RawVgn

There are thousands of people on raw diets, including myself, who swear by them and have never been healthier or felt better in their lives. I would never, under any circumstances short of starvation from lack of available fruits anf greens, go back to a standard vegan diet. And if we hadn't already beat this subject into the ground a hundred times, I can easily refute every point the original quote attempts to make. Raw philosophy is based on many convergent lines of reasoning, not just anthropology. And at the end of the day, for thousands or millions of us, our direct experiences confirm the theoretical considerations. There is something absurd about people who have never been raw vegans criticising those of us who have been both raw and regular vegans. Without a doubt, my health is better now at 48 than at ANY point in my life including when I was standard vegan, and the improvements are a direct result of being raw including much greater pound-for-pound strength and maybe more strength absolutely. The are many variations of raw veganism, and unfortunately most raw vegans probably eat way to much fat because of high nut and seed usage. Any high fat diet is bad, vegan or otherwise. There is an art to being raw, and very few people are willing to let go of food attachments and addictions to the extent necessary to be really successful at it. And BTW Dr Graham, one of the most prominent raw vegan advocates, has a bachelors degree and extensive post-graduate training in nutrition, and has written several books dealing with nutrition issues. Raw veganism is very sound both theoretically and empirically based on thousands of practicioners.

There's another school out there that says humans are very similiar to other animals when it comes to food and nutrition. Most animals are niche eaters: they evolved in specific environments and are biologically adapted to those environments. So sharks eat fish but not rice or potatoes, horses eat grass but not steaks, and anthropoid primates (chimps, bonobos, orangatanes, gorillas, and humans) eat fruit and shoots. So, according to Natural Hygiene "balance" or variety, eating beyond our niche, is the KEY to illness and disease. Variety within our appropriate food classes is fine-any kind of fruit or greens-but across food classes like starches and dairy and meat is an environmental and health disaster. "Balance" in nutrition is largely a political accomodation of the Food and Nutrition Board and like minded political institutions- balance being a euphemism for variety so nobodys toes get stepped on and maximum political accomodation is maintained- so all the influential agricultural and processing interests are kept happy. Don't confuse our "best government money can buy" with scientific facts or realities. About half the American population believes the earth is only 6000 yrs old and evolution is untrue, so adopting attitudes by popularity contest (herd behavior) may be very dangerous to your health. Not having "pegs" to hang our beliefs on can be unnerving, but subjects like nutrition (or stock trading) require radical perspectives to thrive. Herd behavior is supposed to protect us (and often does), but it can not be blindly relied upon. Dr Douglas Graham wrote a very illuminating book about appropriate human diet. It's called the "80/10/10 Diet." We evolved in the tropics and are a tropical species. Eating all the junk our culture treats as food was probably a necessity for us to expand our range in the days before global trade. Most of us are now in a position to bring our largely tropical climate foods to our temperate homes regardless of the season, so we can enjoy health benefits our recent ancestors could not have imagined. There is an often useful test to see if something is suitable for human consumption: can you eat it in its whole, natural raw state without technological sleights of hand like fire (which appeared only recently in evolutionary time frames.) If you can't eat it and enjoy it naturally, is our senses, our evolved choice mechanism, are telling you it is not human food. Can you eat and enjoy a raw potatoe? Can you chew and enjoy raw legumes? Does eating a carcass appeal to your senses? Do you enjoy eating unprocessed grains like rice or wheat? All of these so-called "foods" are inedible in their natural state; our species is not evolved to eat them and cooking and spices and so on are just efforts to make the unsuitable for human consumption half-way edible. And the unedible half-the denatured proteins and fats from cooking, the opiods in grains, the indigestable cellulose in starches, the toxins in legumes, cholesterol and uric acid in meat, and on and on-are the root of most health problems in the modern human developed world.

I'll give you the radical perspective: your putting a bunch of junk in your body that could very well cause joint pain and other degenerative problems. Health is not nearly as much what you put in your body as what you don't put in it. Protein (like the powder and legumes)is notorious for causing degenerative joint problems, kidney problems, and so on. There is an ongoing international effort to largely ban over-the-counter supplements like vitamins because they are considered toxins by many expert toxicologists. The Natural Hygiene School says our bodies are naturally healthy and vigorous if we don't pollute them with junk. There is a pretty straight forward way to see if all the junk you eat is causing your problems: stop eating it for a month or so and see how you feel. Try eating ONLY raw fruit and raw greens (lettuces and chinese cabbages)for a month. No supplements, no powders, no legumes or other cooked food. Detox yourself and see what happens-just keep in mind you'll probably have some mild symptoms as your body cleanses the junk you've been eating. I've eaten this way for the past year and never been healthier-including heaaling a chronic "tennis elbow/wrist" that the best doctors around could do nothing for. I also chat regularly wwith 100s of other people who eat this way, many of whom tell similiar stories of miraculous recoverys from chronic diseases unhealable by the medical establishment. Now for the obligatory legal stuff-you should consult your dr before doing anything and this is not intended as medical advice. Know why the US and northern Europe have the highest hip fracture (osteoporosis) rates in the world? Milk. The protein in milk acidifies the body causing calcium to leech off the bones to neutralize the acid and reestablish ph balance.

Sure. feel free to ask questions. And yeh, Dr Graham does a real good job laying our this diet in his book. Lots of good solid science and decades of experience with the diet on himself and hundreds of clients, some world class athletes. If you go to vegsource.com look down the left column for his discussion group. Tons of people in there who use the diet, some for many years Dr Gs been on it over 20 years himself. Sometimes it will take me a few days to answer; I travel a lot sometimes and often work 65 hour workweeks so things can get hectic for me.

Maybe try eating 3 or 4 ounces of raw cashews a day. I did that for a month recently and put on 10 pounds; some of it was fat but a lot was muscle and i eventually lost the fat and leveled off bigger and stronger.

I do agree that some of this is revolving around the def of "failure." The sense of failure as used in the system I use means being able to do a weight for 8 to 12 reps but not the 13th. It's doing every set to the point you can't do an additional rep, instead of doing a fixed number of reps, like 10, regardless of the effort level. It works the muscles pretty intensly, but its also very brief (it's not really possible to be really intense for more than brief periods kind of like wind sprinting). As a person gets stronger in this system, they also have to furthur reduce workout frequency and duration to allow more recovery time from the increasing strength/intensity level. For an intermediate lifter like me, the system uses either 72 or 96 hours between workouts. It also requires a nine day layoff every six months. Eventually the frequency decreases to 8 exercises done 3 times per 2 weeks (about 20 min of actual lifting a WEEK), so believe me, those of us who use this system make ample provision for recovery. I can tell you from the 8 months I've used it that it is very effective at building strength ( I keep a journal) and it requires a minimum time committment. And unlike when I used to workout 4 times a week for over an hour at a time, now I fully recover from my workouts and am less sore. Ellington Darden, who I learned the system from, was a world class bodybuilder at one time who has a Phd in exercise physiology and has written about 20 fitness books in his 30 plus year career. It is a tested and proven system that is widely used by professional athletes including the NFL. Given its pedigree, widespread use, and my personal experience with it, I'm comfortable recomending it to others, though I do appreciate construcive criticism.

I've been on the diet 10 months. Teeth tend to do real well on this diet as there is little to get stuck on them. I've read that sticky stuff like dried fruit is what really tears up teeth. Fruit averages about 5% protein which our school believes is ideal for good health. There is a growing belief in expert nutritional circles that excess protein consumption is bad. i also eat a lot of raw greens which avg about 15% protein. Our school also believes that cooking macronutrients like protein and fat denatures them and makes them largely biounavailable while simultaneously creating byproducts, many inorganic, that toxify the body and must be removed. At 6-1 and 173 lbs I don't worry about getting bigger. My strength is far greater than I need for even my pretty active lifestyle. Even so, my strength is gradually increasing because of this diet and occasional high-intensity lifting. And I'm 48 yrs old. About 4 days after switching to this diet, I had to increase the weights I was lifting about 30% across the board! In 35 yrs of intermittent lifting, I have never otherwise experienced a step-wise increase in strength; in the past, it's always been very gradual if at all. As long as I don't indulge in nuts and keep the fat under 10%, I feel super energetic and strong. At 48, I am stronger and healthier than I ever have been in my life! And the health extends from my clear, smooth skin and muscle strength all the way into my cholesterol level and blood pressure; my Dr looked at my biostats during my last annual checkup and said I should go on the health lecture circuit.

What RawVgn is talking about is often called nautilus method. RawVgn, FYI training to complete/positive failure is proven to damage your central nerve system and doing so set after set, day after day is a pretty bad idea. Can you point me to any research on this CNS matter? The recent book I used to learn the method didn't say a word about it. Just about any bodybuilder who is building mass works to failure on a regular basis. If you don't push a muscle to 100% capacity (failure), it has no reason to grow because it still has spare capacity. Increasing strength is an adaption to consistent excess demand. Since this system spends so much less time lifting than most approaches, it seems like it could be safer.

I use a single rep to failure system that is very fast and easy and gives great results. Basically, you just do 1 set to failure of about a dozen exercises. So leg extensions, for example, would become 1 set of whatever weight allows you to do 8-12 reps at complete failure(you can't do a single additional one.) Select at least half the exercises as compound types like squats, bench presses, rows, etc. Also make sure to work both legs, core, and upper body at each workout-no split routines. When beginning, workout 3 times a week. After about 3 months reduce down to 5 times per 2 weeks and reduce again to 2 times per week after six months; as your strength increases, you need more recovery time because you create more microtears at each workout with greater power. Try to work from a list of about 25 classic exercises, twelve at each workout. When you can do more than twelve reps of any exercise, it's time to increase the weight again. If you don't keep increaing the weight, you won't build muscle. From start to finish, you should be done in the weight room in under 35 minutes. The routine your using looks pretty low intensity. I think you'll make a lot more headway reducing volume and putting your energy into far fewer but much heavier lifts.

Some movement disorders, like essential tremor, get worse when under stress and when adrenaline surges. I've had Essential tremor for decades and it definitely gets worse when I'm lifting-or doing anything else that increases adrenaline like public speaking. Most people aren't diagnosed until their 40s or 50s because ET is degenerative and just looks like "nervousness" until people progress enough. I had it for decades before it got bad enough to be diagnosed. Do you tend to get shaky after drinking caffeine? Or do you get the shakes the day after drinking a little too much? Do the shakes primarily affect your hands and or voice/head? If yes to any of these, you may have ET. It's very common; 10 times as prevalent as Parkinsons Disease-about 5 to 10 million people in the US have it and its global prevalence, particularly among caucasions, is about 5% of most populations. Some prominent people with ET are Sen Byrd from W VA, Sandra O'Conner formerly on the Supreme Court, and Catherine Hepburn. 30 years ago, when I was in my teens, weight lifting was probably the main thing that brought on my tremor. Only 20 some years later after the disorder had greatly progressed did I realize what I had all those years ago. Hopefully you don't have early stage ET, but given its prevalence it is not remotely inconceivable. You can easily research ET on the web and use its well known characteristics to see if they fit your situation. Best of luck.

You bring up some very good points VE. And honestly, most of you guys look a lot stronger than me so I'm definitely listening. And your point about not working w real intensity before learning HIT also applies to me, so the last 6 months are the first time I've ever really focused on intensity. The points about stabalisers and core strength make a lot of sense too, so I'm going to try to get on the free weights more (they're very popular) and see how it goes. I do use free weights regularly for stiff-legged deadlifts, pullovers, rev curls, wrist curls and extensions, lat raises, shrugs, tri extensions, side bends, standing rows, and so on. I didn't think anyone would be very interested in my side bend or wrist curl numbers. Looking back on this string, I think it some how concluded I don't use free weights when I probably use them almost half the time. Maybe it's because I tend to use machines for the bread and butter stuff like benching, military press, bent rows, squats, and so on.

About 95% of my daily calories come from fresh fruit-more if you consider tomatoes and cucumber as fruit. The only non-fruit I eat are greens like chinese cabbage and lettuces which don't amount to many calories regardless of how many you eat. A typical breakfast for me is often 6 large bananas, in the summer lunch might be 1/3 of a large watermelon, dinner might be a large canatlope, after dinner snack might be another 6 bananas. As snacks during the day I typical eat 1 or 2 large salads of cucumber, greens, tomatoe, and half an avacado a day, and misc fruit as desired. Because I don't eat grains or legumes or roots and so on (all foods that require a lot of energy to digest and yield low net energy per cal consumed), my overall cal req are probably 20% lower than a person my size and activity level. I do super high intensity weight lifting twice a week for half an hour each session, so about an hour a week total-only half an hour actual lifting. Sometimes I also run 20-40 minutes a week, and I do Yoga stretches about 20 mins a week. In my experience, diet is about 80% of fitness so it is very easy for me to maintain a high level of fitness with minimum work. I learned how to eat this way from a book by Dr Douglas Graham called "The 80/10/10 Diet." It's a fascinating read. Fatigue is probably the most common complaint I hear from vegan friends. In fact, a few of my vegan aquintances have gone back to the SAD because of being tired a lot. Ordinary vegan diets are typically based on starches, and starches are relatively tough (which is why they almost always have to be cooked to break down their cellulose casings) so the body uses a lot of energy just trying to convert them into monosacharrides for transport to the cells and oxidation. Fruit on the other hand is already monosacharride and does not in most cases even have to be digested; it moves very rapidly into the intestines and is absorbed by the villi right into the blood for transport-which is why triathletes eat dates and oranges and other fruits during competitions. Hope this helps.

Interesting Sid I'll keep my eye out for sugar criticisms. It strikes me as odd though, since only sugar can be oxidized by the body for chemical energy release; sugar is the ONLY energy source the body has. Any other macronutrient consumed has to be digested to sugar before it can be burned. As a person who consumes over 80% of his calories from sugar (raw fruit), I can tell you from first hand experience it does not lead to fatigue or an acid body; I am very high energy and my saliva usually comes in at about 7.5 ph which is very alkaline. My geuss is they are referring to yeast growth which is definitely an issue on a high fruit diet, if you don't aggressively limit fat. In order to avoid microorganism growth (yeast) on a fruit diet, you have to limit fat consumption to no more than 10% of calories. Otherwise, the insulin receptors along the arterial walls start getting clogged up reducing energy delivery to the cells and keeping sugar in the blood long enough for yeast growth. It's very easy to exceed 10% fat- eating all fruit and one avacado a day will come in at about 15% daily fat, or eating 2 ounces of nuts a day will do the same thing. To be successful on a high fruit diet, you have to aggressively limit fat meaning no more than 1 ounce of nuts or 1/2 avacado a day for most people. If you keep the fat way down, the sugar burns like dry kindling and you have endless energy and there is no acid by-product from micro-organisms that don't have an opportunity to flourish.

I learned 1 set of each exercise to total failure from Ellington Darden, who first got exposed to it while working for Nautilus in the 70s. I've read that about half the NFL uses a similiar HIT method, and Casey Viator and Mike Mentzer used it. It looks like its got a good track record and following to me, and I buzz through workouts in less than an hour total weekly. I've been making steady gains with a minimum of time invested, and working out only twice a week allows me full recovery which seems to be helping my strength growth. For a fitness buff like me, spending less time in the weight room gives me time and energy to train flexability and endurance and martial arts without burning out. And I'm definitely making better progress than when I was lifting 4 times a week, but with much lower intensity. By using such low frequency and duration lifting, I can go all out the whole time; it's a cool system. To me, it doesn't make sense to do any set less than 100% of capacity; if your not going to failure, then your not using the entire muscle and it has no reason to grow. A set to less than failure is little more than prefatiguing the muscle in preparation for eventually getting serious. The school I follow says just go straight to failure and don't bother with the time and energy wasting rituals; increase the weight so that you'll fail at between 8 and 12 reps of the first set. When you can do more reps, it's time to increase the weight again. The system seeks continual progress and total effort every time. And it does it in the minimum amount of time and ensures the most amount of recovery, which is when muscles actually grow. You can call it "asinine", I call it smart.

The main reason I don't prefer free weights is I can't get the intensity with them. I work to COMPLETE failure on every set. Do a barbell exercise like bench presses to failure without a partner and see what happens-you'll end up exhausted with a heavy barbell laying across your chest. Doing pyramids and cheat reps, to increase intensity, is also easier and faster on machines- I can pyramid down in 2 or 3 seconds on a machine and never give my muscles a chance to recover. Also, I deal with ongoing injuries from martial arts-I'm recovering from a broken rib right now, the second time this year. I like having a sport like weight lifting were I essentially never get injured, because it sucks endlessly convalescing.

I rarely use free weights because I don't workout on a schedule that is suitable for a partner. Without a spotter, its really hard for me to work to complete failure with free weights as I do with machines. I also never do 1 lift maxs as I feel that is real dangerous too. I usually start a workout with something like leg extensions. I'm currently using 310 lbs x 12 reps (the whole stack, could probably do more). I do 170lbs x 10 reps of machine flys, 110 lbs x 10 reps of cable curls near the end of my routine, 220 x 12 lat pulldowns, 110 x 12 tricep pulldowns, 215 x 10 deadlifts, etc. Keep in mind, I only discovered high-intensity lifting 6 months ago and my strength is still increasing. My wife and kids and I just moved to Madison about a year ago. I workout at the SERF which is right next to the Kohl basketball center.

Scientists have compared human genetic maps to other anthropoid primates and we are far more similiar than different; humans are over 98% identical to bonobos for example-and bonobos eat , for all practical purposes, only fruit and greeens. There is no question we share a common ancestor within the past 4 to 6 million years. And rest assured, all raw vegans are not "small." At 6-1, 174 lbs (all muscle and bone) I'm anything but small. I work out in the Univ of Wisconsins main weight room where over 95% of the patrons are less than half my age, and I'm easily in the top 20% of the people in the gym strength wise. On many machines, I use the entire 220 to 320 stack and still don't have enough weight! Look up Storm Talifero's website; he's been raw for decades and he ain't remotely small. I just think the very, very few raw vegans out there (I'd estimate less than 1 in 5000 people is raw, let alone raw low-fat) are simultaneously into high-intensity lifting, the kind you need to build muscle. Maybe 1/10th of raw vegans are also low-fat, which is almost certainly a prerequisite for a body-builder physique, So figure maybe 1 in 50,000 people is low-fat raw, then add the combination of being into weight-lifting and knowing enough about it to understand the intensity required for growth. Your probably talking about a one in five million person who fits in this category; the odds of coming across such a person is very, very low.

One thing I've noticed being raw is you really gotta keep the fat down to get the power benefits. Best I can tell, when fat builds up in your blood it really slows down the delivery rate of sugar to your insulin receptors and noticeably reduces power output. My strength at 10% fat max is way higher than at 20 or 30%, and it's extremely easy to eat 20 or 30% fat if your eating nuts or seeds. I'm not sure what a fast growth rate is for a bodybuilder trying to maximize muscle mass? I know I can put on about half a pound a week eating just fruit and greens working out less than an hour (2 to 3 15 minute all-out sessions weekly). If a 48 yr old can put on muscle like that so casually, there is no telling what a young, serious body builder might be able to do. I've only been raw 10 months and I only learned how to do super high-intensity lifting in April-I couldn't have done HIT before going raw because my joints were to painful. Yeh, I'm 100% fresh-no dried, no juiced, just whl;e fresh fruit and greens and no supplements except a little B12 and an occasional omega-3 cap.

Calories are no problem for me on a raw diet, even though I limit fat to 10% max meaning no nuts or seeds-I eat a half an avacado a day, the rest just fruit and greens. After 6 mons or so raw, I just got real used to eating ALOT of food volume compared to regular diets. In the summer, my 4 person vegan household goes through more than 200 lbs of fruit a week-alot of it is rinds and peels though. I haven't logged my calories recently, but I've kept logs in the past so I'm pretty good at geustimating, so I figure I'm running about 2200 cals a day right now which is probably equal to about 2600 cooked. Strength wise, I've never met a person in my age bracket as strong as me pound for pound. The first week I was 100% raw, I had to increase the weights I was using about 30%-the only step-wise increase I've ever experienced in 35 plus years of intermittent lifting. For the past six months I have been gradually gaining weight and increasing my lifts-I keep a journal of my workouts so the trend is quite clear. My goals may be different than many people's in this forum since I have no interest in competitive body building or getting super strong. I'm purely interested in fitness for life, maintaining my strength and flexability and endurance so I can enjoy and participate in life to the fullest as long as possible. At 48, my overall fitness is off-the-charts superior to almost all my peers: I regularly compete in Jui-Jitsu against men half my age, I hike and wrestle with my 10 and 11 yr old boys, I work outdoors up in trees and on rooftops and ladders, I can run for miles almost effortlessly, I haul huge wheelbarrows of dirt in my organic garden,and so on. Aside from a movement disorder I've had since childhood, I haven't been treated for so much as a cold in nearly 2 years. I can't even remember the last time I had to take so much as an aspirin tablet or had a headache. If a guy who approaches weight-lifting pretty casually like me at 48 can gain muscle on less than 10% protein, maybe it's possible to get really big if that's what your after? I gained about 10 lbs one month when I stared eating lots of raw nuts, but then I decided they weren't working good for me and cut them back out. It's simple enough to experiment with raw low-fat if you want to see if it works for you. Just start eating only raw fruit and greens for a few months and see were it goes. You might be pleasantly surprised. You can always go back to regular vegan if that's what works for you. I lost 40 lbs the first several months I was raw and thought I might get to thin, then suddenly the weight just stopped coming off and I slowly started putting on muscle. Now I've put nearly 20 lbs back on and feel better than I ever have in my half-century of living.

I've never seen anything suggesting sugar is acidic. Sugar is the only molecule our bodies can oxidize to release chemical energy, so unless the sugar was bound with an acidic mineral, it will leave no metabolic residual. If you check food ph tables, you will see that almost all fruit is highly alkaline, at least as far as foods go. You have to always distinguish between nominal and residual ph, residual being mineral remains after burning/oxidation. The only residual from almost all fruit oxidation is water-it is natures nearly perfect food; it leaves almost no waste to accumulate and eventually cause degenerative diseases.

I think human milk is much lower in protein than cows' milk, so probably less acidic though a small amount of acidity for a few infant years might not be a big deal for our systems? ALOT of diff protein molecules out there and most are bonded with acidic elements like sulphur and iodine, but who knows about human milk?

I'd be hard pressed to find many things more TRUE than comfort and hope-compassion, forgiveness, and love come to mind. All central themes of most religions. How can personifying and symbolizing benevolent beliefs, so that they live in the forefront of our minds, and that enrich our humanity, be untrue? A well constructed deity is a symbol, the personification of cherished values and beliefs, a figurative representation of much that is dear or significant in our minds. You might as well say you don't believe in verbs as say you don't believe in figures.

Body acidity is a pretty standard idea in holistic health circles. I'm a low-fat raw vegan and eat only raw fruit and greens-all alkaline foods. Many starches, like grains and legumes, are often mildy acidic because protein (which is relatively high in these foods) usually appears with acidic elements like sulphur. The acidity of most protein molecules is one reason some experts advise against consuming protein powders, grains, and so on. The body can operate in a very narrow ph range, so consuming acids forces it to neutralize the acids by buffering with endogenous bases (leaching calcium from the bones basically.) This is why countries like the US and Norway, which lead the world in dairy consumption (high protein), have the highest rates of osteoporosis. It is also believed that the residual buffer salts ,from neutralizing acid consumption, eventually leads to degenerative diseases like arthritis as the salts lodge in the joints and tissues. Kidney stones and kidney diseases are also thought to be caused by acid consumption since the kidneys do not appear designed to endlessly filter the buffer byproducts. Typically peoples body acidity increases as they age, though it is not clear that this is natural-it may be the consequence of eating foods we are not biologically evolved to eat. Acidity is closely associated with aging and disease-terminal cancer patients' body ph is often 100 times greater than healthy people and children usually also have relatively alkaline bodies. If you buy some mid resolution ph paper, that reads to tenths of a unit, you can monitor your body ph. Just wait a few hours after eating and test your saliva; it should be at leat 6.8 if you are eating well and healthy. You can test your urine too, though I can't recall the recomended range. There is a holistic health school that believes there is literally an acid test for health. Generally speaking (there are a few exceptions), food acidity is as follows (from most acidic to alkaline): Meat Dairy Starches-mildly acidic Greens-mildly alkaline Fruit-very alkaline Keep in mind too that NOMINALLY acid foods like citrus fruit leave an alkaline RESIDUAL after metabolism, which is what determines a foods ph for health purposes. Milk is nominally alkaline but burns down to an acid residual-so it is an acid food. My health improved dramatically when I switched over to an alkaline diet; I highly recomend eating all raw fruit and greens- the only alkaline diet I believe is theoretically possible.

Trust me folks, vegan kids need not be skinny. They still grab olive oil covered popcorn and coke every chance they get. I have to lay down the law with them regularly to keep them from eating too much VEGAN junk food and getting chubby! My 11 yr old eats almost constantly: grapes, bananas, oranges, apples, watermelon, and so on- last year he was the second biggest kid in his class (85th percentile.) He's also in the sixth grade and reads at a freshman college level (99 + percentile); so the old argument about meat consumption creating big brains is a bunch of hogwash too!

I'm a super lowfat raw fooder (10% max), and I have no problem getting sufficient calories. For all practical purposes, I eat no nuts or seeds. My diet is entirely raw fruit and greens, just like our bonobo cousins. I'm also much stronger eating raw than ordinary vegan. In my experience, lowfat raw vegans need substantially fewer calories than people who eat cooked food; starches, which typically constitute a large amount of an ordinary vegan diet, do not digest readily (one of the reasons they have to be cooked to help break down the encasing , non-digestable cellulose) and require a lot of energy for their digestive processes yielding relatively low net energy per calorie consumed. In my experience, I probably need 20% fewer calories eating raw to maintain my weight. At 6-1 and 174 lbs I'm slim (size 32 waist) but far from skinny, and if I wanted to gain weight I could easily eat more fruit instead of watching to not eat excessive calories. I'm 48 yrs old and can readily do the entire 310 lb stack on my gyms leg extension machine a dozen times. Low-fat raw is an excellent lifestyle: it's inexpensive, fast, convenient, and yields excellent health, strength, and overall fitness with minimum effort-I work out less than an hour a week and am in very superior health. I highly recomend it.