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

Posted by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 12:22am in General Chat

In my search for an optimum diet I'm gravitating more and more to raw. I've been raw for extended stretches but am still having a few stumbling blocks between where I'm at and 100% raw. The biggest one is this. I'm a pretty active, on-the-go guy and seem to need (and do best with) a reasonably high caloric intake. When I've experimented with all-raw it seems like I can only really do it on either a high-fat or high-fruit diet. There just aren't enough calories in raw vegetables.

However, based on all my studies of nutrition (I've read 100s of books by now) I don't think either a high-fat or high-fruit diet is optimal. So that I'm trying to figure out where that leaves me.

It brings me to some other foods that I've generally regarded as being nutritious, namely quinoa, black beans, brown rice, soba noodles, etc. However, while I'm sure sprouting them is a possibility(?) given that I don't have all day to spend on diet I'm not sure that's practical.

So what I'm wondering is...

#1 - Given that it's tough to get to my desired caloric intake on purely raw food, does it make sense to have 20-30% of my diet be foods like quinoa, brown rice, etc. I'd keep 70-80% raw but this would allow me to also keep my fruit and fat intake lower.

#2 - Am I missing something here? Many of you have been raw for a long time. How have you solved it? Most of the recipes in raw cookbooks are super high in fat as are a lot of the dishes at the popular raw restaurants. High fruit seems like an alternative (80-10-10 anyone?) but I'm concerned about high sugar content (even if it's natural), candida, etc.

This seems like the final frontier for me. In other words, if I can crack this nut (no pun intended) then I think I can do the raw vegan thing. But at the same time I get a little discouraged when it seems like neither of the two options are all that healthy.

Thoughts?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hilary Baumann on May 11, 2008 at 8:24pm: Oooo, the sprouts with spices dehydrated I hadn't heard of before and that sounds really good!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 8:26pm: thanks hilary and pink lady. any particular resources you'd recommend for sprouting?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Pink Lady Apple on May 11, 2008 at 8:42pm: Jon, I purchase the majority of my seeds from sproutpeople.com. They have wonderful links which give great details on sprouting. If you need any additional information, just give me a shout. I love sprouting :)

Hilary, I thought of that when I didn't want to eat too many nuts, so I thought, if I can spice almonds, why not grains? We do that with the flax crackers, so I just used some of the spices I used for crackers and it worked fine :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Hilary Baumann on May 11, 2008 at 10:18pm: Thanks for putting the idea out there then. I made a spice mix the other night that I think would be perfect to try.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Hilary Baumann on May 11, 2008 at 10:12pm

http://living-foods.com/articles/sprouting.html
http://hippocratesgreenhouse.com/Quickstart/ImageLib/Sprout_Chart_2...
http://sproutman.com
http://www.Sproutpeople.com which Pink Lady Apple already mentioned
... plus I have a pdf with a couple of sprouting charts. I don't know where I got them from or else I would just reference the resources.

As far as where I buy my seeds or grouts - the local co-op grocery is where I usually get them at the moment. They have big bins of seeds and grains and such. If you start eating them a lot there might be places online that sell them cheaper but I found it's a good way to sample and find out what I like before I go looking to buy a bunch of something.

Attachments:

sprouts1.pdf, 340 KB

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Permalink Reply by .·:*¨¨* :·.RawZi.·:*¨¨* :·. on May 12, 2008 at 6:10am: In a little support of what you justy said, acetic acid is vinegar. Most vinegars especially grain vinegars can definitely give me a bad reaction in most cases. I prtetty much dislike vinegar for human consumption, but I guess that's just me and my opinion.

I do like it for cleaning the house (cold, not reheated); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Blissfully Blessed on May 11, 2008 at 9:45pm: Jon, Jameth Sheridan is of the view that too high fat or fruit is dangerous and so reocmmends brown rice, potatoes, lentils etc. to fill in the needed calories. He's very much against high fat or high fruit. Google him, he's a famous raw teacher.
I personally have really bad reactions to any cooked starches these days, and they are not palatable raw, and I also have BAD reactions and hormonal imbalances to high fat, so 80/10/10 is my only choice. Read the book, there's too much info in there to miss, he gives references etc. so you can research those.
Good luck!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 10:13pm: @Pink Lady - Thanks for info on sproutpeople. I'll check that out.

@Baraka - Yeah, the more I study the more I seem to align with Jameth. Having said that I always like to keep an open mind and keep researching Next week I may be somewhere else entirely! :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by bitt on May 11, 2008 at 10:14pm: i have to say i was eating a diet based on brown rice, potatoes, lentils, beans, quinoa prior to going raw and i was very sick. now, it could have been what i was NOT eating versus what I was. i obviously haven't done a controlled study and don't care to on myself. i do think everybody is different. so keep that in mind, Jon.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jon Bischke on May 11, 2008 at 10:18pm: Valid point. From reading Butenko and others it seems like if you weren't doing greens, etc. it's very likely that any diet could make you sick. What I'm thinking right now is a diet something along the lines of 25/25/25/25 where 25% of calories come from greens, 25% come from fruit, 25% come from fat and 25% come from stuff like quinoa, buckwheat, etc. Now I could make this a totally raw diet but sprouting the quinoa and buckwheat but until I figure out how to do that I may simply continue to cook them. We'll see where this leads!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by buddhababy on May 12, 2008 at 6:15am: Everyone has mentioned only two options to raw diets- there is a third (very healthy I may add) that is not based on fat nor fruit- It's called the Hippocrates approach. It's actually the approach I settled upon because I can't do too much fat nor too much fruit. It took me years to figure this out but I feel best on it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by buddhababy on May 12, 2008 at 8:23am: I've been wondering about that_ I suppose that's why even Ann Wigmore ate organic cheese and seitan. I had a health challenge (breast cancer) so that's what led me to Hippocrates style diet- prior to that I ate a high fat raw food diet and have tried a high fruit one but it leaves me tired,my teeth hurt and I feel unwell.
Finding a balance can be tricky. I also had major salt cravings when eating high fruit but overall love eating low to no added fat and lots of greens with some fruit, wheatgrass, sprouts etc; nut heavy diets are awful in my opinion.; ▶ Reply to This