Quitting a raw vegan diet is not failure.

[St3v3B]

When someone tries a raw vegan diet and abandons it, proponents of raw diets usually refer to that person's failure to sustain the raw diet. I have seen recent videos in which ex-raw vegans will apologize for their inability to stay on the diet. Quitting a raw diet is not a failure; it is a success. Years ago, 1.9 million years ago to be exact, our ancestors were all on a fully raw diet. Then fortunately for us some lucky Homo habilis discovered fire and invented cooking. Cooking makes food softer and easier to chew. making it easier to digest. Cooking made a wider variety of food available to habilis (try eating a raw tuber) and increased the nutrition they were able to get from foods they had formerly eaten raw. Raw food takes more time than cooked. Other great apes spend 48% of their day eating as opposed to 4.7% for humans. Cooking allowed opportunity and time for more social interaction, which led to the creation of language and increased the value of an agile mind. Richard Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard, contends that cooking is what caused Homo habilis to evolve into Home erectus.

I love raw food. Mangoes, apples, pears, peaches, avocados, bananas, grapes, oranges, nuts, berries, melons, plums, I prefer raw carrots to cooked carrots and cooking daikon should be a crime. But raw potatoes are literally inedible. Bake, steam or boil them and they transform into manna. Kale is barely edible raw, but steam it and you not only improve the taste but increase the bioavailability of its high calcium content by 85%. We humans were cooking our food long before we became human and for good reason.

[EquALLity]

Welcome to the forum.
You should make an intro.

I agree that raw veganism is unnecessary and often a bad idea, but the idea that because cooking enabled us to do things that led to things that led to an agile mind means cooking itself is healthy today isn't really logical.

And just because we've cooked for a long time doesn't mean it's good. After all, people have eaten meat for a long time too.

[brimstoneSalad]

Welcome!

I think EquALLity hit the nail on the head.

Cooked foods are good for us (if not too cooked), but we know this because of modern scientific evidence on bioavailability, ecology, etc. History is a very poor substitute for a dietitian.

[cornivore]

And just because we've cooked for a long time doesn't mean it's good.

Cooking is good for food safety (which is pretty much a universal rule). Half of the food poisoning is caused by produce. Someone just died from contaminated raw romaine lettuce recently. "Almost 6 dozen outbreaks traced to leafy greens since 1995" is an ongoing headline. Food poisoning from various things like nut butters, fruits, etc. is always happening, and more so than ever, because more food is being produced. Lack of food safety is notorious with meat, because that kills more people, but it makes them sick just as often with plants (primarily when they are not cooked, pickled or naturally acidic). Seventy people were made sick, and half of them hospitalized, for eating raw melons lately (simply cutting a melon often contaminates it with things that are hard to rinse off). Something like c. botulinum, for example, can be on anything, and it is the deadliest poison on earth, unless throroughly cooked. People on raw diets, or those dishing it up at a salad bar, are playing Russian roulette I think (and don't mind failing to play that if I can help it).

[brimstoneSalad]

Seventy people were made sick, and half of them hospitalized, for eating raw melons lately (simply cutting a melon often contaminates it with things that are hard to rinse off).

This is why I try to wash my melons (with soap and water even, if I can) before cutting. A good reminder.

Hopefully some day produce safety standards will be better and they'll be washed and hit with ozone or UV before they hit the shelves.

[cornivore]

That wouldn't necessarily work, because the toxic bacteria in soil (and therefore everywhere) have been shown to multiply on melon skins (canteloupe especially), or anyone handling them could transfer it there. Washing before preparing them is about all you can do, besides cooking those as a sauce. There was another headline about melons killing 25 people in Colorado from listeria contamination (which flourishes in water, so rinsing may not work well enough). This article says it can be on fruits of all kinds or refrigerated foods as well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehai ... erms-lurk/

[cornivore]

There's also a difference between safety standards and what happens in practice. The recent salmonella outbreak occurred with pre-cut melons and I think it happened because a standard wasn't followed (aside from cooking), so we're better off following those ourselves, if aware of them (instead of trusting that it will be done carefully in a time-is-money environment). I think that's especially sad because the pre-cut melons I've seen are super expensive, as if it cost a lot to prepare them safely. If it wasn't that though, it would be something else. Another outbreak (of cyclospora) just happened with pre-cut vegetables sold at convenience stores.

[brimstoneSalad]

There's also a difference between safety standards and what happens in practice.

That's true, we can never really trust anything with a profit incentive to cut corners.

[EquALLity]

And just because we've cooked for a long time doesn't mean it's good.

Cooking is good for food safety (which is pretty much a universal rule). Half of the food poisoning is caused by produce. Someone just died from contaminated raw romaine lettuce recently. "Almost 6 dozen outbreaks traced to leafy greens since 1995" is an ongoing headline. Food poisoning from various things like nut butters, fruits, etc. is always happening, and more so than ever, because more food is being produced. Lack of food safety is notorious with meat, because that kills more people, but it makes them sick just as often with plants (primarily when they are not cooked, pickled or naturally acidic). Seventy people were made sick, and half of them hospitalized, for eating raw melons lately (simply cutting a melon often contaminates it with things that are hard to rinse off). Something like c. botulinum, for example, can be on anything, and it is the deadliest poison on earth, unless throroughly cooked. People on raw diets, or those dishing it up at a salad bar, are playing Russian roulette I think (and don't mind failing to play that if I can help it).

Yeah, I'm not sure what you think we're disagreeing about. I said that doing something historically doesn't make it good. And, as you explain here, that's true because the reason why cooking food is good is for safety reasons.

[cornivore]

I think that the safety regulations (or recommendations) are based on the concept of improving a situation by doing things a certain way, such as cooking food to prevent food poisoning. So, historically, doing so makes the outcome good, compared to not doing so. I know what you mean in general too, but there are laws for food preparation (at least professionally), and whether or not it is good to cook some things is more than a matter of opinion these days. I think it's important to point this out to raw vegans and the juice blending crowd, because I don't think they are necessarily aware of how prevalent toxins are on produce, from soil, whether or not it is organic (I read one book claiming to be a bible of juicing or something like that, and there was no mention of food safety, just a one-sided argument that mixing together raw produce was the healthiest thing ever, period). People still die by doing so sometimes... or get sick on a regular basis (as there are outbreaks announced all the time), but it's not as often deadly as from eating meat. It seems to be considered a freak accident when it happens with produce, and then people go on eating it the same way, and then it happens again, and again. I agree that quitting a raw vegan diet is not a failure, and wish the best of luck to those who believe in eating raw food as a rule.