I ate a raw diet for most of last summer. I recommend the book "Everyday Raw", and the 2 other bigger cook books from the same author. I would typically eat one of the smoothies in "Everyday Raw" for breakfast. Then snack on nuts, fruit, or one of the snack food recipes (pre-prepared) from the same book for lunch. Then for dinner, I would typically eat one of the more elaborate recipes. This type of raw "cooking" is fairly gourmet, but even the complex recipes rarely take more than 30 minutes or so to put together...assuming the prep work has been done. By "prep work", what I mean is that often recipes will require that you soak something for 5 or 6 hours, or dehydrate something for 12 hours, or overnight...etc... This was the biggest problem for me with this type of raw diet. I might get ready to prep dinner and realize that I forgot to soak some cashews for 4 hours....and not be able to make dinner. Also, say I run out of snacks...I can't just go to the store and buy a bag of chips...I have to wait 12...36 hours while my home-made snack foods dehydrate. The last big drawback for this type of raw diet is that it requires a pretty hefty investment in kitchen equipment. At the bare minimum you need a Vitamix high-speed blender, an Excalibur Dehydrator, and a food-processor. That is like almost a 1000 bucks for just the mixer and the dehydrator. There is also another school of thought with regard to raw food. Instead of making elaborate dishes to keep things interesting...people just eat fruits and nuts...dinner might be 2 bananas, half a cantalope, and a young coconut, or something like that. If I ever get back into the raw food diet, I'll probably try to incorporate simpler menus like that from time to time, but I think it would get really boring fast if that is all I ate and I would not be able to continue on it long-term. I was pretty skeptical of raw food and vegan diets in general when I started it last spring. My wife wanted to try it so I ordered her that "Everyday Raw" book I mentioned, and a cheap dehydrator on Amazon.com to humor her. After a few days of eating raw food I noticed that I had so much energy and just felt "GREAT" all of the time. This is a pretty common sentiment that people who eat a raw food diet describe. My wife lost interest in raw food after a week or two, and so I took over and got really into it. I finally had to quit near the end of the summer when my wife completely refused to eat most everything I was making by that point. She was pregnant and I wanted her to eat so I quit doing raw food. I still think most Vegan diets are generally unhealthy. What I think makes this type of raw food diet work so well is that you are generally getting most of your calories from nuts and unsaturated fats (oils) which I believe is very healthy. In other types of vegan diets where you are getting most of your calories from carbohydrates. There are no beans or grains for the most part in a raw food diet.
I assume "RAW" you and the OP refer to plants only- no animal products? (NEVER eat RAW animal product!! very unsafe!) Why eat only RAW, what's wrong with lightly steamed? Of course LEGUMES can't be eaten raw but should be THOROUGHLY cooked/boiled to inactivate an inherent plant toxin. Legumes are an important source of protein, antioxidant, vit/mineral fiber why restrict these? Most of calories from NUTS is NOT a good idea. Too much fat even mono is unhealthy. I like getting most of my calories from whole natural unprocessed veggies. Raw and lightly steamed but never boiled to retain nutrients.
Raw food diet should not be applied like a hammer. The concept of things like plant enzymes does not work, as they cannot make it past the stomach acid. Further, some foods work better cooked, as it releases some nutrients much better. And some foods are a bit toxic unless cooked. Also, some foods can cause problems unless cooked. And not just meat/fish. But overall, the concept of eating a lot of raw fruit/veggies, nuts, etc. is not a bad idea.
No, but I can tell about someones experience, from the fifties; they were living in a bedsit, labouring, couldnt afford cookware, anything, nowhere to cook anyway, even if they knew how. So, they chopped up raw steak, cabbage, any fruit/vegetable that could be eaten raw-celery, apples, carrots, you name it, mixed it up roughly in a bowl , and ate it. No sauce, salt /pepper, no nothing. They claim after two weeks of this, they felt the strongest and fittest, most alert they had ever been in their life, to this day. A couple of months of this and huge physical exertion labouring, they felt practically superhuman. What happened? Well, they got a better job and access to cooked meals, downhill slide healthwise from there really. Didn't have a fridge, not sure how they avoided salmonella etc.
I cannot answer to all of those who said that eating raw is unhealthy.. because I don't want to list down why eating cooked meals are unhealthy... I have researched on this, even read documentaries.and I feel that its worth a try and an amount of dedication. Ofcourse the premise here is I'm not doing this to lose weight and be stick skinny. Im trying to prevent diabetes, and I saw a documentary who was able to reverse diabetes because of RAW food lifestlye for 30 days. I just hate drinking medicines for maintenance. I'm talking about raw fruits and vegetables. Definitely NOT raw meats.
Cooked food is dead food. Of course if you eat animals they are already dead so you might as well cook them.