Here in Los Angeles, "raw food" has become a big trend. Several raw food restaurants have opened up in recent years, where nothing you eat is cooked. It can be ground up, sliced, diced, and put in a blender, but never cooked.

Even the soups are cold. (I'll never forget my friend ordering a soup at a local raw food restaurant, only to realize that it - duh! - wasn't hot!)

I enjoy eating raw food, but I find myself only being able to stomach so much of it at a time. I suppose some raw food purists will accuse me of being too tainted by my Western diet...but personally, I need more carbs to survive.

So I like raw food as an addition to my regular diet, but not a lifestyle. I think it's always a good idea to add more raw fruits and veggies to a diet. I'd actually love to take a class in raw food "cooking" (an oxymoron!). But doing it 100% isn't my thing.

For one thing, being a raw foodist is time consuming. A friend of mine who consumed only raw foods was constantly in her kitchen, juicing. She never seemed to be fully healthy either, with a stomach that was constantly in knots and likely to freak out over the introduction of any slightly foreign substance.

My feeling (coming from the world of energy healing) is that if your chi is strong, you should be able to handle more diverse foods in your stomach, not less. But maybe I'm an idealist in that way. What is it about restricting diets that makes people more allergic? It's strange to me. But I digress...

At any rate, I was absolutely fascinated to read an eye-opening look at the "calorie paradox" on the Beyond Vegetarianism website, which is a very thorough, thoughtful look at vegetarianism by current and former vegans.

Alas - raw food by the scientific numbers just doesn't add up. From Beyond Vegetarianism:

The raw vegan diet promoted as the "party line" does not satisfy minimum calorie requirements in its strict form. Active healthy adults (i.e., in Western countries) need, on average, at least 2,000 calories of energy per day from their diet. However, the foods that usually comprise the raw vegan diet, with the exception of avocados, nuts, dried fruit, and sweet fruit juices, are relatively low-calorie-density. That is, they provide only limited calories per pound or kilogram of food. Hence, to acquire the 2,000 calories needed per day, raw vegans who follow the "party line" and limit their consumption of avocados, nuts, and dried fruit need to consume, as we will see: (a) very large amounts, each day, of the lower-calorie-density foods (raw vegetables, fruits, legume sprouts), or (b) ingest significant quantities of sweet fruit juice (which has the side-effect of excess sugar consumption).

(More here: http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/cal-par/calorie-paradox1a.shtml)

They further suggest that any raw food guru who claims they are getting enough calories from their diet is cheating:

Is the "expert" really, in effect, an anorectic? It may be possible under some (unusual) conditions to live on somewhat less than 2,000 calories per day--the body, within certain limits, can adapt to low-calorie diets. The precise value of such a lower limit is of course, variable, and will depend to some degree on the individual. But that people occasionally die from starvation in anorexia proves that there is a lower limit. Also, those with anorexia/fruitarians may need less energy, as an emaciated body has less muscle and requires less energy to maintain or move. (Even at rest, muscle requires energy to maintain.) And of course, those who are sedentary will need less calories than those who are active--such sendentism often going along with restricted diets. (Just ask a range of people on such restricted diets how much exercise they are getting, and you will discover that many of them just don't do very much.)

Thus, the "experts" who wish to use this type of explanation (who are often emaciated when caught up with; or if not, often found not to be following the diet they promote) are caught in another trap: Having to admit that for their caloric needs to be so low, they will have been on such a restricted diet for long enough that their bodies have likely adapted to their low-calorie regime in much the same manner as those with chronic anorexia nervosa--not a healthy situation to be in either mentally or physically.

(More here: http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/cal-par/calorie-paradox1e.shtml)

Now, if you read through the website (which is a book...give yourself some time), the authors are not suggesting that eating raw food is inherently bad, but that there are very good biological reasons why cooked food is healthy for you. It has to do with extracting the highest amount of nutritional content with the least amount of effort:

In other words, if a food is easily collected and edible raw, then it will generally be eaten that way, but some foods, which are inedible in their raw state, would be able to provide a high energy or nutrient yield, in the sense that gathering, processing, cooking them would represent a significant gain of time and effort compared to eating only raw foods. This is true in particular for certain tubers or root vegetables, some of which are partially edible raw but become much more bioavailable after cooking, and are concentrated sources of energy. It's also worth noting that smoking, drying, or cooking meats can also allow them to be preserved and more fully utilized without waste or spoilage, which is important in a wild environment where a regular supply of meat is not assured. On the other hand, foods that are difficult to collect, and which require too much time preparing and cooking would be unlikely to be eaten, period.

(More here: http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-3a.shtml and here: http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/cal-par/calorie-paradox1d.shtml)

Put it this way, to get the caloric equivalent of a cooked yam with some brown rice, you might have to eat 20 pounds of raw vegetables. Here's what you'd need to eat in vegetables to get 2,000 calories per day:

Raw Vegetables: 20 lb or 9.1 kg

Sweet Fruit: 6.7-9.3 lb or 3-4.2 kg

Cucumbers: 33.9 lb or 15.4 kg

Tomatoes: 23.3 lb or 10.5 kg

Sprouted Legumes: 4.5 lb or 2 kg

Sprouted Wheat: 2.2 lb or 1.0 kg

The result of eating so much veggies?

What goes in must come out. Think of the food mass mentioned in reality check #1. So you ate it all--and it must come out as well, as urine and feces. How many bowel movements would that be? Depending on the person, perhaps as much as one per meal, both due to the large food volume, and because raw vegans rarely suffer from constipation. The amount of urination is also usually inconvenient--I remember when I was on 100% fruit (and eating quite a lot of avocados as well as sweet fruit) that frequent urination was a real hassle and inconvenience. (The fact that many sweet fruits are both high-water-content and diuretic makes the situation problematic.) Pardon the extremists for not telling you about this--reality makes it harder to sell idealistic dietary dogma. :-) A 100% raw friend on a vegetable-based diet (very large volumes) said the diet disabled her and made her a shut-in--she needed to urinate every five minutes or so.

(More here: http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/cal-par/calorie-paradox1d.shtml)

I realize that this information may be upsetting to some raw food purists...but I think it's important to share some of the realities. So many people are jumping on the raw food bandwagon. Now - some people may be able to thrive on an all raw food diet. But if for some reason you are trying an all raw diet, or even veganism, and finding you aren't feeling energetic and healthy, it may not be because you're doing something wrong. Your body may be crying for more calories.

Personally, I eat meat (mindfully and out of choice, with preference given to free-range and grass-fed) but try to add lots of vegetarian options to my diet. I am also looking to add more raw foods. But I'm not giving up meat or cooked grains. (Why I choose to eat meat and how I don't think it's counter to spirituality is a whole other story.)

Check out the data for yourself, listen to your body and make an informed decision - not due to dogma or meat-eating guilt, but what works best for you and your body.