Raw Food Diet - Why It is Effective But Dangerous

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Criticisms
The first and most obvious criticism is one for food poisoning. The main reason that men started to cook foods many thousands of years ago is to help protect against food poisoning and basically any other ailment that can be caused by ingesting food that isn’t properly handled. A study into the contamination levels of common foods like raw meats, raw fish, shellfish, milk and vegetables has shown that despite the freshness of the items, they are often contaminated by improper handling or other causes which renders them as filled with foodborne bacteria as any less fresh foods. It is because of this mixing of foods especially in supermarkets that it becomes more important to cook your foods thoroughly.

In addition to just the microbial breeding problem modern food also has a lot of preservatives and even artificial pesticides, hormones etc that were previously not in our foods. It is because of this that cooking is becoming even more important than before. Most chemicals that are present in our foods can effectively be nullified upon the introduction of heat. Most chemical producers often engineer their chemicals used on our foods to do exactly this so that it can be active when it is needed and destroyed by heat when humans want to eat it. It is because of this that the raw foodist will recommend that people only eat raw foods that have been certified organic. The problem is that even with certified foods, not everything that you consume will be organic, some foods that you take in will still be normal foods and the presence of these harmful chemicals will probably have an adverse long term affect on your health.

Another important thing to consider is the factor of nutrition. It has been shown by the studies conducted that those on a raw food diet generally are less well nourished compared to people who have a normal diet. Studies have indicated that raw foodist are generally deficient in calcium, vitamins D, B12, iron, zink and are normally running a calorie deficit. The first thing that causes this is that raw food is harder to digest compared to cooked foods. Cooking foods often makes meat much easier to digest, converts carbohydrates into forms that are more easily absorbed and also softens vegetables to aid digestion. It is for this reason that most experts will actually recommend that children avoid the raw food diet as the nutritional deficiencies will often manifest themselves only later in life.

There is also the school of human evolutionists that argue that humans have already made evolution steps towards the digestion and handling of cooked foods. This is evidenced by the weaker teeth and jaw structure that humans have compared to other wild animals. The evolutionists argue that if it were not for the cooked foods that we eat today, humans would not have evolved to the stage that we have today. If humans were to take as much time as they did to hunt and eat raw foods as they did before, there would not be time for the human brain to develop into what it is today. Anthropologists have also long established that the increase in the size of humans was because of the move away from a staple food of berries and nuts to cooked meats which provided enough proteins to allow the gradual development of a larger brain.

Our Verdict
Overall we feel that there is merit in this raw food slimming diet, however it is also quite dangerous if you are not careful and picky about what you eat. The main concern about raw food diets is food poisoning and malnutrition. If you are careful with the preparation of foods and only choose the highest quality organic foods then you should be able to minimize your risk of food poisoning. On the nutrition front, you have to be careful that you are taking in enough nutrients as raw foods are generally harder to digest than the normal cooked foods that we are used to.

We recommend that if you want to try the raw food diet that you treat it more like a detox diet meaning you only consume it for no more than 2 weeks at a time. This will ensure that you take in enough nutrients even if your raw food diet is nutritionally deficient. It will also allow your body to properly adjust to changes in the diet and compensate where needed instead of being thrown into the deep end without a chance of turning back.