Fruit or Fat? + The problem with quinoa, black beans, brown rice?

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Permalink Reply by bitt on May 11, 2008 at 1:29am

from what i've read and experienced you seem to need more fats in the beginning of being all raw. then gradually your body adjusts to needing less food. have your tried green smoothies? my husband used to need a big bowl of oatmeal in the morning because he is active and high metabolism but the smoothie keeps him satisfied. if you get more nourishment then you will need less calories. but there is for sure an adjustment time. my comsumption of nuts and seeds has gone down since the beginning.

btw, sprouting does not really require a lot of actual time, just patience. do you see the difference? you rinse them a few times a day and wait.

also try chia seeds. they fill you up and are very nutritious.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 1:38am

Thanks Bitt. A few follow-ups:

#1 - I LOVE green smoothies. However, they're not easy to do when I'm not home (nobody serves them, tough to do on the road, etc.). So while I'm home they're an option but not when I'm on the road. It also seems like with most green smoothies if they have a lot of calories they usually come from (surprise, surprise) fruit or fat. I mean, you can load them up with kale, spinach, etc. but at the end of the day most of the calories will come from the bananas or flax seed oil that you added. So this is helpful but I'm not sure it gets me fully there.

#2 - I definitely buy the argument that as your body gets more clean you'll need less calories. However, I'm not sure if the trade off in the meantime is worth it. If I was trying to lose weight it might be one thing but I'm already thin and actually feel like I've gotten too thin recently. So I guess I could do high fat for a while but to be honest, it doesn't feel that good, I don't think it's that healthy and it also doesn't seem to suffice on days when I'm real active (90 minute yoga sessions!).

#3 - I haven't done any sprouting yet but most people I've talked to say it takes a fair amount of time. Plus again, it's something that's tough to do when you're on the road or away from home. I can see where the raw lifestyle works pretty well if you're home a lot and can sprout, do green smoothies and juices, etc but when you're traveling a bunch it seems really challenging.

Oh, and I *love* chia seeds too. They are about 70-80% fat though... :(

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Permalink Reply by br00k on May 11, 2008 at 6:40pm

sprouting is really easy. I never follow the *directions*, and they still sprout. soak for 8+ hours, drain, cover on the counter (not the fridge) and wait two days. problem is; I think sprouted grains taste and smell terrible until they've been dehydrated- which is a project.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 1:48am

Thanks Pink Lady! I actually know Brendan. :) But I don't think he's 100% raw (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kristi17.htm).

I see the (huge!) benefits in a diet that's largely raw. However it seems like almost everyone who's raw and very active has to do a lot of fruit or fat to get the necessary caloric intake. And I guess it seems to me, based on all the nutritional stuff I've studied, that it probably makes more sense to substitute brown rice/quinoa/black beans/soba noodles instead of doing a ton of fruit or a ton of fat.

I'm going to order a couple more books on the subject and see what I can find but as of right now I'm in a bit of a quandary. :)

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Permalink Reply by nycgrrl on June 11, 2008 at 4:04pm

I came to the same conclusions, Jon. I am athletic, training for a 10k (not huge by brendan's standards, but still) and I was finding it hard to maintain the 811 thing, and then on the flip side, too much fat was just making me feel heavy.So i am trying out incorporating small amounts of quinoa, lentils, beans to get my calories up and keep my fat down. What, in the end, did you decide? As I see this thread was started a couple of weeks ago?

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Permalink Reply by RawKev on May 11, 2008 at 1:51am

Try the 80-10-10 diet. Candida is not a concern on a high fruit, low fat diet. The key to a high fruit diet is high greens as well. To be completely honest with you I struggled for a year with a high fat raw diet, consuming entire jars of tahini and almond butter, sometimes even 2 a day, I would eat 6 avocados a day and did all sorts of poor food combos with added salt and spices that made suffer with weight gain, low energy levels, and the worst digestive issues I've ever experienced. For some reason, through all of this, I still knew that raw was the way and that I just had to keep changing my diet while staying raw until it worked. 80-10-10 is the only way of eating that has ever worked for me my entire life. Everything that I suffered with as a child and teenage was due to the food that I was eating(acne, severe depression, sleep issues, mental unclarity, fatigue and weakness, sore joints and an aching body, no spiritual connection with myself and the world around me. Going 100% raw made all of that go away, and 80-10-10 just took it to a higher level which I know is my personal dietary perfection. I will never suffer because of something I have eaten ever again...

Do some research and read the book.

I hope you give it a go.

Good luck

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Permalink Reply by Anabrese on May 11, 2008 at 6:37am

Hi Jon, my partner is very active and on gym days his calorie intake increases quite a bit. He eats apples before a workout along with a green juice with maca. When he's finished he will have a green smoothie with lots of fruit, bananas and lots of greens, especially wild ones. Shortly after that he may have some chocolate made with cacao butter and coconut oil which is quite fatty. Later, he might eat a couple of avocados with a large vegetable salad and maybe a few nuts. If you're early raw you are likely to alot of acid waste in the system and so green smoothies are ideal. I know you travel so you could dehydrate vegetable breads made with sprouted quinoa and seeds. Good luck

www.rawlifestyle.co.uk
Recipes, diary

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Permalink Reply by Cinnamon Girl on May 11, 2008 at 6:40am

i eat a lot of sprouted buckwheat, very yummy.
also sweet potato and butternut squash or pumpkin.
you could try sprouted grains, such as debbie's essene bread recipe.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 2:47pm

Thanks guys for all this. Here's the dilemma I'm facing though. Part of the appeal of the raw diet is all the wonderful dishes you can make (raw ice creams, all of the cool stuff you can make with cashews, etc.). While the high fruit diet seems like it could be very healthy it seems like there are very few places to find recipes and very few restaurants that caters to this. I live in Los Angeles and only a few miles from Juliano's and Rawvolution and they have hardly *any* fruit on their menu except in their desserts (http://www.rawvolution.com/?q=ingredients). It's almost uncanny...

I realize that some things we think of as veggies (e.g., tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) are actually fruits but here it also seems that these low-sugar fruits are also low calories relative to weight (10-15 calories per 100g, http://www.brianmac.co.uk/food.htm). So eating a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. doesn't really seem like an option.

I followed Steve Pavlina's raw experiment a little while back and while I know there were some things he could have done better (e.g., consume more greens) to be honest it didn't seem like a very appealing diet to me. It seems like most of the wonderful things that people talk about in a raw diet are really only wonderful things about a high-fat raw diet.

Two final specific questions...

@Anabrese - When you say that he eats stuff like "a couple of avocados" with a salad that's about 40g of fat. Each gram of fat has 9 calories so right there that's 360 calories from fat. Even if he didn't eat any other fat all day long (unlikely) if he was consuming 2,000 calories a day then his fat intake is already 18%. That's why I think this is so tough... :)

@starflower - You eat sweet potato, butternut squash and pumpkin raw?!

Thx so much all!

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Permalink Reply by D-ra on May 11, 2008 at 5:19pm

I don't really understand what your concern is with getting calories from fruit or fats. When you break it down calories only come from three sources: CARBOHYDRATES (sugar, fruit, etc), FATS (plant, animal) and PROTEIN (again plant and animal sources).

As a raw vegan you know you cannot get all your carbs and protein from greens and they have almost zero fat. You would need to round out your diet with fruit and nuts/seeds to satisfy your need for calories from CARBS, PROTEIN and FAT. That's why it does work. Finding a way for it to work for you, with your schedule is a whole other issue, but you can't make it work if you're scared of going overboard on fruit and fats because you will limit yourself and not feel good.

Secondly, the healthy foods that you would like to continue to eat: quinoa, beans, rice of course are all primarily CARBOHYDRATES. They will also have some protein and fat. The reason that they don't raise your blood sugar rapidly is due to fiber, but in a raw diet with lots of greens and whole fruits you still have your fiber to prevent blood sugar spikes.

Hope this helps as you continue to refine your diet.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 6:27pm

I don't have a concern with getting calories from fruit or fat. I have a concern with getting too many calories from fruit or fat. If you're getting 50/60/70% or more of calories from fat (like many raw fooders) I just don't think that's healthy based on all the studying I've done. But if you try to drop down to 10/20/30% of calories from fat then you have to fill the void. Since vegetables (particularly green vegetables ) have a very small amount of calories relative to the amount you eat (a big bag of spinach might be 50 calories or so) it seems almost impossible to fill the void that way. So that leaves fruit.

I guess if you make the argument that a fruitarian diet is the healthiest then there's your answer. But again, I'm not sure based on the studying I've done that that's the case. I'd argue for a good chunk of a diet to be fruit (particularly lower-sugar fruits) but it also seems like having a diet that includes 70/80/90% calories from fruit might not be healthiest.

So I come back to quinoa/beans/rice. All sources of calories where the vast majority aren't coming from fruit sugars or from fats. I understand the benefits of raw food but it seems like excluding all cooked foods might actually result in a sub-optimal diet as you eliminating relatively clean sources of carbs and protein and replacing them with either fruit sugars or fats.

This is a great conversation. It's really helping to me to refine my thinking on the search for an optimal diet. Thx!

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Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 6:50pm

i haven't read the book as a whole but have studied the principles. and i'm leery of getting my nutritional advice from just one person/book. plus, i've read a ton of stuff about why high sugar (even natural sugar) diets might be sub-optimal.

as for "grains", first of all black beans and quinoa aren't grains. they're technically seeds. but they're relatively low in fat (quinoa is 16% fat, black beans are less than 10% fat). brown rice would be a grain but in terms of a "HUGE" mistake i'm wondering if this is due to the misconception some people have that grains = gluten. brown rice, while being a grain, is gluten-free. i get the problems with gluten. am a little less clear on the problems with gluten-free grains.

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