Last Updated: 30 Dec 97
Hey all,
I'm a 33-year-old living in Los Angeles. I went 100% raw (except for one meal a month) about 6 months ago (and feel better than ever!). Before that, I was 85% raw most days-always raw until dinnertime. The 15% was usually whole wheat pasta. I was 85% raw for about 4 years and even though I ate cooked, I considered anything cooked (especially complex carbos) to be "junk food". During the 85% days, I put salad dressing on my veggies. When I dropped the pasta (went totally raw), I also dropped the dressing. Since dropping salad dressing, I've actually felt cravings for lettuce. All along I've been drinking 99% water only.
Today, my typical day might be 3 apples and 2 bananas (at least an hour later) in the morning, a salad of 3 of the following: Eggplant, red bell pepper, cucumber, green beans, cauliflower, and turnip, on either red leaf lettuce or bok choy. In the afternoon I eat about 1/5 lb. of almonds. Dinner might be grapes (seeded) then possibly avocado, then some of the following: corn, cucumber, red bell pepper, eggplant, green bean, and maybe tomatoes, carrots and possibly (fairly rarely) a banana much later on. Oh and some butter lettuce (yum!)
My experience has been great! The whole path to this point has been due to feeling more alive with every dietary improvement. The first change was (after reading Fit for Life - thank you Harvey!) trying food combining to stay awake in the afternoon at work (and doing fruit in the am). After such success, I quickly became a vegan 6 years ago-a veggie eating vegan. Gradually, I eliminated the lingering cravings for refined junk like chips and fake sweets (rice dream, etc). As soon as I went raw, another level of feeling alive was obtained.
From my "eat list" you can tell that I'm somewhat fruitarian, but I do eat cauliflower, corn, turnip, with the occassional broccoli, carrots and mushrooms (I stopped eating jicama recently-didn't feel good in the tummy). I know almonds are nuts but someone told me that they qualify as fruitarian. Is this true?
Eating philosophy is simple: Humans did not evolve to need to eat cooked food. Yes, we are omnivorous if we cook our food, but then again, most herbivores could be omnivores if the food was cooked (cows, chickens and pigs already are omnivores thanks to the disgusting practice of feeding them cooked "fallen" animal). We can survive on cooked, but I thrive on raw.
I also ascribe to almost all popular raw foodist philosophies (see Blatant Raw Foodist Propaganda and Nature's First Law among many others). Through my time rubbing shoulders with other vegans, I've come to support many animal rights ideals. Mostly, as I am scientifically minded (PhD in Electrical Engineering), I am totally convinced that humans should be on a raw diet.
Being raw is actually quite a change from my 0-26 years. I grew up as someone who fit in. A New Jersey native (ages 0-15), as a college student I drank Budweiser, rooted for the Yankees, drove a Mustang, joined a fraternity, and liked cherry pie, and especially, hamburgers. Mr. Conformity.
I've found one nice thing about being so different, I don't waste my time comparing myself to others because there are so few like me.
My email address is DaveVegan@aol.com, feel feee to drop me a line. I look forward to hearing from you!
Dave
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