Raw Food Diet: Day 3

I realized today that I'm doing this thing that is relatively important in my life and food related but not blogged, so I'm blah-gging now.

I'm on my third day of a raw food diet (see title of post above). I got the idea originally during my Anthropology of Food class of fall 2010 (my, that seems long ago) when we had a section on the power of cooking and fire. We read a bunch of essays, anthropology papers (or, as I like to call them, "long stories about that one time I was in Ghana"), and a book, even. Mostly, we discovered that modern-day diets, specifically an Amurrican one, are responsible for most deaths/health problems in the world.

Some people blame meat. It introduces animal fat and cholesterol into our diets despite our ancestors being mostly frugivores. Meat is costly to get, costly to digest, particularly in its raw form. Some scholars insist that obtaining meat was so costly for an individual that social dynamics began in pre-human groups specifically to get and distribute meat, ergo culture, barter, currency, language and BAM! Our heads are huge and so are our guts. Our response? Vegetarians!

Some people blame agriculture, grains as we know them today. The beginning of agriculture can be linked archeologically to the shrinking of our jaws and chewing muscles (goodbye Neanderthal look!) and thus ALL OF THE TEETH PROBLEMS. Domesticating grasses and seeds allowed a large injection of carbohydrates into our diets, quick sources of sugar that supposedly let us spend less time hunting/gathering and more time doing other stuff (i.e. accounting, filing taxes, meditating, selling car insurance). Domesticating grasses and seeds sounds like it was hard: breeding plants, irrigating water, predicting weather patterns, anything to optimize growth. So of course we banded together and decided, Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could communicate about all this stuff? And suddenly BAM! Our heads are huge and every other adolescent needs bulky metal work to fit all their teeth into their mouths. Our response? Gluten-free!

Some people blame cooking. Now, this is much harder to prove considering how ancient fire is and how, let's see, it happens to DESTROY much of the carbon evidence we would use to identify its...uses. But basically there are issues with the other two things.

First, our chimpanzee cousins do eat meat on occasion. It's a treat (as it should be with us), but their heads stay about the same size through the generations, despite this ancient practice of bonking off their smaller cousins and happily putting raw bits of lemur into their mouths.

Second, these other theories don't explain the proportional ratio exchange between stomach size and brain size. Eating meat requires a rather large intestinal tract considering how the fat in it doesn't even begin to get digested until it reaches our small intestines (think of all that raw meat rolled up in y'all, delish). Eating grains and seeds, despite their being packets of easy energy, are still difficult to digest without being cooked. You try eating some raw rice and flour and see how your tummy fairs (not good, believe you me).

Both the meat and agriculture rely on the stipulation that fire releases essential nutrients from these food products to ease digestion. Stomach shrinks, and BAM! Brains get huge. But....what do we lose from cooking our food? Some people say heat destroys essential phytochemicals, micronutrients, antioxidants and fosters carcinogens, toxins, carbon (that black crunchy delicious stuff you get when you char meat). Now those are just some fancy words, so what do we REALLY lose from cooking our food? Or maybe the better question to ask is, what do we gain from NOT cooking our food? Our response? Raw food diet!

Also known as the Paleolithic diet, raw foodists believe in consuming unprocessed foods that have not been raised about some degree of temperature that I can't remember. Just nothing that's ever been really hot. This eliminates most of our beloved food pyramid. Grains? Gone (again, try eating that meal of raw rice and flour). Dairy? Gone (unless we're talking unpasteurized milk and good luck with finding that in the United States). Meat? Gone (Minus sashimi, beef tartare, carpaccio, smoked salmon, yougetthedrilletc). So we're left with fruits, nuts, and veggies. Hmm, not so bad, you might think. Wrong! Let me walk you through my average eating day.

First, I might have some cereal with milk for breakfast. Except cereal is a heavily processed grain and again, milk has been heated a LOT to get it through the FDA and onto your table. Okay, for lunch I might grab a sandwich. Except there might be bread in it, from processed and milled flour, baked at high temperatures in an industrial oven. Or meat. Fine, for dinner I might steep a salmon filet in butter and garlic and lemon juice, bake for 20 minutes, and serve over some hot jasmine rice. Take out what's not raw and I get...well, some raw garlic and lemon juice.

A raw food diet changes the way you think about food. Also how much respect I have for my oven. But this might have been why I ran into problems the first time I tried going raw. I thought, an excuse to eat sashimi? hurrah! And then I woke up in the morning and did not feel like dragging my ass to a sushi restaurant and dropping 30 bucks for a meal that made me full. So I stayed at home and rummaged for raw foods in my fridge. I found a case of tangerines. Bad move, said my stomach about an hour later. Bad move. I managed to pull through a full 3 days before reverting back with a most delicious meal of bulgogi and kimchi tacos from a Kogi truck. Scrumptious.

But this time! This time will be different. I did some research and managed my budget much better, and here at day 3, I don't feel like I want to drive a slow drill through my right eye. I've had sashimi for lunch once and dinner once, $15 tip inclusive for the lunch, $25 tip inclusive for the dinner, so I did splurge. But what I lost over sushi so far has been more than made up for by my incredibly cheap grocery list. To be fair, I've committed to a week of raw food, which means I didn't go all out and buy a blender and a dehydrator and organic sprouts. Here's what I got at my local C-Town:

apples
bananas
avocados
tomatoes
almonds
dates
cucumbers
limes
carrots
seaweed (I lied; I got this at the asian market.)
total=$34

Not bad, not bad, although now I wish I'd gotten some rice milk, basil, and summer squash. Maybe I'll go back.

Anyway, my goals for this were 1) satisfaction of curiosity; 2) detoxing my body from all the funemployment stress (btw, stress increases your acidity while a diet heavy in fruits will be very alkaline); and 3) losing weight so I can look goooood in a dress at GC. Unfortunately, only the last thing is really measurable, in terms of results, but I'm happy (worried? intrigued? curious) to report that so far I've lost about 3 pounds. This could be mostly the intense fiber intake flushing my system or the sudden lack of salt in my diet being compensated for by less water retention. I'm curious to see how things go from here/if I'll even make it to day 7 (my bets are mostly on day 5 which, psychologically, probably means I'll only make it to day 5. self-fulfilling prophecies, whaaaat). Mostly bored by my diet at this point. I need something new to eat...