What is it About Raw Foods Anyway?

Happy Wednesday, everyone! It doesn't feel like 'hump day' or midweek especially: we're in Anchorage,  with good news on Phil's eyes again: his pressure is continuing to hold steady!

So he's off skiing right now and will continue to revel in many dimensions of the beautiful outdoors. We went for a beautiful hike this morning, too, with our friend Terry:

It was -8F (-20C) this morning in Anchorage, but by the time we were walking it was a bit warmer. Cold enough to make your nostrils crinkle!


The other major weather event the past few days has been wind. It has been blowing! We tried to hike along the beach in Homer for a little bit a couple days ago and the wind was spraying the waves up over the road! We had to walk backwards for some of it, and it was one of or shorter hikes, you'd better believe it.

When the snow has started to melt from the trees and then the chilly wind comes in again, it can freeze that dripping water into charming shapes. Look at this wishbone dangling from one of our spruces!

OK--moving to the ostensible subject of this post: What is it about Raw Foods Anyway?

For disclosure of my biases: I used to eat 100% raw very strictly, and worrying about percentage raw even at raw food potlucks was a serious ruling parameter in my life. Nowadays, I eat mostly raw food but I eat cooked food every day too, and I don't put a lot of energy on worrying about the percentage.

There are topics in food and nutrition that I've felt some confusion around as a result of all the recent discussion, but I bring up this topic because I feel that one thing that was clear in The Great Health Debate was that for most people, outside of the serious health crisis situation, the experts (perhaps excepting Robert Young) generally did not claim enormous additional benefits to accrue from a 100% raw foods diet compared to a diet containing some nutritious cooked foods. Even Gabriel Cousens, who is definitely a live foods practitioner, talked about 'protein types' eating cooked beans to obtain purines.

I mentioned at the time that I was impressed by Joel Fuhrman's take: that he didn't think that people gained anything by removing cooked beans and root veggies from their diets. In other words, there are foods that we can eat cooked beneficially.

It seems like a good time to revisit this subject, in the wake of the Great Health Debate, to reinforce the validity of both raw and cooked forms of nutrition and to feel grateful for them. There have been some good discussions of this topic out there quite recently, like Gena's clear and penetrating analysis in response to another blogger's rejection of raw food based on a short-term cleanse, also passionately written and researched. Bitt also has some insightful discussions of the balance between raw and cooked food, including this one. In continued and belated celebration of this little blog's own anniversary, there are also my own posts, written almost a year ago now, analysing and responding to Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire.  I wrote five posts about it in total: an initial overview, a summary, and a three-part analysis of the implications of the book for raw-foodists--part 1, part 2 and part 3. I noticed that during the Great Health Debate, both Dr Goldhamer and Frederic Patenaude mentioned Catching Fire, explicitly to point out that one of the major implications of the claim for cooking's antiquity is that it allowed an increased usage of starchy foods (not edible raw) that drove some great steps forward in human evolution: i.e. it was cooked plants, not raw--or cooked--meat, that made us what we are.

I think that it's important to note, as I did in part 3 of my analysis, that Wrangham's book can actually be interpreted as speaking in favor of eating more raw foods in this day and age of superabundance and super-refined and easily absorbed foods: or at least of more raw and otherwise minimally processed foods.

There is a semantic trap around raw foods too: raw implies "unadulterated," "unmanipulated," "not tampered with," and then much more charged and emotional judgments such as "pure," "clean," (morally) "good."... Of course, nowadays raw foods can be the most decadent, processed, worked concoctions, recipients of great artistry and creativity. When I got into raw foods eight years ago, agave and cacao weren't on the table yet, let alone flours. Things were chunkier back then. 

But even back then, we would sometimes philosophically agree, at our raw food potlucks, we raw food fanatics, that it could be argued that some steamed broccoli might be more nutritious/healthier than a raw pie with tons of nuts and dates. Outside of the sheltered world of the raw potluck, there may be times when the 'raw versus cooked' choice is even less clear-cut.

Travel and Social

As someone who has traveled a lot, I'd be the first to say that it's easy to do so as a raw-foodist. But then I'd have to backtrack a little and to admit that there were times when my refusal to consider cooked food probably left me less well-nourished for my hiking along than I could have been. Off the road, when options dwindle, if all you're willing to eat is fresh fruit and veg, you may wind up with nothing but some tired bananas, whereas a little more flexibility could find some steamed veggies or baked roots. In airports, salads can be exiguous and exorbitant (not to mention covered in cheese, meat and gluten), but if you're not in a panic about whether the guacamole and salsa might contain cooked ingredients, you can get those and be fairly well satisfied.

And then there's the whole world of socializing and accepting hospitality. I accept that it's not good to pull ourselves down to the lowest common denominator, but being willing to share lovingly prepared food that you're not compelled by allergy to avoid is a practice that I have found to strengthen my immune system and open my heart. It's been a long road: initially my internal resistance to and judgments of the foods prevented my enjoyment on this level.

Better Raw, Better Cooked?

I don't subscribe to the 'enzyme theory' of raw foods' superiority. The 'enzyme theory' claims that raw foods spare our own enzymes by bringing their own with them, which have not been denatured by the application of heat. I don't subscribe to this for two reasons. First, I think that any enzymes left on raw foods are denatured in the stomach before the breakdown of the foods actually commences. And second, I believe that it's highly unlikely that there are many enzymes left even in raw foods unless they are literally freshly picked (which may be why microgreens and sprouts are such good food: peak of freshness). It's not just heat that depletes enzymes: many other experiences that each food item undergoes on its increasingly long journey to the table do so too. Roots are not repositories of enzymes to enable growth, but of starch. Seeds contain enzyme inhibitors to keep them dormant and prevent them from rotting (which is part of why sprouting them to remove this is recommended: but the improved hydration is another key).

Without going into too much more detail, I should say that very few raw-foodists that I know personally 'do it for the enzymes.' There are plenty of other good reasons. Interest in raw foods tends to correlate with interest in freshness and quality of the food, which always equates with better flavor and nutritional profile. Raw foods tend to have a higher moisture content--and the water contained in there is some of the best quality, structured water that you can obtain. This structure can improve the availability of the vitamins and minerals contained in fruits and vegetables. Vitamins, of course, are heat sensitive and are generally better available in raw than in cooked foods.

On the other hand, despite the fact that I've put some energy into eating broccoli and cauliflower raw, and have written about it, e.g. in this article, I have to confess that at this time, I'm enjoying them more cooked than I am raw! And of course, they contain goitrogens, which can be a problem for someone like myself with hypothyroid. I recently heard David Wolfe speculating that these goitrogens may be deactivated by juicing but I think that since they are not deactivated by krauting, that may be unlikely. And personally, I'd far rather eat my broccoli than juice it!

Similarly, onions are full of wonderful compounds, some of them not even fully understood--like quercitin, crucial for mitochondrial health, and important sulphur compounds. Well, aside from the fact that I can't stand raw onions, they make me feel sick! So, should I just never eat them? That's what I used to think. Now, going along with Dr Fuhrman's words, I feel good about eating some onions, cooked. If you cook them into a sauce, the huge amounts of vitamin C that they contain may be retained, dissolved in the liquid, so long as you don't boil it for too long!

Another piece of releasing from the black-and-white: I love that raw food techniques can be used with semi-raw preparations, like my peanut butter mousse brownie. Never mind that in retrospect, I think it would have been even better with a raw base...!

A recipe coming soon: this is delicious and part-raw. Peas, barely-blanched cauliflower, coconut oil-sauteed onions in a coconut curry sauce.

Do you think that raw foods are beneficial for everyone? Do you think that this benefit is lost if other kinds of food are included?
Love and balance!

Phil's Laundry and Other Outlandish Things; The Great Health Debate Days 6 & 7

Phil really ought to be the subject of a TV show: almost daily, being around him ensures you'll get exposed to things you'd never imagine otherwise! A little later in this post, I'll share a story about what we took to the laundromat today. Stay tuned! Or, if you're not interested in the Great Health Debate, scroll down to the bottom of the post...

It's a crisp 13 degrees downtown, which means that a little farther from the coast it's well below zero here. Beluga Lake, on which I've been doing my driving practice had more cars on it today than I'd ever seen before! More on that shortly also.

First, though, I hope that my summaries of the talks so far on the Great Health Debate have been useful and interesting. Tonight will be the last night, with Mike Adams and Sean Croxton wrapping things up and also two pre-recorded talks, from T. Colin Campbell and Charlotte Gerson. (Obviously), I haven't listened to those yet, and I'll be back in a day or two with comments about those and some general summaries of what was offered throughout the event. Today, I want to share some thoughts on night 6, with Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude, and night 7, with Dr Will Tuttle and Sally Fallon. These were the two most polarized pairs of talks so far: each pitted an advocate of animal products (Sisson and Fallon) against a vegan speaker (Patenaude and Tuttle). However, on night 6 the focus of the debate was  high- versus low-carb and insulin, whereas on night 7 the focus was on the ethics of veganism versus the claimed necessity of consuming animal products.

All four speakers had some admirable things to offer and also some points that seemed highly questionable, to say the least. Perhaps this is because of my personal proclivities, but I didn't come away feeling any more confused as a result of what these speakers had to say, but I think it may partly have had to do with the fact that, as Sally Fallon herself confessed at the beginning of her talk, she--and they all--are secondary researchers: they're not physically present in labs designing and carrying out experiments, nor are they in clinical practice. Additionally, I felt that neither Mark Sisson nor Will Tuttle added a lot to the debate in terms of nutritional discussions, whatever the other merits of what they had to say. Now for some specific remarks on each pair of speakers.

Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude
First of all, kudos to Frederic for bringing together such a coherent talk at what was apparently short notice. If he and Kevin hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have realized that he'd had less time to prepare than the other speakers. And kudos to Mark for his light-hearted and humorous approach.

I mentioned above that the main point of difference presented between these two was that Sisson was advocating a low-carb diet (less than 100g of carbs/day, which isn't actually that low, but precludes grains, sugar, more than a little fruit, etc) with animal products, and Patenaude was advocating a high-carb, low-fat, vegan, whole-foods, high-fruit diet. Each was clearly very convinced of the rightness of his own position, and each was also clearly convinced that high amounts of fat and carbohydrate cannot coexist in a diet and have health be maintained: one or other macronutrient has to be restricted. Before I go on to their reasons for this, I should say that this throws up a red flag for me right away. As I shared in my 'this much I have learned' post, my experience has led me to believe that all fats are not created equal and all carbs are not created equal, and therefore to reduce the whole picture of health to a need to restrict a whole class of macronutrient seems like an oversimplification.

Mark Sisson, somewhat like Daniel Vitalis, advocates an atavistic strategy: a return to hunter-gatherer-type food choices, with the belief that this includes exclusion of grains and reliance on a high amount of protein and fat. Aside from the fact that research has been emerging to show that hunter-gatherer societies generally ate a lot of carbohydrate in the form of root vegetables, my question here is the same one I had for Daniel: what of the possibility that our rapid evolution with the rise of agrarianism means that we are no longer 'epigenetically' equipped for a step backwards like that? Sisson agrees with Mercola and Cousens that keeping insulin low is the key to longevity and health, and claims that eating high-carb inevitably raises insulin.

Frederic Patenaude points out that the human body's motor is glucose: that's the source of our fuel, and claims that it makes most sense to derive that fuel from complex carbs and lots of fruit (he claims that the latter is not a problem because of the fiber and minerals accompanying the fruit sugar). His further claim, that we should eat carbs because they are 'what taste good to us' derives from the Natural Hygiene and Instinctotherapy schools of thought. Although I agree that whole foods taste great to a clean palate, I think this claim is a minefield in this day and age of hyperstimulated tastebuds. You end up having to distinguish between what tastes good 'naturally' and what is part of the 'Pleasure Trap,' and can easily be misunderstood by people who think that twinkies and cheeseburgers 'taste good' as arguing for those! So, his first claim, which is essentially a claim of economy (get glucose from carbs rather than by gluconeogenesis from proteins or going into ketosis) is more attractive. Speaking of ketosis, he quoted a newspaper report that mentioned as axiomatic that ketosis slows down brain function. I'll say something in the next post about the credibility of sources like that, but although there are certainly problems associated with being in ketosis for extended periods of time, I think it's very unlikely that people eating the kind of diet Sisson described are in ketosis much of the time.

Sisson's and Patenaude's respective incredulity over the macronutrient ratio opposite from what they favored was amusing. Sisson suggested that the Ornish patients who had lowered insulin with whole grain diets may still have had net elevated levels of insulin 'under the curve' over the course of the day and implied that much of the improvement in readings was due simply to reduced calories. Patenaude cast doubts that low-carb advocates are really eating low-carb, including a personal query against Mark Sisson's cream in coffee and occasional beer! His claim that it's actually impossible to eat low-carb was clearly incorrect, since whole populations have done it (although perhaps he's correct that this wouldn't have been their first choice): also, as I've already mentioned a couple times, you can actually eat quite a lot of carbs on what is still called a 'low carb' diet. Patenaude claims to maintain low blood sugar while eating a lot of fruit but minimizing fat: we don't know what his insulin levels are, however. And while it's great that he feels good eating fruit, he didn't really address the possible problems with fructose. Recent research has suggested that the fact that fructose does not spike blood sugar levels (because it's processed through the liver) does not necessarily mean that it's healthier for the body overall.

Some people took exception to Sisson's philosophy of 'not getting into it with vegetarians:' of accepting that there are vegetarians who are very sure that they are 'right,' and he's very sure of his opposite position. I actually think that this is a sane way to go (of course I think that, living with someone with a very different diet to my own), and overall I enjoyed the level of openmindedness and acceptance of other perspectives displayed by both Sisson and Patenaude: a rare thing where each is a strong believer in a polarized position.

Will Tuttle and Sally Fallon
Acceptance of other perspectives was a feature not much in evidence last night in Tuttle's and Fallon's talks. Sally Fallon said several variations of 'there is no right/healthy way to be a vegetarian or vegan' and went as far as to implore vegan women not to have children. Will Tuttle said that humans continuing to eat meat would destroy the planet in short order. Tuttle's perspective was spiritual (he has traveled in Asia and has a doctorate in Comparative Religion: he was a very passionate, charismatic, inspiring speaker (although he definitely had a tendency to get carried away, rant, lose focus). Fallon was equally sure of her views and forthright, but in a more 'earthy' way. It was interesting that aside from the 'animal products/no animal products' polarity, Tuttle was focused on our need to evolve away from our historical ways of being and move to another level, whereas Fallon was focused on the need to return to traditional ways, meaning pre-Industrialization, small-farm-based food production and including grains and dairy: i.e., not an atavistic/'primal' regression a la Sisson or Vitalis.

I think those two polarities sum up the two talks fairly handily, but each speaker said a few shocking things that I want to mention.

Tuttle's claim that using animal manure in food production is 'absurd' and that animals should not be part of our sphere of influence was problematic. Although I agree philosophically with his claim that we cannot 'own' another animal, where are all the animals going to go if they're all set free? Presumably, as we always did, we need to coexist with them. His picture of veganic farming sounds like a call to create an ecosystem in which we have cut ourselves off from animals and I believe that that is impossible. Even the health of the soil is crucially dependent on earthworms and smaller micro-organisms, and I don't think anyone is going to recommend that we remove them from the ecosystem. Animal poop--including our own--has been a building block of the soil for all time. And although an argument over who got to keep the humanure when someone left a farm was legendary in the community I used to live in in HI, it really is possible to take animal poop without exploiting or dominating the animal. You can go to the beach and collect guano, or go out in the woods...

I've met vegans before who eschewed pets and abhorred companion animals because of that argument against domination, and I understand what they're saying but think it's an oversimplification. It also doesn't say anything against the practice of hunting. Daniel Vitalis might say (and I might agree) that the genetic modification of plant crops is an even worse, and more environmentally detrimental, form of domination. Small-scale polyculture farms are a wonderful thing to strive toward, as is reforestation, but I think that Tuttle's estimation of how much food can be grown on a homestead and how many people it might feed was unrealistically high. Reforestation won't necessarily be compatible with growing a lot more plant food for human consumption: one of things that we struggle with, gardening up here, is getting enough light on the garden plants in the Boreal Forest. Plus, like I said, all the animals have to go somewhere.

Up here, where it's relatively wild, coming through our homestead we have moose, pheasants, eagles, various corvids and songbirds, an explosion of snowshoe hares, squirrels, and the occasional visit from our neighbors turkeys and dogs! When they're not hibernating, we have black bears right here too. And when they come through, they all poop! My point is that we coexist with animals and that treating them with respect shouldn't have to mean an artificial sequestering of them from our ecosystem.

The most shocking thing that Sally Fallon said was that animals raised for human consumption die more humanely than they would in the wild. Having just read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I find it hard to accept the claim that farmed animals die quickly and instantly--and what about the quality of their life prior to slaughter?

The other shocking thing that she said was that she is not concerned about mercury levels in fish (although she is concerned about mercury fillings): that a healthy gut has the enzymes and other protective agents to escort mercury from the body and allow fish to be eaten without concern. It's true, she was talking about her personal choice, but since so many people nowadays do not have healthy guts; since we are 'bombarded with toxins' from so many sides; since even the FDA warns of the dangers of mercury levels in certain fish, it seemed like a potentially irresponsible claim. Otherwise, most of what she said was about what one would expect: that a whole-foods-based, omnivorous diet, preferably from organically raised livestock, is essential to good health. Some of the scare-mongering stories about vegetarian babies growing in rotten teeth were startling, but of course there are likely just as many positive stories from those who advocate for vegetarian diets. [Edit and afterthought: I agree with some other commenters that her allegation that vegetarianism is responsible for such epidemic health problems seems unrealistic given that in actuality, the percentage of vegetarians in the population is so low! Another fallacy that she perpetrates is the implication that all vegetarians eat tons of soy. Most health-conscious vegetarians are pretty careful about soy, I think. While the story of the prisoners in Illinois being fed soy in an uncontrolled experiment is truly horrific, it doesn't fit the story of most plant-based eaters.]

What else would you like to hear about the Great Health Debate? I will share some closing thoughts in my next post, and then during the week that follows, I'll share some of my personal perspectives and the ways in which it has confused me! And I'll be happy to address any other requests too.


Back to Phil's Laundry...
Anyone who's spent any time around Phil knows that their freezer is at risk of being populated with dead birds and crustaceans, assorted roadkill, and pelts. Phil is endlessly curious and avid to possess the essence of beings that he encounters. This means that when he comes across a dead animal when he's out hiking, he's likely to either bring it all home and put it in the freezer or skin it and bring home the pelt! (Yes, this is a contentious bone sometimes when I need to put food in the freezer!)

Well, this winter Phil has had mercy on me and decided that it's time to tan some of the pelts.
Remember that juvenile eagle that was in our yard? 

He was on cleanup duty! Phil had put out a hide and he cleaned the remaining pieces of meat off. A nice supplement for the eagles in a lean season.

Afterwards, Phil poured kerosene on the hide and rubbed baking soda into it, as much as it would take. He left it overnight and then in the morning thawed it out, washed all the kerosene and baking soda off with some cheap shampoo... And then we took it all to the laundromat! Hopefully no one was looking. We had to put them through twice: still a distinct stink of kerosene when it came out.

Phil has a story of a caribou hide that he took to a laundromat one time years ago, where things went horribly wrong and the hair came off all over the washing machine. I don't think he ever went back there! I was so relieved that nothing like that happened today.

...and Other Outlandish Things
It's outlandish because it's a frozen lake! I've never seen so many people and cars on a body of water before. Here are little kids racing their snow-machines. (For non-Alaskans, snow machines are like all-terrain vehicles for winter: fast, noisy, with runners instead of wheels, enabling rapid access to all kinds of places that would otherwise demand an arduous hike or a day of snowshoeing. Adult-sized ones run around $10k and are the ultimate testosterone toy.)

Speaking of testosterone toys, the adults get their fun too. This is ice-racing--an assortment of beat-up but souped-up vehicles racing around the ice in a circle. Lots of skidding and sliding.

What's the strangest thing you've put through the laundry?

The Great Health Debate, Our Perceptions of Experts, Impulse Indulgence vs. Make Your Own

I hope everyone's having a beautiful day. Sun is shining the snow bluish here, up in Anchorage, floating around again, on funny schedule and chancy internet connections again. We spent almost the whole of yesterday _outside_, on a boat, in Prince William Sound. I'll post more about it when I'm home and can upload photos.

Internet connection notwithstanding, I'm listening to The Great Health Debate and really hope that I can catch as much of it as possible this week. They have an amazing line-up of genuine experts from all sides of the nutritional spectrum: for example, last night's debate, that I'm catching up on now, was between Gabriel Cousens, MD and Joseph Mercola, MD. The luminescent level of speakers stays as high as that throughout the course. It's an amazing thing that Kevin Gianni and the Renegade Health folks have put on. These two, one raw vegan, the other high-raw omnivore respectively, are compatible otherwise in that they both advocate a metabolic-typing approach. I had to admire the respect with which they debated with each other and look forward to continued sincerity and courtesy in the information-sharing to come.

As someone blessed with slow internet connections, I'm also eternally grateful that the talks are basically audio files, not videos, which would be very frustrating: it makes it far more likely that I'll get to hear all of it.

So, I'll be spending some time with them this week and encourage anyone else with like interests to do so too. It can be so enlightening to meet experts in person, and also to hear their voices, even over the computer: get a sense of how they talk, how they interact, what their energy is like. It must be a little daunting as an 'expert,' especially a 'nutritional expert,' that every nuance and foible may be judged, and may be used to judge the efficacy of the approach that you espouse! I feel a little shy of coming out here with my impressions of Cousens and Mercola as personalities--but I met Cousens in person too about seven years ago, and my impression now is similar to what it was then. I would say in brief that I find both of them quite impressive but also with some significant reservations. Despite the 'spiritual' emphasis, there is definitely a strong 'ego energy' present.

And is it unfair of me, as an intensely verbal person, to feel uncomfortable/judgmental when an 'expert' mispronounces or malaprops several words? And speaking of judging experts, Ray Peat, on the basis of whose research I'm experimenting with minimizing PUFAs, as I shared in the last post, is an interesting and engaging speaker but he 'um's and 'er's so frequently and so much that you start to wonder whether all the neurons are firing! Fatty acid deficiency? If I start to 'um' and 'er' too (except when I'm multitasking, when I'm allowed!), tell me and I'll go back and pound some flax seeds, ok? On that note, interestingly, both Mercola and especially Cousens talked emphatically (if not at great length) about the importance of PUFAs and omega-3's. I wish I could have asked them about Peat's research and what it says to that in their judgment.

Being in Anchorage, being on the road, being unsettled and boomeranging, occasionally I succumb to a packaged indulgence, especially when there's a tide of hormones to ride out too and/or I didn't get enough to eat the day before. If there's something bar-shaped that has no gluten or dairy and is raw-ish and I haven't tried it before, I sometimes feel the need to do so, and almost always wish I hadn't (they're never cheap).

This time, I tried an 'Organic Fiber Bar' in the chocolate flavor--yet another nut-date bar with some added fiber, and some sunflower oil that I really would not have preferred to have (I don't like that concentrated sunflower taste in sweet things). The sunflower taste is the biggest strike against this, but generally the chocolate flavored nut-date bars are not my favorite. One good thing that I'm noticing, though, is that these kinds of bars don't crash my blood sugar as much as they used to.

What is it about these packaged snacks that is so appealing, even when I can read the ingredients and be pretty sure it won't taste great and that I could make something far better? (Of course, being in Anchorage in the Natural Pantry and being hungry both play a part). My own stuff almost always tastes and feels way better, and is definitely worth the time invested. Maybe I should make fancy foil wrappers for it... Of course, chia-sweet-based snacks are out of the picture for me for the time being (interestingly, I wasn't really eating them for a bit even before the PUFA-minimizing experiment). But I have my barks, which are always good, and have been experimenting and playing with some other things too: I'll share soon. I've also been eating more plain raw carrots and leftover roasted yams/parnsips as snacks, but am planning a challenge to design a low-PUFA-compatible snack: I'll share more soon.

Are you an impulse indulger or do you always bring your own? Do you feel ok about impulse indulgences?