Frederic Patenaude Raw Foods Diet

I’ve had a lot of personal experience in the raw food movement. Much of my adult life I’ve been actively seeking information and learning from others on the topic of nutrition and raw foods.

Over those years, I’ve heard many things said about what is the healthiest way to eat: like how your body supposedly reacts to certain foods and what is the healthiest type of water to drink, among many other things.

But one thing that always caught my attention was digestion people experienced on a raw food diet, and how a raw food diet may impact it.

Raw Foodists and Digestion

Any health-orientated person has taken a greater interest in their digestion, or how your body utilizes and absorbs nutrients from the food you eat, once they started to get in tune with how largely it impacts how you feel.

We all know the feeling of a sour stomach, and when your stomach isn’t happy, it’s hard to think about anything else.

Raw foodists, Natural Hygienists, and many Indian and Eastern health philosophies all put an emphasis on the importance of digestion.

Some stress the importance of eating certain foods together at the same time, or specifically not eating specific foods together at one time.

Food-combining has been written about for decades now, and is something I personally used to follow relatively rigidly for several years.

Specifically, the Natural Hygiene approach to food combining, like not eating melons with other foods, acid foods with sweet foods, and so on.

The Digestion Industry

Digestion has become so important to the general public now that it’s become a bit of a food-marketing gimmick.

Everything from probiotic-boosted green powders to endless brews of kombucha and lacto-fermented yogurts line the shelves of most grocery stores and supermarkets today, all touting a specific amount and strain of probiotic bacteria.

They’re sold with promises of improving the balances of bacteria in your intestinal tract, in-turn allowing you better digestion, sharper mental performance, clearer skin, etc. etc.

I think to a large degree, many of the benefits of these specific strains of bacteria and the packaged foods that are “boosted” with them are overall exaggerated to market them.

Naturally fermented foods like raw kombuchas, kimchi, and sauerkraut are much more likely to have truly beneficial bacteria in them vs. powder-boosted items too.

You can make these foods in your own home from your own garden!

It’s also questionable as to how many of the once-living probiotics actually survive from the time of packaging to you eating it, after transit and shelf-time.

I’m not saying that they may not offer some benefit to your digestion, but I feel that truly healthy gut flora starts with an otherwise healthy gut via eating and living healthfully, not a reliance on supplemental bacteria from packaged foods.

Some raw foodist will go as far as buying digestive enzymes in powdered form to supplement the enzymes everyone’s body naturally produces.

This could be a topic for a whole other article, but for now I’ll just say that the body produces all the digestive enzymes you need perfectly fine by itself, given you take care of it.

The Raw Curse

There is something that at one time felt like a phenomenon, but now just makes more logical sense as a natural progression of human adaption.

“The raw curse” is something I’ve written about in my books, “The Raw Food Controversies” and “The Raw Secrets”.

One thing I noticed amongst fellow raw-food-enthusiasts was that there seemed like a predictable decline in digestive abilities the longer they followed a strict raw food diet.

The longer they followed a raw food diet, the less ability they had to digest any other foods than raw foods.

The longer they followed that path, the types of raw foods they ate started being limited, too.

In many circles, you see people eating mostly mono-meals of one type of sweet fruit and tender, leafy greens, for most of their food intake. These are among the easiest foods for the digestive system to digest, as they are mostly composed of simple sugars.

This is a good and a bad thing.

There are valuable nutrients in fruits and tender leafy vegetables that can be easily absorbed by just eating them as they naturally come to you, from the garden or your nearest produce aisle.

But when you eat these foods and absolutely nothing else, you body quits producing the proper digestive enzymes and gastric juices to digest other foods, like dense proteins or starches.

Humans can eat and absorb nutrients from proteins and starch-dense foods just fine, but your body needs to “get used” to digesting them first.

Tuning Up Your Body’s Digestive Fire

I’ve come to the conclusion that many of the so-called digestive imbalances and woes that many people face amongst the vegetarian, vegan and raw food scenes may not always be caused by a complex imbalance of specific digestive bacteria, and more to do with the individual’s inability to digest foods that other people can digest, without any supplements.

The raw foodist who gets knocked out by eating a bowl of rice for the first time in nine months isn’t necessarily a sign that rice is bad for them. It could just be their body wasn’t used to digesting the rice.

You can observe this by the same person eating rice (and many other things!) in the years before and digesting them at least relatively well enough to still function and not be doubled over in pain.

Whether they are incredibly happy to admit it or not, there are many people who previously swore by a 100% raw food diet and now eat cooked foods of many different kinds. The same foods that people swore at one time would wreak havoc on the system are now being eaten and digested perfectly well.

Did their body magically gain the ability to digest the previously “poison!” cooked food from all of that meditation?

While the meditation probably doesn’t hurt anything, it’s mostly just a matter of the body producing the same digestive acids again, in the proper balance, once the new foods are reintroduced into the stomach. The body re-learns how to digest them again.

Like riding a bike!

Keeping Your Stomach Strong

Even basic activities like regular walking and movement/exercise of any kind improves the muscles in your stomach, leading to stronger, more efficient digestion and absorption of the food you eat.

You digestion is much more multi-faceted than some may lead you to believe, so when diagnosing your own circumstances, I encourage you to consider all points of view.

What have been your experiences with digestion, supplements promising to improve your digestion, or anything else you care to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

Many people’s aim for eating a healthier diet isn’t just to feel and perform better NOW, but also with a mind towards the distant future.

How far? Many people say that living to a hundred years isn’t that hard to manage, given you take care of yourself.

Check out this video clip today by John Robbins as he shares some of his basic principles to eating and living in a way that keeps you healthy for your whole life and you’ll learn:

• Why it’s so important to have not only a healthy body, but a healthy emotional body and mindset if you’d like to live longer than the norm.
• How everyday choices that you make greatly impact the rest of your life.
• How to easily integrate better choices into your mind so you automatically make better decisions without having to think them through every time.
• The differences between individual cultures that live into their 100’s, and why those differences are important yet not the determining factor in their total health.
• Why eating a plant-based diet ultimately offers the body more nutrition for fewer calories.

John brings up some great points, and I think it’s particularly good to recognize that each culture that tends to live well past world standards of life expectancy don’t all eat one specific way.

While they all eat a plant-based diet, they all have little differences in the types of foods, amounts of animal products, and cooking methods they use.

What are your thoughts on living into your 100’s? What have you learned in your years so far?

Coffee is one of those beverages that has always received mixed reviews.

At one time, it was everybody’s favorite breakfast item to criticize, saying that it was too stimulating and hard on your adrenals, so you should swap it for a green juice or tea.

More recent years people have come up and argued the contrary and said that it’s actually full of antioxidants and all sorts of other nutritional components that actually make any small side effects from the caffeine negligible.

Some people will go as far to say that dark roast black coffee is very good for you, and will cite a number of studies arguing that dark coffee is good for the following conditions:

• - Type 2 diabetes
• – Parkinson’s disease
• 
– Alzheimer’s disease
• 
– Prostate cancer
• – Liver cancer
• 
– Kidney cancer
• 
– Etc.

Now in a moment I will give you what I believe is a more balanced view on coffee.

But first, let me be clear that I absolutely LOVE coffee. I totally understand the love affair that the world has with coffee, and other caffeinated beverages, like tea.

But for me coffee has always been a love/hate relationship.

I love caffeine and its immediate effects on my body. However, I also know that I’m very caffeine sensitive and I know the short and long-term effects of caffeine’s effects on my body.

If I consume coffee one or two days in a row, I will inevitably get headaches as a result. I will also get depressed and lack energy a day or two after I stop coffee.

If I keep drinking coffee and make it a habit (I have done that at times in the past), I personally experience the following symptoms:

• - Irritability
• 
– Clouded thinking in the morning until I have coffee again
• – Regular migraine headaches
• – Back pain
• 
– Bouts of irregular feelings of depression

I know that I am more sensitive to caffeine than most people. Therefore, I treat coffee with respect. I don’t underestimate its effects as a drug and I stay away for the most part.

But as I said, I love coffee and the feeling of caffeine in general. So once in a while, I can’t resist having a cup of tea or coffee and go ahead and have one.

When I do, I like the immediate effects. But I know there will be some consequences.

I have found that if I don’t consume caffeine more than a couple of times a month (say 2-3) then I can manage with it.

There are times, for example when traveling, when using a little bit of a boost is not a bad idea.

After all, certain circumstances in life are unnatural to begin with, like traveling across multiple time zones in minutes or hours.

But what’s important is that I treat coffee for what it is:

Not a beverage like fruit juice or green juice, or even an innocent breakfast beverage: a drug!

Just a little bit of research into the effects coffee has on the human body quickly brings to mind the effects of any other type of stimulating drug.

Many books have been written on the subject of caffeine and coffee specifically not being good for the human body. They list a number of side effects and conditions:

• - Energy swings or periods of fatigue during the day
• - Mood swings or periods of depression
•  -Headaches
• - Gastrointestinal distress, cramping, and diarrhea
• - Constipation and/or dependence on caffeine for bowel movement
• - Tension or stiffness in the neck, shoulders, hands, legs or stomach
• - Premenstrual syndrome, menstrual irregularity, cramps, sore breasts
• - Insomnia
• - Anxiety
• - Irritability, including inappropriate fits of anger
• - Irregular or rapid heartbeat
• - Light-headness/dizziness
• - Waking up feeling tired
• - Generalized pain (back, stomach, muscles)
• - High blood pressure
• - Ulcers
• - Anemia
• - Shortness of breath
• - Difficulty in concentration
• - Ringing in ears
- Coldness in extremities

Of course, not every coffee drinker will immediately, or possibly even ever experience all of these symptoms. Some of these more intense side effects would only occur at a sustained level of consumption. Which in the western world isn’t that far from the norm.

For some people however, they notice very acute symptoms after drinking coffee or caffeine.

Some other people are sensitive to the high levels of caffeine in coffee, but can drink green tea every day.

Others seem to process caffeine better and do well with a certain amount of coffee per day, like a cup of espresso or a cup or two of dark coffee.

Everybody seems to have a little bit different tolerance level for coffee and/or caffeine, ranging from can’t-have-a-drop to multiple cups of coffee or tea everyday with seemingly little to no negative effect.

I believe this is mostly due to different people’s individual makeup and ability to process caffeine via the liver.

Caffeine being a drug has its side effects as well as potential benefits.
But nobody likes to talk about the side effects. It’s just not popular to question America’s most popular drug!

I feel some people can have at least a certain amount of caffeine in their life, whether it be from tea, coffee, or a bit of chocolate. Yet at the same time, for certain people, it’s likely that their healthy amount is next to no caffeine.

But I want to hear from you. Do you consume any form of caffeine? Do you consider yourself sensitive to caffeine? Have you quit coffee or caffeine?

Let us know in the comments below!

Every year, more than 600,000 people in the United States die from heart disease. That’s 1 out of every 4 deaths in the US every year.

Some people may be surprised to learn that more people die from sick hearts each year than drug and alcohol abuse or even accidents. But when you take a look at how sick many people actually are, it’s not that shocking.

However, it may be equally surprising for some people to learn that these terrible bouts of bad health can easily be avoided, and in many cases reversed, all by attention to your lifestyle and what you eat.

Check out this video today where Dr. Michael Greger explains about diet and heart disease. You’ll learn:

• The differences between the antioxidant content of plant foods and animal foods and how this impacts your health.
• Why so many people are resistant to using diet and lifestyle as a means of effectively treating disease.
• How people’s minds about a certain food or idea can change dramatically, as in the case of the humble, yet previously forsaken Tomato.
• Why a plant-based diet for overall health as well as the treatment of disease is so effective vs. drugs or other diet therapies.

Check it out here:

Dr. Greger brings up some great points, including how shocking it is that so many people have died and still continue to, all because of ideas that either were accepted or unaccepted by the general population or medical community.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below!

Over the years of being in the raw foods scene, I’ve heard a lot of crazy theories as to 
“why” people ate a raw food diet and didn’t cook their food.

Some of them really do make sense, like the preservation of nutrients.

Others, like when someone says that they should eat green bananas because of the enzymes present in them, don’t hold as much weight.

I will say that a 100% raw food diet may be very appropriate and beneficial for many people. For others however, the all-or-nothing approach just doesn’t work the way they want it to.

There are also many different people who believe many different things. And anything you believe is just that: something you believe. That can change.

I personally don’t think there is any life force in food, something touted in raw circles, besides the raw materials necessary for human nutrition. I haven’t found any proof to bring me to another conclusion for myself.

However, you may disagree with me and still think that there is indeed life force in food or any other thing you want to believe. Nobody needs a rational reason to think or believe anything, and that’s okay.

I have certain beliefs that are not completely rational.

For example, I do believe that everything happens for a reason. That kind of belief is based on my personal experience, and it also works for me. But I know it’s not necessarily “rational”, it’s just something I believe.

Top 5 Reasons to Eat Raw

Nutrient Density

Fruits and vegetables are the most-nutrient-dense foods on the planet, and most of these foods are better eaten raw than cooked.

When we say that a food is “nutrient-dense,” we mean that it has many nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, per calorie. Starchy foods are calorie-dense, but not as nutrient-dense as fruits and vegetables.

In other words, 500 calories of rice or potatoes will contain fewer vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals than 500 calories of kale, or 500 calories of apples.

By eating a diet composed mainly of fruits and vegetables, we take in more nutrients than if we were to eat mostly cooked foods.

There are some exceptions, however. Cooked green vegetables tend to be more nutrient-dense than raw greens, simply because we can eat more of them more easily.

For example, you probably remember taking a huge amount of spinach and cooking it down in a matter of seconds to almost nothing. Well that small cup of cooked spinach is now jam-packed with minerals, and will only take you a few minutes to eat. On the other hand, the same amount of raw spinach would take a long time chewing to get down.

Raw foodists can use the same principle by using a blender and other devices to process their food, such as the case of green smoothies.

Caloric Density

One of the most important concepts to understand in human nutrition is that of caloric density. Caloric density is an estimation of a food’s energy content by weight.

For example, an entire head of lettuce weighing over one pound contains less than 100 calories. That means that the caloric density of lettuce is less than 100 calories per pound.

On the other hand, a single tablespoon of oil contains 120 calories. So you have more calories in 1 tablespoon of oil than in a pound of lettuce. But guess which one is going to fill you up more?

The principle of caloric density is to encourage eating sufficient nutrients while feeling satisfied eating a larger volume of food and a healthy amount of calories.

Studies have confirmed that if you feed people foods of low caloric density, they will eat as much as they want, not be hungry and lose weight, without having to count calories.

Let’s take a look at the average caloric density of certain foods. Keep in mind that this is an average across a category. For example, we know that bananas contain more calories per weight than apples, but overall, fruits have a similar caloric density.

Now it’s important to note that nobody will ever really successfully live off a diet of just raw vegetables, and I wouldn’t recommend doing so.

However, you want your diet to contain plenty of raw vegetables by weight. The concept of caloric density is to look at the overall caloric density of the foods you eat throughout the day.

Low Toxic Load

When cooking carbohydrates (such as potatoes) at high temperatures (baking, frying, etc.), a compound called acrylamide is created. In animal studies, high doses of acrylamide cause cancer and doesn’t sound very promising for your health.

More acrylamide is created when foods are cooked at a higher temperature or for longer periods of time.

We also know that other molecules called “Maillard Molecules” are formed when foods brown and caramelize during cooking. Some people speculate that these new compounds, created in the cooking process, may affect health negatively.

It’s also important to note that the act of being alive and living is toxic to you, and every bite of food you ever intake will always have varying degrees of “nutriment” and varying degrees of “toxicity”.

While certain forms of cooking appear to be relatively harmless (steaming, for example), the surest way to reduce the amount of toxins in your diet to the lowest level is to eat foods in their raw state.

You Eliminate Everything Else That’s Really Bad for You

One of the main reasons why people get sick is that they eat so many “dead”, pre-packaged foods in their diet.

These foods are not only heavily processed, but they contain a long list of suspicious ingredients, including MSG, preservatives, artificial coloring, and more.

Eating a raw food diet automatically eliminates all of this unhealthy food, which means that your diet will be 100% more clean and pure. It will be “wholesome” in the true sense of the word.

When I started the raw food diet, there were no pre-packaged raw snacks available. All that I bought were actual foods: fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Eventually I got into olive oil, but that was a pretty simple product. The “worst” thing that raw foodists bought was jars of olives that could possibly have been marinated in salt water.

Nowadays, a variety of raw food snacks — from kale chips to chocolate brownies — are available at a variety of stores. Many of the people making these products do remain true to their nature of keeping them free of artificial flavors and preservatives, but processed foods are still processed foods and eaten in moderation.

Phytochemicals

Raw fruits and vegetables, as well as raw nuts and seeds, are absolutely packed with phytochemicals.

“Phyto” means “plant,” so the term phytochemical designates different compounds in foods that protect against illness. Some phytochemicals can prevent DNA damage caused by free radicals.

You’ve probably heard of antioxidants with cancer-preventing benefits found in many fruits and vegetables and dark leafy greens. Antioxidants are a class of phytochemicals.

Some of the most potent phytochemicals are found in raw foods, and many of them are heat-sensitive. Therefore, eating a raw food diet or a mostly raw diet will give you an abundance of phytochemicals — and this could prove to be one of the main benefits of the diet.

Some notable phytochemicals are to be found in:

The Cruciferous Family — including cabbage, kale, broccoli, etc. These vegetables contain a class of phytochemicals (called sulphoraphane and indole-3-carbinol) that are converted into cancer-fighting enzymes by the liver.
Berries — This includes pomegranate, cherries, blueberries, grapes etc. They contain many phytochemicals that increase immunity.
Citrus fruits — Those fruits contain many phytochemicals (close to the skin), in addition to lots of vitamin C, which is an antioxidant.

Pretty much every raw fruit and vegetable contains health-enhancing phytochemicals. Cooking food sometimes enhance the bio-availability of certain phytochemicals, like lycopene in tomatoes, but in general we get more benefits from eating foods in their raw state.

Conclusion

When we use bad arguments to promote a certain philosophy, it often leads us to make mistakes. Sometimes people oversimplify a health philosophy and refuse to look at new information on top of it all.

There are so many great reasons to eat more raw foods in your diet, I feel that being conscious about the reasons we give for them are important to gaining a better understanding of ourselves and our food!

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.

Many people tend to get a bit scrambled when it comes to following a new diet, or even just changing their diet in the simplest of ways.

Why? Because there are so many different people out there all saying that ONE specific way to eat is the only sane, healthy way to eat and live.

See the contradiction?

Today Dr. McDougall sheds a bit of light on the topic by sharing his experiences with people following what they considered a “vegan” diet, and his own experiences with
“starch-based” diets.

Check it out and you’ll learn:

• Why all vegan diets are not created equal, and why “vegan” doesn’t automatically mean healthy.
• The differences between starch-based diets and the typical plant-based diet you may think of, and what this means for your health.
• Why the food industries hardly give consumers a fair chance at choosing the right foods to eat for their bodies by using confusing terminology to cloud the truth.
• Ways that you can educate yourself so that you can understand what you are eating just by changing how you describe your food.

Many of us have had personal or second-hand personal experience with somebody following a vegan diet, and we’ve also had different experiences with vegan diets.

I think the important thing to remember with following any diet is to remain free-thinking so that you can learn and grow along with everybody else.

What have been your experiences? Let us know in the comments below!

I’m a big fan of raw foods.

Whether or not you eat an entirely raw food diet isn’t really my biggest concern. But one thing that cannot really be avoided is the health benefits inherent in eating plenty of fresh raw fruits and vegetables, regardless of what you eat on the side.

But at the same time, many people have given (frankly) silly reasons for eating raw foods, particularly to the exclusion of all other foods.

So while I offer you my top 6 bad reasons to eat raw foods, keep in mind there are many more great reasons to eat raw foods and include more of them in your diet. It’s just good to be realistic about what you put in your mouth!

The Top 6 Bad Reasons To Eat Raw

1) Enzymes

This one is easy: Plant enzymes are produced by the plant for its own purposes. For example, a green banana is full of starch and amylase. As the banana ripens, the enzymes in bananas called amylase breaks down the starch into simple sugars and it becomes sweeter.

We produce our own digestive enzymes, like amylase. We don’t need the enzymes in raw foods to help our digestion. In fact, most those enzymes are destroyed when they reach our stomach acid. We also do not have a “limited supply of enzymes” like a few people once thought. Ask any medical professional or true scientist and they will agree that you don’t need to limit your consumption of any specific type of food because of a “limited supply of enzymes”.

2) It’s the diet of our “species”, the human species

I admit that for a long time, I used to believe that every single human had one species-specific diet, and even taught it as such.

The idea is that every animal has a natural diet. For examples, carnivores, like cats, must eat meat. Omnivores, like pigs, eat a bit of everything.

If we look at nature, we’ll find that the closest relatives to human beings are the chimpanzees. If we compare their anatomy to ours, we’ll find that it’s remarkably similar. Chimpanzees eat fruits, leaves, and even small invertebrate animals with regularity; therefore, we must do the same, right?

Although personally I would never recommend eating termites, it’s worth a look at the chimp’s diet.

The truth is that humans and chimps have several serious differences. Chimpanzees can eat certain astringent and fibrous types of wild fruits that humans could never even dream of digesting.

If modern-day raw foodists tried to live on what chimpanzees eat in the wild, they would live in a more or less permanent state of indigestion and would likely not be able to lead a very meaningful life.

Just take a look at what most raw foodists tend to eat.

People love the sweetest mangoes, the sweetest melons, the least acidic oranges, and would cringe at eating very acidic fruit like a quince.

Chimps in zoos fed bananas and kale are NOT fed their natural diet. And even so they still prefer hybridized human food, even cooked food compared to their natural food.

Humans produce in their saliva up to 12 times more amylase (an enzymes that digests starch) than chimpanzees do. This is an evolutionary adaptation humans have gone through as a whole.

The main thing to keep in mind is that over 4 to 7 million years of evolution separate chimpanzees from humans. They may be our closest relatives, but they are very distant ones indeed.

3) We never “adapted” to cooked foods.

The human being has adapted to eating cooked foods, to some degree. This is evidenced by our smaller digestive system, which is 25% shorter than that of chimpanzees (by body size). The idea behind this adaptation is that we are used to eating more concentrated nutrition than they do. We also produce more starch-splitting enzymes, among many other changes.

Modern day raw foodists do not eat like wild animals. They blend foods, eat highly hybridized, extra sweet fruit, and have many ways to make vegetables easier to chew and digest. That’s because as human beings, we are adapted to eating highly nutritious and more concentrated foods of higher caloric density, as opposed to the low-calorie wild fruits eaten by chimpanzees and other apes.

This attribute to humans is also what allowed us to take the time to kick back and paint a picture, a beautiful piece of music, or muster up the gumption to build skyscrapers.

4) We are the only animal on the planet who cooks its food

“Have you ever seen a wild animal with pots and pans cooking up their dinner? Well maybe that’s the reason they don’t get sick!”
No, I haven’t seen a deer roast some potatoes, but I’ve also never seen a wild chimpanzee blending up bananas in a Vita-Mix, for that matter.

There are a ton of things that wild animals don’t do — like wearing clothes, making music and writing books. But I wouldn’t encourage the human race to give all of those things up just to be like monkeys.

Wild animals DO get sick sometimes, mainly due to parasites and viruses. The sick animals also get weak and eaten by predators first typically, before they have time to die of disease.

5) All cooked food is toxic

It’s true that cooking changes food at a molecular level. In some cases, cooking foods at high temperature creates toxins, but absolutely everything you eat and do is “toxic” on some level or another, too.

If you are frying or roasting your foods to the point where they are deeply brown or blackened, there of course is going to be excess toxins that you may not want to be eating all of the time.

Yet there is no evidence that steaming vegetables or boiling rice creates toxins that truly harm the human body.

6) The Bible Says we should eat raw

Many Christians use the Bible as a reference on how to eat and live, and while I will agree that many of the points referenced have good value, it is sometimes taken out of context in reality at times.

I would suggest following your own intuition as to what feels good and right for you when it comes to what you should eat and how you nourish your own kingdom.

Really in the end, I could sum it all up just by saying, go ahead and eat raw foods. Just eat them for your own reasons, not some made up reasons that someone else told you!

What have been your experiences with any of these failed reasons to eat raw? Let us know in the comments below!

Chances are that you’ve been eating and living in a much healthier way than most people in the Western world ever have, especially if you’re reading this right now.

The truth is, many people just aren’t as healthy and happy as they truly could be, and in large part that’s due to the way they eat.

Dr. Michael Klaper has been teaching people how to eat and live healthfully for several decades now. He’s someone I feel has a good grasp on what is a healthy and sustainable approach to eating and living.

Check out this video today where Dr. Klaper discusses some the simplest and most effective things you can do to dramatically improve your health.

You’ll learn:

• Why and how people eat food in an attempt to fulfill other needs, like emotional wellbeing, without addressing the main culprit.
• How the way you think significantly impacts your digestion and the way your body feels overall.
• Why it’s so important to your physical wellbeing to actually feel and be a happy person.
• How happiness within your workplace is critical to being healthy.
• The importance of pleasing your aesthetic senses and connecting with the natural environment around you.

Check it out here:

Many people get so focused on improving their wellbeing by putting such a focused effort on their food and eating that it gets easy to forget to be mindful of all the other important aspects of healthy living.

I can say that once you have your eating down, that’s just one step for many people. The more effort you put into being a healthy and well-rounded person, the happier and healthier you and everyone around you will be.

What have been your experiences with balancing those other important aspects of healthy living? Let us know in the comments below!

A couple of weeks ago I was out of town on business and needed to grab a bite to eat. I spotted a health food restaurant that offered a giant buffet, including a salad bar where you could pay by plate size instead of by weight. Perfect!

They had two different salad prices: small and large. Of course I went for the “large” plate, but even that could have been bigger!

Whenever the deal is “fit as much as you can on your plate for this price,” my caveman instincts kick in, just like everybody else. So I started to pile crazy amounts of salad on that plate, filled with all kinds of veggies, some slices of avocado and other good things.

When I made it to the counter to pay, I thought I had a pretty big salad, but I still felt I could have piled even more on top of it all.

When the cashier saw my salad, he started laughing like a mad man.

The guy actually started to laugh uncontrollably! He just could not contain himself and started laughing and laughing while making comments about my salad between gasps for breath.

“Wow, that’s a really big umm….wow that’s a salad…..”

You get the idea.

I wasn’t quite sure whether to take it as a compliment or if I should feel slightly insulted.

But as he kept laughing more and more, I ended his party by looking at him straight in the eye, and with the most serious Poker face I could muster I asked him, “How much do I owe you?” trying to sound like I was a high-paid CEO talking to a low-class subordinate.

At first, I was wondering if he was laughing so hard simply because I was taking advantage of their $7.99 plate of salad by piling more than most people would fit onto such a plate.

But then I kept thinking of other buffets where you pay by the plate, and all over the world I’ve seen people do the same thing: pack as much as they can onto the tiniest, cheapest plate possible.

There’s a restaurant in my city called the “Mongolian Grill” where you can get a pretty good vegetarian stir-fry. You take a bowl and pile as many vegetables as you can onto it, and a guy will cook it in front of you on a giant hot plate.

At all of those restaurants, I’ve always witnessed people pack in as much meat as possible, and if they’re vegetarian, as much veggies as they can possibly fit onto that plate, so much that sometimes stuff starts falling off it as they bring it to the counter.

So after this health food store employee laughed uncontrollably at my salad, I came to the conclusion that he was actually laughing because I was going to EAT such a big salad, not because he though I was ripping off his store.

In his mind, eating such a giant salad would be the equivalent of someone else eating a three-foot sub sandwich! It’s all relative.

A local Montreal newspaper that was doing a feature on raw food diets once interviewed me. When I told the reporter that I was often eating 8 to 10 bananas for lunch, he also started to laugh uncontrollably, as did the filming crew. It seemed so odd to them that a single person would eat so many bananas in a sitting!

The Importance of Caloric Density

Caloric density is one of the most important concepts in health and weight loss.

It’s simply a value of how many calories are in a certain weight of food, either by pound or kilo.

If you eat foods with a low caloric density, you get full much faster because you have more volume to deal with, and more fiber to keep you full.

If you eat foods of high-caloric density, you tend to find it easier to consume more calories, and for some people this causes some issues for their waistline.

Study after study has shown that caloric density is the most important factor in making a diet work long-term.

Why?

Because if you eat foods of low caloric density, you get full much faster, and it’s incredibly difficult to overeat and gain unwanted weight.

For example, lettuce has a caloric density of only 100 calories per pound, while olive oil has 4000 calories per pound.

Now you’ll say… yeah, but nobody just eats olive oil!

Of course. But whenever you add olive oil to a food, you increase the overall caloric density significantly.

One famous study showed that when they fed a group of people the same food but without the added fat, people ate the same amount of food, but consumed fewer calories, and lost weight. But, the other group being fed the same food but with extra oil sneaked in gained weight. They were taking in extra calories without realizing it!

At the same time, if you add lettuce to any meal, you lower the caloric density.

That’s why they’ve found that when people had a large fat free salad or a big apple before their meal, they ate less at the meal and were able to lose weight. All because of applying the concepts of caloric density.

Let’s take a look at the average caloric density of different food, in terms of number of calories by pound.

Keep in mind that this is an average across a category. For example, we know that bananas contain more calories per weight than apples, but overall fruits have a similar caloric density.

Looking at this table, you’d be tempted to only eat vegetables if you were interested in losing weight, as they contain only 100 calories per pound.

It’s important to note that nobody can live on just vegetables, and that you’d get so hungry on a diet of just vegetables that you’d eventually break down and eat something else!

However, you do want your diet to contain plenty of raw vegetables, by weight.
The concept of caloric density applied to your overall system of eating is to look at the overall caloric density of your meals.

What have been your experiences with eating since being aware of caloric density? Let us know in the comments below!

Okay, okay. I’ll say it: following a healthy raw foods diet is more expensive than eating your typical, standard Western diet.

Some people don’t like to hear this, but it’s the truth.

If following a healthy diet filled with an abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthy items is what you want, it’s likely going to cost you more than the drive-thru meal you were used to!

At first, someone may think that eating fruits and vegetables would save you money as these foods are so easy to grow compared to the labor-intensive animal products and other foods so commonly eaten.

The main difference that makes a raw food diet more expensive is calorie density. Fruits and vegetables are extremely nutrient-dense, but have a low caloric density in contrast.

That means that to get the same number of calories you might need in a day from fruits and vegetables, you need to eat more volume. You may be satisfied after having a quarter-pound hamburger with cheese for lunch, but anything under a full pound of most fruits for a meal would leave most people quite hungry later.

Every human being needs a certain number of calories everyday to maintain his or her weight and overall health and vitality. If you eat below that amount, you will lose body fat. If you eat above that amount, you will gain body fat. Of course not all calories are created exactly equal, but this gets us close.

Let’s say you need to eat 2000 calories a day (to pick an average number that’s easy to calculate). How much would it cost you to get those calories from typical foods?

Foods like rice, beans, and even potatoes are incredibly cheap when you buy them in bulk.

For example, a 50-pound bag of long-grain rice at Costco costs around $18. Once cooked, that will yield over 100 pounds of cooked rice.

Each pound of cooked rice will give you about 590 calories, so your big bag of rice for $18 will be enough for 59,000 calories, or enough for 29 and half days. So for less than $20, you can eat for an entire month.

Now you could say that no one could live on just rice. Point taken. How about adding some beans to the equation?

A 25-pound bag of pinto beans might cost around $14, if you know where to shop. Once cooked those beans will about double in weight, at least. But let’s be conservative and double that to 50 pounds of cooked beans for that bag.
Each pound of cooked pinto beans will give you 650 calories, so your bag of pinto beans will give you 32,500 calories, or enough for over 16 days of eating, for just under $15. Combine half rice, half beans and you’ve got a diet that costs you less than $30 a month, or about $1 a day.

What about potatoes if you buy in bulk? Same deal. Your monthly cost of living only on potatoes will be just over $1 a day.

As monotonous as this may sound to those of us who are used to “courses” and could barely get through a meal without choosing from numerous side dishes, this isn’t far off from how much of the world actually eats every day.

Still, of course I wouldn’t recommend limiting your diet to such a high degree, especially when you have options!

But my point is that if you made the bulk of your calories come from these foods, you could eat very inexpensively. Throw in some added fruits, vegetables, and salads, and you have yourself an ultra-healthy diet that almost anyone could afford.

Why do you think the rest of the world lives on staples such as rice and beans (Latin America), rice (Asia), potatoes (Peru) or millet and corn (Africa)? Because they are cheap, reliable, easy and relatively healthy sources of calories and nutrients!

Why a Raw Food Diet Costs More

A raw food diet costs more because most of the calories will come from fruit, or fats such as avocados, nuts and seeds. Greens must also be consumed for their minerals and other nutrients, but they provide hardly any calories.

A person needs to get their calories from somewhere (eventually!) if they are to maintain a healthy body. On a raw food diet, building your diet based on fruit as your main calorie source makes sense for a variety of reasons.

Let’s say you were able to get cheap bananas at 66 cents a pound, your daily cost for 2000 calories would still be $6.43 a day. That’s just under $200 a month.

That’s certainly not as cheap as the $30 a month it would cost you to live on rice and beans, but it’s not bad either.

If you decided to get lazy and get your bananas at Whole Foods, or live somewhere where bananas are expensive, and ended up paying $1.49 a pound for organic bananas, your cost for 2000 calories would be $12.78 a day, or $383 a month. Again, not a bad price considering how expensive raw food diets can be.

However, nobody lives on just bananas! Raw foodists also tend to eat all sorts of raw vegetables, lettuces, nuts, seeds, nutbutters, superfoods, and supplements that all costs something to acquire.

Focus on Inexpensive Sources of Calories

First, we must acknowledge that variety is important, both for nutritional variety and the psychological satisfaction we get out of eating.

However, if you try to simply divide everything you eat in a certain number of fruits and vegetables, your bills are going to add up.

For example, cherries are great. In the summer, there’s hardly anything better than feasting on Rainier cherries.

However, they tend to be expensive, and $5 a pound for those cherries is usually a good deal.

A pound of cherries, once you take in account the pits, will give you around 250 calories. Your cost per calorie will be relatively high, as it would cost you $40 a day to eat only those cherries if you wanted to get 2000 calories.

Let’s also consider blueberries, which yield only 230 calories per pound. If you get them at $3 a pound (good deal), it will cost you $26 to feed yourself for the day.

But as we’ve seen, cheap bananas — even when you didn’t get them for a really good deal, will cost you only $6.43 for 2000 calories.

If you buy oranges at Costco in bulk, it will cost you around $9.81 to feed yourself for the day, eating only oranges.

Avocados are usually $1.99 per avocado. You would need 7.22 avocados to get 2000 calories, so it will cost you $14.36 a day eating only avocados! (Note: This is NOT recommended!)

Once you’ve become accustomed to knowing which fruits provide the healthiest variety of nutrients while still being calorie-dense and affordable enough, it makes things much easier. There’s less to think about and you just eat!

If you’re in the market to save a little bit of money on the foods you eat, try looking not only at the costs-per-nutrients, but also costs-per-calorie. A little bit of research goes a long way.

What have been your experiences with saving (or spending) money on a raw foods/plant-based diet? Let us know in the comments below!