how healthy is raw?

August 1, 2004

Interesting article. Thank you for sharing.

After reading this article I have a lot of questions especially regarding the omega-3 fatty acids. I just spent close to 50 dollars on a product by Udo Erasmus that combines flax oil with different oils that supposedly provide the essential fatty acid-omega 3 requirements. I guess its not as good as I was hoping it would be.

It appears that this article was written by a member of the a live foods organization in NY. Perhaps no one really has THE one correct answer to a healthy reverent life path. I look foward to reading responses from other members of the group.

love and light

pam

August 1, 2004

Thanks for sharing this article Ahstarra. I read all of it & the info

is very thought provoking. I'm curious about why no one else has yet

responded to it? Perhaps it hits a " raw " nerve? Pun intended. ;-)

Shakti

, ashtarra brissette

<arcadiapress@e...> wrote:

> This is a long discussion, challenging the raw food diet. I have

read some of it, I thought it would be interesting to pass on, I

believe the article by Gabriel Cousens that said that one's raw food

diet has to be individualized applies here...Ashtarra

>

> -----Forwarded Message-----

> listadmin@l...

> Jul 25, 2004 9:14 PM

> arcadiapress@e...

> Accent on Wellness-7/26- Paul Nison Canceled/Special

Controversal Topic

>

> Hi everyone,

>

> An interesting and controversial event, tomorrow, 7/26. Below is

the post from Accent on Wellness which contains the interview that

will be the topic on conversation.

>

> Should be lively!

> ~~~~~~~

> Accent on Wellness Raw Food Support Group

>

> With Donna Perrone & Karen Ranzi

>

> To Discuss Frederic Patenaude's Controversal Interview with Nazariah

>

> Monday, July 26, 2004

> * new time-7:30-9:30pm

>

> at our new location

> 33 East 7th Street

> between 2nd Avenue & Bowery

> a few steps down under a Chiropractic office.

>

> We come together in a sharing circle to exchange information, give

support, and create a community.

>

> An Interview with Nazariah

>

> Veganism and the Raw Food Movement

> By Frederic Patenaude

>

> In March I had the pleasure to interview Brother Nazariah, who is

the founder of the Essene Church of Christ. Nazariah shares with us

his experiences in the raw vegan movement in this fascinating

interview. He may be reached on the Internet at www.essene.org.

<http://www.essene.org> I have made a few comments throughout the

interview, which are in [brackets].

>

> FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH THE RAW VEGAN DIET

>

> Frederic Patenaude: What is your background with the raw food diet?

>

> Nazariah: I'm 46 now and I've been a vegetarian since I was 17. At

that age, I not only became a vegetarian but also a raw foodist. I

included raw dairy into my diet because I had met an elderly Essene

teacher who recommended that. Historically, that used to be the

Essene diet. The Essenes, for the most part, were not vegans. They

were vegetarians and many of them were raw foodists, but they ate

fermented dairy products such as yogurt and kefir. So that was my

diet was for 7 years. During that time, I did great — no problems at

all.

>

> Then, when I had moved to another location, I became very attracted

to the vegan philosophy, because it is a beautiful philosophy. I then

became a raw vegan.

>

> After 5 years on a raw vegan diet, I lost the ability to walk. All

of my extremities — my hands, my fingers and my feet — were in such

pain that I couldn't move. I had central nervous system problems and

I was B12 anemic. All of that happened after 5 years on a raw vegan

diet.

>

> So I switched back to eating the raw fermented dairy products. At

that point, being as nerve-damaged as I was, I also included eggs. I

healed myself by reintroducing those products.

>

> At that point, I was wondering whether this was an experience

unique to myself, or whether other persons had had problems on the

raw food diet in the long-term. In the short term, you don't have

those sorts of problems. They're nutritional deficiencies that take

several years to manifest themselves.

>

> LACK OF SUCCESS IN THE RAW-VEGAN MOVEMENT

>

> Nazariah: So I did some research. I put a call out on the Internet

at different raw food chat boards. Because I was one of the speakers

at raw food events, I got to hang out with the other noted raw food

speakers. I started realizing that problems like I'd had were rampant

in the raw food movement, but don't get talked about.

>

> When the people who lecture and write the books start themselves

having problems on the diet, they hide that fact because they are

earning their livings being a raw food lecturer/author. I hate to say

that, but it's that way. I've seen it happen again and again, when I

will personally know a famous raw food speaker/teacher, and because I

personally know them, I know that they are going through anxiety

attacks, panic attacks, clinical depression, that they're having pain

in their joints, they're losing their teeth — things like that. And

yet, I'll see them speak at a raw food convention and they never

mention any of the problems they're experiencing. They just praise

how perfect the raw vegan diet is. And what happens is any time

people are having problems on the raw vegan diet, they get told that

they're just experiencing detox and cleansing. But that's just a pat

answer.

>

> [Comments by Frederic: There is a big misconception in the raw food

movement. People will believe that whenever something goes wrong, it

is because of " detox. " I keep reminding people that the intense

period of detoxification is often something that lasts less than a

few months — often only a few weeks. If symptoms persist, they are

often signs of nutritional imbalances.]

>

> DEATHS IN THE RAW-VEGAN MOVEMENT

>

> Nazariah: Here, in the Eugene area, where I live, a man in the

local raw food support group died about two years ago. He was only in

his forties. For two weeks before his death, he'd been telling the

leader of that group that he was having bad chest pains, but she just

kept telling him, " oh, it's just detox, it's just cleansing. "

>

> Frederic Patenaude: And he had been into this for a long time?

>

> Nazariah: Yes, for a long time. He was one of the funding members

of the raw food support group there. His doctor, when he died, told

his wife (the man's wife) that her husband had died of starvation.

His body just starved to death, even though he was eating raw foods

everyday. He wasn't absorbing enough nutrients from it.

>

> I was telling that story to a woman in Santa Monica who is part of

a raw food support group there, and she responded by saying: " Oh

yeah, we recently had a guy who died the same way, and he wasn't very

old either. The doctor said that his body just starved for lack of

nutrients. " Then I was telling another woman in Florida who's member

of a raw food support group there the same story about both these

people, the one in Eugene and the one in Santa Monica, and she

responded by saying, " Oh yeah, we've had two die that way. "

>

> RAW VEGAN FALLACY #1: PROTEIN

>

> Nazariah: The more I got into looking into this, the more I found

that a lot of the things that get preached in the raw food movement

just aren't true. One has to do with protein. There is a real issue

with getting enough protein. Over a period of several years, some

people become really protein deficient.

>

> Protein is what rebuilds everything in our body. Everyday we're

losing billions of cells, and they have to be replaced. Well, it's

protein that is used by the body to rebuild all those things. So what

happens is that over a period of time, the body just isn't rebuilding

all of that and you end up having nerve damage and different

repercussions. That can happen even in the cooked-food vegan diet.

>

> [Comments by Frederic: The protein requirements are different for

each individual. The problem is that those needing higher amounts of

protein who go on raw vegan diets are often the ones who experience

the most problems. Lack of strength, hair loss, and constant hunger

are some of the symptoms that can occur.] Longevity of Vegans

>

> Nazariah: A study on the true mortality rates of vegetarians and

vegans was published recently, and the results were partly shown in

Ahimsa Magazine, which is a vegan magazine. Even though the results

were not good for the vegan movement, that vegan magazine said in an

editorial that they felt that in fairness to the readers, they needed

to publish the information.

>

> The information was that even though we've been led to believe that

vegans live longer, they actually live less long than many other

dietary categories. Vegans have a high incidence of degenerative

brain diseases — Alzheimer, dementia, and things of that nature.

>

> In the past, all of the positive statistics about vegans, all

the " less this " and the " less that, " all the good things that were

taught in books like John Robbins's Diet for a New America — all

those statistics weren't from studies from large groups of people who

actually died. They were just extrapolated information. It was like,

John Robbins would say, " Okay, fat is one of the things that cause

heart disease. Vegans are eating 30% less fat, therefore they will

die of 30% less heart disease " It was all theory. As it turns out,

there are certain things that are good about the vegan diet — such as

less fat, less cholesterol — but the problem is that there are

certain deficiencies in the diet, even in the cooked-vegan diet, that

actually cause vegans to have more of certain serious diseases,

especially brain-related ones, because it's all having to do with the

central nervous system.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Are there other studies to back up your claim

that vegans live less long than meat eaters?

>

> Nazariah: See, over the years, I've read many studies that have

caused me to come to this conclusion. But I've also spoken to many

experts, such as Gabriel Cousens, who have clinical experience with

vegans. But it goes back to the 1990's, when Vegetarian Times, which

is a major magazine, published the results of a study that was geared

to just women, and tried to see who lived the longest, between meat

eaters, lacto-ovo vegetarians and vegan women. It turned out that the

lacto-ovo vegetarians lived the longest, the meat eaters lived the

next longest, and vegans lived the least long. And that was in

Vegetarian Times approximately in 1990. So as the years went by and

studies were done, it just became sort of overwhelmingly obvious that

a lot of the things that we believe in the raw food movement and the

vegan movement literally aren't verifiable by science, and science

actually discredits a lot of these claims.

>

> The good news is that a vegetarian diet, which includes some dairy

and eggs, appears to be very healthy. That's the good news, is that

we can be healthy vegetarians. It's extremely questionable whether

very many of us can be healthy vegans. It might be possible, but that

it doesn't seem possible for the majority. The majority of vegans are

actually not healthy.

>

> [Comments by Frederic: Actually, I haven't seen studies showing

that vegans live less long than vegetarians.]

>

> B-12 DEFICIENCY

>

> Nazariah: Most vegans are not getting enough B-12. It's very

important to take a B-12 supplement if you're on a vegan diet, and a

lot of vegans don't. A lot of the sources vegans have believed they

were getting their B12 from actually aren't good. For instance, the

blue-green algae, the spirulina, sea vegetables, all of those things

are listed as having a lot of B12, but studies have shown that

they're analog B12, which can't be utilized by the human body. Analog

B-12 competes for receptor sites with the real usable B-12. It

results that eating any of those things, it's not only that you're

not getting the B-12 you think you're getting, you're actually going

to get less, because the analog B-12 clings to the limited numbers of

receptor sites in the body for real B12 — and then real B-12 can't

cling to it, because it's already taken by the analog B-12. So,

people who have been eating those things in the vegan movement

thinking that it's a natural source of B12 and that they don't need

to take a B-12 supplement, become very B-12 anemic.

>

> Gabriel Cousens, a holistic M.D., has become very concerned about

the B-12 issue and is now publishing the results of new research. He

says that it's been demonstrated that 80% of vegans become seriously

B-12 deficient. He then lists the problems that can be related to B-

12 deficiency, and it's an incredible list of problems.

>

> VEGETARIANISM VERSUS VEGANISM

>

> Nazariah: Where I come out on all this, is that when we look at our

own family lines, most of us have not had a vegetarian ancestor. The

vast majority of us, living in America, have not had a single

vegetarian ancestor, going back all the way to this almost countless

line of generations. And certainly, there was not a vegan in that

family line. Therefore, that's a pretty radical thing to do, if you

look at it that way, to all of a sudden become a vegan, when no one

in your genetic line has been a vegan, going all the way back to

perhaps thousands of years ago. We've been eating animal products for

all that time, so the human system is expecting to get nutrients that

way.

>

> So what I advocate now is that people become vegetarians, not

vegans. With that in mind, there are certain smart things that you

can do. For instance, the problem with dairy products that most

people have is the digestion of lactose. Lactose is what causes

mucus. But in fermented dairy the lactose is pre-digested by the

fermentation process. Even most people who are lactose intolerant can

tolerate fermented dairy. Fermented dairy is yogurt, kefir, etc. You

can also have some organic eggs from free-range chickens.

>

> FALLACIES IN THE RAW MOVEMENT #2: THE EVILS OF COOKING

>

> Nazariah: Another one of the fallacies of the raw food movement is

the idea that once you cook vegetables, you destroy all of the

nutrients. It simply isn't true, according to some tests that have

been done.

>

> They did a test for cancer purposes where they knew that there were

certain nutrients in certain vegetables with anti-cancer properties.

So they fed one group of people raw vegetables and they fed another

group cooked vegetables. Then they checked their blood, to see which

group had the highest level of the positive anti-cancer properties

from the vegetables in their bloodstream, and it was the people on

the cooked vegetables that had it, far more than the people on the

raw vegetables.

>

> The reason is simply because most people digest cooked vegetables

better than they digest raw vegetables. More nutrients get in the

bloodstream from the cooked vegetables.

>

> What I point out is that it's the same thing with a lot of the

nutrients in vegetable matter. A lot of times, you'll eat the raw

vegetables and your body doesn't really break down the fibers enough

to absorb certain of the nutrients. In a tomato, for example, you

find lycopene, which is one nutrient that they've found which is

really good for the human heart and has anti-cancer properties.

Lycopene is not digested in a raw tomato. It is digested in a cooked

tomato. So, there are some nutrients that are more absorbed in cooked

vegetables than in raw vegetables.

>

> If a person isn't defending a particular " ism " , but is just looking

for truth, you'll find that the healthiest diet is one that includes

a lot of both cooked vegetables, and raw vegetables — because that's

the best of both worlds. You're getting the things from the raw

vegetables that you can't get from a cooked vegetable and you're

getting things from the cooked vegetables that you're not going to

get from the raw vegetables.

>

> THE HEALTHIEST DIET

>

> Nazariah: That is the healthiest diet. A vegetarian diet that's not

a junk food vegetarian diet — but one based good, whole, organic

foods.

>

> The healthiest diet would have one meal a day that is a raw

vegetable salad — a major vegetable salad, not a little iceberg

lettuce, but with romaine lettuce, broccoli, etc. — a real heavy-duty

salad.

>

> Another meal would be cooked and feature things like steamed

veggies, or a stir-fry, so it would have a lot of cooked veget;ables

in it.

>

> A third meal would simply be fruit, like a fruit breakfast or a

smoothie.

>

> In there, somewhere, you should add some protein-rich foods. So

either with your salad, or with your cooked meal, you want to have

yogurt or kefir, or hard-boiled eggs on your salad, or something.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Could that be beans?

>

> Nazariah: It can some days, but if it were going to always be that,

then that would be vegan, and the whole point of everything I've just

told you is that it seems that the vegan diet isn't beneficial in the

long-term. If a person were going to be a vegan, they could be having

some tofu, tempeh, or some sort of a bean-type protein with their

steamed veggies. That diet would be a healthy vegan diet, as far as

vegan diets go. But what I'm saying is that the latest research is

that the vegan diet itself is deficient in the long-term.

>

> MORE NUTRIENTS LACKING IN THE VEGAN DIET

>

> Frederic Patenaude: What about supplements? If someone takes B-12,

vitamin D, etc., could that be complete?

>

> Nazariah: They keep on discovering certain little things that we

didn't know, even three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. You

really can't be sure that there's something else that they haven't

discovered that's lacking in the vegan diet.

>

> For example, we only found out a few years ago about the need for

the omega-3. Omega-3 fatty acids are very important, and it's very

difficult to get them on a vegan diet. Several years ago, when that

got discovered, we got told that it's in flax seeds. So then people

in the vegan movement started having a lot of flax seeds or flax oil,

and stuff like that. Well, now, as recently as a year ago, they

discovered that we only absorb something like less than 6% of the

omega 3 in flax oil. So in other words, you'd have to eat an

incredible amount of flax oil to get very much omega 3 from it,

because most people don't absorb very much of it from flax oil.

>

> And then, they discovered as recently as one year ago that there's

a long-chain fatty acid, which is really important to the brain and

is not found in any vegan source of food. Then about a month ago,

Gabriel Cousens said that this long chain fatty acid, called EPA, is

present in this kind of wild plant called purslane. But hardly

anybody knows that in the vegan movement, because that just got

discovered a month ago. And most of them don't know that they're even

missing this long-chain fatty acid.

>

> What I'm telling you that for is that, even though the general idea

is that you just combine some beans and grains and maybe take a B-12

supplement and you're going to have everything that you need,

actually, there are little things, like certain fatty acids, that

they keep on discovering that aren't in the vegan diet, until they

figure out some way that you can get it from a vegan source. So I

wonder, whether or not in the next five years, or 10-20 years,

they're going to keep on discovering little things like that, that

they didn't know before.

>

> It's certainly has been happening my whole lifetime. They keep on

discovering ether new tidbits of information. So if a person were

concerned about health, I wouldn't recommend a vegan diet.

>

> ETHICS AND HEALTH

>

> Nazariah: If your main reason for being a vegan is the ethical

concerns for the animal world and if you're willing to take on the

personal karma of being less healthy because of your ethical

considerations for the animal world, then, that's an okay reason to

be a vegan, but not health, because it doesn't seem to be healthy in

the long-term.

>

> So you have to just decide, where you're at on that. If you don't

care about your own health, or if you're willing to sacrifice your

own health because of the ethical considerations for the animal

world, then I don't have any problems with that. If a person knows

that they're going to have an increased chance of dying prematurely,

and having different health problems, but are choosing that path

knowingly, because of their love for the animal world, well then

that's fine. As long as they're doing it knowingly.

>

> My viewpoint is that I think that for the animal world, our

generation is making a good step in the right direction by simply

stopping eating animals. We're making a good step in the right

direction for our species. After a certain number of generations of

our family line actually being vegetarian, we could probably evolve

from a vegetarian species into a vegan species — the way evolution

works.

>

> But you don't just go from a meat eating species to all of a sudden

being a vegan species without a lot of traumatic problems. So I

advise a more intermediate step. Let's first evolve into being

vegetarians for a number of generations, then let's evolve into

veganism and let evolution happen in that way.

>

> RAW-VEGANISM DURING PREGNANCY

>

> Nazariah: I don't think that it's wise for a woman who is pregnant

to eat a raw-vegan diet, and the reason is that there are numbers of

studies and view points that believe that there is an insufficient

amount of nutrients comes in — especially vitamin B12. If a woman

were taking the vitamin B-12 supplement, and certain other

supplements, then she probably could stay on a raw-vegan diet.

However, a lot of the people that are on the raw-vegan don't believe

in supplements — they don't believe in taking vitamin B12. And

according to the latest research from Gabriel Cousens, 80% of vegans

are B-12 deficient. A vitamin B-12 deficiency in children leads to

irreversible brain damage. So even if later in their life, they're

eating plenty of B-12, there's been irreversible brain damage already

done.

>

> I understand the reasons that a woman would choose to be a raw

vegan herself and to attempt to raise her children that way, and even

to attempt to maintain that diet while she's pregnant. The reason is

that she believes that it's good for her and that it will be good for

her children. The problem is that actual scientific evidence shows

otherwise. It's very risky and dangerous for a pregnant woman to be

on a raw vegan diet, and it is risky and dangerous to raise small

children on a raw vegan diet.

>

> Now, one might say, are there other problems besides the B-12

issue? Well, the B-12 issue is very important. There would need to be

a B-12 supplement to be raising your child on a raw-vegan. But B-12

isn't the only issue. Many children who are being raised on a raw-

vegan diet are suffering from various nutritional deficiencies that

affect them later in life. And even if a person believes that perhaps

a child can be raised successfully on a raw-vegan diet, they owe it

to their child to research the issue before attempting to actually

raise the child as a raw-vegan. It's not enough to research the issue

by asking raw-food experts, because as I've pointed out in this

interview, raw-food experts have been spreading incorrect information

for a number of years. You have to actually get into talking to other

sources of information, including nutritional scientists — people who

actually study nutrition.

>

> IS 100% RAW IDEAL?

>

> Nazariah: Here's what I think now: a person on a raw diet,

including fermented dairy products or eggs, will do fine. But if a

person was going for what the healthiest diet is, I think having one

meal of cooked vegetables per day — steamed vegetables or an oriental

stir-fry, or something like that — is actually even healthier than

being 100% raw for this reason:

>

> Studies have shown that certain important nutrients in vegetables

are better absorbed and utilized by a human being from cooked

vegetables. And other certain important nutrients are better absorbed

and utilized by a human being from raw vegetables. So, the best of

both worlds is each day to have cooked and raw vegetables in our diet.

>

> So actually, as far as what would be the most healthy diet, I think

it would be one meal each day that includes cooked vegetables, like

some steamed veggies or stir-fry and one meal per day that's

basically a big, raw, vegetable salad, and, if there's a third meal,

that can be a couple pieces of fruit or fruit smoothie for breakfast,

and that would be raw. So the diet that I just described would be two

third raw. And then there's got to be a good source of protein in

that diet, which means that perhaps with the cooked meal, one might

have some kefir, some yogurt, or perhaps, on the salad a couple of

hard-boiled eggs.

>

> WHAT'S MISSING IN THE VEGAN DIET

>

> Nazariah: This leads me to question the protein theories that I

have learned. The current RDAs for protein are 0.8 grams for every

kilo of ideal body weight, which seems fairly easy to get on a raw-

vegan diet. So where do you get the impression that protein is such

an important element in the diet?

>

> Where we get the impression is from the actual crippled people and

people with nervous disorders on the vegan diet. See, on paper, like

you're saying, it all looks fine. But in reality, you have people on

long-term vegan diets having real problems.

>

> So that's where we find out that there are problems. So then the

investigators say, " Okay, even though we thought that there was

plenty of these nutrients in a long-term vegan diet, we have these

degenerative brain diseases and things like that happening to vegans:

so what's the problem? " Then they discover that there are certain

long-chain fatty acids and other things that we're not really

thinking about when we're just looking at how many ounces of protein

is in this or that.

>

> The real complexity comes in that there'd be these things that we

haven't factored in. And then even right now, there's no reason to

think that in the next five or ten years they're not going to

discover more of those little things that we don't currently know

about, because they keep discovering more. You have to realize that

in the 1900s, nobody knew what B-12 was, nobody knew what vitamin C

was, nobody knew what vitamin A was — that's all stuff that got

discovered later. And as the years go by, they keep discovering more

things. Rather than look at all the things they've discovered so far,

and then look at whether or not you can get them on a certain diet,

it's good to look at groups of people who have been following a

certain diet and if they're healthy or not.

>

> LONG-TERM VEGANS DON'T LOOK GOOD

>

> Nazariah: One of the things that I've just noticed, with my own

eyeballs, is that a lot of long-term vegans don't look healthy. They

look kind of emaciated, their skin is kind of yellow, they've got

bags under their eyes, their hair's not good — it's splitting, their

fingernails aren't good. So just looking at long-term vegans, like if

you go to a vegan organization's meeting and look at the people and

you'll realize that they actually don't even look healthy, especially

when you look at the people that have been on it for longer than 10

years. So then you start finding out that they're having really major

health problems related to certain nutritional deficiencies.

>

> I want to emphasize that I was a vegan. I was a radical vegan. I

was in favor of the philosophy, and I still think it's a beautiful

philosophy. I still think it's fine for a person, in spite of all

that I've said — to just knowingly become a vegan. But what they

shouldn't be under is the false illusion that they're following a

diet that's healthier than other diets, which is what they thought.

In fact, it's probably not as healthy as certain other diets. And

it's okay to do it, as long as you realize that you are taking a

risky dietary choice, and you're doing it for ethical reasons, not

health reasons.

>

> [Comments by Frederic: I wouldn't generalize like that. Not all

vegans are unhealthy. However, there are some people who definitely

aren't doing well and do not look well, which can be attributed to

their diet because their problems go away when they stop being

vegans. ]

>

> RAW-VEGAN FALLACY #3: ENZYMES

>

> Nazariah: You're probably familiar with the very recent case in

Florida, where a small child died on a raw-vegan diet. When that

happened, there were a lot of newspaper articles in Florida about the

raw-food diet. And those reporters were going around, asking

different nutritional experts for their opinion on the raw-food diet.

Well, some buddy in Florida sent me a couple of newspaper articles,

and in those articles, there were a few nutritional scientists

interviewed. They were pointing out, like I've mentioned before, that

most of the nutrients get absorbed better in a cooked vegetable, and

a few get absorbed and utilized better in a raw vegetable. Therefore,

the healthiest diet would be one that included both raw and cooked

vegetables, because then you're getting the nutrients that are better

absorbed in each way.

>

> But there are other fallacies that nutritional scientists pointed

out. One of which is the whole living enzyme thing. Only one

researcher, in the 1940's, that Dr. Howell, who always gets mentioned

in the raw food literature, believed that there was a chance that,

when you ate raw foods, those enzymes in the food would make it to

the part of the digestion process where they could be helpful, before

they got themselves completely fried. But, your other 99% of

researchers don't believe that. And this is what people in the raw-

food movement don't realize, is that the idea that the raw enzymes in

food that you eat are going to help you digest your food is not

believed to be true by 99% of researchers. The reason is because

before food every gets to the point where the nutrients are being

extracted, it's already been totally broken down by your own

digestion process. When you eat food, it goes to a place in your

stomach where there's these incredible " fires " with acids, and stuff

like that, and it totally breaks down your food before it gets to the

point that those enzymes could help in the way that raw-foodists

believe they help.

>

> But, the other thing is that the enzymes of a plant are not the

same as the enzymes of a human being, in our digestive tract. The

enzymes of a plant are designed by a plant to help the plant digest

its nutrients, its food. So the enzymes of a broccoli plant are for

the broccoli plant to digest its food. If you look at them with a

microscope, they aren't the same as the enzymes in a human digestive

tract.

>

> Now there are a few plant enzymes that have been found to help

digest certain things, like for instance in papayas you have papain.

There are a couple of plant enzymes that seem to have a beneficial

effect in digesting certain things, but the idea that we have when we

are eating our salads and our raw foods that all of those living

enzymes in those plants are somehow going to aid our digestion

process actually is not what science has found.

>

> UNDERWEIGHT RAW VEGANS

>

> Frederic Patenaude: If we go to a raw food conference, you notice

that a lot of men look quite skinny or emaciated. Some say it's detox

and that the weight will come back, but then many have been on this

diet for quite a while and still are quite underweight.

>

> Nazariah: That's the big problem now, but there are a few

exceptions to the rule: people who have amazing digestive systems and

are able to digest nutrients properly on an all-raw diet. But the

important thing is that those are the exception to the rule. The vast

majority of people does not adequately break down and digest all the

raw foods that they're eating. And that's why they can't reach a

healthy weight.

>

> I mentioned to you that several people have died on a raw food diet

and that when they died; the doctor said that their body had starved

to death. Those weren't people that were fasting; they were people

that were eating raw foods everyday. But their body starved to death

because these individuals had less effective digestive systems than

the average person. So, even though the average person would not

digest as many nutrients from the raw vegetables as from the cooked

vegetables, people with poor digestion digest so few nutrients on the

raw food diet that they can actually starve to death even though they

are eating everyday.

>

> And so, when one sees things like that happen and then try to bring

that up and talk about it in the raw-food movement, then everyone

gets really defensive and starts attacking you and labeling you in

some negative way.

>

> What raw-foodism has become is just another " ism, " that is defended

by the true believers. And any information that I've provided you in

this interview, what the true believers will do with it is that

they'll simply look at it and immediately start forming arguments and

opinions to counter it, without ever being open to the possibility

that it might actually be true. Just like a Jehovah Witness would

defend Jehovaism, and a Mormon would defend Mormonism, raw-foodists

will defend raw-foodism. The Raw-Vegan Movement

>

> Frederic Patenaude: When we talk to these leaders, people like

Gabriel Cousens, they'll acknowledge the B-12 issue. But you don't

just recommend supplements but move away from the vegan diet

completely. Why?

>

> Nazariah: The thing is that I'm not so personally invested in

having to defend the raw-food diet or the vegan diet. I simply got

into all of this because I was a seeker of truth, and I was looking

for a diet that was spiritual and healthy, and wherever truth has led

me, I followed. The problem is that with most of these noted leaders

of the movement are authors. That's how they got to be the noted

leaders, because they were writing the books. And they're on the

lecture circuit, they have clients, they're earning their living from

being an authority on veganism or raw-foodism. If they completely

just shift and say, " I no longer believe that the raw-vegan diet is

anything that should be advocated to the large number of people, "

then the problem is that it pulls the rug from underneath them,

personally, in regards to how they're learning their living. So I

hate to say a thing like this, but from what I've seen with my own

eyes, it seems to be part of the problem.

>

> The leaders, the authority figures, are earning their living from

being promoters of this particular diet. So therefore — and even the

best of them — when they start to see some problems, their instinct

is to just recommend a particular supplement, or something like that,

and of course, usually they sell the supplements that they're

recommending. You'll notice that most of them do. So they sell those

things, but if they were to simply say, " Gosh, you know even though I

became a famous author on this topic, it doesn't actually seem to be

valid anymore, " they would have to change their entire career. The

thing that they're famous for would not be something that they aren't

in favor of anymore. It's a radical thing that they would have to

experience and go through.

>

> LOOK-TERM RAW-FOOD AUTHORS EATING COOKED FOOD

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Are you saying that these leaders may actually

not be vegans themselves but won't come out publicly and say that?

>

> Nazariah: That's not what I just said. But since you are saying

that, on whether or not they are vegans or not, all I can say is that

I have seen with my own eyes certain things... One incident occurred

when I was one of the speakers at the raw-food convention in San

Francisco, a few years back. Two of the speakers were really

insistent that one has to be on a 100% raw-vegan diet and that 80%

raw is not okay to get the benefits. They said out loud that you have

to be 100% raw-vegan. And each of those speakers claimed to have been

100% raw-vegans for 20 years. They were the most aggressive,

assertive speakers in the entire convention, really negative towards

anyone that would just eat partially raw. Well, before the end of

that weekend, I saw each of them sneakily eat cooked food.

>

> I went for a walk and a few blocks away from the convention center

and I walked by a pizza restaurant, and there was one of the speakers

who had said those things, and he's eating a pizza. You can order a

pizza with no cheese on it, but even then it would be cooked food and

he was claiming that he hadn't eaten cooked food in 20 years. And it

looked like it was a cheese pizza.

>

> Then when I was leaving the San Francisco airport, and I was

walking around that round concourse in the airport, with little

restaurants and things like that, and there was the other speaker who

had been so aggressive and assertive about having to be 100% raw. He

was sitting at a table having a plate of spaghetti. I don't know

whether that was vegan or not, but it was certainly cooked. And, as I

was approaching him and he saw me coming up, he stuck up a newspaper

and hid his face behind it. But I didn't embarrass him by walking up

to him.

>

> One of the real problems in that raw food movement with those

experts and authors is that they have a lot of guilt because they get

into this thing about having to be 100% raw. And when they themselves

have a binge or sneakily eat some cooked food, they don't want to

admit it because it would wreck their reputation as the great raw-

foodist that never eats cooked food. So therefore they eat the cooked

food on the sly and then have guilt about it. They start to get into

a very vicious cycle psychologically. Yet, when you speak to them or

when they do their lecture, they just still claim to have never eaten

cooked food in all these years. They put on a fake front to the

public. So I saw that with my own eyes with a number of the leading

individuals.

>

> So, are there some of those leaders who really are 100% raw-vegans

through the years and are healthy? There might be. But, they also

might not be. I mean, all I know is that the ones that I get to know,

the more I get to know them, the more I see them eating cooked food

on the sly, or having really severe problems like anxiety attacks,

panic attacks, clinical depression, teeth falling out, fingernails

breaking, hair falling out. So I'm just not personally impressed with

my experience of the raw food movement and the raw-food experts!

That's just my own personal experience with all that.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: But I'm sure some people will come to you and

say, " Oh, I know this guy who's been a raw-vegan for 30 years, and

he's muscular and he's really healthy. "

>

> Yeah, and what I always think of when I hear that is those speakers

that I saw that said that they had been 100% raw for 20 years and

that very weekend of the raw food convention both of them ate cooked

food. So, I take it all with a grain of salt. In other words, those

people might believe they know somebody that's been raw-vegan for 30

years and is in great physical condition, but whether that person

really has been or not, or whether that person really is healthy and

isn't suffering some things behind the scenes, one doesn't know. And

so, I remain open to the possibility that there are some individuals

whose particular body type has permitted to be a raw-vegan for thirty

years and be in good health. I admit that possibility, but my own

experience tells me that that would be few and far between — it

wouldn't be most people.

>

> LACK OF HONESTY IN THE RAW-VEGAN MOVEMENT

>

> Frederic Patenaude: There's not much honesty in the raw movement,

as you're saying...

>

> Nazariah: See, there's a definite problem there. And it's not,

a " problem of the raw movement. " The problem is just human beings.

Whether you're talking about politics, whether you're talking about

sports, whatever field you're talking about, you find that there are

a lot of things that are done for the profit motive. That individual

people are usually looking out for how they're earning their income.

>

> Now we see that and criticize it, in things like the oil industry

and the munitions industry, but the same exact thing is true in the

health food industry. It's true in health movements, raw-food

movements, and things like that. There gets to be certain groups of

people who are earning their living from it and feeding their egos by

being the authority figures. The human species seems to, in general,

still have a problem struggling with basic honesty.

>

> In the raw-food movement, you sort of set yourself up for the worst

of human nature, simply because you get into a one-upsmanship thing

where, " what percent raw are you? " , " How long have you been 100%

raw? " You get into this sort of like " raw-food one-upsmanship, " which

cultivates the worst in human behavior patterns.

>

> SUPPLEMENTS

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Many of the authors in the raw-movement, who

used to recommend really simple, basic raw-vegan diets, are now

getting into all these supplements and super-foods. It seems that

they're noticing that this basic raw-vegan diet seems to be

deficient. Why is that?

>

> Nazariah: There are two reasons for that. One is because of what

you just said. There's an interesting thing about the raw food

movement, which is different than other field. In the raw-food

movement, if you come into it and are a raw-foodist for a fairly

short time — like two or three years — you tend to start writing your

books.

>

> In the raw-food movement as a whole, people get into the idea of

the pristine version of the raw-food diet, which wouldn't include

supplements. They do that for a period of time and write a book or

two while they're on that version of the diet. Then, all of the

sudden in their own lives, they start having the problems of the

nutritional deficiencies, and then they start looking for the

answers. At first, the idea is that the answer is like some simple

fix, like, " Gosh, if I just take a B-12 supplement, or if I just eat

this algae " or something like that. So then, they start looking for

the answer in that direction. So, that's one reason why all these raw-

food guys end up getting into pitching supplements.

>

> But the other reason is that once you've become a raw-food author

and are getting to speak at the raw-food events and are earning a bit

of money being on the lecture circuit, you quickly realize how much

more money you could make if you were selling supplements. It just

becomes really obvious that if all of these people who are attending

your lecture had the opportunity to buy from you some vitamin C or

buy from you some fatty acids or something like that, well, you're

going to walk away from that event with more money in your pocket.

Plus, you can only be in so many places in a year, you can only do so

many lectures, you can only earn so much money from that. But the

amount of money that you can make over your webpage if you're hulking

supplements is astronomical —there's no limit to it. So, once a

person is viewing their career as being a raw-food teacher, they soon

learn that they'll make a lot more money if they're also selling

supplements.

>

> But that first reason that we talked about, which was, they

themselves start to experience nutritional deficiencies and are

looking for answers — that's in there too. So there's these two.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Then, the question is, would that be possible

to go on a raw-vegan diet that wouldn't include supplements?

>

> Nazariah: I'd recommend Gabriel Cousens' latest information. It's

not in his book. It's in his e-mail bulletin, and he actually

contradicts what's in his book — he admits that. He says that what he

put in his book is what he believed at the time. He now believes that

problems with B-12 in the vegan movement are much more severe.

Before, he was saying you could get B-12 from certain sources, like

spirulina and blue-green algae and certain sea vegetables. He now

does not believe that. He believes that those are analog B-12 that

can't be absorbed by the human body. And so now he's advocating that

people take a B-12 supplement. He says that maybe 20% of human beings

could do a vegan diet without having to take a B-12 supplement, but

at least 80% can't. And people shouldn't just assume that they're in

that 20% category, because the odds are against them.

>

> He believes that 20% might be able to go without a B-12 supplement

simply because when he tests vegans, 80% of them are found to be in

serious B-12 deficiency. But to me, that doesn't necessarily mean

that 20% of the people can go without B-12 supplementation on a vegan

diet. Because in fact, of those 20% people that he's testing that

right now, aren't deficient — how do we know that three years from

now, 10% of those people won't have become deficient? In other words,

a best-case scenario, which is what Gabriel is talking about, is that

maybe 20% of the people on a vegan diet wouldn't need the supplement.

>

> LONG-CHAIN FATTY ACIDS

>

> Frederic Patenaude: But that just B-12, though.

>

> Nazariah: Yes, like I was was indicating, and it's really complex.

What we know, based on that article, the research published in the

American Vegan that I cited, is that vegans die more of degenerative

brain diseases. Now, then the question is why? And this is new

information; it didn't used to be known that vegans get more of these

brain-wasting diseases. Now that that is known, people are looking

for the answer. And they're coming up with certain answers, like that

there's a particular long-chain fatty acid that is not available in a

vegan diet.

>

> What I stick on there as an extra is that we don't even know right

now what brain nutrients might be lacking in the vegan diet, because

they're just barely discovering this. They barely discovered this

long-chain fatty acid that isn't present in the vegan diet. So for us

to now buy a supplement of that one thing and think that we've solved

the problems with the vegan diet, I don't think that would be valid.

>

> How do we know that two years from now, six years from now they're

not going to be discovering other little things that we didn't know

existed before that are lacking on the vegan diet? What we do know is

that there are some sorts of nutritional deficiencies in the vegan

diet, and we're starting to discover what some of those deficiencies

are. For instance, David Wolfe and Gabriel Cousens want to develop a

supplement for that long-chain fatty acid.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: DHA?

>

> Nazariah: EPA. That's a long-chain fatty acid and one of the things

it protects against is depression, which is one of the reasons vegans

also have a higher incidence of suicide, clinical depression, anxiety

attacks and panic attacks. It may be because they're not getting

enough of this EPA long-chain fatty acid. So Gabriel and David Wolfe

are interested in developing a supplement they would sell that would

be a vegan source for EPA. Right now, there's one plant source that

some people can get their EPA from. It's an herb that grows wild like

a weed and is called purslane. The thing about that is that only

people with good digestion can absorb the EPA from the purslane.

People with good digestion can do that. But people with less than

average digestion can't.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: If you were a vegetarian who eats dairy and

eggs, would you get EPA from the animal products that you're eating?

>

> Nazariah: Here's what we know: we know is that vegetarians who eat

a bit of dairy and some eggs live longer and healthier and have less

nutritional deficiencies. You've got the possibility to eat some

dairy and/or eggs, but since some people have problems digesting

dairy, eggs are a good option. Eggs seem to have some nutrients that

dairy doesn't have, and it seems to me that eggs seem to have

everything in them that meat has, but the dairy only has most of what

meat has. So I think that the person who eats dairy will be helping

themselves nutritionally, but not as much as much as if they eat

eggs. So then the thing is to get organic eggs from free-range

chickens.

>

> I guess this is my point: rather than try and figure out what exact

supplement or what exact fatty acid we need to take to be a vegan, it

seems to me that by far the safer thing to do is just be a vegetarian

who eats some eggs and a bit of dairy, because of that point that I

keep coming back to. They keep discovering these different things

that are deficient in the vegan diet every couple years. So even if

right now you take a particular supplement that's supposed to handle

some particular problem now, you don't really know that in two years

or eight years they're not going to discover that vegans are still

dying of these problems and so, we still are lacking something. We

don't know how this is going to come out. So, the safest thing to do

is to simply start eating some organic eggs.

>

> IS FISH HEALTHY?

>

> Frederic Patenaude: But then, if we take your arguments further and

someone was just interested in health, would that be healthier not to

be a strict vegetarian, and have fish occasionally?

>

> Nazariah: If a person doesn't have the ethical considerations, then

the healthiest diet might be to include some fish. However, I do have

myself the ethical problems with that, so that's not what I'm

recommending to people. I feel that if we can make the step to become

vegetarian, this generation, that we're doing a great thing. We are

making a giant step in the right direction of ethics. Just becoming a

vegetarian is doing a good thing. But to answer your question, if a

person didn't have the ethical problems with eating fish, would that

be healthy? Well the answer is probably yes, as long as it wasn't

fish from a polluted source that has mercury or something like that.

>

> RAW VERSUS PASTEURIZED DAIRY PRODUCTS, EGGS

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Here in Canada you don't find raw dairy

products, except cheese. You only find pasteurized dairy milk. So

what would you recommend?

>

> Nazariah: What I would recommend is going to a health food store

and buying the health-food store variety of yogurt or kefir. The

reason is that those are live-foods, because of the fermentation

process and the culture, even though they're not raw.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: So that still would give you the benefits?

>

> Nazariah: You see, even though we all hear about all the problems

with pasteurization, we shouldn't forget the problems with non-

pasteurized dairy. For instance, dying of the worst case of diarrhea

you can possibly imagine! Because when you drink raw milk, there's

the possibility that it's contaminated with E-coli. So there are the

pros and cons of unpasteurized dairy products. If a person is not

concerned with things like E-coli in a raw egg, they could simply put

a couple of raw eggs in their smoothies, if they are trying to be raw-

foodists.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Just the yolk or the whole thing?

>

> Nazariah: I would say the whole thing, and the reason is because

the egg white has the protein, but the yolk has certain fatty acids

that seem to be important for the brain.

>

> [Comments by Frederic: Raw milk is definitely preferable to

pasteurized milk. It is much more assimilable. Also: It's not

recommended to eat raw egg whites. Egg whites contain strong enzyme

inhibitors and are close to impossible to digest raw. The best thing

is to have the yolk raw and the white cooked.]

>

> THE LATEST RAW VEGAN DIETS

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Some people recommens a fruit-based, low-fat

raw diet, and say that you actually won't get the problems that all

these other raw-food people are getting because they're eating so

much fat. What are your thoughts on this?

>

> Nazariah: Over the years, I've seen every imaginable variety of the

raw food diet, and the one common denominator that I've seen over a

period of time is that the raw-vegan diet over a period of years

seems to be nutritionally deficient. That's my opinion. It seems to

me that a raw-vegan diet, over a period of years, leads to severe

nutritional deficiencies.

>

> This is one of the problems: there will always be people pitching

some particular variation of the raw diet, which is going to be the

true solution, if you just do this. And of course they'll write a

book about it and will be on the lecture circuit about it. The

problem is that a couple years go by and that's no longer the " in "

variation — it's some other variation take its place, a couple years

later some other variation. What I've seen is that no variation that

is raw-vegan for years in a row seems to be adequate.

>

> The diet that you're particularly mentioning there: where is it

going to get that long-chain fatty acid that we're talking about?

Where is it going to get its B-12, where is it going to get its

complete protein? Those are very real issues. In the raw food

movement, people will read an old Arnold Ehret book, which talks

about the possibility of making protein from the air we breathe, and

they'll just believe they can do it. And yet, not one human being has

ever been shown to be able to do it. They'll read in an old

fruitarian book that suggests that we could make B-12 in our gut,

like some of the animals do. And even today, if you ask vegans, if

they believe that they can make B-12 in their own gut, more than half

of them believe that they do. Because I've asked that question, and

most people have that belief in the vegan movement that we are making

our own B-12 in our gut, in a way that we can live off that B-12 and

utilize it. In reality, not one human being has ever been shown to be

able to do. That's the science. Not one human being has ever been

able to demonstrate that they were living off the B-12 in their gut.

In Gabriel Cousens' latest bulletin on this B-12 problem, he says

that the only way a human being could live off B-12 made in their gut

would be if they ate their own feces. And I don't think that that's

going to become a popular option.

>

> That's the problem with these variations of the raw-vegan diet,

like the one you asked me about specifically. Those variations don't

supply the essential fatty acids that the brain needs; they don't

supply enough of the complete amino acids. They don't supply enough

of the B-12 and other essential nutrients, and that's why people,

after they've been on those diets for lengths of time, end up having

nutritional deficiencies. So I don't know that there are exceptions

to the rule, but I acknowledge that there might be. What I say about

that is that the dangerous thing for everyone who comes to the raw-

food movement is to just believe that they are going to be the

exception to the rule, when statistically, most likely they're not

going to be.

>

> Frederic Patenaude: But then these people, like in the case of that

diet, would take your argumentation and dissect it and then explain

with science how you can find all these things in their diet. That's

usually what happens.

>

> Nazariah: You're right, that's usually what happens. However, if

one takes their science and shows it to a nutritional scientist, the

nutritional scientist will pooh-pooh their argument, and will show

the flaws in it. It gets as bad that in a lot of these books that are

used in the raw-food movement where it lists the amount of protein

available in certain food sources, and a lot of those table are just

plain old non-accurate. They're printed in a book, and it looks

scientific, but it's just not true. There are people that believe

that there's a whole bunch of protein in watermelon because one of

the old raw-food authors used to claim that and put it in his book.

There are people that I personally know who started eating only

watermelon, or made that the chief element of their diet, thinking

it's their primary protein source.

>

> In the raw-food movement the problem is that you have a lot of

pseudo-science, which doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of actual

science. True Raw-Vegan Believers

>

> I want to say that you will never convince " true believers " of

any " ism " that there are problems with their " ism. " And so I don't

even attempt to do that. For the interview, I simply honestly

answered question that you've asked, but I'm not attached to changing

anybody's mind, and I'm not living in the illusion that I'm going to

change a bunch of raw-vegan minds, because I've already experienced

the fact that I'm not going to. Already, all that's happened to me is

by sharing honestly the information that I've shared with you is that

I got kind of blackballed by the raw-vegan movement. They just tried

to discredit me, instead of deal with these realities of nutritional

deficiencies in a raw-vegan diet.

>

> But there are some regular folks who come to the raw-food movement

because of all the hype and then start to experience problems in

their own bodies. If they see the information that I've given you, a

few of them might be moved to take positive steps, which could result

in saving themselves a lot of pain and misery, and that's why I

bother to share this information at all. It's not because I have the

delusion that I'm going to convince the defenders of an " ism " to give

up their " ism " — rather, I'm more concerned about members of the

public receiving all this hype, that if you get into the raw-food

vegan diet, you're going to live to be 120 years in really good

health. See, I used to believe that, and I used to teach that. I

believed it because that's what people told me, and that's what was

in the raw-food books, and so I parroted it.

>

> A CHALLENGE TO THE RAW-VEGAN MOVEMENT

>

> Frederic Patenaude: Is there anything you'd like to add before we

end this interview?

>

> Nazariah: I want to with a challenge to the raw-vegan movement.

Find us one really old raw-vegan. One. I've been in the raw-vegan

movement for over twenty years, and I have never met a healthy,

really old raw-vegan, who's been on the raw-vegan diet for decades or

anything like that. In other words, if by eating the raw-vegan diet,

we're going to live to be a 120 years old and be disease free, then

how come, when you attend a national raw-food conference, there any

isn't old raw-vegans there? There's some in their 60's and 70s who

have been trying to do the diet and have problems in their own lives.

But why aren't there any 100 year old raw-vegans anywhere? The raw-

food movement is not new, but was popular in 1800's, when the first

Natural Hygiene movement started advocating the raw diet. Then it was

really big in the 1940's with Shelton. Why have we never seen a

single 100 year old raw-vegan? Why has there never been a 90-year-old

raw-vegan speaker at any of raw-vegan conferences?

>

> Frederic Patenaude: So that's your challenge?

>

> Nazariah: Yes, that's my challenge. And even if someone were to

come up with one 90 year old raw-vegan, I think that my point is

still made, because they'd have to struggle pretty hard to find that

one. There aren't a bunch of old raw-vegans! I'm a child of the

1960's. I was born in the 1950's, and so, I was shaped by the 1960s,

and believe me, in the 1960's, we had raw-food gatherings then. Ann

Wigmore, before her Shelton — all these people existed back then. All

of them died. All the great leaders of the raw-food movement in the

1960s are dead. And at no raw-food conferences in the 1960s was there

ever a 100-year-old speaker, or a 90-year-old speaker even. And in

the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, I've never met any of them. You hear legends

about Dr. Walker...

>

> Frederic Patenaude: But he wasn't a raw-vegan?

>

> Nazariah: He wasn't a raw-vegan and he wasn't a vegan. In one of

his books, he talks about how important goat's milk is, and he was

drinking goat's milk. And even with him, who wasn't a vegan,

definitely there are questions about how old he actually lived to be.

Because, you hear all sorts of different numbers. Unless someone

actually produces a birth certificate, we don't really know how old

he was. But he's the only example I've heard people give. And then I

point out to them that he wasn't a vegan. So you have to admit that

most people who come in and hear the hype believe that if they become

a raw-vegan, they are going to experience some great health benefits,

and are going to live a long time. And yet, if that's true, since the

raw-vegan movement has existed since the 1800s, and certainly was

very popular since the 1940's with natural hygiene and became even

more popular in the 1960s, why aren't there any old raw-vegans

speaking at the raw-vegan conferences?

>

> FINAL COMMENTS BY FRÉDÉRIC PATENAUDE

>

> Nazariah's experience with the raw vegan diet is not unique,

although not everybody will experience such dramatic problems. The

conclusion we can clearly draw from his experience (as well as backed

up by my own experience and research) is:

> 1. The raw vegan diet is not a guarantee for health.

> 2. Eating 100% raw is not necessary for optimal health. If this is

practiced, it should be done with careful planning.

> 3. Every vegan should be taking a B-12 supplement to insure optimal

health in the long-term.

> 4. We shouldn't believe invariably raw-vegan " experts " or what is

written in books, because the information is often not accurate.

>

> As for whether we should be vegans or not, I do not necessarily go

in the same direction as Nazariah. I do not believe that everybody

should start eating some animal products. I believe that every vegan

should be taking a B-12 supplement, but also that the inclusion of

some animal products in the diet can be useful to many people.

>

> I wish to say that I'm personally not convinced that a vegan diet

cannot be healthy. I think it depends on each individual. I

personally have found benefits in including some animal products in

my diet, and many others have found that too.

>

> There are many health benefits to becoming at least mainly

vegetarian or even mainly vegan, as well as increasing the amount of

raw fruits and vegetables that we eat.

> #######

> Call our Accent on Wellness Hotline 212 760 5953

>

> Check out our Webpage at www.Live-Food.com

>

> We come together in a sharing circle to exchange information, give

support, and create a community.

>

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> Stay lively!

>

> Tony White

>

> webperson@l...

> http://www.live-food.com

August 1, 2004

Actually Elaine posted the same article about a week ago, I read it then

and responded. Found both sides very interesting/informative and admire

Fredric for printing the article when it is so contradictary of his own

beliefs/experience/business. We did have a light discussion on it on

. I think a few people made comment on why listening to your own

body/soul is important when deciding what to follow. I also thought it