Eating Raw Food - is the raw food diet too extreme?

Let me be upfront here - I'm very sceptical about people who say a raw food diet is better because it's "natural". True, our distant ancestors ate all their food raw - but human beings have been eating cooked food for at least 800,000 years, and many scientists believe the transition to cooked foods was part of what enabled us to develop into modern man. And as for raw food vegetarians - even chimpanzees and gorillas eat insects, so why wouldn't primitive man have been an omnivore?

That doesn't mean I reject the raw food movement out of hand. Something doesn't have to be natural to be good for you: for instance, vitamin therapy has shown some promising results, even though it involves consuming far greater quantities of vitamins than you could hope to get the natural way (by eating food).

But I do have several concerns about the idea of eating raw food and nothing else.

One of the big advantages of the diet is that you have to chew raw food thoroughly. In today's fast-paced society, one of the biggest reasons for obesity is that we rush our food. A raw diet makes you rediscover slow eating, which is much better for your digestion and ensures your natural "full" signal has time to register.

Some vitamins and beneficial compounds are lost when we cook fruit and vegetables - for instance, the anti-cancer benefits of broccoli and cabbage are greater when raw (although their cholesterol-lowering properties are better when cooked!).

Raw food advocates will tell you that raw food also contains "live enzymes" which cooked food does not. That's true, but it's not clear why that's supposed to be such a great benefit. The enzymes in raw foods are very quickly deactivated by our stomach acid, so it's difficult to see what good they can do.

It's essential to be careful when selecting and preparing raw food, as there's no way to destroy bacteria and viruses which might be lurking in it. That means most raw foodists eat only fresh, organic food so their diet is very high quality.  And of course, they never eat junk food!

As I just stated, without cooking there is no way to destroy pathogens in food. When I lived in Africa, we only ate fruit and vegetables which could be peeled, because there were nasty parasites which couldn't be removed by washing alone (some people soaked lettuce in disinfectant so they could eat salad - but no matter how much I rinsed, I could still taste it!). That doesn't apply in the US or Europe, but it is important to know what risks apply in your country or even your state, before you decide what is safe to eat.

That is especially true of meat and fish, which must be very fresh and from impeccable sources to avoid parasites and bacteria. Many raw food proponents are also vegetarians or even vegans: but that brings me to another problem of the raw food diet - malnutrition.

There are many very healthy vegetarians and vegans, but they are all far more conscientious about planning their diet than the average omnivorous person. Most of them rely heavily on legumes (which raw foodists can't eat) for protein, and vegans take a B12 supplement. Raw food dieters often won't take pills, and since B12 is only available from animal sources, they are inevitably going to get sick. Low bone density is also common in raw food vegans, because they simply can't get enough calcium from their food.

Legumes (chick peas, lentils, beans) aren't the only thing raw foodies can't eat. Some foods are off the list because our teeth won't cope with them, but there are other foods which are indigestible or even toxic to humans if eaten raw. That's one of the main reasons human beings developed cooking - to widen our choice of foodstuffs in time of famine.

The other negative about raw food dieting is that some people promote it with missionary zeal, and won't hear of any criticism. If you feel ill while on the raw food diet, they won't suggest you review your mix of foods, or ask your doctor to check for vitamin or mineral deficiencies - they'll just tell you you're "detoxing". The fact is, detoxing symptoms may occur, but they'll be short term. If problems persist, or if you start having problems after a few weeks on the diet, it's not detoxing - something's wrong, and you could be heading for severe health problems if you ignore it.

Fresh, raw fruit and vegetables should always form a major part of our diet every day - they're good for us, and delicious.  But cooking opens up a host of other flavours and textures, and enables us to eat a wider variety of food, so we're more likely to get all the nutrients we need without having to plan every detail of our daily intake.   Eating a mixed diet frees up time for other, more important things in life - there's less time spent in menu planning, ingredients are easier to find and there's less preparation time.   Our ancestors discovered the advantages nearly a million years ago - so why reinvent the wheel?

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photo thanks to GotMeaMuse. Spaghetti photo by Var Resa.