Raw Food Diet - Why It is Effective But Dangerous

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As an extension to cooked foods being worst for you, most of the time the preparation styles of some cooked foods can also be very bad for your health. The best example of this is deep-frying and open fire grilling. Both of these methods can very easily burn the foods and convert them to toxic substances. A perfect example of this is the chemical transformation of some oils when exposed to high amount of heat turning them into trans or hydrogenated fats which are already proven to directly cause cardiovascular disease. Another example is when cooking over the open fire causes opioid peptides which have also been confirmed as harmful and is also addictive.

In addition to the toxic chemicals produced by the cooking of food, most raw foodist will also point to the extra calories from the unnecessary sugars and oils used from the cooking process. By cooking some vegetables, it breaks down their carbohydrate chains from complex and hard to digest forms to simple sugars which have already been proven to be a leading cause of diabetes. Cooking also increases the amount of oils that is present in food and thus can also expose people to unhealthy oils which can contribute to heart disease.

The Research and Findings
Although there have been many studies into the affect of vegetarianism, the same level of detail is actually very lacking for the raw food diet. To date there hasn’t been a thorough study on the affects of long term raw food consumption on people. The only study that was available was on people who are strict vegetarians and also limited their diets to just raw fruits and vegetables. The main finding of the study suggested that those with that strict diet suffered from a lower bone density, lower red blood cell counts and were also underweight especially amongst the females. The results were basically that the strict dieters were actually malnourished. This however is mainly because of the extreme restriction the raw food vegetarians place on their diet. We believe that if the raw foodist consumed meats to balance their diets that most of the negative affects would be reduced or even eliminated completely.

A small study conducted on 10 raw food dieters confirmed that there were actually health benefits from the consumption of raw foods over just a few months. Almost all the participants in the study experienced a lowering of their cholesterol numbers, an increase in the favorable LDL cholesterol and a marked reduction in unfavorable HDL cholesterol. Overall the people that were involved in the study lost between 10-15lbs each but when checked were not malnourished like their vegetarian counterparts. The only thing was that their calcium levels were still left wanting. Although this does sound very good promising, the study was conducted with only 10 healthy people and thus isn’t conclusive enough to pass judgment on the benefits of the slimming diet.

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