Top Bad Arguments in Favor of a Raw Food Diet

Lately, some people have recently to engage in a sort of "war of arguments" to try to prove to me that a 100% raw diet is the best diet for everybody, no matter what.

I'm talking about the fanatical raw foodists who are so convinced that their point of view is right, that they can't seem to stop arguing and pushing their philosophy down other people's throats.

Even though, all they are doing is rehashing arguments they have read in other raw food books.

Some people seem to think that I've suddenly become "anti raw foods," when in fact I'm very pro raw foods.

But, I want people to eat raw for the RIGHT reasons, and dispel the non-sense that's been spread on the subject.

So in this two-part article I want to present what I think are the REAL reasons to eat raw, and also discuss the WRONG arguments people use in favor of a raw diet. Let's start with the bad ones…

Top Bad Arguments to Eat a Raw Food Diet

1) Enzymes

This one is easy. Plant enzymes are produced by the plant for its own purposes. For example, a green banana is full of starch and amylase. As the banana ripens, the amylase breaks down the starch into simple sugars.

We produce our own digestive enzymes, like amylase. We don't need the enzymes in raw foods to help our digestion. In fact, most those enzymes are destroyed when they reach the acidic content of our stomach.

2) It's the diet of our "species"

I admit that for a long time, I used to believe that one and even teach it.

The idea is that every animal has a natural diet. For examples, carnivores, like cats, must eat meat. Omnivores, like pigs, eat a bit of everything.

If we look at nature, we'll find that the closest relatives to human beings are the chimpanzees. If we compare their anatomy to ours, we'll find that it's remarkably similar. And surprise, surprise, they live on fruits and greens! Therefore, we must do the same.

The truth is that humans and chimps have some serious differences. Chimpanzees can eat certain astringent types of fruits that humans could never digest.

If modern-day raw foodists tried to live on what chimpanzees eat in the wild, they would live in a more or less permanent state of indigestion and would likely not be able to survive. Chimps in zoos fed bananas and kale are NOT fed their natural diet. (I'll expand more on that in a future article).

Humans produce in their saliva up to 12 times more amylase (an enzymes that digests starch) than chimpanzees do. That's an evolutionary adaptation to eating cooked starches.

The main thing to keep in mind is that over 4 to 7 million years of evolution separate chimpanzees from humans. They may be our closest relatives, but they are very distant ones indeed.

3) We never "adapted" to cooked foods.

The human being has adapted to eating cooked foods, to some degree. This is evidenced by our smaller digestive system, which is 25% shorter than that of chimpanzees (by body size). The idea behind this adaptation is that we are used to eating more concentrated nutrition than they do. We also produce more starch-splitting enzymes, among many other changes.

Modern day raw foodists do not eat like wild animals. They blend foods, eat highly hybridized, extra sweet fruit, and have many ways to make vegetables easier to chew and digest. That's because as human beings, we are adapted to eating highly nutritious and more concentrated foods of higher caloric density, as opposed to the low-calorie wild fruits eaten by chimpanzees.

4) We are the only animal on the planet who cooks food

I love that one.

"Have you ever seen a wild animal with pots and pans cooking up something? Well maybe that's the reason they don't get sick!"

No, I haven't seen a deer roast some potatoes, but I've also never seen a wild chimpanzee blending up bananas in a Vita-Mix, for that matter.

There are a ton of things that wild animals don't do — like wear clothes, make music and write books. But I have yet to see raw foodists give up those things.

By the way, wild animals DO get sick sometimes, mainly due to parasites and viruses. The sick animals also get eaten by predators, before they have time to die of those diseases.

Raw foodists tend to think that wild animals have an awesome life, living in harmony with nature. The truth is that it's a ruthless world out there. We can learn thing or two from wild animals, but to just use wild animals as examples on what to do is a pretty weak argument.

5) All cooked food is "toxic"

Cooking certain foods creates some toxins, but it doesn't mean that all cooked food is toxic. As far as I know, there is no evidence that steamed broccoli will kill you.

6) There is lifeforce in raw foods that's destroyed when you cook it

Foods are raw material. That lettuce may be alive when you pick it from your garden, but you can be certain that by the time you digest it, it is long "dead."

Don't tell me that when you blend your vegetables, or chew them aggressively in your month, that you're not destroying that "life force" that they supposedly have.

7) The Bible Says we should eat raw

A lot of Christians are using the Bible to make it say whatever they want. I was raised as a Christian, and I studied the Bible. To my knowledge, the Bible was not intended as a reference guide on nutrition!

You can take quotes from the Bible, out of context, to make almost any point you want. Some people use it to justify meat eating. Sure, there's Genesis 1:29, but if you look at the Bible as a whole, you'll find that the nutrition advice wasn't too clear.

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In my next article, I will give you my REAL reasons to eat raw foods.