RawVgn

I've done both; low-fat raw is definitely better; got cut like never before! Most raw is high fat though, so beware.

My youngest son, now 10, has been vegetarian since 3 and vegan since 7. My 11 year old has been vegetarian since 4 and vegan since 8. The older boy is the second tallest in his 6th grade class (85 percentile); both of them enjoy excellent health. I also have a friend whose 5 year old has been vegan since birth; he's also very healthy, big and strong. Anyone who says raising kids vegan is unhealthy is full of it! Go to Storm Talifero's website and order his CD. He's raised a bunch of kids vegan (one is over 20) and he has documented their progress including video during an annual pediatric checkup-they are extremely healthy. One scene in the video shows one of his sons, about 6 yrs old, outrunning an adult up a mountainside at about a 15% grade. Storm's in his late 50s and has been raw vegan for over 20 years; he still looks like a 20 something body builder! Two summers ago I chased my youngest boy up a mountain trail in the rockies for nearly an hour; we passed probably 40 adults and teenagers on the way up.

I found out last night that a casual friend of mine read The China Study after my recomendation, and has now, along with his wife, stopped eating meat and almost all dairy-they're both over 60! His cholesterol has dropped from over 200 to about 140 in 3 months. Now another guy in our social circle, whose extended family and himself have had lots of heart trouble, looks like he is moving towards veganism-I think he was skeptical of the things I was saying to the group, but now this other guy has had such great results I can see his wheels turning.

My 10 and 11 year old boys (and wife) are all vegans. We don't buy animal products so they really don't have a choice, though they are very proud being vegans and practicing non-violence. I'm primarily a health food vegan, so to me it is my parental duty to protect their health and that means being at least vegan, and the more raw the better. Many of their friends are vegetarians, so cooking vegan when they go over to friends' houses is not a big deal- my 9 year old told me half his class last year was vegetarian. Living in WI, the schools push dairy pretty heavily. We just use the situation to explain to the kids about irrationality, group think, economic survivalism, misinformation, and so on. For the most part, in spite of the widespread absurdities in culture, we still find plenty of positive narratives. And it's hard to argue with success: in the past 2 years, between the 4 of us, we've missed one day of school and 0 days of work due to sickness- and I'm pushing 50!

I certainly believe low-fat raw is superior to vegan, otherwise I wouldn't eat low-fat raw. As to pushing it on people, we have a right to express ourselves regardless of prevailing ideology. ( The soil your washing into the ocean is our common heritage and I have a duty to protect it for all our sakes, and so on.) Expecting people to be silent is repressive and oppressive. About the only thing I've ever felt I can do to accomodate the cooked majority is be very referential with my writing and avoid comments directed at people. A well crafted critique really should be taken as a possible opportunity to learn and grow, and if your nutritional belief system isn't strong enough to withstand criticism, you should wonder why you have it. I say take these arguments as scientific discovery, and leave the refined sensitivity for nonscientific venues; referential language, like science, does not tend to emphasize interpersonal relations. Science is like exploring in the jungle, you should expect some insect bites and bumpy roads, but the discomfort is often worthwhile. After a while, once you know what to expect, the bumps along the way don't phase you much at all. And in the end, sometimes we discover some amazing things! So suck it up people; as they say in bodybuilding, "no pain, no gain."

Sounds like a lot of intense exercise to me! As your fitness level increases, your intensity increases so that you can create more muscle micro tears per unit of workout time. However, your body does not increase its recovery capacity as strength increases; so overtime, you have to reduce workout frequency and/or duration in order to recover. Also keep in mind, your strength does not increase while working out; it's the recovery time that builds muscle. I use a lifting system developed by a world class bodybuilder and exercise physiology Phd; for an intermediate bodybuilder like me, I only lift twice a week for no more than 30 minutes each workout- that's just one hour a week lifting and only about half that time is spent actually lifting weights. I lift to utter failure on every set, and it takes me 3 to 4 days to fully recover. I do high-intensity intervals on one or two of the off lifting days for no more than 25 minutes- only about 7 minutes sprinting. Listen to your body; if it's sore, rest until its not. Frequency and duration do not build muscle; intensity does! And the more intense you are, the more recovery you need.

Get a new coach and/or change schools; you'll never learn what you can if you don't connect with your coaches training style and goals; you both gotta be on the same page. You should try to eat A LOT MORE raw simple carbs like fresh fruit(it should be your principal calorie source); all those starches your eating aren't going to get you to the top of your game-they burn dirty, and to be edible, they require too much goopy condiments like spices and oils. Try an all fruit fast for 3 days-nothing but fresh, whole raw fruit-you'll see what I'm talking about.

I, and many aquantances, stay very lean eating over 80% of our cals from carbs. Carbs can make you flabby because they contain high NET energy compared to fats and proteins, which require far more energy to digest than simple carbs. The key to thriving on high carb diets is to only eat them raw-so their water and fiber are intact; cooking dehydrates most carbs-like a baked potatoe-and increase their caloric density so it is easy to overeat. Keep your carbs whole-like fresh fruit-and it is very hard to overeat.

Where do you shop? I buy 40 lbs cases of bananas for $19.20. Remember that eating raw requires less calories; simple carbs consume very little energy digesting so your overall calorie needs go down-maybe by as much as 20%. You gotta get used to eating volume-fruit averages 70% water so what your really doing is eating lots of water with some nutritious sugars. I'm 169 lbs and typically eat 15 bananas a day, and I do almost no cardio (of course, I eat a lot of additional fruit and greens and some nuts/seeds too.) If you start loosing weight and think your becoming too skinny, just eat more fruit and up the nuts some more. It's really easy once you get the hang of it. I'd be careful of eating half a cup of nuts a day-4 ounces of nuts is about 700 calories, typically over 70% of them fat. I shoot for 1 ounce a day on average, and I don't need to be as lean as a runner. On a 2300 cal per day diet, 4 ounces of nuts will put you close to 30% of daily cals from fat; you probably want to shoot for no more than 15% fat, and maybe as low as 10%.

I still haven't figured out what credit crisis their talking about? I still get offers for endless credit cards, and my bank makes it clear to me regularly that they'd be happy to lend me money to buy a house. If a working stiff like me can get abundant credit, it's hard to believe big, profitable companies can't get credit. Sellers of money (lenders) are like any other sellers trying to make a profit; they'll sell in a moment to any qualified buyer. Too bad for the potential buyer if their financial shenanigans disqualify them.

Exactly, he's claiming that other animals eat animals, and that is the reason, or a main one, for eating like he does. His premise is untrue (many animals, perhaps most, do not eat animals), so his argument is false. It's ridiculous to compare Natural Hygiene, eating like our genetic cousins, to this childish argument. And anthropology is only one line of reasoning that supports Hygiene; sciences like anatomy and physiology also support the conclusion that humans are frugivores.

I have to admit, I like seeing women lift. So many women seem to think being skinny is sexy, Guys aren't healthy skinny or flabby, and women aren't either. One of my Jiu-Jitsu instructers is a women; I love rolling with her because she's slightly lighter and weaker than me, and submits me every time, usually within 2 minutes; its a good reminder that ultimate physical dominance is more about technique, timing, and knowledge than brute strength or power.

He claims animals eat other animals; cows don't eat animals, chickadees don't eat animals, horses don't eat animals, bonobos (humans closest genetic relatives) don't eat animals; he has his basic facts all wrong. Maybe we'll get lucky and thirty years from now (if the bacteria doesn't get him first), he'll tell us how his crazy little experiment went. I wonder why he didn't give his biostats? Probably to uninformed to know they matter. Well he is awful young.

The republicans have controlled the presidency and executive branch, and at least part of congress, more than 80% of the time in the past 25 years. Their policies have turned our economy and financial system into a banana republic full of white collar criminals and scammers, they've wrapped a ten trillion dollar noose of debt around our families and childrens necks, they've manufactured an endless war in Iraq based on lies that has cost 3 trillion dollars with no end in sight and killed over a million people, they've Walmartized the economy and made jobs our biggest export, they've created a medical system that underinsures or doesn't cover almost a third of the population that is by far the most expensive in the world undermining the competitiveness of our companies and workers, they've created laws that prevent food manufacturers from being liable for creating the obesist and one of the most unhealthy populations in the industrial world. And then the fools scratch their heads and wonder why people lack confidence in the system they've created. We've been down the road of right-wing rule before; another republican presidency could easily drive the country into another republican Great Depression.

I saw a link to the study on vegsource.com in Dr Graham's section about 1 to 3 months ago; you'll need to wade through some posts to find it. It created quite a conversation. Yeah, what's restrictive is very much a matter of opinion; I'm in I'm Your Man's camp and think of 10% limit on fats and protein as normal and everything else as more or less excessive.

I Personally think your playing with fire, though keeping it polyunsaturated is definitely a plus. Most diseases people get in industrial societies are degenerative, and take decades to fully develop. Even at your very young age, your blood pressure is at the upper end of the acceptable range. I'm 48 and my bp is 94/60. I think you will find as you age, the degenerative effects of a high fat diet will take their toll and you will have to reduce it to be really healthy. In women, high fat diets are closely associated with breast cancer. Many other diseases are also associated with high fat diets. Many leading nutrition experts agree that less than 20% of cals from fat is very healthful. I saw a recent study that showed vegan diets increase testosterone. I'm 48 and my sex drive and performance are very strong.

Tuc You gotta understand how American politics works-its designed to be undemocratic. The last thing in the world the hereditary rich want is a country run by the people; then they'd have to work for a living like the rest of us. Why work when there's corporate welfare? Just have your friend in the white house transfer a couple trillion dollars of the peoples money to you with regular ongoing wars and bailouts and whatever other scams suits your fancy. Our only alternative is to start a revolution, and that would be a bloody mess. Civil war in a country with thousands of nuclear weapons, oh boy. So we live with the scoundrels and hope for the best.

America is already close to an unprecedented financial collapse. I'm amazed anyone would even consider voting republican after what has happened over the last several months-let alone the last 8 years. Deregulation, the republican mantra for the last 30 years, has proven itself to be a total failure-it's just a license to steal. If we don't impose law and order on our economy and its participants soon, it'll end up looking like Bahgdad!

If your eating seitan, I wouldn't worry about protein too much. I avg less than 10% protein a day, and I put on about half a pound a week of mostly muscle when I'm lifting with high intensity. Low frequency, short duration , high-intensity lifting puts muscle on me...and half the NFL!

Joel That's amazing! Can you share your biostats with us, so we can judge your true health? Cholesterol, height, weight, age, blood pressure, resting pulse, LDL, & HDL should give us a pretty good picture? I remember the story of Jim Fixx, the father of the modern running movement, who was found dead on the side of the road at 52 from a heart attack; he looked great on the outside, but his veins were all clogged up inside from eating fat and cholesterol. And who can forget Mike Mentzer? Looked great but...ya can't judge a book by its cover!

Umm, the "anthropogenic" part of my post means man-made. So 97% plus of the worlds leading climatologists agree global warming is man-made. The debate is long over in informed circles. The real debate now is how much damage it will do to the natural systems we rely on for survival and well being, before enough people take serious action, and whether it will be too late to matter at that point. There is a substantial delay between carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere and when its peak effects occur; so if the world suddenly stops emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today, global temperatures will continue to rise for another century until the earth reaches a higher mean temp equilibrium. The concentration of green house gases already in the atmosphere may prove catastrophic; to continue pumping them into the atmosphere for decades to come is literally insane. The earth our grand children inheret will be far different from the earth we know today, which is already seriously degraded ecological from human activities. Another looming ecological disaster is the loss of topsoil. The US, and most of the world, have lost about a third of the topsoil in the past 200 years. It takes, on avg, about 1000 years to grow an inch of it, so it is essentially non-renewable. If we continue to loose topsoil at the current rate, widespread starvation will occur as less and less land is suitable for agriculture. Vegan agriculture produces about 15 times as much food per acre as livestock agriculture, so far less land has to be tilled and far, far less topsoil is lost. Eating tree fruit is even more productive than growing grains and other starches for human consumption, because trees produce food 3 dimensionally (theyr'e much taller than grain), they're perennial and do not require repeated tilling, and they're deep rooted and actually anchor the soil holding it in place. Trees also sink huge amounts of carbon dioxide and release large amounts of oxygen. So if you want to make a huge difference ecologically, the best thing you can do is eat lots of fruit. Nifty coincidence that the food that is best for our health is also best for the environment.

Fruit is carbohydrate-it's SIMPLE carb which is a type of sugar, which is the ONLY thing our bodies can burn for energy. Anything you eat-protein, fat, complex carbs like rice and potatoes and carrots- must be digested into simple carbs (sugar) before it can be burned in the body cells to release energy. Complex carbs-grains, roots, and legumes(starches)- have a LOW NET Energy content: simply digesting them, reducing them to simple carbs before burning, consumes a significant amount of energy and makes your body do a lot of needless work. Starches also contain lots of indigestable cellulose that the body can not digest, acidic elements like sulphur bound into the protein molecules, and other non-digestable junk that the body must then use even more energy eliminating. Starches are also essentially tasteless and must be combined with additional toxins like salt and herbs and fractional oils like Earth Balance just to make them palatable. They are also relatively low in vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and anti-oxidants, and they contain sharp, insoluble fiber that abrades the intestines causing mucus buildup to clog the absorptive villi undermining nutrient uptake. If you eat a lot of starches, it is unlikely you will ever sustain high fitness and health . Without going into a lot of details, fat is obviously not a good source of energy. Protein has many of the same shortcomings as starch. This reasoning eliminates ever class of food except simple carbs and non-starchy vegetables as high quality food; in other words, fruit and leafy green veggies should be your only staple foods. Anything else you eat in substantial amounts will , sooner or later, undermine your vitality and fitness. Like you, as a vegan, I could never achieve my ideal weight and had other nagging health problems. As a frugivore, I maintain ideal bodyweight and incredibly high energy and fitness literally without breaking a sweat. I'm sure you've heard the old adage, "don't work hard, work smart." If you align your diet with HUMAN NATURE, health and fitness, for most people, are almost effortless. Also keep in mind, when you eat whole food-like raw food that has not been dehydrated by cooking, you need to eat what APPEARS to be a lot more. On average, fruit is about 70% water, so when your eating lots of fruit, what your really doing is drinking lots of water and eating some simple carbs. In order to avoid being hungry, you need to eat 2 to 3 times the volume of cooked food. So when you have a fruit breakfast, you don't eat A banana, you eat 6 or 8 bananas. You don't eat a slice of melon, you eat half a watermelon or cantalope at one sitting.

Thank you for clarifying-"moderate carb" diet. I certainly agree your approach is superior to the SAD or any non-vegan diet. I also think it's important for him to realize why his approach has failed in the past. I personnaly find the approach I use far easier than yours; I exercise less than 2 hours a week and can readily loose weight without any aerobic exercise. The lethargy issue is also chronic among vegans, and until he realizes that fruit is the staple of primate diets he will continue to have problems. And in order to avoid candida or thrush while consuming so much quality sugar, he will have to keep his fat consumption down around 10-15% which will also control his weight. Short of eating protein powders (which eventually acidify the body and are low or void of fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and so on), high protein diets do not exist-they're really high fat diets. It is not possible to be healthy, long term, on a diet that is less than 60% carbs-ideally it should be at least 80% carbs and almost all of them simple sugars to provide energy and other nutrients. The problem with his diet is obvious, and the solution is equally simple. Like anyone who aspires to excellence, he will have to hone his mental game. Also, many people seem to think being raw is some great act of self denial. When I quit the SAD and became vegan, I did it in 1 day; my health and joy improved as a vegan, so it was a labor of love. When I went raw from regular vegan, my health and fitness skyrocketed. Being raw is not some Herculian effort of self-discipline, it is a labor of love-I love raw food, juicy homegrown heirloom tomatoes, ripe succulent bananas that almost melt in my mouth, mountains of cool watermelon after a hard workout in the middle of the summer heat, growing my own fruit, working outside in the sun watching goldfinches and hawks, walking down the street a half century old tall and strong and fit, never being sick or going to the doctor, enjoying sex like an 18 year old, aging very gracefully, and on and on. Connection with life force is what carries people to the mountain top, discipline is a distant second if that.

Cool, I eat mountains of watermelon and had no idea the seeds are full of protein; no more throwing them away. So a Fruitarian only eats fruit including nuts and seeds (which are fruits). A Frugivore, like me, eats only fruit and green leafy veggies. Both are raw vegans-and there are also many other types of raw vegans. I definitely avg under 10% protein in my diet. I'm more of a fitness buff than a bodybuilder though weight lifting is my favorite sport. At 6-1 169 pounds, I can easily do the entire 305 pound stack a dozen times on the leg extension machine in my gym. I'm planning on building myself up over the next 6 months to 185 to 200 but don't want to go higher than that- I'm already bigger and stronger than most everyone I know except really hard core body builders; my strength already exceeds what I need for day-to-day living. So far, it's been very easy for me to put on muscle: in the 6 months I've been high-intensity lifting I've put on 13 pounds. That's half a pound a week!

Carbs do not cause weight gain; I eat 85% of my calories from fruit (almost all carbs)and am 6-1 169 pounds. I do less than 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a week. Unless your doing major mileage, exercise will not significantly affect your weight. Do the math; it doesn't work. Eat food loaded with water, sugar, and fiber- that means fruit! The water and fiber fill you up before you can eat too many calories, and only sugar can be oxidized by your cells for energy to beat your lethargy. Most vegan diets are loaded with fat; how else can you eat tastless starches like potatoes and rice and bread unless you load them with fats like Earth Balance or grill them in oil and so on. The average vegan eats as much fat as the avg American- it's just polyunsaturated but still loaded with calories and a very poor fuel source that pushes quality fuel (sugar/carbs) out of your diet. Low energy is the most common complaint I hear from vegans- caused by eating complex carbs, fats, and protein-all inferior energy sources. If you want super high energy and to never worry about your weight again, eat raw fruit and green leafy veggies and eat no more than an ounce of nuts or seeds a day. An ideal caloronutrient ratio is 80% carbs (almost ALL fruit sugar), 10% fat, and 10% protein. The weight will peel off you, and you will never break a sweet! And you won't know what to do with all the energy you have. It is so simple, you will be amazed. And forget the "we're all so different" comments: we're all the same species and we are far more similiar than different; short of being very ill, the diet I am suggesting works for everyone who sticks to it. Go to foodnsport.com and you will see how simple it is. And low carb diets are extremely dangerous; read what leading nutritional groups have to say about Atkins and so forth. If you are eating low carb, then you must be eating high fat or high protein to get calories- either way is unhealthy and potentially deadly.