Welcome to a new issue of the Pure Health & Nutrition E-Zine, brought to you by Frédéric Patenaude. Whether you are a vegetarian, a vegan, a raw foodist, or just someone interested in finding out more about diet and nutrition, you will find in Pure Health and Nutrition: lots of food for thought and practical advice.

In this issue

From the editor. Topic: Answer to a naturopath about raw foods. Featured Articles: More evidence for the optimal raw-food diet. Highlights from the next issue.

From the Editor

Dear readers,

I'm sending this e-zine from a hotel in Seattle, after a busy week in California and Oregon, first at the Rawstock festival, and then traveling and seeing friends I haven't seen in a while.

Rawstock was a blast. A truly great festival of healthful living, in the midst of an apple orchard and surrounded by a healthy crowd of smiling people.

I'd like to send my greetings to all the friends I saw or met at Rawstock: it was great seeing you all!

I will be back on the 9th, and there won't be an e-zine next week. Now I'm off to Health & Fitness Week with Dr. Graham and the crew of raw fitness people!

Yours for the best health,

Frederic

PS: To tell a friend about this e-zine and my website, go to:
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Topic: Answer to a Naturopath About Raw Foods

Recently, the popular naturopath Dr. Weil wrote a short answer explaining why he didn't recommend a raw-food diet. I was asked by one of my readers to comment this article. Here are my responses to some of the comments made by Dr. Weil in his article.

WEIL: “First of all, when you eat everything raw, you lose much of the best flavor, texture and appearance of food.”

COMMENT: Is this true? Whenever I ask people what is their idea of paradise, they often add the image of an abundance of beautiful fruits. I always found that beautiful fruits and vegetables are much more appealing to the eye than most cooked and processed dishes. The possibilities of creating beautiful dishes using edible flowers, colorful vegetables and fruits are almost endless, and those kinds of raw dishes are the most beautiful ones I have ever seen. So I really don't see how someone could complain about the appearance of food when eating raw. There's a big improvement, in my opinion.

Saying that we lose much of the best flavor of food when we eat raw is also a rather false statement. I've found that I much prefer the natural flavors of fruits and vegetables to the rather extreme and stimulating flavor of spiced cooked foods. Also, there are so many kinds of new fruits and vegetables to discover and within them so many new amazing flavors.

You should also wonder if what people really like is actually the cooked and processed food, or instead the spices and condiments that go on them.

In fact, who would be attracted to:

- Plain pasta with oil, salt or sauces?
- Cooked meat without any seasoning?
- Boiled rice, plain?
- Potato chips, without the salt and oil?
- Cheese without salt?

We can see that most cooked foods are rather flavorless and bland unless we add some seasonings and salt. In contract, fruits and vegetables are tasty in their natural state, without the addition of any seasoning or condiment. So, is it the flavor of cooked foods that people really like or the flavor of the unnecessary condiments that are added?

Personally, the only cooked foods I have ever enjoyed without salt and condiments are steamed vegetables.

As for the texture, there are some textures that we can create with cooked foods that we cannot have with raw foods. Well, that's a little loss. Overall, I think eating raw wins in flavor and appearance.

WEIL: “More importantly, however, is the fact that many of the vitamins and minerals found in vegetables are less bioavailable when you eat these foods raw than when they're cooked.”

COMMENTS: A few nutrients are more readily available in cooked foods, but overall raw foods give more benefits. Raw foods do contain more vitamins and minerals than cooked foods (because cooking destroys certain vitamins and minerals), and there are also many nutrients than are MORE readily available in raw foods than in cooked foods. It is impossible to live without raw foods without developing some sort of nutritional deficiency in the long run.

WEIL: “Another disadvantage stems from the fact that many of the natural toxins in edible roots, seeds, stems and leaves are destroyed by cooking.”

COMMENTS: It's true that there are several toxins in certain raw foods that make them problematic to eat raw. My solution is simple: if you're going to eat all raw, do not eat those foods: we are not meant to eat them. If you want to eat them, then you'll probably have to cook them. However, it doesn't make this a disadvantage of an all-raw diet. We cannot say that the rabbit should eat cooked foods because cooking would enable the rabbit to eat certain foods it doesn't eat. The rabbit simply doesn't need to eat those foods. The same is true for us.

WEIL: “The latest word on raw food diets comes from a new study which shows that vegetarians who eat only raw foods have abnormally low bone mass, a sign that they may be vulnerable to osteoporosis.”

COMMENTS: It's funny because depending on who read the study and quoted it, they either say that raw-foodists have “strong bones” or that they have a low bone mass. In fact, the study itself showed that the raw-foodists examined showed no sign of osteoporosis and that their vitamin D level was within normal ranges.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Young entrepreneur, Frederic Patenaude, is the author of the best-selling e-book “The Raw Secrets” and is known for his no-gimmick, BS-free approach to health and nutrition. To learn more about “The Raw Secrets,” and to read his FR*EE how-to articles and newsletter, visit http://www.fredericpatenaude.com

More Evidence for the Optimal Raw Food Diet

by Roger Haeske

This article is based on research from the fantastic book "Natural Eating" by Geoff Bond, who is a Nutritional Anthropologist. I've quoted some pieces directly from his book. I simply leave the page number next to the quote if you want to look it up.

Geoff Bond has done research using Anthropology, Forensic Archeology and Comparative Anatomy to determine what the ideal diet for humans is. Though I don't completely agree with all of his conclusions about diet, I do think his findings are fascinating and can dispel many nutritional myths about what our Pleistocene ancestors actually ate.

All throughout the book you'll find evidence that our ideal diet is low in fat, high in micronutrients, high in fiber, low glycemic, low caloric density, high in volume or weight and low in salt.

Pleistocene Man Facts: These are humans in the period before agriculture came to be on the planet. Approximately 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago. Agriculture started about 10,000 years ago. Before that man was mostly a gatherer and sometime hunter.

Humans lived in small groups of 35 to 50 people and needed a range of land of 200 to 300 miles to sustain themselves. With those kinds of space requirements a maximum of 600,000 people could live in the continental United States. Compare that number with the current estimate as of July 05 in the US of 295,734,134 people.

When the Aborigines (gatherer/hunter type, pre- agriculture) were the only ones living in Australia they had a filled the continent up and there was a maximum of 800,000 Aborigines there. You simply can't have 6 billion people living on the planet without the advent of agriculture and modern technology.

"Our Pleistocene ancestors had an average height some 6 inches greater than their descendants who took up farming. Today, in the opulent but still malnourished West, we have recovered only about 4 inches of the deficit." pg 45

Osteoporosis, gallstones, kidney stones, arthritis and cavities were virtually unknown to early humans. I don't know how they figure this out, but anthropologists and archeologist can tell this through the study of fossilized remains, DNA testing, etc.

Early humans weren't great hunters. At that time they had very primitive tools like a sharpened stick as a spear. They didn't even have bows and arrows. From the determinations, it appears that humans didn't make many big kills, but instead let other predators do their hunting for them and then they scavenged the remains.

In short, early humans did eat animal matter but they were by no means great hunters. And just because they could eat some animal foods does not mean that eating animal foods are the best choice, health wise, for humans.

The animal matter that early humans ate included, insects, shellfish, eggs, lizards, snakes, bugs, caterpillars, frogs, small game and carrion.

There are three important factors about the nutritional nature of this animal matter. Pg 34- 35 Natural Eating.

1. It was very low fat, no more than 3% (as against 25% fat in modern beef.)

2. The fat was very low in saturated fat and high in 'essential fatty acids' (exactly the opposite of modern supermarket meats).

3. The essential fatty acids were present in a well-defined ratio of linoleic acid to alpha linolenic acid. The range of this ratio varied within close limits of 4:1 to 1:1. It transpires that this fatty acid profile is exactly what we modern humans need too. In the average western diet this ratio is totally distorted at 32:1, and we know that this has harmful health effects. (My comments: namely heart disease.)

I'm not trying to make an argument that we need wild animal foods to get the ideal omega 3 to omega 6 ratios. This fatty acid ratio was not just in the animal foods but in the plant based foods, located in their natural environment. How do you think the herbivorous animals had this correct ratio of essential oils? It's because the plants they were eating had them in the right ratios as well.

The EFA's are naturally there in the proper ratios from wild plant foods. But we should consider if there is an adequate ratio of these fatty acids in raw vegan foods produced by modern farming techniques? There is certainly a big difference in the nutritional profile between wild foods and cultivated foods.

This is why we have to eat a raw food diet but adapted to our modern living conditions. We have to do the best we can to meet our nutrient needs with the cultivated foods we have access to. It's good to try and get as much wild food into your diet as you can.

These essential fatty acids are so important they used to be called vitamin F1 and F2. "All other fatty acids that human biochemistry needs can be made by the body from these two." pg 35

"It is thought that much of the time, our early hominid ancestors fulfilled their basic protein needs just by consuming plant foods." pg 35

"These people had a choice of hundreds of edible plants, a rich variety compared to the 30 or so found in today's supermarkets." pg 35

Geoff Bond took a sample of 50 wild vegetable foods consumed by foragers and totaled up the nutrient content for 2,600 calories worth (a day's supply).

There was a more than adequate 82 grams of protein or more accurately amino acids.

Potassium was very high and sodium was very low. The potassium to sodium ratio was 40:1. This should help alleviate your fears of getting too much potassium and not enough sodium on a raw diet. This is about the same ratio I get when I analyze my food consumption at www.fitday.com.

They had no added salt in their diets. All the sodium they ingested came from plant foods. This is sodium in its organic form made useable to us by the action of plants.

Any sodium not coming from plants is toxic to the body, this includes sea salt, real salt, and even Himalayan sea salt. If you drank a glass of sea salt you would become very dehydrated. It's not the water in sea water that would make you dehydrated, but the salt.

Another interesting point Geoff brought up in his book is that the advent of extensive cooking also did not happen until agriculture came into being. Pleistocene humans did have fire but they didn't cook very much as they didn't have the tools or possessions to make extensive cooking possible.

Vitamin C was at 540 mg. That is five times higher than what the average American consumes.

The fiber content was 62 g and five times higher than the norm for Americans. Not only that, but the fiber in these foods was soluble fiber. This is the ideal fiber for humans not insoluble fiber you find in grains and Metamucil or other fiber supplements.

Those 2,600 calories weighed 4.5 pounds. This is a much higher volume than a person on the average western diet consumes. The high fiber, nutrient and water content would naturally control your appetite. You can eat much more food like this volume wise and yet be consuming much less calories then you would from the SAD diet.

"Our prehistoric ancestors did not eat:

* Milk, cream, butter, cheese
* Bread, breakfast cereals, popcorn, spaghetti, pizza, rice.
* Vegetable Oils
* Farmed Meat (saturated fat)
* Sugars (sugar, honey, maple syrup, malt, corn syrup.)" pg 37

"The Pleistocene diet was:

* high in volume
* low calorie density
* high in micronutrients
* high in fiber
* very low fat
* low glycemic
* low salt" pg 37

"Evolutionary History tells us that our pre- historic diet contained soft vegetation, fruit, nuts, insects, flowers, gums, some egg and some small game.

It did not contain seeds, grains, or cereals, dairy products, farm meat, saturated fat or vegetable oils." pg 39

Our bodies have not evolved in the last 10,000 years. We still operate the best on this pre- historic diet. I'm supplying you this information to give you more evidence that a low-fat, raw food diet, high in fruits and vegetables is the optimal diet for our modern world living conditions.

Don't let anyone fool you into believing that you'll attain your best health on a high protein or high fat diet. It simply cannot happen. You might lose weight, but you can lose weight by taking diet pills, drinking coffee, smoking, taking drugs and doing chemotherapy.

I think we all can agree these are not safe ways
of losing weight. Neither is a high protein all
animal food diet.

To Your Radiant Health, Happiness and Fitness, Roger Haeske

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Coming next week, in “Pure Health & Nutrition”

The secrets of increased energy... find out simple methods to get more energy now!

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