In this article, Dr. Jameth Sheridan shares candidly on the pitfalls of a raw food or vegan diet.
Renegade Roundtable with Dr. Jameth Sheridan. Dr. Sheridan is a naturopath and nutritional consultant. He and his wife Kim co-authored “Uncooking with Jameth and Kim” and they co-own and operate Health Force Nutritional.
Kevin: So you’ve been at this for 23 years now. What are some of the most common pitfalls you see with a raw food or vegan diet?
Jameth: I think the number one pitfall that a raw fooder suffers from is, based on my 23 years of experience in raw food with countless tens of thousands of people, is if they’re a regular person, they eat regular foods, and let’s say they’re ill and they go raw immediately and they get well, I actually think that is ultimately a mistake. Because I see people when they “fall off the wagon” so to speak, they fall off hard and they fall back to what they started from. So if I’m eating regular pizza and regular chicken and regular animal products, things like that, regular cookies, I fall off the wagon with raw, do things with family, I’ll just go ahead and eat those and then, you know, “When I do that, and finish with my binge, then I’ll just go back to being raw.” And, I see a lot of people leaving raw foods or just being less healthy by going back and forth between those things. Because in raw the emphasis is so hard, and this is how I was taught too, on raw, that it forgets all the other things that are important, that make a raw food diet successful. And the number one thing that makes a raw food diet successful – all of a sudden, you are a whole food vegan.
If you become vegan, all of a sudden, if you stop eating animal products, cooked or raw – which are not good for you, you had an immense increase in your health. Your likelihood to get osteoporosis has plummeted; your likelihood to get cancer has plummeted; and as a whole food vegan, your likelihood to get heart disease is almost non-existent.
Now whole food meaning, you’re not just eating white sugar, white flour, and hydrogenated oil – all of which are vegan, but all of which are absolutely abysmal for you. A whole food vegan would eat things like millet, amaranth, quinoa, chick peas, you know, grains, beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables – actual food, unadulterated by nature. You’re also eating an organic diet, when you tend to go raw, and organic is huge. These things are just additives, and you don’t just eat a whole food, organic, vegan diet, you also change completely the types of foods you’re eating. For example, you don’t go from eating, let’s say a frozen vegan pizza, cooked, to a raw frozen vegan pizza. You change your food completely. You go from eating, let’s say a frozen vegan pizza, or a regular pizza, to broccoli, and cauliflower, and fruits, and sprouts, and flaxseeds, and actual foods that are completely different types of foods. So the amount of nutrients you are getting by being a raw fooder, unless you’re fruitarian, is dramatically higher. You’re also usually consuming more water, unless you’re doing lots of dehydrated things, or lots of cacao, you’re more hydrated, which is immensely beneficial. Some diets include lots of raw vegetable juice, which is tremendously beneficial. And, you are also eating a lot of your food raw, which there is a benefit to actually having things raw too, but it’s just one of the many benefits.
In raw food teaching, there is often taught, usually taught, that there’s two categories of food: foods that are raw, and foods that are cooked, and there is nothing in between. So if you’re eating something cooked, well it might as well be cheese lasagna, rather than tofu lasagna, because in the raw food world, there’s really no difference. And I’ve seen that information devastate peoples health, and I seen it have people leave the raw foods movement who would be having, let’s say, 80, 90% of their health has improved, and like “Wow, I love this.” And maybe 10 or 20% hasn’t, or 10 or 20% may have gotten worse, for some reason, some deficiency cropped up somewhere. And, if they usually talk to the raw food leaders or look at raw food text, they say, “Well, there’s a problem with you, you’re cleansing, you’re this, you’re that, blah blah blah blah. You’ve got to stay raw, because all cooked food is poison.” Even the, you know, sometimes even with macrobiotic diets, which the healing macrobiotic diet is an all-cooked food, vegan diet, there are many people who have overcome cancer with that. Now you can’t overcome cancer on poison, and by no means am I an advocate of macrobiotics, by any stretch of the imagination, because I think macrobiotics is very depleting long term but far better than the standard American diet.
So I think it’s important to be a whole food vegan at some point, and get a good basis of that. And if raw foods is not working for some reason, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Kevin: So some of the deficiencies that you encounter, with raw food are, maybe…
Jameth: I’m not saying they’re widespread, I just want to make sure it’s clear. I’ve met 20 plus year raw fooders who, for the most part, were following that regime, and who appear to be vibrantly healthy and they’re in excellent health, and I have no interest in trying to change their diet whatsoever. I just want them to live optimally and have the creatures of the planet live optimally and the planet as well. But for those who do, there’s some – there’s a group of raw fooders – I don’t know how to necessarily define the types yet – but it might be, people who tend to be vata, it is, in my experience, don’t necessarily thrive on 100% raw foods. And it could be that there’s possibly deficiencies of a type of protein, because it’s not a deficiency of protein, because on raw foods, if you eat an appropriate amount of nuts and seeds – and I think you can eat way too much of those – but an appropriate amount, let’s say, one handful or so, you can get tons of protein doing that. But there’s some vata types, with my experience, take a long time to recover from working out, and it has a much harder time building muscle, just on nut and seed protein. And you can’t really eat enough broccoli, because broccoli has, I think 20 or 30% – protein, very high. But to get that much grams of protein from broccoli, it’s virtually impossible. To eat that many calories, you would actually have to juice a couple of cases of stalks of broccoli to get sufficient protein – and you would get sufficient protein in that case. But broccoli’s also a cruciferous vegetable, and I love cruciferous vegetables for the liver detoxifying, for their anti-cancer benefits and they have some hormone balancing benefits too. They’re phenomenal foods. But raw broccoli, or any raw cruciferous in a large quantity, is really, really hard to process. It’s hard to deal with. So in cases like that, I’ve seen, if people move over to the legume family, it does not have to be soy beans. Soy beans are one of hundreds of different legumes. If you don’t like soy beans for some reason, just don’t eat them – not necessary. Lentils, chick peas, mung beans, adzuki beans, things like that. Now you can certainly do those raw, but it’s ironic that one of the reasons that soy is indicted amongst the raw foods communities is because research on raw soy shows that it is very difficult to digest. It has enzyme and protein and other inhibitors in it that make it hard to deal with and hard to grow on, but that’s when the soy beans are raw. Now when you sprout any legume, any legume sprouted still has a lot of these anti-nutrients in them and it’s harder to digest and get everything out of a raw legume sprout. Now it’s almost ironic though, when you steam those legumes you do destroy all those enzyme inhibitors and the enzymes as well. But at least you’re enzymatically neutral now. You have not cooked it, or charred it, or burned it so there’s no lucocytosis raising of the white blood cell count, with steamed legumes or any steamed vegetable. For those people who don’t thrive on raw, if they do that, sprouted and steamed legumes, not lightly steamed you’ve got to steam it the whole way. Raw is just hard to digest. Most people don’t even make raw hummus anymore with raw chick peas. Have you noticed that?
Kevin: Yes.
Jameth: Because they are notoriously difficult to digest raw. I’ve made lots of raw chick pea in my day, lots of raw sprouted things and always the thing I used to do and still do is the stuff that’s left over, a dip or pate or something, well you throw it in the dehydrator and make raw chick pea burgers and eat them the next day for dinner. I did that one time and I ate the things in the morning, the raw chick pea hummus we had the day before, a whole bunch of them, I brought them to my seminar and man, I had a hard time even being in the seminar because I had so much volume of gas, that smelled so bad and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t actually socially be in the actual building. I had to walk outside.
Kevin: Wow.
Jameth: Now that was because I had a concentrated, dehydrated version. Now if you sprout chick peas, and chick peas can be hard to sprout. Sometimes they just go bad before they sprout. Now I don’t mean soak. So actually sprouted chick peas that are steamed then mixed with raw tahini, no reason in any way shape or form to cook your tahini, is phenomenally digestible. Really, really awesomely digestible and to get back, if you sprout your legumes, steam them and put a little bit of flax oil on them and salt them whether it be Himalayan salt, Celtic sea salt, a little bit of gluten free tamari or miso, some sort of good quality source of organic sodium, in my experience I have never seen that not take away someone’s craving or desire for flesh. That is so much better for you nutritionally than eating a piece of flesh, raw or not. By any measurement that science has currently come up including [indecipherable] photography, it’s far superior to do that than it is to eat raw flesh. So what I’m saying is rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water and being 100% raw, if you’re eating an animal product because you’re better off not. You’re better off eating a whole food vegan cooked food like sprouted, steamed, salted, flax oil, legume that I talked about. That’s my experience.
Kevin Gianni
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/the-pitfalls-of-a-raw-food-or-vegan-diet-681939.html
March 9th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Veganism – potential pitfalls?
I’ve been vegetarian for a while now and have decided to "trail" veganism for a couple of months. I’ve started off quite well and am really enjoying the diet aspect of the lifestyle change, but have run into a pitfall – I’ve just been told that quorn isn’t suitable for vegans!
Are there any other seemingly vegan foods which are actually full of dairy I should be aware of? I was pretty shocked that Quorn is a no-no.
Any advice on avoiding the pitfalls would be great. Thanks
After the first two answers I feel I should probably add that one of the main reasons I am trying to go vegan is to stop eating diary products in full – no more saturated fat, hormones, allergenic proteins etc. As milk and eggs are in Quorn, I cannot eat this and meet my objective of going dairy free.
So I’m looking for advice on what else appears to be animal-free when it’s not, rather than advice how not to follow the herd.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
If you have no personal objection to eating quorn, then continue eating it. Why must you fit the mold of every other vegan?
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
What is Quorn? I say eat it anyways. Veganism is already restrictive enough. Eat what you feel fine with instead of following some herd.
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
According to wikipedia Quorn uses egg whites as a binder, so I personally don’t even consider that vegetarian. Some do, and that’s cool.
You could take a ‘flexitarian’ view on veganism, and live a generally vegan lifestyle, and just indulge in certain things very occasionally. be a ‘fleexan haha. Just coined that term.
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
i would check your local grocery store to see what there is.
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
There are no seemingly vegan foods full of dairy. There are vegetarian foods that are full of dairy, egg, and honey (the three most talked about vegan no-nos).
If you really want to be on a vegan diet, you should not assume anything with packaged foods. Unless you’re buying fresh fruits and vegetables, you need to check ingredient lists or look for "vegan" on the label. Even nuts, seeds, and some packaged fruits/vegetables may contain dairy, egg, honey, or other animal products.
Products from Quorn, Morningstar, Bocca, and other makers of vegetarian products very often put egg and dairy in their products. Unless they mark it as vegan, there’s a good chance it’s not. For example, I just looked at the ingredients in a few Quorn items. They all included some form of dairy and egg. Some products actually had "cheese" in the name of the product!
So, if you’re not into read labels, I’d stick to only fresh products. Even those, if you’re really really strict vegan, may have residual animal products. Almost no one is that strict, but if you are…
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I’m not a vegan, but I can’t eat dairy, so I look for vegan items. I’ve been disappointed that many veggie burgers contain dairy, for example.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
as a vegan, if you don’t know what something contains, assume it isn’t vegan.
A lot of biscuits and cereals contain whey powder.
Items that are fortified with vitamin D most often contain a form that is from Lanolin (sheep wool)
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
here you go http://www.godairyfree.org/Food-to-Eat/Food-Label-Info/Hidden-Dairy.html
the e numbers are a big one because alot of them are like beetle juice and stuff but supplyers wont release info on whats veg and whats not so you dont know wether or not your eating meat
i know its very hard avoiding animal ingredients in a meat world
i eat all the fake alternatives like facon bacon, sweetened soya milk, fake egg, golden syrup extra
so heres the pitfalls if the link doesnt work
Artificial Sweeteners – Darn, I guess we will have to suffer with real sugar! Some artificial sweeteners are derived from dairy foods.
Baby Formula – Read the labels carefully on this one. Babies can have much more severe allergic reactions to milk than adults.
Bakery Goods – This is a hard one to verify, although many fresh bakery goods do come labeled with ingredients.
Baking Mixes (cakes, biscuits, pancakes, etc.) – Read up, there are some okay brands.
Bath Products (shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc.) – Okay, so these are not food items, but those who tend to have skin reactions to milk products (i.e. eczema) may want to avoid topical application.
Bread – Whey is a common preservative in breads. Also, other milk proteins and possibly cheese or butter may be included, depending on the type and brand.
Breath Mints – Not all, but a few do contain casein related ingredients.
Candy – Much of the candy world (of the non-chocolate variety) is free game from a dairy free point of view, not from a health perspective of course, but there are a few to watch out for.
Canned Tuna Fish – Some contain hydrolized caseinate, check out our Product List for the good ones.
Caramel – This is a highly suspicious food and ingredient. It may either be made from sugar and water or milk.
Cereal – Dry and instant cereals vary significantly in ingredients. Even the same type of cereal may contain milk ingredients in the brand name, but not in the generic version.
Chewing Gum – Okay, now this is a weird one. Some brands do actually contain milk protein ingredients.
Chocolate – Milk chocolate is a given, but some semi-sweet and dark chocolate brands have milk ingredients as well. Luckily the better tasting ones don’t, check our Product List for some excellent dairy free chocolates.
Chocolate Drinks – Even the non-milk varieties frequently have some dairy to beef them up.
Coffee Whiteners / Creamers – Well, something has to make them white and creamy.
Cookies & Crackers – Often the most processed foods of them all.
Cream Liqueurs – These may possess solid milk ingredients or caseinates.
Custard / Pudding – Most contain milk products, although a few are dairy free.
Drugs / Medications – Lactose is used as the base for more than 20 percent of prescription drugs and about 6 percent of over-the-counter medicines and vitamins.
Eggnog – Try some soy-nog, or make an at home version with other "milk" alternatives.
Fat Replacers – Some are derived from milk, such as Simplesse® & Dairy-Lo®.
Fondues – Isn’t this the word the Swiss use for cheese?
Fried Foods – The breading on fried foods can contain many mysterious substances. Also, cheese is commonly added for flavor and texture.
Ghee – This is technically pure butter fat, no proteins or sugars, but some argue that trace amounts may still linger.
Goat’s Milk – Although slightly different, goat’s milk has proteins similar in structure to cow’s milk proteins, and thus is often an allergen for those with cow’s milk allergy. Also, goat’s milk contains a significant amount of lactose, just a touch less than cow’s milk, and thus not suitable for those with lactose intolerance.
Granola & Nutrition Bars – Just like cookies, various milk additives could be in there.
Gravies – Some utilize milk ingredients for flavor and texture.
Hot Cocoa Mix – The best varieties are pure cocoa and sugar, but some have milk ingredients added for a creamier drink.
Hot Dogs – What isn’t in hot dogs?
Imitation Maple and Other Syrups – Go for the real stuff, it tastes much better!
Instant Potatoes – Particularly the Au Gratin varieties.
Kosher Parve Desserts – Most parve foods are okay, but those with highly sensitive milk allergies may have a problem with the desserts.
Lactose Free Milks – These will still be loaded with milk proteins.
Lunch Meats & Sausages – Some "meat allergies" are actually dairy allergies in disguise. Lactose and caseinates are common in these foods, as well as ingredient cross-contamination.
Margarine – Most are not dairy free, and many are rich in hydrogenated oils.
Meal Replacement / Protein Powders & Beverages – Those instant breakfast mixes and muscle beverages may contain powdered milk, or other milk derived ingredients.
Peanut Butter – A very few may contain milk solids.
Potato Chips – Particularly risky among the flavored varieties, although several brands and f
References :
im vegan
March 9th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Honestly, that quorn stuff, and other meat/cheese replacements, are just processed junk anyway. I eat them about as often as I eat junk food, which is rarely. Plus, it gets expensive…you’ll be amazed at how cheap a vegan diet *really* is as long as you cut the crap.
Watch out for: milk, whey, and casein (including sodium caseinate and calcium caseinate) as ingredients, as well as egg albumin and albumin.
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vegan bodybuilder and personal trainer
March 9th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
If you really want to eat it, eat it.
You don’t have to abide by every strict rule of veganism there is. Just be yourself and don’t worry about the standards. Veganism is pretty hardcore. If you can’t do it perfectly, that’s ok. Every little bit helps.
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Vegan that eats honey!