Digesting raw food

[Marcina]

For some reason I have a really difficult time digesting raw food. This makes me mad because food in it's natural, wholesome state should be easier to digest in my opinion!

Also, if I'm not digesting it properly, how can I make sure I'm getting the nutrients from it I need?

 

I tend to get bloated and very very gassy when I eat raw veggies.. Especially leafy greens. I take probiotics and wash my veggies well to make sure bad bacteria don't accumulate.

 

I dunno what else to do! I'm tired of stinking up the house!

[robert]

I think we're twins

 

Some raw foods are just very difficult to digest. My father is a nutrition professor at a University and we chat about this sometimes because I tell him I want to cut down on bloating and gas, etc. and he says some raw veggies just aren't digested well at all and will always have that effect.

 

I can ask him for more details another time, but we chatted about it 6 months ago and I learned a lot about how the stomach works and how digestion works and how some things just don't work for us very well.

[Marcina]

I'm wondering if I just eat too fast. When I started my bulking diet I had to chow down quickly because I was so used to eating slowly and not eating much at all. Before my bulking diet it wasn't uncommon for me to consume under 2000 calories a day.

I also wonder if it's a "detox effect" from so many years of eating cooked, processed crap food.

I have written a grocery list and hope to start making green smoothies and eating more raw stuff in an effort to get used to it.

[flanders77]

Concerning eating to quickly: Take your time.

Make a list of things you digest easily and focus on those.

If some foods cause trouble it is important to know them.

Concerning smoothies: Make sure you eat them... I mean: chew them well.

 

I have no or very little gas since I am high raw. But there are many ways of eating raw beginning at raw cuisine ending at mono fruit meals. At what point are you at right now? Please post a standard eating scedule.

[Guest]

Nothings wrong with a little...or a lot of farting for that matter. If that were a reason to not naturally be eating something cows wouldn't eat anything.

[Couture547]

It's mainly the amount of fiber that's in the veggies that's causing it. I had the same problem when i first started eatting raw, but now i can digest a ton of fiber. Juicing is the best way to get every thing from the vegg besides the fiber.

[Marcina]

Concerning eating to quickly: Take your time.

Make a list of things you digest easily and focus on those.

If some foods cause trouble it is important to know them.

Concerning smoothies: Make sure you eat them... I mean: chew them well.

 

I have no or very little gas since I am high raw. But there are many ways of eating raw beginning at raw cuisine ending at mono fruit meals. At what point are you at right now? Please post a standard eating scedule.

 

I don't have an "eating schedule". When I'm at work, especially, I just kinda eat when I'm not busy.

I'm not trying to go 100% raw, but just eat more raw food because it gives me more energy.

[flanders77]

Did you read the thread about food combining? A lot of raw foodists (including me) experienced that eating easy to digest fruit after hard to digest (cooked) food can cause digestive problems like gas etc.

With schedule I mean this: What do you usually eat and when? Just list what you ate yesterday.

[ChaserHUN]

food combining helps a lot, I eat 90-95% raw and I don't have any problems now

[beforewisdom]

For some reason I have a really difficult time digesting raw food. This makes me mad because food in it's natural, wholesome state should be easier to digest in my opinion!

 

Here is an interesting alternative view about that "should"...no offense, just trying to make conversation,

 

 

This quote is an extract of a nutrition newsletter Dr. Michael Greger M.D. of the HSUS used to publish. Dr. Michael Greger is a vegan medical doctor and animal rights activist who researches/writes regularly on nutrition issues.

 

From

http://www.drgreger.org/november2003.html

 

G. Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?

 

"Raw foodist" lifestyle advocates tend to argue that cooking is unnatural. They often argue that since we evolved eating raw foods like the rest of the animal kingdom, we are better adapted to eat that way. In a landmark article just published in the journal of Comparative Biology and Physiology, however, two Harvard anthropologists argue just the opposite.[10}

 

First, they note that other than the new deliberate "raw foodists," there do not seem to be any current or historical populations, small groups or even individuals living for more than a few days without access to cooked foods. Then they take on the belief that cooking is a recent phenomenon for our species.

 

Mammalian species like ourselves can evolve adaptations in as few as 5000 years. Human beings have been cooking for at least 250,000 years, and maybe as long as 1.9 million years, long before we were even Homo sapiens. They argue that not only have humans adapted to eating cooked foods, they argue that human beings have adapted so much that eating cooked food now seems obligatory for optimum health. And indeed the medical literature backs them up.

 

The only study I know of 100% raw foodists followed for years was published in 1999.[11] It showed that a third of the raw foodists were suffering from Chronic Energy Deficiency. Many were just wasting away. Most of the women suffered menstrual irregularities and half of the women lost their menstrual periods altogether, which could lead to devastating osteoporosis. And this was in modern urban people with relatively low activity levels who had access to high-quality high-calorie produce from around the world year-round. How might our nontropical gatherer/hunter ancestors lived through a single winter without cooking, especially with their extreme energy expenditure?

 

There have been major changes in our digestive biology over the past few hundred thousand years, and the researchers argue that these changes may have been due to the availability of cooked foods. 100,000 years ago, for example, the size of our jaws and molar teeth started to shrink, perhaps as an adaptation to softer, easier-chewed cooked foods. They also posit that perhaps other differences between our digestive systems and those of the great apes may also have been because of our adaptation to cooked foods--our smaller gut volume, longer small intestine, smaller colon, and faster gut passage rate.

 

They conclude that while well-supported individuals in an urban environment with a relatively sedentary lifestyle may be able to thrive on a raw food diet, it is neither natural nor necessarily desirable for optimal health.

 

[Marcina]

I eat maybe 60-70% raw.

I eat my grains cooked, like oatmeal and quinoa. Most of my greens and some fruit go into a smoothie.

I started eating properly, and the gas and bloating have subsided now. I also have more energy.

 

I don't think I could go 100% raw. I have to eat some grains and stuff or I get hungry too often.

[Guest]

You can always eat sprouted grains. If you have an appetite for them...they're actually more filling than cooked grains are...most people can't handle that though.

[Im Your Man]

 

I don't think I could go 100% raw. I have to eat some grains and stuff or I get hungry too often.

 

There's nothing wrong with being hungry too often. Animals eat grass all day long or many many small meals, and we should do the samething by eating fruits all day long.

 

Of course, in the modern world we live in, nutritionists are saying : "eat your three balanced meals per day, each one containing fat, carbs and proteins and at least one serving of all different food groups" all this at the same time, because we need to WORK between the 3 meals.

 

NO WAY. I don't like modernism. No matter where I am, I just take some almonds from my pocket and it contains fat, carbs and proteins, calcium, etc, just like those so called complete balanced meals.

[Marcina]

Bah. I eat when I can. At work, a baggy of almonds is perfect.

 

Btw, I'm phasing wheat out of my diet and the bloating and gas is going away. I think I'm gluten intolerant.

[Odidnetne]

Bah. I eat when I can. At work, a baggy of almonds is perfect.

 

Btw, I'm phasing wheat out of my diet and the bloating and gas is going away. I think I'm gluten intolerant.

 

That's possible. By the way, quinoa can be sprouted, and it's very delicious like that.

[ChaserHUN]

oats are cool raw too, wich are not raw in my diet is bread, and soy products, everything else is raw

[Im Your Man]

 

Btw, I'm phasing wheat out of my diet and the bloating and gas is going away. I think I'm gluten intolerant.

 

Yeah, wheat is very too present in every food products. There's so many other grains that have way more qualities. Everybody is at least a little bit intolerant to gluten, it's an allergen.

[Marcina]

Yeah I know. I've always been very sensitive to pro-flammatory type foods. It makes sense why gluten would bother me.

[StrawberryJam]

Saw this post after I made a post titled "Can't digest raw food properly?" in this forum... what a coincidence. Perhaps have a read of what I wrote and see if that applies to you?

[Zack]

oats are cool raw too, wich are not raw in my diet is bread, and soy products, everything else is raw

 

Oats are pretty much never raw, just so you know.