This week I had a great conversation with a person I regularly follow in the raw food movement. After our conversation, it revived an itch I've had for quite some time regarding the raw food movement. I've been thinking about this for quite some time now and after our talk I finally decided that it's time I wrote some of this down.
I've been doing raw and living food for about 7 years now. I've been doing it intensely and learning as much as I can from as many different sources as I can. I'm a voracious reader and love to study, read and listen to audio and video lectures as well as attend lectures.
I love this lifestyle and at the same time I realize there are many different points of view as to what is healthy. If you've been into this way of eating for a long time you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are people who love David Wolfe, and there are people who cannot stand him. There are people who believe that eating high amounts of sugar is dangerous like many raw food "gurus" like Brian Clement and more, as well as people who lean more towards eating more fruit and low fat like Dr. Doug Graham.
Personally I have not read Doug Graham's book yet but it's on my list. I do not pretend to be an expert in the work that is put out from each of these people. My point here is just that these "gurus" have differing opinions as to what is healthy and what is not to some degree.
The problem in my opinion is twofold. The problem is the state of the person who comes into raw food as well as how they come in the door. The person, who is generally healthy and gets introduced to raw foods by somebody like Doug Graham, is going to have a radically different view of "health" than somebody who has stage 4 cancer and gets introduced to raw foods by somebody like Brian Clement or Dr. Cousins.
Think about it, there are so many factors to what is healthy. Where a person lives (Costa Rica vs. Alaska), their metabolism, age, previous eating habits and relationships with food, their current level of inner cleanliness and the list goes on. It's not as easy as saying, "Just follow 80/10/10
" or "You must get rid of all sugar from your diet immediately!" We need to take a lot of things into consideration before making these platitudes.
" or "You must get rid of all sugar from your diet immediately!" We need to take a lot of things into consideration before making these platitudes.
The real point is that with the advent of social media websites and networks, there is a lot of bashing and hate going on. To be honest it's just a bummer. People who come in from the outside don't care about whether or not David Wolfe is right or Doug Graham is right.
This whole process is a journey, why don't we just let each other figure it out ourselves without being so dogmatic? If I don't eat any sugar (I do) and I think that is the best way, what do I really care if you eat tons of hybridized fruit? Let's give people some grace here. We're all trying our best to just get healthier. It doesn't do me any good or my health any good if I have anger in my heart because X amount of people don't agree with me. All I care is that people put some intention back into their food program. If that means you cut out all sugar so be it. If that means you go from eating no sugar to eating tons of fruit, that's cool. At the end of the day we're only responsible for ourselves anyway. Let's approach this with love.
By putting intention into our eating program I just mean slowing down and asking some questions before you dive into that meal. For example asking simple questions like, "how does eating this food affect our environment?" or "what am I supporting by eating factory farmed meat" or "should I pay a little extra and support the organic farmer?" Simple questions that make us pause before we eat are huge.
To carry this whole idea a little further, I don't even like being called a "raw foodist" much. That's just a label anyway. Labels by nature are restrictive. Yes I eat raw and living foods but if you were to see me eating a veggie sandwich would you care? Why? I'm a person who tries to be healthy that's all. I don't care about percentages, labels or platitudes. We're all trying to do our best here.
Recently Dhru at Giveittomeraw.com had to kick people out of his website because of how they were interacting with people. Anthony at rawmodel.com really ruffled people's feathers because he was walking away from veganism. People freaked out about it. What if that's what he needs to do in order to be healthy? Personally I support him all the way because perhaps he's onto something that we should all be aware of. It's time to open our minds a little bit about what is "healthy" and not just say; "I eat 100% raw." 100% raw can mean so many things. Just because you eat 100% raw doesn't mean you're as healthy as you can be.
Let's just look at this from a whole new perspective and stop with the fanaticism and the labels and the percentages and take a holistic whole body approach to just being healthier and making more conscious decisions with our eating program. If that happens to include eating more fruit, cool, if it happens to be eating raw dairy products, that’s cool too.
Life is about way more than the food we eat.
Ahh...I feel better already...
