An intriguing article by Will Tuttle a friend sent to me this afternoon. I believe Will raises some interesting questions. It was definately food for thought for us.

What's your idea of Will Tuttle's opinions in the greater scheme of things....?


love
peace
joy
i breathe in
i breathe out
Bikini


"Does Rawfood Support Veganism?"

Published in VegNews Magazine by Will Tuttle, Ph.D.


While rawfoodism may certainly contribute some wisdom to help us optimize vegan health, I wonder how much it actually supports our long-term efforts to promote veganism to the general public. It’s been my experience that when I or people I know have undertaken rawfood diets it’s been because we wanted to get something from it, like better health, or more energy or personal purity. It’s basically good old self-centered motivation.

Veganism, by contrast, is completely revolutionary because it insists on an underlying motivation of compassion born of our direct experience of interconnectedness with other sentient beings, and is an ethical refusal to treat them as mere commodities to be consumed. As vegans, we strive to live in a way that minimizes unnecessary suffering to other vulnerable creatures and we gladly reject our culture’s fundamentally self-centered orientation of cruel domination of animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and research. I believe veganism is the essential healing force that our culture desperately needs, because the mentality of domination that starts on our plates reverberates through our various cultural institutions as authoritarianism, oppression, and violence. Healing this mentality requires cultivating vegan values: concern and caring for others weaker than us, and refusing to exploit them. As vegans, the improved health we naturally experience is a side-benefit; it’s not the main focus because we sense there’s a higher purpose in life than just being physically healthy.

With rawfoodism, though, I wonder if we make the vegan connection. My wife Madeleine, for example, became a strict rawfoodist 25 years ago and for two years ate a completely raw diet that was nominally vegan. Her motivation, though, was not vegan, but was to have more energy, be healthier, and need less sleep. For this, the rawfood diet was successful, but after two years, like most people who take up rawfoodism in our northern climate (except the rawfood “pro’s”), she discontinued the rawfood diet, and found that eating cooked grains was helpful and nourishing, both physically and mentally, as well as emotionally. However, because her motivation was still basically health, after a while she felt it was good to supplement her diet with dairy products and occasionally with fish. In my experience, this pattern seems all too common, though Madeleine did eventually go vegan several years later.

As rawfoodists, we eat what seems to be a vegan diet, but when we can no longer stick with it, unless we already have a strong vegan motivation, we typically revert to being omnivores again, not to being vegans who eat both cooked and uncooked food. I’ve also found that when I’ve been a rawfoodist, a lot of willpower was involved, because it would be tempting to cheat a little here or there, since only my health and purity were at stake. If I didn’t cheat, I’d be quite proud of myself. As a vegan, though, I find my diet requires no willpower and there’s nothing to be proud of, because it’s based simply on seeing animals as beings to be respected rather than as objects to be eaten.

I also wonder whether rawfoodism is healthier than non-rawfood veganism. As a rawfoodist, for example, I’ve eaten raw meals of dates, figs, bananas, nuts, nut butters, and avocados and though I was bringing in huge and unhealthy amounts of sugar and fat, I was strictly avoiding steamed kale and broccoli—and merely maintaining a delusion of healthy eating.

Another open question is whether a raw diet uses less energy or is more environmentally benign. As a rawfoodist I would buy piles of bananas, pineapples, and other tropical and subtropical foods, all of which had to be shipped many thousands of miles, and I had to go to the store more often to keep the refrigerator stocked. Now, as vegans who eat both raw and cooked food, Madeleine and I use one 7-gallon tank of propane to fuel our stove every six months! This is a tiny amount of fuel compared with the huge amounts of fuel required for transportation. I wonder if the fuel savings of eating raw is not more than offset by the hidden fuel demands of transportation, because five pounds of rice or lentils goes a lot farther than five pounds of bananas.

A final important question is whether rawfoodism might alienate the general public because it’s perceived as being more extreme and difficult to adopt than a vegan diet that includes both cooked and uncooked foods. I believe our goal as a movement should be to promote the compassion and environmental sustainability that vegan living provides. It seems that in promoting veganism to the public, breads, pastas, grains, potatoes, cooked vegetables, soups, salads, beans, tofu, and meat analogs are probably a lot more appealing than a diet composed of strictly raw foods. We are trying to build bridges to the omnivorous public to bring them over to veganism and away from cruelty and destruction, and I wonder if, in being rawfoodists, we may tend to make ourselves impossibly remote.

Veganism, which is a committed effort to live the ideals of mercy and kindness to others, is indispensable to all spiritual paths, because it emerges from and deepens the understanding that we are all completely interconnected and interdependent. It seems to me that our deepest purpose on this earth is spiritual, and that the towering spiritual geniuses who have blessed this earth have typically been vegan but have been little concerned with whether their foods were cooked or not. For example, when we look at the great Zen masters of China and East Asia of the last 1,500 years, we find people who invariably ate a vegan diet of both cooked and uncooked foods. The desert fathers of the Christian tradition are similar, as are the sages of most other religious traditions.

It seems the essential point is to go vegan (and go organic) because of compassion, and to endeavor to be the change we want to see in the world. From this basis, we can mindfully explore the potential benefits of rawfoodism if we’re so inclined.



Will Tuttle, Ph.D., composer, pianist, Zen priest, and author of The World Peace Diet, is cofounder of Karuna Music & Art and of the Prayer Circle for Animals and Circle of Compassion ministry.

this is kind of like saying: "people are going to eat entertainment foods, so why not let them know their are vegan options, tell them its ok to eat puss as long as it does not come from an animal" per se that is

grains are the subsidy of the meat and dariy WORLD we live in, and is the 'evoutionary link' (pun/sarcasm intended) with our de-evolving health

he makes some good points, for sure about how people fall off the vegan wagon if raw results in eventual ill health, especially if they don't have a commitment to being vegan. Of course he doesn't know WHY this happens, or he wouldn't be suggesting the superiority (morally or otherwise) of a modest cooked vegan diet.

personally, I AM usually more exicted when someone I know chooses vegan over raw (not literally over exactly...most people have no concept of raw), especially if they are including tons of fresh stuff.

if I had a higher purpose in life as a vegan before raw, it was blocked by PASTA.

I have some more great one liners, like "How far does 5 lbs of lentils travel in your intestinal track...NOT FAR" yet i'll refrain, because i'm sure he's doing much to promote the vegan lifestyle, while i'm just intelectulizing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2007 04:21AM by anaken.

What's with all the Raw Vegan V's Vegan stuff these days....just live and let live and go do something better with your time that's what I say!!!

F1

I agree with the author that there can be a junk-food raw food diet. But there also exists a junk-food cooked vegan diet. I know a vegan who doesn't eat vegetables, and his diet consists of lots of processed fatty foods.

I disagree that veganism is indispensable to a spiritual path. Look at the Dalai Lama. In India, where there are lots of saints, they are eating dairy products.

As for locally grown foods, this is more of a macrobiotics concept rather than an issue for vegans. How do non-locally grown foods affect the cruelty to animals??? I think this author is mixing metaphors or something here.

I eat the way that I do because it feels good to me, and my health is excellent. If I were eating cooked grains or soy products, I am sure my health would decrease and I would feel less well. Should I use how a diet feels as a criteria of how I eat, or how my diet affects my health, versus the various "intellectual" (or in the head rather than feeling) arguments provided by the author?

I like a lot of the points in the article, but I also agree with Fruitarianone that there's really no reason for one way vs. the other.

As a raw food vegan, I admire anyone who is vegan, whether they are raw or not. For myself, I would choose eating some cooked vegan food over eating some raw animal food. And in the last 20 years, any time that I've gone off the raw wagon, I've always stayed vegan. I don't think I could be successfully raw now if that were not the case.

One thing the author might not be aware of is that for many of us, raw food is not just a matter of being self-centered. Some of us just can't function well on cooked food at all, because it makes us feel so bad. There's nothing self-centered about not wanting to be depressed all the time and a burden on others, due to health issues.

It's also fair to mention that on raw food, it IS possible to eat local, depending of course on the kind of raw diet that a person follows and where a person lives. And cooked food vegans certainly don't automatically eat just local food. My understanding is that most organic potatoes, for example, come from Idaho, and are shipped cross-country. And there are many foods that vegans eat that originate in Japan and other countries around the world. Last time I looked, vegans also eat avocados, bananas, and other tropical fruits - not as much as raw vegans, but maybe the total shipped foods are about the same.

I don't mean to disparage cooked food vegans by saying this, but people are definitely saving fuel when they don't cook. One raw person doesn't add up to a big fuel savings of course, but a lot of raw people do.

And finally, there's the packaging. It's just easier to avoid plastic packaging when you're raw.

So, for me it's not raw vegan vs. vegan. It's first choice: raw vegan. 2nd choice: vegan.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2007 09:26AM by suncloud.

No way no how I ever would've become a vegan first, because I know my body - that it can't thrive on carbs. However I also knew from a lifetime of eating raw fruits & veggies that those are my friends and make me feel the best. For me it was the surreal discovery & wonderment that that was ALL I needed. I LOVE it that I never have to worry about eating "real food", I can just eat cucumbers & bell peppers & watch TV, just like I did when I was a little kid.

Strict diet philosophies generally have always annoyed me.

It seems clear to me that Tuttle does not understand all of the benefits of a raw vegan diet. A vegan diet is only translative while a raw vegan diet is the only diet that is transformative. Tuttle keeps comparing the motivation of a raw foodist to the motivation of a vegan and I have always emphasized that we want to give people as many reasons as we can so that they can, as Nietzsche would say, be able to bear any how. The fact that Tuttle needed “a lot of will power” when he attempted a raw food diet clearly illustrates that he does not understand the consequences of his own dietary choices.

So, is a vegan diet more compassionate than a raw vegan diet?

I immediately thought of something Dr. Flora once said and when I went through her file, I found quit a few of her posts that addressed this issue and here they are.

"While working with Dr. Wigmore, we noticed something wonderful happening to our students who really took the program to heart and went 100%: they all became 'enlightened' and loving and were in an entirely different space from when they entered the program approximately 10 days to 2 weeks before. From being suspicious to open and trusting, from frightened to loving. I could go on and on with the descriptions, but basically, there are no negative feelings when one is 100%. No reactions, like fear and anger; only love." -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

"I may be the only non-alcoholic who was ever allowed to speak to the AA meeting at Virginia Beach and was trying to explain why the sugars in their donuts dropped their blood sugar and then depression and cravings continued or started again. When one eats dead foods or drinks dead juices the energy is in one's bowels and that is the slowest of the feelings (tired, numb, non-reaction, non-feeling), and the living food's electrical charge wake one up to the source and love of life, the excitement of just enjoying the sight of a flower or a sky without needing any further stimulant. Oh, to be able to give everyone who is struggling with an addiction the blessed juices of a fresh papaya, or even an apple, and let them feel God's love coursing through their veins, as the nerves regenerate and they feel they are 'on the path' again. Peace and freedom from drugs come from the electricity in live food connecting with the love already inside us, that's been waiting for real nourishment. Men, especially, need water but not the water at a 'watering hole' or at a fishing pond, which are 2 ways they keep from going crazy, but the water from the living food." -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

“Cooked food, according to the Dead Sea Scroll, Essene Gospel of Peace, causes people to feel malice against one another, and raw food fills us full of love for our brothers (and sisters).” -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

“Mindy, once you go raw/living, your energy increases so fast that when you go back to eating something like chocolate with non-organic dairy in it, you get contaminated by the cow's feelings of anger, frustration, etc. because of the stuff that happens to the cows. If you want to know what stuff, PETA will be happy to fill you in, or you can write to me at drflora3rd@hotmail.com and I will tell you. I don't want those feelings in my body because I've worked hard to get to the point where I can't 'compute' fear and anger or go into reaction. Peace comes when we don't have someone else's energy inside us, because we are all love when we are eating the highest vibration foods, which gives us the same vibration as love. Then, we attract what we radiate. Don't give up on asking for help. That's what this group is all about, helping each other up the steps of the pyramid to the top!” -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

“I will never eat creatures, but when I go to Earth Save for their vegetarian potlucks or some Vegan potluck, I may stray a little, but I always secretly regret it a tiny bit later, because cooked food makes me tired, and the past few months, I've been totally liquid and it feels so good, spiritually and physically, that I wonder why I don't love myself enough to not compromise on this spiritual high. There's no spirit in cooked food. There may be love which is put in it from people who prepare it, and that's great, but spirit is more important, the living electricity that keeps me going. One day I will be like Dr. Wigmore and go all raw. She was 50 when she decided. I'm 65 and I know what happens to me when I eat cooked: I degenerate really fast; overnight my skin looks 5 years older, because I have no natural enzymes in my body like younger people have and I was married to a smoker and was raised by smokers so my face skin is pocked like smokers (especially women smokers) face skin is, yet I've never smoked. Too much dairy will do that to you too. So, because of my earlier 'sins', my facial skin will always look old when I eat the energy soup unless I make sure I eat aloe, buckwheat greens and cucumbers. But, I'm not interested in how my body looks outside anymore, only how it is inside. My space suit has nothing to do anymore with what is happening on the inside, where I am like a little child, all bubbly and full of energy because of the energy and vitality coursing through my veins. Anyway, I would've puked too, or felt like it mixing that stuff.” -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

“I agree with you (Randall) about everything except the last sentence. Do you know anyone who is 100% raw and 'pissed' at anything? I don't. If a person is truly 100% living food, and has done his/her work to clean out eveything that would keep him/her down like no smoking anything or drinking anything alcohol, they can't even comprehend being pissed at anything because they are in a state of love/bliss/grace. Of course, there are people who are new raw foodists and some old who don't know how long energy from stuff we've inhaled, drunk can last until we do our emotional work also: I remember at Murrieta Hot Springs, and I've mentioned this before, where a man who had been on the wagon for over a decade was on the table in front of everyone, and the therapist was demonstrating a diaphragm press. His face clouded as he bent over the man, and he called to someone in the room (a man who said he had been on the wagon for 15 years) to come down and smell the man's breath as he bent over him. Both had been vegans for some time, but when the man did as he was told and the therapist pushed on the reclined man's diaphragm, the volunteer straightened up and said "Oh, that's Jack Daniels! Used to be one of my favorites!" We found out that the man on the table had been clean for 17 years. So, we have to get to a point of going beyond forgiveness to a point where we understand that there is nothing to forgive, nothing to judge, that we are all perfect, and that everything that happens is perfect because it has brought us to this point today, this second. I remember again my friends in Egypt explaining to me about their belief that this is all a predetermined conversation, and we are playing out our parts in this play which will culminate in eternal bliss for all, and we have two choices in these parts: to bitch and complain or to say, when we're confronted with something, what am I supposed to be learning about this? The book and tapes "Why Some People Never Get Well" show how incredible the transformation is when people get to that point of understanding that there is nothing to blame on someone else, there is nothing that we can do about anything except to give thanks for our blessings. Life becomes a lot easier after that. And, opportunities spring up out of nowhere once we let go attachments and preconceived notions of things. The living/raw vibration leads us quickly into that space and is worth all of the effort to get there. I salute all of you young people who are making that stand for your own strength and energy. You have the support now that some of us didn't have because we didn't know there was a choice! Truly is this a time of higher consciousness and this is such an exciting time to live!” -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

“Cooked/processed/dead food causes these feelings of I and You instead of WE. We are all just reflections of one another and we radiate what we attract and attract what we radiate, so you can see how important it is to attract life over death. …To quote a friend of mine, Kwatamani, "Divine actions speak louder than words", and the most divine action we can do is eat the most revitalizing foods there are, those from Mother Earth, prepared with lovingkindness and eaten in a spirit of gratefulness. …When you sincerely go all living, you give up nothing and gain everything. …Finally, she's/he's giving us the highest vibration foods, eaten in the proper spirit, and now we can do our job!), …Ultimately, everyone down the road will get there, we have to be kind to the ones who don't understand the importance of it yet.” -Dr. Flora Mason Van Orden

Love and Hugs……..John

PS As an added bonus, I thought this post by Dr. Flora also addressed some of the negative aspects of eating grains which make up a big percentage of a vegan diet. I especially like her comment that “leaders need to be grain free.”

Outline of AnnWigmore's diet
drflora3rd (---.mia.bellsouth.net)
Date: 02-06-02 05:31

Kasuo, she was 100% living food vegan. Brief? I cannot comprehend brief! Thanks heavens I work with 2 men who are concise and focused! who can help me focus! Please share this or forward this to anyone who can benefit. Perhaps I read you wrong, but I am assuming that you wanted her own personal diet, not the one she taught her students who were very fragile.

Her recommendations for her AIDS and cancer students' soups were purposely missing sprouted grains and more than 2 ounces of almond cream. She would have appreciated Dr. Doug's message on no grains. Some people have found it useful, mostly men, but I have found sprouted buckwheat to be a total waste of the energy of the little seed. The starch has not been turned into the kind of sugar that is used for fast energy, and there is no usable protein until the chlorophyll turns the leaves green. The pink/magenty stems are wonderfully full of lecithin, which dissolves cholesterol, as bromelain from the stalks of really ripe pineapple do too. All useful besides fiber that we could get from fermented or sprouted grains are mainly the b-complex vitamins, but the sauerkraut takes care of that thoroughly, and is a more grounding and spiritually enlightening and masterful food than grain. Seems it's ok for followers; but leaders need to be grain free. "Healing Foods" touches on that and others I could recommend, but people will find this out themselves when they give up grain completely. My friends in India's eyesights improve also.

She ate Energy Soup with 1/4th avocado in the a.m., and almond cream in the p.m., with homemade sauerkraut and rejuvelac in it. Sometimes, if we were at a conference together, she would buy a variety of seed and nut cheeses, take a taste (literally, not a bite and wash her mouth out with rejuvelac and give me the rest. I would eat it all and promptly fall asleep. Too much protein, and some of the seeds and nuts had not been soaked the proper time to get the inhibitors out and the starch and protein predigested into simple sugars and amino acids, so my body had to shut down in order to make some sense of it. I had to learn the hard way. She would smile indulgently and say, as she woke me up to work some more, "You eat differently from me and that's why you have to sleep, Flora". She put different amounts of the basic ingredients in each am and pm and I have no idea if what she made for me was always what she made for herself, but the few times I was in her kitchen, which floor was covered with newspaper to catch the peelings she scattered all over as she quickly and efficiently prepared soups on and off all day for guests, and then rolled the paper up at night and threw it away and her floor was clear and clean for the evening, I saw she was sharing!

She taught me that if I just followed my inner guide, I would take the right amount of what I needed. Other naturopaths have suggested the same; one in Hurricane, Utah, said when he is walking and sees a brown eyed susan and focuses on it for a longer period of time, the minerals/vitamins in it will usually be just what he needs, and if it something inedible, he makes sure he gets enough that day of what his eyes had led him to, only in a different plant or fruit.

She made dehydrated protein nuggets for our guests, but did not recommend them for people who were trying to regenerate their cells with heavy health challenges. In fact, she felt that more than a couple of ounces of almond cream a day was too much fat for one's liver when it was compromised.

She mandated that in order not to have cleansing reactions, it was necessary to take enemas in the a.m. (before 2 hours of rising) and to enjoy the trampoline and dry natural bristle brushing toward the heart and wet skin stimulation with a loofa. Implants with wheatgrass juice were necessary parts of her regeneration program.

She had transcended the need to sleep and she watched the Oprah program a little to keep up on the topics that people were interested in, but spent most of her time writing, answering letters, making audiocassettes for people. She was the most spritiual person I've ever met and because she lived in present tense and had incredible love inside her, she was never worried about anything, even when people where trying to undermine some of her students' confidence in her in order to 'take' the reins from her hands.

I would love to answer specific questions, and have over 2 decades of experience with her and could really give you some stories, if I was not reined in!

She was always experimenting and some people who came into the Institute for a couple of weeks might have gone away thinking that what they saw there was what they might eat. She finally had to take the lovely jars of beans, peas and lentils down that lined the top shelf in the kitchen because so many people got the wrong impression, not understanding that they were just for decoration and that we didn't use them ourselves. After oriental doctors asked her to test things like mung beans and aduki beans, etc. she found that they were not things that were helpful (in fact some were very harmful sprouted) and she didn't want them used anymore. She wanted to use red vegetables (like sliced ref bell peppers) for color in some of the recipes for the weekend banquets, but did not use them herself and did not recommend tomatoes. She was allergic to both, as I am, and nightshades in general. If you read a book called "Healing Foods" it explains well what nightshades do to you. She wanted us only to teach what to do and why, and to stay away from saying what was wrong or why not to do certain things.

She didn't want citrus to be used and asked people not to put them in their compost piles because of the fruit flies that they hatched, and they destroyed the friendly bacteria/buggies that the compost made to grow the spprouts well. The major ingredient in natural insecticide is citrus oil. If I eat anything 'out' that has citrus oil or acid in it, I have a bad time because of the pains inside. When I was travelling with her, a bowl of Energy Soup, which I gratefully received, would appear in front of my door and she chastised me to eat it immediately, chewing silently at least 30 times before I swallowed each mouthful, thinking about peaceful things as I did.

She taught to chew each mouthful of wheat grass JUICE as if it were a solid, for a couple of minutes and not just chug-a-lug it as some do now. She kept a wheatgrass 'bundle' tied up in a rubber band in a shallow glass of water next to her wash basin and her kitchen sink. Everytime she needed to wash her hands, she would put the grass in water in the basin for about 10 minutes to neutralize the chlorine, and also in her bath. She used a lot of wheatgrass juice in her implants and the trays would disappear everytime she came back from a trip because she knew she had to detox from the cigarette smoke in the airports and the exhausts from the autos and busses. Her Energy Soup was what she ate when she was hungry. Once someone gave her a loaf of Essene Bread, which is frozen, and she threw it away so that people would not think that she supported frozen stuff. She asked me to walk along the banks of the river in Boston to collect lambsquarter and purslaine, which was difficult for me because the air up there in the 80's was so acid that if I wore sandals, my feet would burn in the air. When we went to the radio station to give a program, we would collect the incredibly long tender leaves of the dandelion leaves that had been supersized by the radio waves!

She used buckwheat lettuce (the female energy - I smile when I think of her walking along in the 'nursery' and stroking the buckwheat, calling them her little ladies at a tea party, as she taught me that they would help me when I needed to go inside and build my intuition, my sense of discrimination, deep sense of loyalty and service) and sunflower lettuce (the male energy, for giving speeches, giving people directions and telling them what to do, and being organized and consistent and just having physical strength). She was not a user of sprouts, personally and felt that plants needed soil to grow in and leaf out before they were proper to use. Since then, Dr. Clark has found that sprouts have aflatoxins in them that are very dangerous. Many people in her kitchens, and even some of her staff, were not 'on her program' and even though she wanted them to be very loving and centered when they fixed the food for the students, because she knew that the energy of their minds would go into the food, many put things in there (both physically and emotionally) that were not part of Dr. Ann's personal program.

The books (and over 99% of the recipes inside) that are on the shelves in the average bookstore today are not written by Dr. Ann, even though her name appears on them. She did not want to mix all manner of things together, because she was a stickler to follow the "Essene Gospel of Peace" and thought that 3 things were enough to be mixed together, as blended foods were easier to assimilate by the little villi, or in the mucus membranes in the mouth, than solid. If I have an apple, I will blend it instead of munch it, because I don't want to waste its energy or mine. She felt that every little plant that peeped up in her cafeteria trays was a baby, and she wanted to use every one necessary and not let it have a wasted life.

People were always trying to talk to her during the program weeks, but she understood that the first week's questions would disappear once their enemas washed the waste down the toilet and so she only 'appeared' once a day from 9 to 9:30 during a questions and answer time. There was such a difference in the questions during the second week, if there were any at all. With inner clarity, there was less need to talk. People who are not in pain don't need to talk much at all. Watermelon or apples in season and dulse mixed with rejuvelac* and 7 day old buckwheat and sunflower greens, almond cream and avocado and sprouted grain dehydrated crackers were staples for guests, but the latter was not for the students who were having serious regeneration challenges.

I am trying to finish a spiritual booklet that Dr. Ann started, but am so busy just trying to take care of people around me now, that I have not much time even though my sleeping needs are not much. I will try to write a concise, clear organized living food daily regime for you after I get some rest from all of this male energy of writing the grant! I am at home with stream of conscious female writing (as you can tell), and it is stress to be 'organized' to some externally prescribed form! But, my dear friends are trying to get a computer clubhouse going for some children, and whatever I can do to help them, I'm available. Perhaps you could help me make a BRIEF outline! I do have old outlines that I can send you but I will have to dig them up from under the pile of papers and books! Peace.

Another point worth discussing from a vegan and raw vegan perspective is the affect our eating grains has on the environment and on wildlife. Obviously, more animals are hurt when we eat them, but we are still hurting animals when we eat grains as opposed to raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Dr. Doug Graham makes some great points in his book, “Grain Damage”:

"Cutting forests to raise fields of grain is an animal rights and ecologic disaster. Cooking in itself is environmentally unfriendly, from any perspective."

"A field of grain is basically two dimensional; it provides little more living opportunity or protection for wildlife than if it were paved. Trees on the other hand, are three dimensional, and provide myriad living-space opportunities for creatures of many types."

"On land, trees are the main converters of the deadly gas carbon-dioxide into life-sustaining oxygen. Just four hundred years ago, the United States was one huge forest from Maine to Texas. On the land where we are cutting down our precious trees to plant grains, we are also increasing our implementation of oxygen-guzzling, carbon-dioxide spewing machines. This policy is a dead end and can only lead us to environmental disaster."

Peace and Love........John

Dear John Rose,

I think you're right about tree foods. Tree foods are the way to go as much as possible. I am raw vegan. My husband is vegan. We are both very into trees and tree foods, and we are fortunate to be able to walk our talk. We've planted almost a thousand fruit and nut trees (so far) plus bananas and palms. Our hope is that they'll be here for perhaps centuries after we're gone.

But what about planting vegetables? Doesn't the same environmental waste that applies to the planting of grains in industrial farming also apply to the mass plantings of vegetables? And since a MUCH SMALLER PORTION of sprouted grains than cooked grains can comfortably be eaten raw, aren't sprouted grains possibly environmentally no worse than vegetables if grown for the purpose of augmenting a RAW food diet?

Our garden space is in a grassy area, where there have never been trees since we've been here, probably an old burn out spot from a fire. The area is surrounded by fruit trees, nut trees, palms, bananas (all planted in open areas), and all of the preexisting native trees. We've had veggie gardens in our garden spot before, but never yet planted grains. I think there's plenty of room there for the few grains that we eat (or at least the few that I eat, being raw), plus vegetables, and even pineapple.

In addition, many grains such as barley, oats, rye, and even wheat are utilized in organic farming for covercrops to protect and improve soil conditions. Barley for instance is "best for erosion control, adds significant organic matter, and tolerates and loosens heavy soil" (Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply, 2007, Main Catalog).

Plus, grain straw makes great mulch for vegetable gardens, and helps the grower avoid turning the soil.

The green grass we see in natural meadows is a grain plant, and develops grain heads if left to develop naturally. Many herbivorous animals eat grass and grain in the wild, and even omnivorous animals like dogs find it curative.

Open meadow land is a natural occurence in most ecosystems, and perhaps those are the areas where people can grow vegetables and even a few grains without disturbing nature too much, as long as there are sufficient trees surrounding the area to help prevent erosion, and the grower utilizes good organic farming practices so that turning the soil can be kept at a minimum or is not necessary at all.



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2007 07:14AM by suncloud.

Just wanted to correct our tree count. It actually comes close to a thousand only if the banana mats are included.

I do try to be accurate, and that was bugging me! Sorry.

John Rose,

AWESOME post, thank you so much for that!! I feel so much better now, after reading it.

Suncloud.... that's really cool, lately I've been really wanting to plant trees, especially fruit trees, and I'm going to learn how! It seems to me to be one of the most beneficial way to give back.

One thing he didn't mention, and which I personally find endlessly irritating, is that there may be a raw vs. vegan subtext because some people sought to blur the distinctions between the early healing philosophy of living foods and the disgusting primal diet into one program under the word "raw food" despite the fact that they don't actually have anything to do with each other. In that way, simply recomending "raw food" to someone might not really be supporting veganism unless you are specific. But I think that environmentally and health-wise, it is possible to have a really good cooked vegan diet, and to have a really good raw vegan diet; both can potentially utilize local, organic, whole foods. But raw veganism is most definitely superior, and I personally think it reaches an ethical and environmental stage beyond that of the best kind of cooked veganism, partly through, as people mentioned, the trees. I will never be one of those people who deals with meeting an obstacle in my raw journey by running to animal slavery. And for me, tropical is local, now.