrated bitter gourds in his breakfast beverage, for instance, he may still be alive today.

"In 2010, researchers found bitter taste receptors in lung tissue, which cause airways to relax when a bitter substance is encountered. They believe this mechanism is evolutionarily adaptive because it helps clear lung infections, but could also be exploited to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease"

[en.wikipedia.org]

SueZ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have an acre of grass and weeds


You are so lucky to have that. Having an acre of weeds would be a dream.

The best l can do is to rip out all my plants or any vegetables and plant weeds in the garden instead. Gardens growing wild with weeds are the best gardens to have.

The Sproutarian Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SueZ Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I have an acre of grass and weeds
>
>
> You are so lucky to have that. Having an acre of
> weeds would be a dream.

Nothing is perfect. The property tax is (I just checked and am editing for the exact amount) just over $650 a month.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2015 10:16PM by SueZ.

The bucko 5 would take care of the property tax. Oops, shouldn't have said that, the public are not supposed to know the financial instruments of the elite.

The Sproutarian Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The bucko 5 would take care of the property tax.
> Oops, shouldn't have said that, the public are not
> supposed to know the financial instruments of the
> elite.


If has anything to do with that "free man" load of @#$%& count me out. Those "freemen" still end up in jail in the end.

SueZ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Sproutarian Man Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The bucko 5 would take care of the property
> tax.
> > Oops, shouldn't have said that, the public are
> not
> > supposed to know the financial instruments of
> the
> > elite.
>
>
> If has anything to do with that "free man" load of
> @#$%& count me out. Those "freemen" still end up
> in jail in the end.


True, the freeman nonsense is full of fancy theories and 99.9% lose out. I talk about financial instruments, but best not to do it unless you have seen people use it sucessfully.

Too many freemen listen to people on the internet, and jail can be the result. Many are conmen too.

Back to topic now....