reality check with raw food

October 23, 2002

Hi All,

I first started an all raw food diet probably 30 years ago. I ate

totally raw, no meat, eggs, milk for one year. Just Salads,

fruit,and nuts. I lost a lot of weight. When I stopped, my first

and almost exclusive foods for some time was protein (mainly eggs

and miso) as I couldn't eat enough. Years later I tried again,

trying to lose weight and just improve my health as I also found the

raw food movement inspiring and seemed to make sense to me. I was a

associate of Harvey Diamond ( " Fit For Life " ) when I started raw

foods the first time, and he did influence me quite a bit. In

recent years, my son jumped into this and we went to lectures by

Wolfe " Sunfood Diet System " and he was very inspiring, and he

looked great. We both were on raw foods, and I could not lose an

ounce of weight this time, so I slowly stopped after a few months,

but my son stayed on raw foods for 3 years. No meat, eggs or milk

products or grains. He was very careful and followed the diet with

a lot of variety, to the letter. After 3 years, he looked terrible

and felt even worse than he looked. We finally figured out to our

horror that he was full blown anorexic. He had a lot of rules

around what he could eat or not eat which is a symptom. He was very

sick and had many alarming symptoms that he had been ignoring and

not realizing that it was the diet. When he was first on the diet,

he felt much better and really thought the diet was helpful for him,

as he suffers with M.S. We slowly put two and two together, much to

our dismay. It was a very scary time for me, and we both agreed if

he had of continued, he probably would not have lasted much longer.

I think he was very malnourished and in need of more protein. He is

in the process of recovering now, has gained some weight and feels

so much better, the many symptoms have virtually stopped. He is so

much happier, ( not depressed), can think straight, and has a lot

more energy now. My conclusions are that there are different body

types and some of us,it seems may need more protein than others,

and we all need a variety to insure that we are getting everything

we need. It takes a long period of time for these symptoms to

develop, and it can take years to manifest into something very

negative. In my opinion, it's not worth the gamble to find out if

all raw foods is the ultimate diet.

Gretchen

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