UNDERSTANDING RAW FOOD and THE EFFECTS OF RAW FOOD

UNDERSTANDING RAW FOOD

For Barbara Leiman, a raw food chef, astrologist and health counsellor, the
journey to a raw food lifestyle was an instinctual one. ‘I have always been
healthy; in my little head at just five or six years old I had already made the
decision that I wasn’t going to eat any sweets because I had got a toothache.’

The connection between toffee and toothache stuck, and she stayed away
from anything processed or high in sugar. By the time she was in her midtwenties,
Leiman had stopped eating meat and would only eat wholewheat
bread, brown rice and less-refined foods.

‘I came across the more defined concept of raw eating because I was eating
60 per cent raw naturally. It was just getting more in touch with what is
available, which brought that journey into a more wonderful focus of what
foods and superfoods are available. So I went totally raw about five or six
years ago. I don’t eat any meat, dairy or cheese or any flesh at all. For me the
most important thing is that I don’t touch food that is refined or preserved,’
she explains.

This is an experience that many South Africans have shared, evident in
the rising popularity of outlets like Superfoods, which was the first company
in South Africa to import and distribute superfoods and promote raw diets.
Started by Peter and Berryn Daniel in 2006, Superfoods stocks a wide variety
of foods from around the world that enhance the raw food diet, including
Goji berries, raw cacao, maca powder, hemp seed powder, spirulina and
coconut oil. Their motto is ‘Eat as close to nature as possible’. They describe
superfoods as foods ‘that are exceptionally high in vitamins, minerals and
overall nutritional value. Eating superfoods helps to re-mineralise the body,
minimizing the desire for snacking on sugar rich foods, helping the body get
back on track with a healthy lifestyle.’33

As superfoods and raw food diets have become more common in South
Africa, some distributors have started making their own products. One of
these is Earthshine. Based in Cape Town, Earthshine offers raw food classes
as well as products that contribute to a raw way of eating. Noel Marten, who
owns Earthshine with Natalie Reid, says the company came about as a result
of increasing demand. ‘We realised that we could really have some fun with it
and I think we were at an advantage because we were stuck down here in
South Africa with no real influences. You couldn’t just go on a course to learn
how to make raw food so we just started doing our own thing and, as a result
of that, we’ve come up with a style that is potentially quite original,’ he
explains. At first it was just a hobby where they would run some classes in the
evenings, but soon they found that a class once a month turned into a class
three times a week due to growing demand and popularity. Shortly after, a
business plan was formulated and Earthshine was born over six years ago.

A raw food diet, however, was not one that Marten was initially drawn to.

He had explored it but found it too extreme: ‘I perceived vegetarianism and
veganism as sort of a declining extremist view of food right on the end of
extremism and I’m someone in general life who, by nature, is very moderate.

I tend to find that often the middle ground is where the good stuff really
happens, so I kind of ruled raw food out initially on that basis alone.’

Originally from the UK, Marten returned to his home country for a
wedding and was blown away by the raw food feast provided at the reception.

He stayed with his raw foodist friends for ten days following the wedding and
could not believe the breads, cakes, puddings and dishes that were served,
which seemed to be cooked but were in fact raw. They were also simple, quick
and easy. ‘Suddenly it didn’t seem that extreme, but the thing that really
grabbed me was that after eating raw food exclusively for about ten days, I felt
really electric. My energy was up and my mental focus was back. I didn’t
perceive that I had been feeling bad before that, but I felt a whole lot better and
that was something that was quite interesting.’ As someone who had always
had quite low energy levels and had struggled to get up and get going, Marten
says he could not believe how he felt – it was as if he was running on fuel.

When he returned to South Africa, he decided to find out more.

‘I also suddenly made the connection – and I don’t have anything against
vegans or vegetarians and my diet is largely now vegan but I don’t wear the
badge – but for me, vegetarianism and veganism by their nature are defined
by what you can’t do. You don’t eat meat or you don’t eat animal products.

Raw food is an interesting contrast, because it is defined by something that
you do do.’ It was because of this that a raw food way of life seemed more
accessible to Marten than a vegetarian or vegan one. ‘For me that just seemed
like a more realistic way of approaching food because I am a foodie, I love
my food. I look forward to my meal times with great relish. I like preparing
food and eating out, so for me food is where I derive an enormous amount of
pleasure.’

THE EFFECTS OF RAW FOOD

What Leiman and Marten both point out is that they did not feel like they ate
unhealthily or there was anything wrong with their lifestyles before going raw.
Their experiences are echoed in a book by mother and daughter Leslie and
Susannah Kenton. In Raw Energy, the Kentons set out to uncover and present
the facts about uncooked foods based on their own positive experiences. In
the introduction, they write: ‘Our fascination with uncooked foods could
seem very eccentric to anyone who knew nothing about the enormous
quantity of European research into the health-promoting effects that
uncooked foods have on the body or someone who had never experienced the
energising effects of a raw diet.’34

In terms of their experiences, the women write, ‘At first we thought that
the effects of the high-raw food diet were entirely personal – some kind of
genetic penchant we had both inherited from a long line of rabbit-like
ancestors, which made us biologically susceptible to what we had come to call
“the raw food effect”.’35 However, they soon realised their experience was a
shared one.

For Marten, the effect of eating raw food was transformative, even though
he had always tried to buy organic produce and was very aware of what he
ate. ‘I’ve always understood the value of high quality food,’ he explains.
‘When I started eating raw food, I immediately had more energy.’

As someone who had always suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome
(IBS), Marten was used to stomach discomfort and pain after a meal.

However, after eating more raw food, he says the symptoms abated quite
drastically, which encouraged him to eat even more raw food. ‘There are
many ways of eating raw food, but we really started putting a lot of mineral
rich food into our diets, a lot of wild foods, things like seaweeds, so quite
quickly I got to a point where I found that I was eating a lot less. I shed a few
kilos and came to a much healthier, more balanced weight, that [I’ve]
maintained over the last five years; I don’t gain or lose weight.’

Leiman, who has not suffered from even a cold in the last twenty-five
years, explains that a raw food diet allows a person’s immune system to be
rebuilt. ‘Preservatives pull the immune system down and refined foods have
not got an awful lot of value in them. I think this precipitates so many large
people because they are totally undernourished and in a constant mode of
craving because their hormones are always unbalanced. What satisfies the
hormones and puts the body in balance is mineral content, the body loves
minerals, it loves live food.’

I n Raw Energy, the Kentons talk about Swiss physician Maximillian
Bircher-Benner, the first doctor to really analyse raw food diets. He believed
that plants contain a special form of energy directly derived from the sun
during photosynthesis. ‘When we eat plants this special energy passes into us.

He sought theoretical support for his theory from physics, in particular from
the Second Law of Thermodynamics.’36 This law looks at how energy is
degraded. Bircher-Benner concluded that ‘since a very high order of the sun’s
energy is converted by plants through photosynthesis and then stored in them,
and since the quality of this energy is degraded by all kinds of physical and
chemical processes such as wilting, cooking or processing, when we eat the
fresh raw plants themselves we receive the very highest order of energy
possible direct from our food’.37

There are varying opinions on the benefits of raw food and the harmful
effects of cooking on the nutritional value of food, with some nutrition
experts claiming that cooking has no real effect and others claiming that it
obliterates all natural vitamins and nutrients in food. Another factor often
considered is the benefit of enzymes in food, which are destroyed in the
cooking process. The Kentons claim that enzymes in raw food have all kinds
of health benefits, including providing protection from dysbacteria, a
debilitating disease caused by antibiotics. Furthermore, many raw foods are
said to contain nitrilosides (vitamin B17), which may have cancer-fighting
properties. ‘[Nitrilosides] were first isolated by Californian physician Ernst T.
Krebs and his biochemist son Ernst T. Krebs Jr. The controversy over whether
or not nitrilosides can be used to treat cancer still rages, with many
biologically oriented physicians claiming that they cause remission and their
more orthodox colleagues dismissing such claims as absurd. Nevertheless it is
a fact that nitrilosides figure heavily in the diets of primitive people who
suffer not at all from cancer or degenerative diseases.’38

The proof, it seems, may be in the pudding. What all these foodies suggest
is that people simply try a raw food diet for a while to experience the effects
for themselves. With South Africa’s raw food industry growing slowly but
steadily, there are a number of restaurants and recipes that you can try to test
the benefits for yourself.