Raw veganism
Encyclopedia
Veganism
Veganism is the practice of eliminating the use of animal products. Ethical vegans reject the commodity status of animals and the use of animal products for any purpose, while dietary vegans or strict vegetarians eliminate them from their diet only...
and raw foodism
Raw foodism
Raw foodism is the practice of consuming uncooked, unprocessed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet....
. It excludes all food of animal origin
Animal product
Animal product, or animal by-product, is a term used to describe material taken from the body of a non-human animal. Examples are fat, flesh, blood, milk, eggs, and lesser known products such as isinglass and rennet....
, and all food cooked above 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit). A raw vegan diet includes raw vegetables and fruits, nuts and nut pastes, grain and legume sprouts
Sprouting
Sprouting is the practice of germinating seeds to be eaten either raw or cooked.They are a convenient way to have fresh vegetables for salads, or otherwise, in any season and can be germinated at home or produced industrially...
, seeds, plant oils, sea vegetables, herbs, and fresh juices. There are many different versions of the diet, including fruitarianism
Fruitarianism
Fruitarianism involves the practice of following a diet that includes fruits, nuts and seeds, without animal products, vegetables and grains. Fruitarianism is a subset of dietary veganism....
, juicearianism, and sproutarianism. The definition of a raw vegan diet can be loosened to include vegan diets with at least 75% raw foods.
Motivations
In addition to the ethics of eating meatEthics of eating meat
In many societies, controversy and debate have arisen over the ethics of eating animals. Ethical objections are generally divided into opposition to the act of killing in general, and opposition to certain agricultural practices surrounding the production of meat...
, dairy
Dairy
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting of animal milk—mostly from cows or goats, but also from buffalo, sheep, horses or camels —for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on a dedicated dairy farm or section of a multi-purpose farm that is concerned...
, eggs
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
and honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
, raw vegans may be motivated by health, spiritual or environmental reasons, or a combination of these.
In terms of health, some raw vegans believe that cooking foods destroys the complex balance of micronutrients. They may also believe that, in the cooking process, dangerous chemicals are produced by the heat interaction with fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Other followers of a raw vegan diet place importance on spiritual gain. Ruthann Russo, Ph.D and author of two books on the raw foods diet, says that the movement aims to look at "the way food, living, treatment of the earth, our treatment of each other, and our quest for physical, spiritual, and mental health all fit together."
Forest gardening
Forest gardening
Forest gardening is a food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans...
is a radical raw vegan lifestyle with a number of motives. Developed by raw vegan Robert Hart, forest gardening is a food production system based on woodland
Woodland
Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...
ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s, incorporating fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
and nut
Nut (fruit)
A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...
tree
Tree
A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
s, shrubs, herb
Herb
Except in botanical usage, an herb is "any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavoring, food, medicine, or perfume" or "a part of such a plant as used in cooking"...
s, vine
Vine
A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...
s and perennial vegetable
Perennial vegetable
Perennial vegetables are parts of plants that are prepared and eaten like a vegetable, and that are also perennial, in other words, the plants live for more than two years....
s. The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green leafy vegetables
Leaf vegetable
Leaf vegetables, also called potherbs, green vegetables, greens, leafy greens or salad greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots...
. Forest gardens are probably the world's oldest and most resilient agroecosystem
Agroecosystem
An agroecosystem is the basic unit of study for an agroecologist, and is somewhat arbitrarily defined as a spatially and functionally coherent unit of agricultural activity, and includes the living and nonliving components involved in that unit as well as their interactions.An agroecosystem can be...
.
Nutritional considerations
Raw vegans must ensure that their intake of vitamin B12Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12, vitamin B12 or vitamin B-12, also called cobalamin, is a water-soluble vitamin with a key role in the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system, and for the formation of blood. It is one of the eight B vitamins...
is adequate, since it is produced by bacteria and does not occur reliably in plant foods. Vitamin B12 deficiency can have serious consequences such as anemia and neurodegenerative disease. The Vegan Society
Vegan Society
The Vegan Society is a registered charity and the oldest vegan society in the world, founded on November 1, 1944, in England by Donald Watson, Elsie "Sally" Shrigley, and 23 others....
and Vegan Outreach
Vegan Outreach
Vegan Outreach is an American grassroots animal advocacy group working to promote veganism through the widespread distribution of printed informational booklets. As of March 2010, over 11 million hard copies of Vegan Outreach brochures have been handed out by members of Vegan Outreach around the...
, among others, recommend that vegans either consistently eat foods fortified with B or take a B supplement. Tempeh
Tempeh
Tempeh , or tempe , is a traditional soy product originally from Indonesia. It is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form, similar to a very firm vegetarian burger patty...
, seaweed
Seaweed
Seaweed is a loose, colloquial term encompassing macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae. The term includes some members of the red, brown and green algae...
, spirulina, organic
Organic food
Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.For the...
produce, soil, and intestinal
Intestine
In human anatomy, the intestine is the segment of the alimentary canal extending from the pyloric sphincter of the stomach to the anus and, in humans and other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine...
bacteria have not been shown to be reliable sources of B for the dietary needs of vegans.
Research
Medical studies on raw food diets have shown some positive and negative health outcomes. According to one medical trial, "long-term consumption of a 70% raw-plant-food diet is associated with favorable serum LDL cholesterol and triglycerides but also with elevated plasma homocysteineHomocysteine
Homocysteine is a non-protein amino acid with the formula HSCH2CH2CHCO2H. It is a homologue of the amino acid cysteine, differing by an additional methylene group. It is biosynthesized from methionine by the removal of its terminal Cε methyl group...
and low serum HDL cholesterol" as well as vitamin B12 deficiency.
Another study regarding concentrations of carotenoid compounds associated with chronic disease prevention in the blood plasma of individuals who had adhered to a long-term diet consisting of 95% raw foods indicated satisfactory concentrations of the carotenoid beta-carotene. However, the study also indicated that these individuals exhibited abnormally low levels of lycopene
Lycopene
Lycopene is a bright red carotene and carotenoid pigment and phytochemical found in tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables, such as red carrots, watermelons and papayas...
, another carotenoid associated with chronic disease prevention. Additionally, the study subjects were only reported as adhering to a diet of mostly raw foods, but were not reported as adhering to a diet of vegan raw foods.
A study mentioned benefits of a raw vegan diet for lowering obesity and hypertension A study has also shown short-term reduced fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a medical disorder characterized by chronic widespread pain and allodynia, a heightened and painful response to pressure. It is an example of a diagnosis of exclusion...
symptoms for some patients who engaged in a vegan diet. Another study indicated that some rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, systemic inflammatory disorder that may affect many tissues and organs, but principally attacks synovial joints. The process produces an inflammatory response of the synovium secondary to hyperplasia of synovial cells, excess synovial fluid, and the development...
patients who ate a raw vegan diet reported relief of subjective symptoms, but showed no measurable change in objective symptoms. The study further notes that half of the subjects had to be removed from the study because they were afflicted with nausea and diarrhea shortly after adapting the raw diet.
German research in 2003 showed significant benefits in reducing breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
risk when large amounts of raw vegetable matter are included in the diet. The authors attribute some of this effect to heat-labile phytonutrients.