How do we know what we know? And how exactly does food affect health?

[macgeek2005]

I think about this a lot, because I eat 100% raw organic, but I look around and see all the people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, etc, who are doing just fine without worrying about food at all.

And then of course in a lot of cases when you look closer, they're not actually doing fine. And they get some terrible disease before they're 70.

But still, questions swirl in my mind. If they do get a terrible disease by 70, was it what they ate in their 20s that caused it? Do things really build up in the body over that long a time period?

Some of the primary questions that I ponder regularly these days are:

1. Do I really have to eat as perfectly as I'm eating in order to evade chronic or degenerative illness and/or cancer?

2. Does what I eat now, in my early 20s, really have a definitive and inescapable effect on the rest of my life?

3. Is the effect of food on health simply based on what your ratio of healthy to unhealthy food is? In other words, if you eat 99% healthy, but eat donuts for that last 1%, will those donuts have an impact on your health? And if not, why not? What about 2%? 3%? If 97% of what you're eating is raw vegetables, fruits, meat, etc, can that 3% of donuts really have an impact? How does it work? Is there a tipping point? Or is it just an infinitely curved line? Does it follow a similar working to the laws of motion? (i.e. Something must receive a minimum amount of force applied to it before it will begin to move). In the food case, this would be: A person must eat a certain amount of unhealthy food before it can adversely affect that persons health.

4. Are desserts made of whole foods (like what you find at whole foods) healthier than what you'd find at safeway? (with the massive lists of chemicals and preservatives, etc)

5. If you eat whatever you want until you're 50, and then go to 100% raw organic, does your body just clean itself out in a few years and you're good to go? Or does what you did in the years previous to 50 have a damning effect on you forever?

6. Why does it feel as though we Really need nice warm foods (like soups) during cold weather? How does completely avoiding all cooked food make sense living in a cold climate?

7. Kind of a general summary of all of the above. I see other young people eating whatever they want, day after day, week after week, and their bodies are functioning perfectly. Is something bad really building up inside them? How? Can it be seen? How do we know this?

8. What other factors contribute to health aside from food? And can they condemn you to illness even in the face of a perfect diet?

Basically, how do we know how any of this works? And how do we know that something like, for example, homemade lasagna, is unhealthy? (just the first thing that came to mind). Let's assume it was all made from scratch at home, and had no added sweeteners, preservatives, chemicals, etc. Just cooked pasta, melted cheese, tomato sauce, cooked meat, etc. This looks, smells, tastes and feels really good. What is it doing that will cause disease? Does it really cause disease? How do we know?

[eveheart]

1. Do I really have to eat as perfectly as I'm eating in order to evade chronic or degenerative illness and/or cancer?

I'll just expound on your first question from my perspective, if you don't mind. My answer to this one makes all the other questions unnecessary.

IMO, this is the wrong question to ask myself, because it presupposes that there is a perfect way of eating. I avoid this question because it leads me to annoyance, impatience, feeling that I'm depriving myself of something that everybody else gets to have.

I eat what I eat because it is my nourishment. It tastes pleasing. It digests well. No corporate interest has to buy advertising to convince me to eat it. If every machine in the world suddenly stopped, I could still go out and get what I usually eat.

I eat real food. I like real food. I'm not falling into the brainwashing/advertising trap that makes people say things like, "I love Starbucks!" or "I love pancakes with real maple syrup!" (People I work with actually say these things all the time.)

This leaves me free to focus my thinking efforts toward perfection in more meaningful areas, such as loving others perfectly, being kind perfectly, being patient perfectly, etc. For me, these ideas are a better use of my thinking time than figuring out how to eat perfectly, whatever that may mean.

[macgeek2005]

Thank you for your alternative perspective on the question. That is admittedly a very good way to go about thinking of it, though I'm still curious about the science.

And for myself, I don't feel that what I eat tastes good. I mean, it's fine, fruit tastes good, the salads I make taste pleasant enough, raw eggs are neutral, raw meat tastes good if I'm hungry, etc. Basically, my diet feels satisfying when I'm hungry. It never pleases the mouth though; not to the degree that many other foods do.

But I do crave bread, and pastries, and things like burritos, pizza, etc. And if I were to completely abandon my whole 100% raw organic thing, I would by no means be eating an extremely unhealthy diet. I would still be eating mostly organic. Sprouted grain bread, probably a handful of Amy's frozen foods (burritos, pizzas, etc), an occasional "healthy" dessert, things like peanut butter, mayonnaise, medium-rare meat, rice, beans, etc.

So really my question is, does the difference between that diet and my current diet really make a difference? Or are they both too far into the "healthy" side of the spectrum that one is no better than the other really?

In other words: How do we know just HOW bad all the cooked foods I just listed are? By almost anybody's standards all of those things are very healthy, and people who eat diets like that seem to be very healthy.

[Neone]

I used to think that since i ate healthy all week, then the weekend was party time... all i was really doing was trashing my good weeks work with a bunch of bullshit in one day (because you felt so crap, you didnt to it two days in a row haha)

You can eat shit till 50 and then clean yourself out... it just means that you wasted your years up to 50 not being as healthy as you could have been.. squandering your prime to masturbate your mouth with those 3% donuts.... haha.

But hey, i remember getting so depressed from cutting out 'snacks' and 'yummy food' that i really questioned if life was worth living without them.... thats one hell of a drug....

[macgeek2005]

I used to think that since i ate healthy all week, then the weekend was party time... all i was really doing was trashing my good weeks work with a bunch of bullshit in one day (because you felt so crap, you didnt to it two days in a row haha)

You can eat shit till 50 and then clean yourself out... it just means that you wasted your years up to 50 not being as healthy as you could have been.. squandering your prime to masturbate your mouth with those 3% donuts.... haha.

But hey, i remember getting so depressed from cutting out 'snacks' and 'yummy food' that i really questioned if life was worth living without them.... thats one hell of a drug....

Well, I'm not even talking about delicious foods that make you feel like crap. I'm talking about the standard "healthy" diet, that 999 out of 1000 people in America would consider to be super healthy, but that does include some desserts, bread, rice, beans, cooked meat, etc. I'm not talking about eating super unhealthy food. I'm just wondering if that "healthy organic" diet that most raw paleo's no longer consider healthy, is Actually unhealthy, and how we know that.

[CitrusHigh]

Carbs are an addiction, yes they taste good, I love a good new york style pizza, and last night I woofed some penne rosa (laced with raw lamb thymus) from Noodle's & Co, but the underlying device is addiction. A craving stronger than any drug I've had the pleasure of knowing. Here is an article about that, the important bit is the part about people dropping out of a study where they could eat all the butter and meat they wanted but had to avoid carbs and sweets! They couldn't live without the sweets in spite of the decadent and rich alternative foods, THAT is an addiction!

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/carbohydrates-are-addictive/

[macgeek2005]

Carbs are an addiction, yes they taste good, I love a good new york style pizza, and last night I woofed some penne rosa (laced with raw lamb thymus) from Noodle's & Co, but the underlying device is addiction. A craving stronger than any drug I've had the pleasure of knowing. Here is an article about that, the important bit is the part about people dropping out of a study where they could eat all the butter and meat they wanted but had to avoid carbs and sweets! They couldn't live without the sweets in spite of the decadent and rich alternative foods, THAT is an addiction!

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/carbohydrates-are-addictive/

So, all breads are under the "addictive carbs" category? Even organic sprouted grain bread? See, one thing I used to love to eat all the time was organic sprouted grain bread with avocado, or with mayonnaise and sardines, or peanut butter, or whatever. Generally "healthy" foods.

I'm not craving eating a diet of junk food. I'm simply grappling with the question of What exactly lies along which point in the unhealthy - healthy spectrum.

Am I really doing myself a favor by cutting out organic burritos, organic sprouted grain bread, rice, beans, peanut butter, cream cheese, etc? Will these things actually cause disease over time?

edit: I also always hear people talking as if gaining weight is the only negative health impact that food can have, and that if you don't gain weight when you eat it, then it's good for you. Is this bogus? For example, they'd say that I can eat as much ice cream and cake as I want right now, because I'll remain skinny no matter what. Is it true that even though I remain skinny now, it is doing harm to my body? That's basically what I need to know. How can it be that it's causing harm when there's absolutely No hint of that happening; not in my appearance or in the way I feel.

[TylerDurden]

Many foods can cause harm over a long period of time but are not noticeable in their effect in the short-term. I'm a classic example. Raw and pasteurised dairy did not have an immediate effect on me but they gradually caused a multitude of health-problems over many years.


Re the other questions:-

1) Perfection is not possible in Nature. It is an abstract ideal. That said, constant striving to improve the quality of one's food-supply really helps. I, for example, at one point had the opportunity to pay vast sums for organic, grassfed meats. After some searching, I found some sources of raw wild game, which was nutritionally superior to the grassfed meats, not to mention cheaper. Plus, farmers often lie about the quality of their produce so one has to keep looking around for better sources.

2) Yes, the earlier you start eating rawpalaeo, the healthier you will be, overall. It's been shown via studies, for example, that people raised on human breast-milk do better than others, as regards issues like asthma, allergies etc.

3) Obviously, 100% is best. It all depends, though, on the person's original state of health as to how they cope. Someone in severe ill-health will suffer far more on a 3% cooked diet than others.

4) Yes. Preservatives and chemicals are always worse than less unnatural foods.

5) Yes, again. I've heard of some remarkable recoveries  of oldsters on a RVAF diet, but I suspect, given my own experience, that decades of consuming cooked foods will lead to a lower robustness than if one has eaten rawpalaeo foods since birth.

6) Eating raw foods in a cold climate is fine. I mean, like cooked-food-eaters, we also have warm clothes, plus we RVAFers generally develop much better circulation of the blood over the years, which means we are able to tolerate the cold much better than SMD-eaters.

7)  Aajonus has pointed out how cooked foods oveerexcite the glands, which produce lots of feel-good hormones. In pre-rawpalaeodiet days, I would feel a massive boost of energy from drinking pasteurised dairy, due to the hormones and opioids in it influencing my brain, but this was illusory, and over years dairy-consumption led to me getting chronic fatigue.

Exercise.

[goodsamaritan]

>> Basically, how do we know how any of this works?

You self experiment.
You heal / help / teach others.
You exchange notes with other self experimentors.
And on and on and on.

No stupid double blind studies for me.  I'll use my judgment and it is proven with the people who get well and thrive.

[macgeek2005]

Thank you for the responses.

What I don't understand is, how exactly does something cause harm in the long term?

If I eat an apple pie from Whole Foods, and then eat 100% raw paleo for the next three months, where in my body is the harm done by that pie? Can it be seen or measured in any way?

And, I'm sure we can all agree that if that apple pie was the ONLY unhealthy thing I ever ate in my life, that it would have no effect whatsoever on my health, correct?

And if this is the case, there must be a threshold, an amount of unhealthy food beneath which it can't have any effect on you because it's too insignificant. What is this amount? Surely it's more than one apple pie in an entire lifetime.

But more importantly, how exactly does it engage in long-term harm of the body? All evidence of it is gone not long after you consume it. And the body is constantly regenerating itself. And furthermore, if the pie is the ONLY unhealthy thing you ever eat, it Doesn't cause long-term harm. So, long-term harm can only come from "too much" unhealthy food eaten regularly. It's an accumulative thing. It's not like one apple pie causes x disease 50 years after you consume it.

[TylerDurden]

This has already been discussed in other threads. The point is that cooking creates many types of heat-created toxins all of which harm the body. It takes time for the body to not only neutralise those toxins but also more time to heal any lasting damage caused by those toxins. Plus, there's the loss of enzymes, thus forcing the body to produce more enzymes, thus gradually weakening the body over time. And, of course, the lack of bacteria.

Here's scientific info about toxins:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods_and_cooking

The point is clear that if one is constantly taking in lots of toxins all the time, one is not allowing the body time to neutralise those toxins, and the body can't heal the lasting damage properly. That's why people on cooked diets benefit a small amount from long-term fasts as that is the only time when the body can devote itself to real healing, without constant toxins going into the body from cooked foods consumption at the same time and disrupting healing.

One apple-pie might not seem to do much damage by itself, but it would weaken the body very slightly for a short period. But it's the accumulation of toxins from constant eating of cooked foods that is the real problem.

[macgeek2005]

This has already been discussed in other threads. The point is that cooking creates many types of heat-created toxins all of which harm the body. It takes time for the body to not only neutralise those toxins but also more time to heal any lasting damage caused by those toxins. Plus, there's the loss of enzymes, thus forcing the body to produce more enzymes, thus gradually weakening the body over time. And, of course, the lack of bacteria.

Here's scientific info about toxins:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods_and_cooking

The point is clear that if one is constantly taking in lots of toxins all the time, one is not allowing the body time to neutralise those toxins, and the body can't heal the lasting damage properly. That's why people on cooked diets benefit a small amount from long-term fasts as that is the only time when the body can devote itself to real healing, without constant toxins going into the body from cooked foods consumption at the same time and disrupting healing.

One apple-pie might not seem to do much damage by itself, but it would weaken the body very slightly for a short period. But it's the accumulation of toxins from constant eating of cooked foods that is the real problem.

Yes, this makes sense. So what, approximately, do you think the threshold would be? How much cooked food/desserts can you eat, that you won't catch up with the bodies ability to keep cleaning itself out? For example, I eat an apple pie, and then wait until the body has completely "taken care" of it (whilst eating raw organic foods), and then eat another apple pie, etc. Surely there is an amount that, when counterbalanced by an overwhelming majority of raw organic food, cannot have a lasting impact on your health.

How long after the consumption of something toxic before the body is completely "reset"?

[cherimoya_kid]

See, here's the deal, MacGeek.

The problem isn't the acute problems that come up, like, for instance, you get extra mucus or a stiff neck (or whatever symptom) immediately, within a day after eating some junk.  You can see those immediately, so they can't surprise you, except the first time they happen.

Those situations aren't the problem.

The problem might be decreased stamina, sex drive, energy, muscle tone, strength, mood, etc., that take longer to show up.  That depends on which symptoms show up in your individual case, and which of those impairs you to some degree. Let's say you're an athlete, and need the extra aerobic stamina that eating all raw gives you.   It's important to at least try all raw for several months.  That way you know what you can expect from it.  These types of symptoms take longer to go away and come back, so it takes some time eating a certain way to improve or worsen them.

The problem almost certainly is the heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, etc., that take decades to happen, and which may very well take your life earlier than you want to die. 

Often those things can be predicted with family history, your personal habits (like diet, smoking, drug use, exercise, etc.), exposure to toxins, and blood work. 

Not always, though.   

Do you feel lucky?  How lucky?  Those are the real questions.

[macgeek2005]

See, here's the deal, MacGeek.

The problem isn't the acute problems that come up, like, for instance, you get extra mucus or a stiff neck (or whatever symptom) immediately, within a day after eating some junk.  You can see those immediately, so they can't surprise you, except the first time they happen.

Those situations aren't the problem.

The problem might be decreased stamina, sex drive, energy, muscle tone, strength, mood, etc., that take longer to show up.  That depends on which symptoms show up in your individual case, and which of those impairs you to some degree. Let's say you're an athlete, and need the extra aerobic stamina that eating all raw gives you.   It's important to at least try all raw for several months.  That way you know what you can expect from it.  These types of symptoms take longer to go away and come back, so it takes some time eating a certain way to improve or worsen them.

The problem almost certainly is the heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, etc., that take decades to happen, and which may very well take your life earlier than you want to die. 

Often those things can be predicted with family history, your personal habits (like diet, smoking, drug use, exercise, etc.), exposure to toxins, and blood work. 

Not always, though.   

Do you feel lucky?  How lucky?  Those are the real questions.

Yes, of course. I'm not worried about the immediate symptoms at all. I laugh at people who think that just because they don't get negative symptoms immediately, that that means the food did no harm.

I would like to live to as close to my life-span potential as possible, disease free. My concerns are cancer, heart disease, auto-immune diseases, etc. I've never drank alcohol in my life, and never will, and same goes for smoking and drugs.

I guess I'm just trying to understand exactly how it is that something I eat today can have an actual impact on my health for the rest of my life, because otherwise there'd be no justification to deprive myself of all the delicious things people have created. If one person gains weight when they eat pie, and I don't gain weight when I eat pie, what else is going on in my body? What else, aside from weight gain, which can be clearly seen, happens inside the body when something like pie is consumed? And how quickly is the body able to regenerate itself from any negative effects from the pie?

[TylerDurden]

Well, our general rule(well, AV's rule) is that one must eat at least 85% RVAF diet foods in order to heal properly at all, after having consumed cooked foods for decades. For those with serious health problems, 95-100% would be a better option for the first year or two as it's less strain on the body.

It all depends on one's age. I can get away with some things as I'm only 39, but if I were 85 I would only eat 100% raw all the time and would eat far more "high-meat" than otherwise as part of my diet. After all, even the healthiest oldsters tend to have some digestive problems due to old age gradually deteriorating the organs(though cooked-foodists have much worse digestive ailments) - eating something, therefore, that is fully predigested such as "high-meat" would avoid any possible issues.

[cherimoya_kid]

I guess I'm just trying to understand exactly how it is that something I eat today can have an actual impact on my health for the rest of my life, because otherwise there'd be no justification to deprive myself of all the delicious things people have created. If one person gains weight when they eat pie, and I don't gain weight when I eat pie, what else is going on in my body? What else, aside from weight gain, which can be clearly seen, happens inside the body when something like pie is consumed? And how quickly is the body able to regenerate itself from any negative effects from the pie?

It all depends on

1. your constitution

2. your environment (toxins, stress, etc.)

3. your general habits and healing methods (exercise, yoga, massage, posture, etc.)

4. your general diet (it's what you eat every day that makes you into your future self, not what you eat once)

Even if the pie doesn't make you fat, it might be scarring your arteries, or creating the conditions for a stroke, or setting you up for diabetes.

Also, what were the ingredients in the pie?  How high-quality were they, even if they were fresh and unprocessed?  How heavily cooked was the pie?

Etc.  It gets complicated quickly.

I treat the whole thing as an experiment.  Occasionally I cheat for social reasons, and I take careful note of what symptoms I notice, like excess mucus, sensitive teeth, lack of energy, etc..  I'm here to improve my health, and simultaneously learn about diet just for the enjoyment. I like learning.  Not everyone here sees it as an intellectual exercise, like I do.

I could definitely eat more junk than I do, and lightly cook much more of my food, and probably not notice much in the way of extra health problems. However, I've already had quite a few small strokes (my first one was at age 17), and all of my great-grandfathers died of sudden, MASSIVE strokes around age 60.  There's also a lot of heart disease in my family, so it definitely pays for me to be very careful, if I want to avoid death-by-stroke.