There has been a lot of controversy about diets for the past 30 years, but it just keeps getting worse. More and more people are getting sick and it seems like there are 5 million different opinions on what we should do about it.
One specific diet that is all the rage nowadays is a vegan diet.
Even those who eat poorly believe that they would benefit if they had the willpower to become vegan.
Even popular athletes are turning to this diet like Houston Texans running back Arian Foster.
So is this the way to go? I mean eating less meat is healthy right? Most Vegans seem pretty healthy.
First, let me break down the way vegans may be fairly healthy in comparison to the average Joe.
- They are health conscious
- They don’t eat processed foods
- They don’t eat at Jack-in-the-Crack and other Fast Food joints
- They may exercise more
Vegetarian or Vegan Diet isn’t apparent in any indigenous society
- They don’t do drugs
So yes, vegans are healthier than most people, but is it an optimal diet?
The answer is NO.
Sorry I don’t mean to piss off any Vegans or Vegetarians (though I know I will, but we can still be friends), but it is just not what we were designed to eat.
I’m not saying we can only eat like cavemen.
Yes, technological advances have given us the ability to eat things that we naturally wouldn’t be able to get our hands on otherwise like coconuts even though I don’t live next to any coconut trees.
Yes, technology has gave us the ability to have a lot more vegetation in our diet that we would have had, and this is great, but we still need to make sure we get meat into our diets.
Don’t tell me about what documentary you watched or what your girlfriend said, our bodies are accustomed to eating meat. Yes I know about the gross factory farms, but not all farms are like that. If you want higher quality meat, I have a link right to the side, so stop the excuses.
There are certain amino acids and fatty acids such as EPA and DHA that you just can’t get eating a vegetarian or vegan diet. These are essential, as in your body cannot create them by themselves, it must come from a food source.
So if you are a Vegan or Vegetarian, it wouldn’t hurt to eat a piece of fish with that salad. In fact it would benefit you a lot.
And for those of you who were considering becoming vegan or vegetarian, you can still eat your meat, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a salad to your menu. In fact it would benefit you a lot.
And for those of you just looking to eat better….EAT REAL FOOD. In fact, check out Sean Croxton’s Real Food Summit! .
Remember that Action is the foundation to success. So it’s great that you read, but it’s what you do with it that counts!
Why really healthy, and why now? Simple. Many of us believe we are “healthy” people. But let’s remember that health isn’t being absent of disease or illness. Just because we don’t feel symptoms sickness doesn’t mean we are healthy.
Actually the healthiest diet is the raw food diet – this includes both plant and animal proteins. The protein in your steak has long since been degraded – so too with your bacon and BBq Chicken.
Your pasta is damaged as well as your bread, any kind of bread.
I loves me some bacon cheesburger but only for flavor and texture – I know that from a molecular point of view (what a chemist knows), that the nutrient value is nill- even the cooked fats have become rancid and potentially carcinogenic. and I love fries with that as well – they too have lost many if not all of the nutrient value that a raw potato has.
You don’t need to eat any big game to look buff like this blog host does. All you need for a bangin body is carbs – lots of starch, heavy weights, rest, water, get up and do it again the next day. That’s all you need.
That’s all you need for body building, which sometimes gets confused with a healthy body. At times they can be one in the same but many times they aren’t. What you need for a healthy body is much more than just carbs (especially if the carbs are cooked – pasta, fries, beans, corn etc.). What you need is unadulterated proteins, non damaged vitamins, good whole fats, and minerals that didn’t leach out of the host food source by way of steaming, boiling, baking, stir frying etc.
Yes there are benefits to eating raw food, claiming cooked food has no nutritional value? I like that you are passionate about it but there is no scientific research to back that theory. In fact, some nutrients don’t become bioavailable unless cooked. So there are benefits in eating raw foods and cooked. Also, plants unlike animals can’t run from their predators and therefore have toxins built in as a defense mechanism. Many perfectly nutritious foods do require cooking to remove poisons or become edible. And I do need to eat meat to look the way I look, others may not need to. But yes heavy weights, rest, water, and real food starches like tubers will get you big.
The healthiest people in the world are raw food eaters. There are many definitions of healthy but for study we can simply look to vitamin and protein deficiencies. Raw foodists have none – they are not lacking in any of the known vitamins or proteins including the essential amino acids.
Vegetarians can claim this nor vegans cause they cook some of their foods. Meat eaters pretty much have the whole mealed cooked up so they will always find themselves lacking in some vitamin or another as well as needing protein supplements (which are fake anyhoo).
As for “scientific proof” I am not one to wait around for science to provide evidence for anything – Science and marketing never let the truth get in the way of profit. The other species who survive and thrive on only raw food and water are all the proof I need. There is no, as in zero, other species that is lacking in any nutrient – you can pick one of a million zebras and check him to see if he is deficient in any known nutrient – so too with birds or fish or ants and bees – all of them are not lacking in anything – humans are lacking in so much that we have a thriving vitamin supplement industry – it’s as if no one is eating – yet every one is eating, they are just destroying the nutrient value by cooking everything.
What’s always funny to me is that people with all manner of scientific backgrounds say there is no “scientific evidence that a raw diet is healthier or beneficial to man”. That is an actual quote from a scientist. He is not alone however. There is a plethora of qualified folk who side with this position. Beyond my feelings of not waiting around for science to figure everything out, or for scientists to give mankind the thumbs up or down on a multitude of issues over the course of time from Newton to Hawking, this “proof” thing seems really obvious:Aside from someones religious beliefs, If many scientists agree that we came about millions of years ago yet we only started cooking our food relatively recently as in 12,000 years ago or even 80,000 years ago, then by way of simple math we have been eating raw foods for millions of years. 7 million in my book, and we survived. We survived and thrived for seven million years eating only raw foods. Humans have been eating raw for over 99 percent of our existence (or whatever 99% of 7 million years is).
How is that not evidence enough that a species can survive on raw? How is that not “proof” enough that a species can thrive, grow, prosper, procreate, and flourish, on raw foods alone? How is the fact that millions of other species are still doing these things on raw alone, not proof enough? Is there a greater “Exhibit A” than what actually occurred and is still occurring with the other species? Do we really need more “evidence” that a raw diet is not only beneficial to a species, than the actual living proof that surrounds all of us? Forget loving bacon and burgers like I do, or making money off of food like many do; when asked to form a logical conclusion, how is there anything else to deduce other than the reality of earth’s history and its inhabitant species – all of whom ate and eat foods uncooked? How can we surmise thus, given these actualities, us eating raw for the most critical stages of our species, the beginning, and continuing on for seven million more years with this diet of fresh uncooked foods, that raw is not critical or at least uber beneficial to good health and sustenance?
Again, for millions of years we did not have drugs, medications, radiation treatments and we were able to survive and thrive. We could not have done this surviving and thriving thing four million years ago with the bevy of diseases we have today, or with the weakened immune systems that we now collectively have, or with the poor nutrient void diets we have today.The nutrients that existed since the beginning of time are still out there, but man, science and marketing feel we need to alter them to “make them more available to us”. This is the most criminal of misled ideas. In addition to science needing scientific proof about the benefits of unadulterated nutrients, there is also the thinking that eating these nutrients without any processing (to make them more “bioavailable” or whatever) is a radical idea. It’s just the opposite. Again the ratio is 99 percent to 1 percent in favor of the time we have been eating raw nutrients. Eating all of this processed cooked food combined with drugs and alcohol etc in the last, most recent, few moments of our history is radical. Giving your children true nutrients should never be considered a radical approach (everyone else is doing it-cubs, chicadees, baby rabbits etc).
Nobody is claiming processed is better than raw food. In fact I’ve stated that most of your veggies you should eat should be raw. I also am not against eating like our ancestors, in fact I highly promote a paleo diet. But saying there is one way to eat for everyone doesn’t take into account bioindividuality. A raw banana may be good for me, but could kill my friend who is highly allergic unless it is cooked. So I don’t dive into dogmas. That’s why I help clients individually to find out what works best for them.
Baris – I am not saying there is or should be one way to eat for everyone – to each his own. All I am saying/stating, is a fact of chemistry – cooking food destroys nutrients.
Among humans, there is no bio- individuality. We all need the same vitamins and minerals to survive, along with needing the same essential proteins and essential amino acids.
What is different, genetically, is how we all evolved from africa. There are today so many types of allergies and allergens unlike 65,000 or a million years ago when the gene pool was much smaller.
To combat that we all need to be eating fewer type things and drinking only water. Otherwise, at this rate, 200 hundred years from now, everyone will have multiples of allergic reactions to so many different things.
If you have to cook something, bananas, kale, soy beans etc to kill the toxic element in it, that should be the red flag that you should move on to another food. The temperatures required to kill these many toxic elements will as well destroy the good nutrients – so what would be the point of eating it unless like me you just like burgers for taste and texture.
What works best for all humans is unadulterated nutrients. Where we get them from is the struggle and the debate for many – for some of us it is very simple – fruits, nuts, veggies, raw fish and raw meat from reputable fish, foul and beef mongers.
The paleo diet is very misleading as well – not everyone sat around eating roast beast during that period – fire wasn’t fully harnessed and used for cooking – that came thousands of years later.