Raw Toxic Chocolate

[Zack]

I think there's a risk in the pursuit of pure. There are a ton of things that in great doses can have negative effects, but I don't think that means that you should automatically ban them from your diet.

 

To me it's a dangerous path to say... This is the best and people doing this other thing are crazy (or nuts, if say you are anti nuts).

 

Everyone's body chemistry is unique, so for one person being Frutopian is ideal, and another its a personal nightmare.

 

For me I've found that being partly raw has had great benefits and works with my life. I don't do coffee, because it doesn't agree with my system (but I do make a mean soy latte for my wife). Things like chocolate I do in grat moderation, same for drinking. I enjoy the balance.

 

Wise man, you are.

[crashnburn]

I really don't think this is something to worry about. Lots of people eat raw chocolate without any problems. Sprouted kidney beans are said to be poisonous, and so is raw eggplant and I've eaten a fair share of both. Its all politics.

 

I agree with Klienman.

 

At the same time, I am thinking of a counter argument.

 

How, when & why did COOKING the food begin? I am guessing after they found FIRE.

 

Now under what SET OF SCENARIOS would the humans start cooking their food - the same food they had been having RAW for generations.

 

Because they figured out that "SOME" of the COOKED FOOD had "some benefits" - Mind you - we were still PRIMAL CREATURES back then so I am thinking there are some reasons why...

 

For the very same reasons that we cannot eat a bunch of LENTILS, LEGUMES, BEANS "RAW" as they are.

 

Some are to be sprouted, some are BOILED (Kidney beans). Some have to be "boiled" if they are not to cause a stomach upset.

 

So, I see that in our SINGLE DIRECTIONAL - PURSUIT of RAW FOODS (and I wholly support HIGH RAW) we need some minds to play DEVILS ADVOCATE.

 

I am of the thought that certain foods are better not consumed RAW. I am sure there are a lot of foods that are not EDIBLE for the human stomach as they come. But, thats part of our EVOLUTION in learning how to "pre-process" foods for better human consumption.

 

I do not advocate using that to justify EXTENSIVE DEEP FRYING.. he he. But, I think you get what I am trying to say.

 

PS: Also, RAW FOODS are typically very perishable. So, there is some SENSE in increasing the longevity of foods by DRYING, COOKING, etc.

 

I am sure NATURE did not provide us with REFRIGERATORS that allow us to CONSUME more than our fair share of RAW foods.

 

What would happen if in the lack of refrigerators we had a FAMINE, DROUGHT or some "NATURAL" condition where FRESH, RAW foods are not easy to get.

 

For the very same reason, I think NATURE provided us with Water & Fire and helped us figure how to best use it for our DAILY LIFE.

 

- THIS IS NOT AN ANTI-RAW THING

- THIS NOT A HARD STATED OPINION

- This is simply OPEN MINDED thought. A counter thought process.. Some thoughts into WHY & HOW we changed.. / evolved..

 

We are not Gods / All Knowing so we can never be a 100% about things. Everything we learn changes.. with time.

[dontxhide]

I read somewhere that even though humans had fire, it was a thousand years or more before they even thought of cooking their food.

 

My belief is the reason they started cooking food is to start putting food under lock and key. Cooking some foods and drying foods extends its life, thus you can make stockpiles of it, lock it up and make it so that the people around have to work for that food. We see it now, processed foods last longer because they are no longer in their natural state, and we work for money to buy food, just to survive.

 

Also, if foods in its natural state(which we ate for thousands of thousands of years before cooked food came around) are bad for us the way nature intended for the food to be, then why would we want to alter that just to make it consumable?

 

I do agree on the fridge part, it does make things easier. But I believe personally you have to study and train on what to do when those things are no longer there.

 

Last thing, Raw Foods are meant to be perishable, they were meant for us to eat according to natures laws at the time, free of money, picking it off trees as we go and live off the land. Drying and cooking foods in mass quantities came around with agriculture, which made us pay for things we usually had for free.

 

That is why I am against cooked food. Yes, I do have to pay for my fruits and veggies now if I dont want to plant them, but I feel eating this way is closer to our human nature.

 

PLUG: Read Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. They are amazing reads and will show you how far we have strayed from our path, thus leading us to a world of pollution, overcrowding, and sooner or later death. ~shrugs~

 

Thanks for playing devils advocate though, I think you brought up some good points.

[Zack]

 

Last thing, Raw Foods are meant to be perishable, they were meant for us to eat according to natures laws at the time, free of money, picking it off trees as we go and live off the land.

 

Are you trying to say that at one time humans lived off of only fruit trees?

[gkleinman]

I'm always skeptical of looking at the evolution of food consumption to justify a certain kind of eating style. It's like looking to the bible to justify something, you can use it to justify or condemn almost everything.

 

The core truth which I believe in for food is that, in general, we know almost nothing about food, what it does for our body, exactly what our bodies need and what's the optimal diet for the modern man/woman.

 

In the absence of true knowledge, we're left for the most part to find our own paths. Some like BigWii look only to himself as a guide, while others look almost exclusively externally. I don't think either approach is wrong, it's more an indication of an environment where there simply are no good maps to show us all the way.

 

So for the most part I think people who are raw, high raw, cooked vegan and otherwise are making their best guess as to what is best for their bodies and what is ultimately ideal for them. It's harder for me to defend or pick apart the issues on the raw/high raw side of the fence, because the information I see is relatively conflicting and highly dependent on 'who you trust'.

 

It's a lot easier for me to have an absolute stand on the Vegan side of the issue as the issue there is more ethical than dietary (even though it does have a huge benefit dietarily)

 

But in the end I come back to my big gripe: the search for the perfect pure is a dangerous one, perhaps as dangerous as overindulging in things which may be considered 'impure'.

[offense74]

I'm with gklienman except for one thing. We have known for 500 years that fruits and veggies are good for us. The new thing is that dairy and meat are bad for us and evidence seems to be building up on that.

There are no long term raw studies (as compared to coooked, whole food vegans) so we know nothing about it. The science behind raw is mostly very flawed. There are alot of money being made in the raw lifestyle by gurus and others. I would love if they actually put a peer-reviewed study together and publish it so we can finally get some evidence. But so far we got almost nothing.

 

The problem gkleinman talks about (I think) is that of religion. It's harder to base your lifestyle on facts since they usually are not so fantastic as the make believe ones. When one reads studies about the compounds of fruits and veggies in large studies the protection against some common cancer might be 20% more than the group who ate no fruits and veggies. When you make shit up as you go along you will almost always end up close to 100% protection, which is of course alot better than the 20%. This is not new as salvation comes in different form for different people.

 

And for feelling better, check this guy out.. He says he feels great, as do alot of others who get 90% of their calories from animal "foods". It doesn't mean that they are healthy.

 

I do believe that a raw food diet is one of the healthiest and cleanest one can eat. I also kknow that washing onself with and cleaning everything to rediculousness is a tradeoff. We used to actually have a better immunesystem when we didn't do these things since we trained it harder than we do today but I dont see people drinking dirty water or not shower because of this. If you want strong protection against disease this is probably as effective as to be a raw foodist.

Edited August 24, 2007 by offense74

[dontxhide]

Good post gkleinman. Havent thought of it that way before.

 

Zack: Im not saying that humans lived only off of fruit trees. But before cooking most of the old cultures were more than likely raw. Eating veggies, fruits, plants, and leaves.

 

The studies I have read lack very detailed information, as gkleinman posted, because food knowledge is hard to come by, but Im sure a couple of them ate raw meat.

[Zack]

Zack: Im not saying that humans lived only off of fruit trees. But before cooking most of the old cultures were more than likely raw. Eating veggies, fruits, plants, and leaves.

 

I agree, humans did eat raw before cooked, but it was never completely vegan.

[crashnburn]

Brilliant discussions points from everyone. Very interesting thoughts.. open ended .

 

One thing I will comment on:

 

My belief is the reason they started cooking food is to start putting food under lock and key. Cooking some foods and drying foods extends its life, thus you can make stockpiles of it, lock it up and make it so that the people around have to work for that food. We see it now, processed foods last longer because they are no longer in their natural state, and we work for money to buy food, just to survive.

 

I dont think that the age of STOCKPILING for MONEY came before COOKING. Forget those times.. I am just making an example.. of tribes.. (Have you seen Apocalypto). The tribes in the jungle used FIRE to cook the meat.. and make porridges / soups. They did not have any concept of MONEY / TRADE. It was a COMMUNITY that lived like a family. EVEN IF - That is just a depiction of tribes in the PRE-SPANISH occupation / Mayan Empire / Inca / Aztec civilizations... in the ADs. If we really rewind it back to PRE-PRE BC - I am sure we had tribes that did not have a CONCEPT of TRADE for SELFISH PROFIT.

 

FIRE / HEAT / BOILING / ROASTING have the ability to disinfect, kill bacteria etc.

 

Also, STORAGE & LONGEVITY of food come from - UNCERTAINITY - the fact that there are times certain foods may or may not be available (they did not have an always stocked super market to go to).

 

They had to literally GET their daily / weekly meals. Hunting (animals) & Collecting (fruits, etc) food probably came before FARMING. Some day they might have more luck than others.

 

They have women and children to feed... Given the uncertainity of availability of food, they had to find A WAY TO STORE & EXTEND the life of foods.

 

Its the DIET-AVAILABILITY-CONSUMPTION-FREQUENCY cycle.

 

Something like this is applies to other animals as well: monkeys (eat as they find), lions & tigers (kill ONLY when they are hungry.. eat carcass for next few days / week), pythons (eat once in months & then sleep), bears (asteviate & hibernate)

 

Humans are also an animal who have a varied & evolved social structure - PRIOR to when humans got attached to BREAKING the BALANCE OF NATURE / ECOSYSTEM.

 

Maybe tigers & lions dont look at a HERD of DEER and think... let me kill 3 now and eat for 3 weeks. They lived with a certain confidence in the ABUNDANCE of the deer.

 

Humans know they can barely kill one if they ALL get together as a team, trap & plan around it. Probably one deer in a month for the entire TRIBE. They lived in a LESS CONFIDENT ABUNDANCE factor.

 

So for them to survive they had to ENSURE their FOOD lasted longer given the UNCERTAINITY in the availability.

 

PS: Mind you we did not have the TREE abilities of the other apes when we started walking the ground on 2 limbs.

[gkleinman]

I do believe that a raw food diet is one of the healthiest and cleanest one can eat.

 

I agree with you on that point. I've been doing raw during the day and cooked at night and feel a marked improvement.

 

BTW. Great thread. Love talking about an issue like this and having people respond intelligently to the issues!!! Another reason my VBF rocks