24 ms·

The Calorie Paradox of Raw Veganism (1999)

32 points by skilled 7y ago

ggm 7y ago
#3 ftw. Yep... Nup.
Legogris 7y ago
> avocados, nuts, dried fruit, and sweet fruit juices I know many on a vegan diet and many on raw food. High nut consumption is definitely a thing. What is this "party line" being talked about here? Feels like a straw man kind of. > An alternative is a diet of nuts (fats) and sweet fruit (sugar). Such a diet may work better than a diet of avocados and sweet fruits. However, such a diet violates the strict form of the raw "party line" that one should sharply limit nut consumption. Is there a source for that this is considered a violation by many? Anecdotally, I know a guy who sustains pretty much exclusively on nuts and fruits grown where he lives (commune in Spain, they have nut trees) for 6 months a year (he's traveling the rest) and claims he never felt better and aims at keeping at it.
- mcv 7y ago
  Yeah, I don't know much about raw food veganism, but I thought fruit and nuts were rather important parts of it. Also because you can eat them without killing the plant. The main reason to limit fruit and nuts is because they might be too high in calories. Obviously that limiting is not something you should take too far. Maybe the author misunderstood and cut fruits and nuts out completely?
11235813213455 7y ago
In one week, I can eat more than 20 kg of raw fruits (currently peaches, apricots, tomatoes; in other seasons: clementines, persimmons, ..), and another 5-6 kg of steamed vegetables (leafy onions, carrots, round eggplant, peppers). Sometimes, I add some full-grain rice or fish or honey. The result is a lot of energy (except sometimes 1-2 hrs of digestion), no cold or other common illness, and a low BMI (body-mass index) indeed (I'm around 18), because it's not only low-calorie, but the fibers give a feeling of satiety for a long time
- rowanG077 7y ago
  Yes that is excess sugar consumption which the article talks about.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    Part of me thinks it surprising that nutrition is still based on things like total sugar content. It's pretty obvious that the mechanism of delivery must be quite important. This is even the case in simple science experiments, consider for example the fact that flour can be explosive under certain conditions. I seems obvious that eating an apple vs eating a mars bar is quite different, though the total sugar is more or less the same.
    - PeterStuer 7y ago
      An apple has around 9,3g of sugar, a mars bar around 30g. I wouldn't call that 'more or less the same'
      - VBprogrammer 7y ago
        A quick google gave me 19g and 20g respectively. I'm not particularly attached to those figures. I don't think it actually makes much difference to my general point. The sugars in an apple must be tougher for your body to extract than those in a mars bar.
      - jfengel 7y ago
        The USDA[1] gives 23g sugar for a large apple. And 34 grams of total carbohydrates minus 5g fiber yields 29g net carbs, which are nutritionally not all that different from sugar. So they're not identical, but I'd say that "more or less the same" is sufficiently accurate. (The apple, however, does have fiber and some other vitamins and minerals, so it's definitely a better choice. It's just best not to devote too much of your diet to it.) [1] https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1809/2 https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices...
zwaps 7y ago
I think the most important info is in the second chapter: Humans and mountain gorillas (say) do not have the same digestive system. We are not herbivores, and we do not have the capacity to extract nutrients only from raw vegetables and leafs. Instead, our digestive system can be classified either as omnivore or faunavore with adaptation to eating plants. Even the apes who east mostly plants will eat meat and insects if they can. For that reason, I do not see veganism as something that fits to human nature as such. It may be, however, possible to do this in a healthy manner, and the motivation may instead be that it is better for the environment. But I think the argument can not be, that we are somehow meant to be vegans.
- cageface 7y ago
  Humans are physically much closer to herbivores than true omnivores and, of course, carnivores. If anything we're opportunistic primates that evolved to take advantage of calories where we found them. But I'm not sure these arguments are really that relevant to the present. We have radically reshaped nature to suit our needs and that includes everything we eat, both animal and vegetable. These appeals to nature generally ignore the fact that the things we ate over the millennia don't exist now.
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    >Humans are physically much closer to herbivores than true omnivores and, of course, carnivores. Where can I read more about this? >If anything we're opportunistic primates that evolved to take advantage of calories where we found them. That sure sounds like "omnivore" to me. >These appeals to nature generally ignore the fact that the things we ate over the millennia don't exist now. They also fail the other way: for example, humans have evolved new metabolic pathways for adult consumption of lactose at least twice in the last 100,000 years, and they're different pathways! (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048992/) homestasis doesn't mean "everything is constant", it means "everything's moving all the time, and the set point doesn't change a lot if things are going well because we're always compensating"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hprotagonist 7y ago
I think the "raw" requirement is the real gotcha here. You can get plenty of calories from rice and beans. For millenia, the bulk of humanity has lived on really plain foods with little meat (though in some places like europe, north africa, and the middle east, quite a bit of cheese). Extracting nutrients from uncooked foods is a lot less biochemically efficient for our digestive system, though, and it's going to be the rate-limiting step. If you rule out rice, oatmeal, porridges, bread, tofu, etc... you are likely to be in a mode of basically permanent caloric defect. A great example is maize. Raw corn is not going to keep you alive for very long. Masa, though, sustains entire civilizations, and it only works because you cook off the meal in high-pH water.
- jfengel 7y ago
  The raw foodies don't rule out grains and pulses. They make them more bioavailable by sprouting them, which uses the enzymes found in the plant itself to convert starches to something more digestible. (Which the plant does anyway in the process of converting its stores to something it can use.) It also makes them softer, so they don't spend quite as much time and effort chewing. It's still going to be a lot of effort spent eating, and it does seem like they're going for calorie-restricted life extension. But it's not quite as impossible as it sounds, and with a bunch of effort it's actually quite delicious. (And involves at least as much time as cooking.) It's definitely not my thing, especially since there's so much woo-woo associated with it, but I've had some raw vegan meals and quite enjoyed them. (Omnivory means getting to try everything, which I really like.)
- Symmetry 7y ago
  Homo erectus's ability to use cooking to liberate more nutrients from their food was probably a critical factor in the evolution of the huge brains we homo sapiens are able to support.
  - richcollins 7y ago
    You can get plenty of calories from raw animal fats. Cooking does help a lot with plants though. Also helps with infectious agents in meat and plants.
stagas 7y ago
I've been having this thought, however strange it may seem, it seems to me that the vegan movement, rightly justified by the cruelty that industrialization brings towards animals, is probably achieving the opposite effect of its original goal, that is, to stop killing animals for food. The ideal solution, in my opinion, would be to brew tissue in a factory, sans brains, just the muscular system of animals. Seems plausible, right? The problem is to reach that state, we require research. Research needs funding, and the only ones with an incentive to do that are companies that deal with meat. I imagine it is way more expensive to take care of animals than it would be to just grow muscles. But now that veganism is eating the world, that creates an impediment to that incentive, as the demand is now reduced and so the companies can just sustain their current production levels instead of finding ways to optimize them and therefore funding the research necessary. So, in effect, veganism is causing more animals to die in the macro-process of us reaching the technological state of growing tissue in the lab. What do you think?
- javagram 7y ago
  > veganism is eating the world I don’t think veganism is eating the world. https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-in-the-u-s-increasing/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-o... “2017 saw the highest per capita egg consumption in the U.S. in over 20 years.5 Per capita red meat and poultry consumption in the U.S. has been increasing as well, and is expected to reach a record high in 2018.” Although there may be some larger % of vegetarians or vegans than a few decades ago, I don’t think that anywhere near a majority of the population will ever convert to that movement. They’ll happily continue eating meat rather than switch what they eat for moral/ideological reasons.
- acdw 7y ago
  Your argument reads a lot like the "millenials are killing X" meme -- you're blaming people who've stopped engaging with a system for the continuing of that system. Factory farming is not vegans' responsibility, just as fossil fuel extraction is not bike-commuters' responsibility. I agree with you that cultured meat is a much better food solution than factory farming, and I will absolutely advocate for that. But veganism isn't causing more animals to die by reducing demand for meat -- that logically doesn't follow. (Also, "veganism is eating the world" is false -- it is on the rise, but less than one per cent of Americans are vegan, at least as of 2015. As a vegan, I still get a lot of looks and comments that prove that my lifestyle is not the norm.)
stevespang 7y ago
It appears the author avoids the simple solution of bringing more monosaturated oils into the diet. If raw vegetarianism forbids it, then it is likely a failed diet plan. Leaning more and more towards "keto vegetarian", I consume more olive oil to get those calories, and I am loosing weight still. Eating raw walnuts is supposed to be one of the highest sources of alpha linolenic acid, however upon visual analysis of stools you can see a large amount of walnut remains passing through without much apparent digestion. On the other hand, the strict keto dieters are eating meat which has excessive cholesterol, artery clogging saturated fats and red meat has high loadings of free iron (toxic).
xvilka 7y ago
I know a lot of vegans who indulge in sugary fruits and dishes. Most of my vegan peers, in fact. At the same time it is quite possible to keep high-fat, low-sugar vegan diet (or even plain vegan keto). It boils down to any above-ground plant, no fruits, various nuts, and a lot of oil - olive, avocado, coconut oil. And soy products of course. It is much healthier than consuming tons of fruits, destroying your metabolism and teeth.
- ssijak 7y ago
  A lot of vegetable oils is not good. Not nutritionally dense as real foods, pretty much almost empty calories and very bad omega3/6 ratio. That partially applies to nuts too. Small amount of nuts is probably ok, especcially walnuts.
  - bildung 7y ago
    https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/No-need-to-avoid-healthy-omega-6-fats https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/No-need-to...
    - Passthepeas 7y ago
      personally I would classify this as malpractice. The inflammatory effect of polyunsaturated oils is common knowledge at this point.
      - bildung 7y ago
        Are you sure? I thought it is basically consensus that unsaturated fats are the more healthy ones. Another source: https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/fats/polyunsaturated-fats https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
blunte 7y ago
The author lets their bias against veganism show with statements like this: "Further, a significant amount of willpower is required to resist the frequent sugar cravings, which often leads to food (and self) obsessions (very common in fruitarianism)." Did I miss the study where it was found that fruitarians are often self-obsessed? I would venture a guess that most _people_ are self-obsessed, regardless of their diet.
- skohan 7y ago
  I have a hard time believing that fruititarianism could be healthy in any way. It seems like getting almost all of your energy from fructose and hardly any fat and protein (two of the 3 core macronutrients) could not possibly work. It makes me think of an article I read in the past 6 months about how zoo animals are having metabolic damage because the fruit we grow commercially is so high in sugar it's no longer healthy. And this is purely anecdotal, but I watched a youtube video about a guy who went raw fruititarian for a few months, and his before and after photos were not inspiring. He lost some weight, but his skin and hair seemed fragile, and he seemed kind of lethargic and spacey in his after video.
  - blunte 7y ago
    Oh I don't doubt that fruitarianism is a less than optimal diet, but I don't know that it's fair to claim that fruitarians are generally self-obsessed (at least compared to practioners of other diets and fitness regimes).
    - monocasa 7y ago
      It's not that it's "less than optimal", it kills you. It's what killed Steve Jobs for instance.
      - a_random_name 7y ago
        That and not using proven treatments for cancer.
      - 7y ago
miles_matthias 7y ago
Need to point out something no one in the comments has: this is a 20 year old article.
meerita 7y ago
Anyone interested in good dietary book, please read Nutitrion and Physical Degeneration, Weston Price. Good information about the health benefits of eating properly.

32 points by skilled 7y ago

ggm 7y ago

#3 ftw. Yep... Nup.

> avocados, nuts, dried fruit, and sweet fruit juices I know many on a vegan diet and many on raw food. High nut consumption is definitely a thing. What is this "party line" being talked about here? Feels like a straw man kind of. > An alternative is a diet of nuts (fats) and sweet fruit (sugar). Such a diet may work better than a diet of avocados and sweet fruits. However, such a diet violates the strict form of the raw "party line" that one should sharply limit nut consumption. Is there a source for that this is considered a violation by many? Anecdotally, I know a guy who sustains pretty much exclusively on nuts and fruits grown where he lives (commune in Spain, they have nut trees) for 6 months a year (he's traveling the rest) and claims he never felt better and aims at keeping at it.

mcv 7y ago
Yeah, I don't know much about raw food veganism, but I thought fruit and nuts were rather important parts of it. Also because you can eat them without killing the plant. The main reason to limit fruit and nuts is because they might be too high in calories. Obviously that limiting is not something you should take too far. Maybe the author misunderstood and cut fruits and nuts out completely?

11235813213455 7y ago

In one week, I can eat more than 20 kg of raw fruits (currently peaches, apricots, tomatoes; in other seasons: clementines, persimmons, ..), and another 5-6 kg of steamed vegetables (leafy onions, carrots, round eggplant, peppers). Sometimes, I add some full-grain rice or fish or honey. The result is a lot of energy (except sometimes 1-2 hrs of digestion), no cold or other common illness, and a low BMI (body-mass index) indeed (I'm around 18), because it's not only low-calorie, but the fibers give a feeling of satiety for a long time

rowanG077 7y ago
Yes that is excess sugar consumption which the article talks about.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Part of me thinks it surprising that nutrition is still based on things like total sugar content. It's pretty obvious that the mechanism of delivery must be quite important. This is even the case in simple science experiments, consider for example the fact that flour can be explosive under certain conditions. I seems obvious that eating an apple vs eating a mars bar is quite different, though the total sugar is more or less the same.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    An apple has around 9,3g of sugar, a mars bar around 30g. I wouldn't call that 'more or less the same'
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      A quick google gave me 19g and 20g respectively. I'm not particularly attached to those figures. I don't think it actually makes much difference to my general point. The sugars in an apple must be tougher for your body to extract than those in a mars bar.
    - jfengel 7y ago
      The USDA[1] gives 23g sugar for a large apple. And 34 grams of total carbohydrates minus 5g fiber yields 29g net carbs, which are nutritionally not all that different from sugar. So they're not identical, but I'd say that "more or less the same" is sufficiently accurate. (The apple, however, does have fiber and some other vitamins and minerals, so it's definitely a better choice. It's just best not to devote too much of your diet to it.) [1] https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1809/2 https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices...

zwaps 7y ago

I think the most important info is in the second chapter: Humans and mountain gorillas (say) do not have the same digestive system. We are not herbivores, and we do not have the capacity to extract nutrients only from raw vegetables and leafs. Instead, our digestive system can be classified either as omnivore or faunavore with adaptation to eating plants. Even the apes who east mostly plants will eat meat and insects if they can. For that reason, I do not see veganism as something that fits to human nature as such. It may be, however, possible to do this in a healthy manner, and the motivation may instead be that it is better for the environment. But I think the argument can not be, that we are somehow meant to be vegans.

cageface 7y ago
Humans are physically much closer to herbivores than true omnivores and, of course, carnivores. If anything we're opportunistic primates that evolved to take advantage of calories where we found them. But I'm not sure these arguments are really that relevant to the present. We have radically reshaped nature to suit our needs and that includes everything we eat, both animal and vegetable. These appeals to nature generally ignore the fact that the things we ate over the millennia don't exist now.
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  >Humans are physically much closer to herbivores than true omnivores and, of course, carnivores. Where can I read more about this? >If anything we're opportunistic primates that evolved to take advantage of calories where we found them. That sure sounds like "omnivore" to me. >These appeals to nature generally ignore the fact that the things we ate over the millennia don't exist now. They also fail the other way: for example, humans have evolved new metabolic pathways for adult consumption of lactose at least twice in the last 100,000 years, and they're different pathways! (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048992/) homestasis doesn't mean "everything is constant", it means "everything's moving all the time, and the set point doesn't change a lot if things are going well because we're always compensating"

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hprotagonist 7y ago

I think the "raw" requirement is the real gotcha here. You can get plenty of calories from rice and beans. For millenia, the bulk of humanity has lived on really plain foods with little meat (though in some places like europe, north africa, and the middle east, quite a bit of cheese). Extracting nutrients from uncooked foods is a lot less biochemically efficient for our digestive system, though, and it's going to be the rate-limiting step. If you rule out rice, oatmeal, porridges, bread, tofu, etc... you are likely to be in a mode of basically permanent caloric defect. A great example is maize. Raw corn is not going to keep you alive for very long. Masa, though, sustains entire civilizations, and it only works because you cook off the meal in high-pH water.

jfengel 7y ago
The raw foodies don't rule out grains and pulses. They make them more bioavailable by sprouting them, which uses the enzymes found in the plant itself to convert starches to something more digestible. (Which the plant does anyway in the process of converting its stores to something it can use.) It also makes them softer, so they don't spend quite as much time and effort chewing. It's still going to be a lot of effort spent eating, and it does seem like they're going for calorie-restricted life extension. But it's not quite as impossible as it sounds, and with a bunch of effort it's actually quite delicious. (And involves at least as much time as cooking.) It's definitely not my thing, especially since there's so much woo-woo associated with it, but I've had some raw vegan meals and quite enjoyed them. (Omnivory means getting to try everything, which I really like.)
Symmetry 7y ago
Homo erectus's ability to use cooking to liberate more nutrients from their food was probably a critical factor in the evolution of the huge brains we homo sapiens are able to support.
- richcollins 7y ago
  You can get plenty of calories from raw animal fats. Cooking does help a lot with plants though. Also helps with infectious agents in meat and plants.

stagas 7y ago

I've been having this thought, however strange it may seem, it seems to me that the vegan movement, rightly justified by the cruelty that industrialization brings towards animals, is probably achieving the opposite effect of its original goal, that is, to stop killing animals for food. The ideal solution, in my opinion, would be to brew tissue in a factory, sans brains, just the muscular system of animals. Seems plausible, right? The problem is to reach that state, we require research. Research needs funding, and the only ones with an incentive to do that are companies that deal with meat. I imagine it is way more expensive to take care of animals than it would be to just grow muscles. But now that veganism is eating the world, that creates an impediment to that incentive, as the demand is now reduced and so the companies can just sustain their current production levels instead of finding ways to optimize them and therefore funding the research necessary. So, in effect, veganism is causing more animals to die in the macro-process of us reaching the technological state of growing tissue in the lab. What do you think?

javagram 7y ago
> veganism is eating the world I don’t think veganism is eating the world. https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-in-the-u-s-increasing/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-o... “2017 saw the highest per capita egg consumption in the U.S. in over 20 years.5 Per capita red meat and poultry consumption in the U.S. has been increasing as well, and is expected to reach a record high in 2018.” Although there may be some larger % of vegetarians or vegans than a few decades ago, I don’t think that anywhere near a majority of the population will ever convert to that movement. They’ll happily continue eating meat rather than switch what they eat for moral/ideological reasons.
acdw 7y ago
Your argument reads a lot like the "millenials are killing X" meme -- you're blaming people who've stopped engaging with a system for the continuing of that system. Factory farming is not vegans' responsibility, just as fossil fuel extraction is not bike-commuters' responsibility. I agree with you that cultured meat is a much better food solution than factory farming, and I will absolutely advocate for that. But veganism isn't causing more animals to die by reducing demand for meat -- that logically doesn't follow. (Also, "veganism is eating the world" is false -- it is on the rise, but less than one per cent of Americans are vegan, at least as of 2015. As a vegan, I still get a lot of looks and comments that prove that my lifestyle is not the norm.)

stevespang 7y ago

It appears the author avoids the simple solution of bringing more monosaturated oils into the diet. If raw vegetarianism forbids it, then it is likely a failed diet plan. Leaning more and more towards "keto vegetarian", I consume more olive oil to get those calories, and I am loosing weight still. Eating raw walnuts is supposed to be one of the highest sources of alpha linolenic acid, however upon visual analysis of stools you can see a large amount of walnut remains passing through without much apparent digestion. On the other hand, the strict keto dieters are eating meat which has excessive cholesterol, artery clogging saturated fats and red meat has high loadings of free iron (toxic).

xvilka 7y ago

I know a lot of vegans who indulge in sugary fruits and dishes. Most of my vegan peers, in fact. At the same time it is quite possible to keep high-fat, low-sugar vegan diet (or even plain vegan keto). It boils down to any above-ground plant, no fruits, various nuts, and a lot of oil - olive, avocado, coconut oil. And soy products of course. It is much healthier than consuming tons of fruits, destroying your metabolism and teeth.

ssijak 7y ago
A lot of vegetable oils is not good. Not nutritionally dense as real foods, pretty much almost empty calories and very bad omega3/6 ratio. That partially applies to nuts too. Small amount of nuts is probably ok, especcially walnuts.
- bildung 7y ago
  https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/No-need-to-avoid-healthy-omega-6-fats https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/No-need-to...
  - Passthepeas 7y ago
    personally I would classify this as malpractice. The inflammatory effect of polyunsaturated oils is common knowledge at this point.
    - bildung 7y ago
      Are you sure? I thought it is basically consensus that unsaturated fats are the more healthy ones. Another source: https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/fats/polyunsaturated-fats https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...

blunte 7y ago

The author lets their bias against veganism show with statements like this: "Further, a significant amount of willpower is required to resist the frequent sugar cravings, which often leads to food (and self) obsessions (very common in fruitarianism)." Did I miss the study where it was found that fruitarians are often self-obsessed? I would venture a guess that most _people_ are self-obsessed, regardless of their diet.

skohan 7y ago
I have a hard time believing that fruititarianism could be healthy in any way. It seems like getting almost all of your energy from fructose and hardly any fat and protein (two of the 3 core macronutrients) could not possibly work. It makes me think of an article I read in the past 6 months about how zoo animals are having metabolic damage because the fruit we grow commercially is so high in sugar it's no longer healthy. And this is purely anecdotal, but I watched a youtube video about a guy who went raw fruititarian for a few months, and his before and after photos were not inspiring. He lost some weight, but his skin and hair seemed fragile, and he seemed kind of lethargic and spacey in his after video.
- blunte 7y ago
  Oh I don't doubt that fruitarianism is a less than optimal diet, but I don't know that it's fair to claim that fruitarians are generally self-obsessed (at least compared to practioners of other diets and fitness regimes).
  - monocasa 7y ago
    It's not that it's "less than optimal", it kills you. It's what killed Steve Jobs for instance.
    - a_random_name 7y ago
      That and not using proven treatments for cancer.
    - 7y ago

miles_matthias 7y ago

Need to point out something no one in the comments has: this is a 20 year old article.

meerita 7y ago

Anyone interested in good dietary book, please read Nutitrion and Physical Degeneration, Weston Price. Good information about the health benefits of eating properly.