Sunday Times UK, 5/9/00: Why Raw Foods is Healthy

[Guest guest]

Sunday Times UK

May 9, 2000

 

Eating only uncooked food sounds cranky but Susan Clark finds the

benefits can be persuasive

 

Why raw food is healthy

 

Olive cream with hoummos, vegetable chips, zingy tomato

salad and almond cookies all sound delicious. They are

also part of a menu which is not only organic but entirely

raw.

 

The recipes have been designed to prove to sceptics that

you need not cook food to enjoy it. The food will be

served at an event organised by the Fresh (Fruitarian Raw

Energy Support & Help) Network, a former charity that is

now a commercial organisation. It was set up in 1992 to

help people to make the transition from a normal diet to

one where none of the food is cooked.

 

This may sound cranky but the Raw Fooders swear that

the benefits of eating uncooked foods, which include

feeling younger and having more energy, clearer skin and

an untroubled digestion, far outweigh the perceived

disadvantages.

 

Karen Knowler, 27, is the coordinator of the Fresh

Network and the co-author of a new book on the subject,

Feel-Good Food: A Guide To Intuitive Eating. Over

the past decade, she has gradually converted from a junk

food diet to a 100 per cent raw food regimen, and says

she has never felt so well.

 

Karen, who once worked parttime in her stepfather's

butchers' shop, admits she could never have imagined that

she would turn her back first on meat, to become

vegetarian, and then on dairy products to become a

vegan. Even less likely, she says, was that as a fully

fledged member of what she calls the Burger Generation

she would develop a preference for raw food over

anything cooked.

 

" My diet used to be appalling, " she says. " I refused to

accept that there was any link between what I ate and my

health, and it was only when I stopped eating dairy and

realised that I was no longer blowing my nose every

morning that I saw how there is a direct link between the

two. " (Dairy products are notorious for producing more

mucus in the body - not the lubricating mucus that protects

surfaces such as the lining of the digestive tract, but a

mucus formed when minuscule waste deposits of protein

swell up with water.)

 

Karen also believes her diet helped to reverse

pre-cancerous changes to the cells of her cervix that were

detected during a smear test. She asked the doctors to

give her three months to try out her own health solution,

which included a 100 per cent raw diet, wheatgrass juice

and a visualisation technique whereby she imagined a

healthy cervix. When she returned for a repeat cervical

smear, the cells had reverted to normal.

 

It is true that many people who have become Raw

Fooders did so as a last resort, looking for an end to the

symptoms of conditions including cancer, candida, chronic

fatigue and allergies. They know that they are likely to be

regarded as cranks. " Nobody, Karen acknowledges,

" wants to give up their steak and chips unless they have

to. " In any case, the point of a raw food diet is not to feel

alienated from your family and friends or to become a

freak, but to benefit from the live enzymes that help the

body to digest what you eat. These are destroyed by

cooking, refining and over-processing, and the body has

to work harder to produce more of its own.

 

Research as long ago as the 1930s suggested that, when

cooked food is ingested, the immune system sends armies

of white blood cells to the digestive tract to fight what it

perceives to be a threat. This does not happen when you

eat raw food since the body perceives this as natural.One

of the biggest reservations about giving up cooked food in

the predominantly cold, damp British climate is that it is

hard to imagine surviving a winter without the comfort of a

warm soup or hot chocolate. Karen dreaded her first

winter as a 100 per cent Raw Fooder, but survived by

telling herself she would eat something warm and cooked

if her body really craved it. This never happened.

 

Listening to your body - what Karen calls Intuitive Eating

- is the key to making the transition from mostly cooked

to mostly raw food, but that does not mean giving in to

every craving for chocolate or caffeine. Those cravings

are not a sign that you are in tune with your body, but that

you have become addicted to their stimulative effects.

 

Karen has no formal qualification in nutrition or health but

learnt about her own health by listening to her body and

responding to its messages, which became stronger as she

cut back on cooked food: " I wanted more freedom, not

less, and a raw food diet has done that for me. I enjoy

everything I eat so much more and I want people to

realise that the best nutrition expert they can have is their

own body. "

 

Another champion of more raw or living food in your diet

is the respected American-trained and London-based

nutritionist Dr Gillian McKeith, who draws on many

disciplines, including Chinese medicine, in her work. She

encourages people to increase the amount of raw food in

their diet but argues that you have to find the right balance.

The author of a new book called Dr Gillian McKeith's

Living Food For Health, which shows how to achieve

that balance, she believes that for many people in this

country a 100 per cent raw diet is not a healthy option: " It

is fine in the summer, but it will only make most people

even more miserable in the winter. "

 

The solution, she says, is to mix warmed food with raw

foods. A perfect example is her own breakfast, which

might be a warmed apple and pear purée with raw

raspberries, which support the kidneys, scattered through

it. If you want soup you can have it, she says. You will

destroy the live enzymes in the vegetables you cook, but

you can put them back by sprinkling the soup with raw

broccoli and sprouted seeds.

 

Sprouts - the seeds of foods such as mung beans, aduki

beans, alfalfa, radish, rye and millet - are all packed with

live enzymes and energy-giving nutrients. According to Dr

McKeith, when the US military commissioned food

scientists to come up with a protein alternative to meat

and dairy products during the Second World War,

sprouts were voted the best substitute.

 

She says: " The secret is to place the hot or warmed food

on top of the cold dish so that the heat filters down. For

example, cook your rice and place it on top of the raw

vegetables. Also, find out which herbs, such as basil and

parsley, have a warming action on the body and include

those in your diet. "

 

The Government's Food Standards Agency recommends

at least five portions of fruit and vegetables in your diet

every day. It does not take a stand on the raw versus

cooked debate but it does acknowledge that most people

find it hard to meet even these minimum targets.

 

The Fresh Network's guidelines for stepping up the raw

food content of a normal diet, especially during the

transitional process from cooked to raw foods, include:

 

Eating side salads with every main course, hot or cold.

 

Eating fruit for breakfast instead of cereals or bacon

and eggs.

 

Eating fruit, nuts and seeds whenever you want a

between-meals snack.

 

Getting into the habit of juicing raw fruits and

vegetables. For example, it takes about 16 medium

carrots to make half a tumbler of carrot juice - evidence

that juicing really is a good way to increase the raw food

content of your diet without giving yourself an aching jaw.

 

Remind yourself that you are improving your eating

habits and not going on a diet. Eating more raw food is

not about penance.

 

Dr McKeith recommends mixing warmed with cold,

raw food, especially in the winter. She says we need to

aim for two portions (a portion is the equivalent of a tea

cup) of sprouted seeds every day to benefit from the live

enzymes that will help with digestion.

 

Feel-Good Food: A Guide to Intuitive Eating by Susie

Miller & Karen Knowler, published by The Women's

Press, £8.99. It can be ordered direct on 020-7251

3007.

Dr Gillian McKeith's Living Food For Health, Piatkus,

£6.99. Mail order from the NutriCentre on 020-7436

5122.

 

The Fresh Network, 0870-800 7070. Membership

costs £14.50 a year and includes five issues of the

Network's magazine.

 

Susan Clark is Health Journalist of the Year.