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Raw Kyle
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« on: October 31, 2008, 07:10:59 AM » |
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For fun I was just watching some youtube videos of raw vegans. I like to just watch videos sometimes even if I'm not looking to get some particular knowledge from them; it can be relaxing.
So I'm watching these videos and people are always trashing meat and dairy and eggs without making any distinction between cooked and raw. I used to do the same thing, the (I believe) false information given out about how bad meat is for you tends to convince you that all meat is bad rather than that the particular meat that is available today and the way it is prepared today is what's bad. The information is designed to lead people to these conclusions.
The raw vegetarian/vegan movement has a lot of things going for it such as celebrity endorsement, a growing following, some very nice restaurants (mostly in NYC and California) etc...
Is there any way to some bridge the divide? It seems that from the people I've met over a 3 or so year stint on that diet and watching videos and everything else very few people even think about the idea of eating raw meat. It's like they've removed the conditioning that you need to eat cooked food but not that raw meat will hurt you, which is interesting because it seems like the same thought process of having to cook things and sanitize everything and all that leads to both of those ideas, that you need to cook your meat and that you need to eat cooked plants as well. Or perhaps not need to, but that the cooking doesn't harm plant foods and make them less valuable nutritionally.
It seems like raw vegans are much more dogmatic and (for lack of a less harsh term) insane about their dietary convictions. It is rather common to see very thin and sickly looking people talking about how good they feel and how stupid everyone around them is. I thought Juliano looked ok in person the one time I saw him in his restaurant and also in the pictures in his book, but some videos I was watching today made him look less good. It seems women do better on raw vegan, or perhaps it's just more socially acceptable for women to be skinny than men. But I find that men tend to be even more thin on the diet and some women can (at least for a while) keep their attractive curves and appear healthy and attractive. Perhaps this is hormonal, or maybe it's that mens bodies are formed from a greater ratio of muscle curve vs. fat curves while women are in comparison more fat to muscle than men and that fat is easier to maintain on raw vegan than muscle; hence a womanly figure could be maintained as minimal muscle mass (as compared to a man) is necessary for today's idea of what healthy attractive women look like.
On a lot of videos too they are always talking about "super foods" and saying "best ever" about everything ala David Wolfe. The whole thing is pretty space cadet-ish and the people I've met IRL and on forums from that diet tend to be much more "out there" than the people I've met at the AV lecture I went to and on this forum.
So what do you guys think? Any of you from the raw vegan diet like I am? Is there any hope for them losing their rapid anti-meat stance in terms of raw meat? I think I read somewhere that David Wolfe said meat is a super food but then gave a reason why not to eat it, either environmental or the standards it's raised and prepared or something. If someone like that switched over that would be almost as big as if Tom Cruise got Oprah Winfrey to become a Scientologist.
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boxcarguy07
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« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2008, 07:32:41 AM » |
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before discovering raw paleo, but after deciding to go raw, I went on some raw vegan message boards because they were the only raw boards I knew about. I wasn't myself a raw vegan, as I would have some raw eggs or fish every once in a while, but most days I ate plant foods only.
Anyway, most of these boards did not even allow discussion of animal foods at all; it was a bannable offense.
The raw vegan community does seem to be extremely dogmatic, and I agree it would take a lot of work to stop the misinformation spread. Not that I'm terribly interested in converting people, but still.
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goodsamaritan
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« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2008, 08:39:45 AM » |
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I went raw vegan for 2 months last year.
I was never dogmatic about anything.
So it was always a wait and see thing.
Many raw vegans are dogmatic... blind until they are faced with nutritional deficiency realities.
Since I wasn't dogmatic to begin with and I'm sensitive to my needs, 2 months was enough for me to quit on raw vegan and I added back cooked starches and cooked meat. Later on I tried raw fruitarian, but that led to other problems. And later on Wai Diet which led to RPD.
I view the resources on raw vegan communities as useful. Since they are stuck in that paradigm, they point out good fruits and good vegetables. So that is useful information for us in Raw Paleo.
I feel that we need to extend a helping hand, open arms to some 90++ percent of people who are eventually going to fall off the raw vegan dead end... instead of them reverting to cooked starches... show them a path through cooked meat paleo diet... moving on to the ULTIMATE... which is raw paleo diet.
I view RPD as the ultimate. Let majority of the raw vegans explore and find us. They eventually will find cooked meat Paleo Diet their bridge and Raw Paleo Diet the ultimate destination.
Maybe we should have a thread or a section for transition diets. Help the lost souls transition say from cooked meat paleo diet to raw paleo diet.
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« Last Edit: October 31, 2008, 08:42:44 AM by goodsamaritan »
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xylothrill
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« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2008, 09:21:36 AM » |
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I was surprised when Tyler said that he teamed up with some raw vegans to let some of his wikipedia articles stay. So, working together is possible.
They don't tend to make a distinction between raw and cooked animal foods and yes, I've also seen people get banned for discussing eating meat. We just have to get the message out there that raw meat, fat, and organs are actually very good for you. I wonder if they'd consider a cooked vegan diet better or worse than RAVF.
They also tend to get more parasites due to the organic fertilization methods of the foods they eat. They are always discussing parasite cleanses for their parasites but I don't see that complaint too often, if at all, from RPDers despite the fact that some of them can actually help cure some intestinal diseases.
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TylerDurden
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« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2008, 08:19:07 PM » |
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First of all, I think it's a bad idea to view Raw Vegans as "the enemy". Like Craig said, one of the main reasons why the anti-raw fanatics were unable to block my contributions to the Raw Foodism Wikipedia page was that there were several raw vegans continually making contributions on other non-RAF-matters, thus creating a distraction. I only came across 1 Raw Vegan who was so angry as to delete all mention of raw animal food diets in the first half of that article, and that edit was, thankfully, swiftly reversed (by a non-rawist?). And there are some Raw Vegans on the Web who do admit that raw meats are healthier than cooked meats, being free of toxins, but they do still harp on about the bacteria/parasites issue, of course.
Basically, we're a fringe group, loathed by many, so we need all the friends we can get. And, besides, a large majority of people who turn to RAF diets are former Raw Vegans(due to nutritional-deficiencies while Raw Vegan), so they are a welcome source of recruitment. I don't agree that Raw Vegans commonly go cooked-palaeo and then go rawpalaeo. Usually what happens is that there are three groups from which RAFers come from(listed in descending order, according to numbers):- 1 is the Raw Vegan/Fruitarian camp, another is from the cooked-low-carb/zero-carb/Atkins/cooked-palaeolithic-diet camp, and the last one consists of those looking for greater sprituality.
Anyway, Aajonus was a former Raw Vegan, and there are now several raw-omnivore gurus and chefs who used to be Raw Vegan but now recommend raw dairy, raw eggs and a little raw meat, so there's always progress, somewhere.
I used to be Raw Vegan and then Fruitarian, but never for ideological reasons, though I've always been an animal-lover. I only turned to Raw Veganism because of the agonising stomach-aches I had from any cooked-animal-food - but the whole thing scared me so I turned to supplements to try to prevent any nutritional deficiencies.
Technically, we do have celebrities who follow RAF diets but they aren't fanatical about being RAF. Mel Gibson has mentioned in 1 or 2 interviews that he follows the Tiger Diet(raw meat plus raw olive-oil, mainly), and there's also Uma Thurman. Also, one ex-Raw Vegan chef seems to have provided Val Kilmer with a Primal Diet meal. There are raw-food restaurants focusing primarily on raw animal foods(ie Japanese Sashimi restaurants, though they offer some cooked seafood as well, and there are always raw oyster bars). So, we're slowly geting there.
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« Last Edit: October 31, 2008, 08:27:47 PM by TylerDurden »
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"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
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goodsamaritan
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« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2008, 08:42:01 PM » |
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Daniel Vitalis was a former raw vegan. He was doing great the first 2-3 years as raw vegan. Then after 7 more years on raw vegan he gave it up, suffered nutritional deficiencies He added raw animal foods to his diet. He is now on raw paleo diet, has been so for 5 years. Daniel was interviewed as a resource export on One Radio Network.  Daniel Vitalis is not a vegan any longer. Why not? Daniel has been researching the best water to drink and is an ardent student of getting the best nutrition to reach his goals. He is the creator of ElixirCraft, he has been deeply immersed in Raw Foods, SuperFoods, Herbalism and Live Food nutrition for more than 14 years. We think you'll hear some interesting and unique ideas from Daniel on how to reach your health goals. Please pass this link on to everyone you care about. http://www.oneradionetwork.com/content/blogcategory/912/113/ |
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TylerDurden
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« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2008, 08:49:37 PM » |
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Thanks, I'll post this on the rawpaleodiet yahoo group, once I've checked it through.
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"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
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Raw Kyle
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« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2008, 02:54:02 AM » |
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I myself came from the raw vegan camp.
I agree that calling someone an enemy is not a good idea because it can be a self fulfilling prophecy, but here's what I'm saying: There are two main groups of anti-RAFists, the largest being the normal population afraid of bacteria/parasites and who don't really care or care to know about toxins in cooked food, as in SAD eaters or eaters of quasi healthy cooked diets; the second group is hardcore vegetarians/vegans who will go out of their way to spread disinformation in addition to real facts about health/environmental/economic/moral reasons as why to not consume any animals foods raw or cooked. This second group is smaller simply because the mainstream SAD eaters are most of the population, but their hatred of healthy diets that are not vegetarian is many times stronger than the general/mainstream population fear of bacteria/parasites.
In fact some of the animal activist oriented vegetarians would probably hide or slander information pointing to meat (raw or cooked) being healthy even if it was sound scientific fact based information. For the most part your normal SAD eater will not go out of their way to lie about what is healthy or not, they just eat what they like and believe mainstream health officials telling them to worry about biological contaminants in RAF's.
To sum it up, raw vegans have a lot more in common with RAFists (mistrust of mainstream health information, alienation by those groups, interest in organic/wild/environmentaly friendly food and products, etc) than with the general population of SAD eaters or mainstream dieters, but the differences they do have (moral position and strongly held health/environmental beliefs against eating animals) are such strong convictions that they more vehemently oppose the movement than average people. I believe this is an effect of the average vegetarians health views being more intimately tied with their moral views than any other dietary group. The average vegetarian will cite animals rights or moral reasons in addition to health ones for their diet while the average SAD dieter or follower of most health non-vegetarian diets will either not cite moral reasons or do so with less frequency than vegetarians. This leads to their diet being more directly associated with their opinions on right and wrong, good and bad than others and will make their emotions such as fear and anger run higher while debating or trying to spread their message. Also another factor is that raw vegans are (other than us, that is to say we are equally) the most dire believers of their diet. Whereas SAD eaters have little to no belief in their diet being optimal and even cooked vegetarians sometimes just being junk food eaters who readily admit their diet of burritos and fries isn't healthy raw vegans believe to their very soul that they are eating the true and most healthful food for humans. You can see it in all the videos, so many of them are brainwashed into calling what they're eating the best ever constantly, it would take quite a bit to convince them otherwise. You don't see people on the Atkins or Mediterranean or low fat diets claiming their food to be the perfect food for humans, they just say more specific things like "this lowers cholesterol" or "this nutrient in this food abundant in this diet is good for this," and whether or not those claims are true, they are a much easier place to begin a discussion than the raw vegan position of "what I'm doing is the only and best way and everyone else is wrong, toxic and brainwashed."
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TylerDurden
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« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2008, 06:17:07 PM » |
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I see your point. But, while we are hardly going to convince the animal-rightists in the raw vegan movement, those who just turn to raw veganism for health reasons can be persuaded. And, while raw vegans do spout all sorts of rubbish about the dangers of meats, they find it more difficult to argue that nutritional deficiencies don't develop on their diets.
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"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
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Sully
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« Reply #9 on: November 04, 2008, 02:02:21 AM » |
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I came from raw vegan. I was doing what evrybody told you to do. Six meals a day. i was also sprouting. I had very very low energy. i had more enrgy on cooked vegan.
The funny thing is, i don't think i knew about raw paleo when I started to eat raw meat. Or maybe I did....I don't know....
I kinda do see them as a big part of putting the scare on people about animal foods in general.
Although the truth hopefully will be spread about RAF vs Cooked AF.
In order for something to live, something has to die. Plant or animal. Plants don't feel pain, but you still kill them when you eat them. Its in our nature to kill and eat other animals.
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« Last Edit: November 04, 2008, 02:08:42 AM by Sully »
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Sully
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