Not Just a Man's World

After listening to several radio interviews with Randy Roach, a personal trainer who eats a raw food diet, and starting to read a book that argues the case for human evolution being closely related to, and dependent on cooking our food, I’ve become fascinated by the raw food debate.

What does a raw food diet entail?

Raw food is defined as food that is not heated at temperatures above 46-48 degrees Celsius (115-118 degrees Fahrenheit).  The majority of material and studies available that look at raw food diets concentrate on raw veganism – diets based entirely on raw plant food – however there is another element to the raw food diet when people also consume raw meat and dairy.

Are your vegetables better raw or cooked?

Potential benefits of a raw food diet

Those who consume raw food diets swear by its healthful benefits including:

• weight loss;
• increased energy;
• clear skin;
• improved insulin tolerance; and
• improved overall health.

Some bodybuilders use a raw omnivorous diet.  Joshua Trentine, a pro-bodybuilder in the US, recently converted to a raw food diet with the assistance of Randy Roach and noted during an interview on Super Human Radio the following additional benefits:

• increased muscle bulk;
• decreased fat;
• easier to consume large quantities of meat, thus dealing with the problem of consuming sufficient calories when bulking;
• increased stamina and strength during workouts.

In particular, Josh noticed that drinking large quantities of raw (unpasturised) milk doesn’t cause him to gain fat, whereas he used to gain a lot of fat when drinking pasturised milk to gain strength and muscle.

Common arguments against raw food diets

I was given a copy of Richard Wrangham’s Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human“ for Christmas.  I’m only partway through this at present but I was particularly interested in one of his early chapters where he presents his view of the raw food movement.

The main arguments against raw food diets, presented in both Richard Wrangham’s book and in an article on Precision Nutrition, are based on the Giessen Raw Food study and reports of how people have fared when they have been forced to follow a raw food diet while stranded in the wild (most often at sea or in forests).  It’s worth noting though that most of these scenarios concern diets with no or minimal meat consumption.

The Giessen Raw Food study

The Giessen Raw Food study involved the analysis of data compiled from questionnaires completed by 513 raw-foodists who ate a 70-100% raw food diet.  They observe in the abstract that most raw foodists who were questioned ate a vegetarian diet.  Some of the key observations from the study included:

• low BMIs, with the lowest BMIs in those who had the highest raw food proportion in their diet.
• direct correlation between the proportion of raw food in the diet and the menstrual cycle, with women with a higher proportion raw food diet also showing a greater likelihood of absent or rare menstruation.  It should be noted that studies by Rose Frisch have found that if a woman’s adipose tissue constitutes less than 17% of her body weight then she ceases to menstruate so it seems that this is likely to be a function of the reduced BMI, rather than being due to the higher proportion of raw food in the diet.
• body weights of almost a third indicated chronic energy deficiency.

Some other thoughts on not eating raw food

In addition to the Geissen Raw Food study, there are a couple of other articles worth reading for a full picture of some of the arguments against raw food.

1. An article on Chemical Crystallinity summarises a scientific study that showed that cooking eggplant was more beneficial than leaving it raw – again, this is a study focused on a raw vegetable that is then being expanded to cover “raw food”.
2. Mark Sisson wrote an incredibly helpful article on raw eggs.  It’s a balanced article and leaves you to make up your own mind.  It seems there are both benefits and problems so the answer may be to eat them both cooked and uncooked.

A case for a raw omnivorous diet?

So far, there seem to be plenty of reasons not to eat a raw food diet.  But as I mentioned before, the studies and reports on which these are based seem to mostly rely on diets with almost no meat.  Richard Wrangham acknowledges this, although he also seems to believe that a raw food diet has to be low in meat.

On the other side of the debate are the bodybuilders who have successfully followed a raw food diet over the years.  Bodybuilders need to build and maintain significant muscle mass and subsequently tend to have a high BMI.  These individuals do not seem to struggle with building muscle mass and Josh Trentine has certainly reported beneficial growth-related side-effects.

Is it possible that the missing element in so many raw food diets is meat?

Home-testing

In the spirit of carrying out a controlled scientific study I included 2 raw eggs in Chris’s daily shake for four weeks.  As good science and a blind study, I didn’t tell him (I was in trouble once I stopped and told him what I’d been doing for the last month).  My observations were as follows:

• I managed to add approximately 150 calories into his daily calorie intake without him noticing.  He was no fuller after breakfast than he had been before.
• While he continued to bulk during the month, there was no noticeable shift in his body composition to a leaner look.
• Towards the end of the study period he had a bad fried egg at breakfast time which put him off eggs for a bit.  This could have just been the bad fried egg or could have also been related to the raw egg.  Either way, this was the cue to terminate the study.

I can see two possible conclusions.  Either raw fooding isn’t everything it is cut out to be, or if you want to use it for muscle gain and body composition purposes you need to change over to raw fooding to a much greater degree than a couple of eggs a day.  The only benefit I can see so far from such a small nod to a raw food diet is the ability to increase calorie intake with minimum effort.

Since there’s no way I’ll get Chris eating raw meat and “bulking” is not on my agenda we’ll be going back to a cooked food diet with periodic “rare” steaks until I get the bug to try some raw fooding again.

I’ll write more once I’ve finished Richard Wrangham’s book and if I ever try raw meat, but in the meantime I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has tried a raw food diet, especially while training.

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 1 (food and drink)
2. Improving nutrition for muscle gain
3. Workout nutrition: timing
4. Diet to gain muscle as a woman