Is Your Raw Food Diet SAD?

You’ve probably heard about the “SAD” diet, aka the Standard American Diet full of processed foods, fat and refined sugar. But did you know that there is a SAD version of the raw food diet that many raw foodists unknowingly follow and promote?

When I started eating raw, I bought into the whole “eat anything you want as long as it’s raw” ideal. I bought raw food cookbooks and ate out at raw restaurants. I stocked up on plenty of nuts and seeds. I even signed up for a raw meal plan that a local raw food restaurant offered and was eating almost exclusively raw gourmet meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I happily munched away on all sorts of raw pasta creations, kelp noodles, cheesecake, cookies, flax crackers and nut-based burgers.

Once I got over the ecstasy of having my raw cake and eating it too, I woke up.

There’s Nothing Natural About Raw Kelp Noodles

The realization really hit home over a bowl of “Sea Pasta” made with translucent “raw” kelp noodles that looked nothing like the dark green, leafy kelp plant that grows in the ocean. I really took a look at what I was eating – fat, fat, more fat, dehydrated, processed, powdered, condensed, concentrated, packaged and bottled ingredients that were shipped great distances and stored on shelves for long periods of time.

How did the raw food diet devolve to the point where it began to look like the Standard American Diet that I moved away from? My eyes were opened as I found myself eating a very SAD raw food diet.

I’ve since moved away from complicated gourmet recipes as well as powdered/dried superfoods and concentrated fats like oils and sweeteners like agave. It’s really strange to me when I hear prominent raw foodists excitedly proclaim that they had raw chocolate cake for breakfast and that it was even “healthy”!

I attended a raw food pot luck recently where everybody ate low-calorie salad for lunch, then the dessert table opened up and everybody ate raw cheesecake, pie, cookies, cacao balls and cacao pudding. Two thirds of the calories from their meal was coming from dessert!

I’m sorry, but cake is cake whether it is made with a commercial cake mix, made from scratch using wheat flower or made from scratch with non-vital, non-whole (but unheated) ingredients. As Dr. Douglas Graham, author of The 80/10/10 Diet says, “if it looks like pizza and it tastes like pizza, it’s going to digest like pizza”.

Now does this mean that you should never indulge in the occasional raw dessert or gourmet creation? No, not at all. I mean, even I have some raw gourmet recipes published here on Incredible Smoothies that are excellent transition foods if you’re trying to kick the cooked food habit. Eating raw pizza once and a while isn’t going to derail your health. But if you eat from a typical raw cookbook or restaurant every day, that’s a different story.

How Do You Know If Your Raw Food Diet Is SAD?

1 – You regularly eat powdered superfoods like maca, cacao, goji berry powder or other processed and powdered “raw” foods. The problem with powders is that while they may have been sourced from raw foods, dehydrating them, turning them into powder, packaging and storing them on store shelves or warehouses for months or longer destroys nutrients and oxidizes the food making it much less healthy than fresh, whole fruits and vegetables. Really, there isn’t any reason to choose a powdered, dried, processed “superfood” in a package over fresh ingredients.

2 – You regularly eat dried fruits like dates, figs, kale crisps, zucchini chips, flax crackers, etc… Dehydrating removes water from food and dehydrates our bodies. Exposure to heat and oxygen degrades nutrients and promotes oxidation. Then these foods are stored for long periods of time where their nutrients further degrade. Eat fresh instead!

3 – You regularly eat complicated raw gourmet recipes such as lasagna, pizza and “meat” pates made with nuts and seeds. Raw gourmet recipes might taste good and curb your craving for cooked alternatives. However, complicated raw gourmet recipes are loaded with fat and many (especially desserts) contain processed, fractionated ingredients like oils and sweeteners. There is nothing wrong with the occasional indulgence or with eating a raw gourmet meal that fits into your overall macronutrient goal of less than 10-15% of your total daily calories coming from fat. Just don’t make it a breakfast, lunch and dinner habit!

4 – You regularly eat raw desserts like cheesecake, pie and cookies. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional indulgence, but if raw dessert makes up a daily part of your diet, you might be eating SAD raw. Many raw foodists who regularly eat goji berry “cheesecake” or other raw desserts made from nuts, seeds, coconut oil and agave nectar are those who claim that their diet is based on greens. Sure, they might eat a huge green salad for their meal and then finish it off with a little piece of raw pie, but in reality, two-thirds of their calories are coming from dessert (processed fat and concentrated sugar) rather than the low-calorie greens.

5 – Your raw food pantry is stocked with olive oil, coconut oil or sweeteners such as agave or yacon syrup. Oils and syups are not whole foods. They are processed, bottled and stored and don’t supply the same nutrient ratio as they would in their whole state, as they grow in nature. It’s always better to eat olives than olive oil and it’s better to eat sweet fruit than refined, concentrated sweeteners that come in bottles or boxes.

6 – You eat a lot of nuts, seeds, coconuts and avocado. One of the biggest mistakes that so many raw foodists make (and I did too!) is to base their diet on fat, fat and more fat. I didn’t even realize how much fat I ate when I first got into eating raw foods. Many raw foodists eat up to 80% of their total calories from fat. That’s 2-3 times the recommended maximum amount of fat in the diet that even mainstream nutrition experts say is healthy!

7 – You restrict the amount of sweet fruit you eat including bananas and watermelons. There’s a pervasive myth in the raw food movement that fruit is bad for you because of the natural sugars and therefore, you should avoid fruit. This myth becomes even more ridiculous when raw food gurus suggest that it is possible to base your diet around leafy greens and non-sweet fruits! The fact is, you can’t get enough calories by eating mostly greens and cucumbers. As long as your total fat calorie intake is low (experts say less than 10-15%), the sugars in fruit, even high glycemic fruits like bananas and watermelon, do not present a risk for obesity, diabetes or other ailments that fruit is erroneously blamed for. Find out more about that here.

Simple, Tasty Low Fat Raw Vegan Recipes

If you are ready for a break from all the oils and processed raw foods, here’s two great recipe books that I really like when I’m not eating my own creations.

The first one is Instant Raw Sensations by Frederic Patenaude. This spiral-bound recipe book is a collection of simple but delicious raw food recipes including fruit and green smoothies, sweet or savory soups, salad dressings, desserts and even some more complicated “gourmet” recipes that are minimally processed. Most of these recipes can be whipped up in 10 minutes or less (no dehydrating or soaking the day before) and there’s even a section for 2-ingredient meals!

The book does contain some recipes that call for dates, tiny amounts of olive oil or agave nectar. I’ll just reiterate that I am not 100% against the use of these product, but I do not recommend that you eat them on a daily or regular basis. Overall, the book has a higher percentage of raw food meals that are tasty, low in fat and minimally processed – unlike so many raw recipe books out there. I recommend this book if you are tired of blowing the dust off your complicated raw gourmet recipe books or want simpler meals without compromising flavor.

The second book I recommend is by the same author, and it contains 70 salad dressing recipes that are low fat. No more saturating your green salad with olive oil or tahini! You can make delicious, easily digestible salad dressings that taste amazing and adds variety to your meals.

Tags: 80/10/10, 811, 811rv, diet, fat, Raw Food Diet, SAD, Vegan