When I followed a cooked vegan diet I ate plenty of fruit, fat, veggies, and complex carbs. I did not reduce my fat intake to 10% of my calories. I did not eliminate complex carbs. I did not limit myself to low glycemic fruit. Many cooked vegans follow a similar diet and they do not have a health crisis after two years that requires them to choose between high carbs or high fat. Why does the same scenario not hold true for raw veganism?

I don't know of any respected raw experts who do not emphasize one of the macronutrients (i.e., carbs, proteins, or fats) over the others. Why can't a diet with a 70-10-20 ratio of carbs to protein to fat be successful in the long-term on a raw diet? Why not even 60-10-30? Why does candida suddenly explode and blood sugar issues start arising if your fat intakes goes above 10% on a high fruit diet or you start eating bananas on a high fat diet? Why do you have to rigidly structure your meals based on food combining principles?

Is is the lack of complex carbs in the raw vegan diet? That is the only major food group missing from the raw vegan diet as compared to a cooked vegan diet. Is it the raw concept itself? Are raw foods more difficult to digest hence making combinations of macronutrients more critical?

What do you think?

I don't think limiting carbs, protein or fat is essential or ideal. Especially not based on someone else's model.

It's a popular way to sell books though (demonizing or glorifying a macronutrient).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2007 10:34PM by Narz.

Most of the people on this planet get the bulk of their kcals from a few starchy staples: wheat, corn, rice, potato, sweet potato, etc.

When we eliminate those, we have to choose: fruit or fat, because greens are so calorie sparse that they hardly make a dent in one's kcal budget and because concentrated vegan protein sources that are low in fat and carbohydrate don't exist naturally in the raw state.

I don't consider any of those people promoting a particular macronutrient ratio to be experts. They are just highly opinionated people who are successful marketeers fixated on a very simple concept that most people can understand and discuss at least on a basic level.

But if you enter all the other important variables (vitamins A, C, E, B complex, D, K, all required minerals, essential fatty acids and correct ratio, soluble fibers) it's much more complicated and most people don't understand or turn off. Why would they think these things don't matter just because they aren't cooking their food? It is a mystery to me. Meeting those needs probably matters more than a particular macronutrient ratio.

The literature is currently pointing to protein levels (and more specifically, methionine) as being a critical factor in cancer development and longevity, as it is so easily oxidized and excesses can be harmful in the long term.

As raw vegans we are in good shape on that end at least.

The debate will continue for a while because it might not matter as much as protein levels.

Edited: there might be some evidence that higher fat levels promote certain types of cancers but fat type and cooking method may be critical. For a raw vegan person, if excess fats are monounsaturated it might not be so harmful.

Also edited to add: I think the low-fruit camp is thinking on a very simplistic level that high fruit leads to diabetes. I don't think so. I think that high fruit when acompanied by low fiber can lead to blood sugar rises. But there are no spikes, only gentle slopes up and down when the diet is high in fiber. Show me a person who developed type II diabetes on a very high fiber diet (over 80 g/day) of unrefined plant foods. I don't think such a person exists.

As far as reputable sources go, WHO/FAO states that there is no convincing benefit beyond 20% for fat. I think when fat intake is much higher than that, there are probably a good deal of relatively empty kcals in the diet.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2007 10:47PM by arugula.

I don't get it either. If you can have both fruit and fat raw, and they both provide good calories and nutrition, why would you have to choose between the two. Fruit and Fat would be the bulk of the calories and then greens and vegetables. I like both, I just don't like to eat fruit and fat in the same meal. I like to eat fruit alone.

Because if you do not think you are choosing, you are: your choice is fat. You will not have a low fat diet unless you deliberately avoid concentrated fats.

Please help me further understand this argument: Are the concentrated or overt fats that are being referred to in your posts oils, nuts, and avocado?

Thanks,
Inner Beauty

PS I appreciate and adore the time and energy that you and Bryan (and others) put into educating those who frequent this amazing site.

Oils, nuts, seeds avocado, olive, and to a lesser extent, Durian. I hope I haven't omitted anything.

10% fat overall is very very difficult for me! It takes a great deal of discipline (that I mostly lack). I am usually in the low to high 20s instead.

Why would you want to eat only 10% fat? It seems neither desirably nor healthy.

AFAIK, no primates eat that little fat and our (fatty) brain is much larger than any of theirs (and our digestive tract shorter).

I don't want to eat only 10% fat.

But (in the context of a whole foods diet) it might be better from the cardiovascular point of view since such a diet is the only one ever shown to reverse arterial blockages.

It might also be best for cancers, although there is limited data. The Koreans with a historic 15% dietary fat intake did better than the Japanese (somewhat higher fat intakes, but still low compared to USA) with hormonal cancers. But that is changing since their diets look more SAD-like every day and their cancer rates are increasing accordingly.

I don't think total fat intake has much to do with intelligence, provided that EFA needs are met and junk fats are limited or absent.

Wild Howler monkeys take in an estimated 17% dietary fat. But since their fiber intakes are astoundingly high compared to ours, their net fat could be much lower. High dietary fiber reduces metabolizable energy. They do get atherosclerosis in the wild. Wonder if their rates would decrease if their fat intakes were lower?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2007 01:08AM by arugula.

arugula Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Because if you do not think you are choosing, you
> are: your choice is fat. You will not have a low
> fat diet unless you deliberately avoid
> concentrated fats.


Well, yes you can choose low fat or med fat or high fat. But just because you choose to eat med. or high fat is no reason to have to keep your intake of fruit limited. Maybe there's some scientific reason, I don't know, whatever. But as far as practical it's not difficult to eat lots of sweet fruit and med. fat, esp. if you're not worried about calories. Not like fruit at every meal, but a good amount of fruit without having to try to stick to some low carb/low sugar only fruits.

Has anyone read the coconut oil miracle where they talk about the cultures eating very high fat whole food diets with no problems?

I'll show you some 2000 kcal/day examples with apples, oranges, bananas, and olive oil:

10% fat
24 pieces of fruit
0.3 tbsp olive oil

20% fat
20 pieces of fruit
2.7 tbsp of olive oil

30% fat
17 pieces of fruit
5 tbsp of oil

40% fat
14 pieces of fruit
6 tbsp of oil

50% fat
13 pieces of fruit
8 tbsp of oil

60% fat
9 pieces of fruit
9 tbsp of oil

Most people would consider 9 pieces of fruit per day to be a high fruit diet. But, it isn't--it's a high fat diet.

Who's gonna eat 9 pieces of fruit and drink 9 tbsp's of oil?

That was just to show proportions. People don't drink 9 tbsp of oil. But they do get the equivalent fat content from nuts, seeds, and avocado routinely.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2007 01:55AM by arugula.

Well I wouldn't consider 6 TB. of fat, high fat. What about all the other food in the diet and vegetables etc.? 9-14 pieces of fruit is a good amount of fruit, depending on what type of fruit and the size of the fruit. I'm not talking about Fruitarian standards of 50 bananas a day (I can't eat more then 2 pieces of fruit at a time). But for a lot of those people advocating the high fat diets or as much fat as you want diets who are down on any and all high glycemic fruit, I don't understand what's so wrong with it. I like fat but I also like dates and bananas and other very sweet fruits. I'm not giving up fat, but I'm not going to go super low glycemic either. Wasn't that the original question?

Today my fat intake was at 5%, no trouble. But I can't seem to keep the protein down, I love my greens...!

What about fruit in the evening?

Because most "vegetables" are really fruit, except for leaves, which have so few kcals that they hardly make a dent in the total. An entire head of romaine lettuce has only 100 kcals but nobody eats 20 of them in a day.

>>But for a lot of those people advocating the high fat diets or as much fat as you want diets who are down on any and all high glycemic fruit, I don't understand what's so wrong with it.

I don't either. I don't think it is a problem when the diet is very high in fiber. But it might be a problem with the people who are subsisting mostly or solely on dried fruits, nuts, seeds, oils, juicing, and fatty fruit.

Very few people are interested in eating a mountain of produce every day. It's time consuming, expensive, and a lot of trouble.

LOTS of people on a cooked diet, even vegan ones get fat/sugar issues like candida and diabetes. I had candida when I was a cooked vegan. Eating too much fat is an issue for everyone, not just raw foodists.

All the best,

Audrey

Narz,

I've seen raw folk eat stranger things than 9pcs of fruit and 9 tbsp oil. By the way, if you added a pound of kale and a pound of lettuce to arugula's sample fruit & oil menus, it is not going to throw of the fat percentages in a significant way. Given 2 pounds of greens, its not hard to see 9 tbsp of oil. I used to use 4 tbsp of oil per salad, plus an avocado, plus a 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds. I did this for lunch and dinner.

Hey, I heard of a raw foodists eating a whole jar of almond butter plus a whole jar of raw honey in a single day! Now thats intense.

Bryan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Narz,
>
> I've seen raw folk eat stranger things than 9pcs
> of fruit and 9 tbsp oil. By the way, if you added
> a pound of kale and a pound of lettuce to
> arugula's sample fruit & oil menus, it is not
> going to throw of the fat percentages in a
> significant way. Given 2 pounds of greens, its not
> hard to see 9 tbsp of oil. I used to use 4 tbsp of
> oil per salad, plus an avocado, plus a 1/4 cup of
> sunflower seeds. I did this for lunch and dinner.
>

Yeah, fruit + greens + oil but not just fruit & oil (unless you're eating as argula said, tons of avocados).

A bit of fat with your greens (and vegetables) helps you absorb the fat soluble vitamins in the salad (better than if you ate it with no fat).

> Hey, I heard of a raw foodists eating a whole jar
> of almond butter plus a whole jar of raw honey in
> a single day! Now thats intense.

Very.

From my experience food combining is more important than fat & carb ratios. I don't get sick if I eat two or three or four avacados in a day (or a salad with oil & other fats on it). Though, from experience I wouldn't recommend an almond butter + date (or honey) combo. At least not on the regular.

Have you seen article called Gut Thinking comparing the howler monkey versus the spider monkey in Panama? Very provocative.

Yeah, you posted it before. Calorie dense food + having to work hard & smart for it = bigger brain. Interesting.

Thanks for the url, Bryan. I wish Milton had written her papers on spider monkey diets rather than those of howler monkeys.

No5,

"Carbs versus Fats" is not more critical on raw. If cooked eaters were eating 60% fat in their diet everyday, month after month, year after year, they too would be seeing massive candida overgrowth. Fortunately, as arugula pointed out, most of the world is getting most of their energy from complex carbohydrates: wheat, corn, rice, etc.

Your other question was why not 70-10-20 or 60-10-30?

How much protein do we need? Cooked food nutritionists are saying 10%. But there is a huge degradation of cooked protein versus raw, so that can't be the real number. Mother's milk is 7% protein, at a time of unprecedented growth in the human organism. Since adults are not growing at the same rate as infants, we don't need even 7%. So what is the minimum? Perhaps as low as 8 grams a day. In any case, if you are eating whole ripe raw organic fruits and vegetables, and you are getting enough calories, there is no way to tweak your protein intake such that it gets too low.

What happens when we eat more protein that we need for our amino acid needs? The protein get metabolized, but there are waste products, like uric acid. To neutralize this, the body need to draw calcium from the bones and teeth remove any excess acidity. Also, the body is only able to utilize 58% of the protein in terms of energy. So the rest of the protein becomes waste, and this taxes the kidneys, and if there is enough excess, leads to kidney disease.

How much fat do we need? Nutritionists say 3% to get the essential fatty acids. The human body can create its own fat from excess consumption of carbohydrates or protein. What happens when we consume more than we need? The fat get metabolized. This creates ketone bodies, which are acidic, and require calcium to neutralize acidity. Too many ketone bodies, the breath smells like acetone, energy become lethargic, the body become dehydrated. If you are eating enough calories of whole raw fruits and vegetables, you will not have a deficiency of essential fatty acids.

So excess protein creates and acidic conditions and taxes the kidneys and liver, thus is a factor in kidney and liver disease and osteoporosis. Excess fat brings the body to ketosis and creates an acidic condition, plus is a factor in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.

Excess carbohydrates create fat in the body. Excess carbohydrates, on a diet of whole foods, is synonymous with overeating. Not healthy, taxing to the digestive system and health in general, and over time will lead to chronic disease. But not as fast as the overconsumption of fats and proteins.

So why not 30% fat? It can work, but it creates an acidic condition in the body and can drain your calcium. If the fats are saturated fats, they are unusable by the human body and are treated as waste. These fats tend to be sticky and cling to arterial walls.

If you are eating fats every day, there is always fats in the bloodstream. This can over time lead to insulin resistance. Perhaps not after a year. In fact, it could take 20 to 30 years to get to this state. But guess what? Most people expect to live longer the 30 years old. So this is a concern.

Thanks for all of the replies! None of these posts suggest that carbs versus fats is more critical on a raw diet because 35% fat is more unhealthy on a raw diet than it is on a cooked diet. Rather, the suggestion is that this issue can appear to be more critical on a raw diet because raw foodists think that they are consuming 35% fat when they are actually consuming 65% fat. However, this information still does not dissuade one from concluding that a properly determined 70-10-20 raw vegan diet can be sustainable especially when proper food combining and sequencing principles are followed.

There is evidence to support many different macronutrient ratios and there are examples of healthy humans and animals who follow many different macronutrient ratios. To claim that we know enough to pick only one macronutrient ratio which applies to all humans is illogical. Scientific proof requires a significant sample set and rigorous proof requires a complete sample set via mathematical methods such as proof by induction. It is easier to disprove something because one disproving case eliminates rigorous proof and just a small set of disproving cases eliminates scientific proof. We already have those disproving cases in the forms of humans who have lived long healthy lives following a variety of macronutrient ratios. This likely points to the complexity of the many factors involved in health as well as the complexity inherent in individual differences.

I am concerned about the carbs versus fats issue in the raw foods movement because several vocal "experts" and message board posters make this issue appear to be absolutely critical to success on the raw diet. This is compounded by the fact that these individuals then suggest that only one extreme macronutrient ratio is healthy. This concerns me because some potentially long-term raw foodists may be convinced by these arguments and then fail at this diet. They may never explore valid macronutrient possibilities because they perceive them to be unhealthy.

Are we raw foodists simply for the sake of being raw foodists? Are some raw foodists very low fat or very low fruit simply for intellectual reasons? Or are these decisions all consequences of a deeper search for vitality? It is ironic that two people who were led to different macronutrient ratios by the same principle of vitality choose to focus on their apparent differences when in reality they are exactly where they are for the very same causal reason.

The other issues is the issue of adaptation. When I was eating cooked foods, my body was used to getting 40% fat. For me, my body didn't want to make an extreme change all at once. It take a while for those adaptations (from eating 40% fat) to let go. It took a while for my mind to let go. I tried control at first, and it didn't work. Things got much simpler when I quit controlling it, but just let my body do its thing. It naturally moved towards lower fat, once I realized that I didn't need the 60%+ fat I was eating before. As I have said in earlier message, it was easy for me to be at 20% fat. Over time, the desire for fat simply fell away. Now it is easy for me to be at 10% or less fat.

There are many successful long term rawfoodists who do not limit their fat to 10% of calories. In my opinion 20% is also just fine; it definitely does not "cause illness within two years" or other such nonsense. Those who advocate 10% so strongly seem to really get off on exaggerating everyone else's intake and its effects on them; as if there are no in-betweens, and everyone else is "high fat," 60%, and chronically ill.

Listening to the body's ability to adapt is a great point. Usually this is applied through a recommendation to transition gradually towards your end goal. However, I would also consider the issue of adaptation in light of balancing your end goal. If it takes a long time to adapt to an extreme end goal then it will take a long time to adapt back. You could gradually adapt to an all-liquid diet. But after a few years it could become very difficult to adapt back to solid foods. This might be acceptable for some but for those who foresee solid foods in their future it might be unwise. You would likely experience digestion problems for a period of time or your body might even reject those solid foods.

Our bodies will adapt to almost anything, they are amazing. If we eat very small amounts at a time like I have then it adapts to not being able to eat much at a time. The stomach shrinks or something. I used to be able to eat full meals like everyone else, now I can only eat very small amounts at a time. Just 1 large glass of smoothie or a bowl of soup makes me feel full and bloated and over-stuffed. Yet for a lot of people that is just like the appetizer to their larger meal.

If you eat a lot of fat you will adapt to feeling ok with that and vice versa. If you don't exercise for years you will adapt to feeling ok without exercise. If you regularly exercise you will feel gross after just a couple days without it. And if you eat very little fat you will feel gross from eating a meal with a lot of fat in it. You can gradually balance your diet to what feels best and most comfortable for you. I just don't buy into all the analyzing and intellectualizing everything. I have no idea what % of fat or carbs or protein I eat or how many calories. And I don't care at all. I just eat what I want and what feels good. My body tells me all the time when it's had too much fat or too much sugar etc. and to STOP. The signals are loud and clear and I'm very sensitive to them. I couldn't eat more then 1 avocado at a time and certainly no more then 2 in one day without feeling gross. I also couldn't eat more then 4-5 bananas or oranges at a time without feeling gross and sticky (sugar is all sticky). Everyone's different. I believe in listening to your own body, not calculating other people's ideal percentages. Some days you might want more of one thing then another day. There are no rules!

>Mother's milk is 7% protein, at a time of unprecedented growth in the human organism. Since adults are not growing at the same rate as infants, we don't need even 7%. So what is the minimum? Perhaps as low as 8 grams a day. In any case, if you are eating whole ripe raw organic fruits and vegetables, and you are getting enough calories, there is no way to tweak your protein intake such that it gets too low.

Bryan, you know this is a bad example. The amino acid profile of human milk is completely different from that of fruit. Or most greens, even. Since the amount of protein assimilated is limited by the least prevalent essential amino acid, you'd have to triple the fruit protein content to match it. Maybe if you ate a lot of greens (10% of your kcals) you could get away with matching a net effect of mother's milk at 14% protein from raw plant foods.

Another thing is that high fiber reduces metabolizable energy, protein, and fat. So to be certain you were getting a match for mother's milk protein, you'd have to bump it up another 20% or so if you weren't juicing and pureeing.

Why not just drink mother's milk...?