Nothing gets a diet craze going like the movie-star stamp of approval. Once America hears that celebrities are embracing a particular diet, that diet gets tried. This is not completely illogical; stars, if they want to work, absolutely have to stay preternaturally thin, glow with health, and look 10 years younger than they are. This is serious business; if a star can find a regimen that achieves all this, it is news with a capital N! The diet craze currently spreading like a Texas grassfire through Hollywood, New York, and Aspen is the Raw Foods Diet (sometimes called the Live Foods Diet), and judging from the results of the converted, it is something to get excited about.
What is unusual about the raw-foods movement is the premise, which is absurdly simple, and, well, obvious: The Earth produces food for us (and all the other animals) in the state in which it is meant to be eaten: raw. We are supposed to eat it the way it comes. The end.
There is a certain irrefutable logic about this premise. Humans didn’t even discover cooking until relatively recently, something along the lines of 10,000 years ago. (Practically yesterday!) Adherence to the raw-foods regimen is simple: Don’t eat things that have been heated above the temperature of 118 degrees. When food is cooked, vitamins are significantly reduced, and the natural enzymes present in food are damaged, sometimes destroyed, by the heat. Raw-food theorists claim that these natural-food enzymes are crucial to our ability to truly digest our food. When these enzymes aren’t present, our bodies are forced to use our own cellular enzymes to complete digestion. Raw foodists claim this causes us to age prematurely, feel fatigued, and grow ill. In addition, in part because our bodies become warehouses of toxic, improperly digested food, we also grow stubbornly fat.
As common sense as the theory sounds (and even with added celebrity allure), eating nothing but raw food is a huge adjustment for the average American; it takes a lot of motivation to even try. Two of the biggest motivators are life-threatening illness (that one will get you motivated) and obesity. But weight loss, for all its drawing power, is only one of the benefits of following a raw-foods diet. Proponents also claim numerous other health benefits, including increased energy, improved skin appearance, better digestion, and reduced risk of heart disease. A raw-foods diet contains little saturated fat and no trans fats. It is also low in sodium and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fiber, and health-promoting plant chemicals called phytochemicals. All of these properties are associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Plus you lose weight. Your body effortlessly morphs into its most perfect version of itself. What’s that? The most perfect version of you was a younger one? Well, you get to feel and look younger, which is probably as good as you are going to get, short of making that pact with Satan you were contemplating.
Ah, the siren song of effortless weight loss! According to advocates, you can eat all the raw food you want, whenever you want, pounds and pounds at a sitting, and the fat will still melt away. I tend to believe this mighty claim, because if you are eating raw foods and only raw foods, it isn’t easy to get enough calories. Consider this: In order to get the normal requirement of 2,000 calories a day, you would have to eat 20 lbs. of raw vegetables. Seriously. I will tell you right now, you could spend all day chewing and swallowing 20 lbs. of raw vegetables, and then you would have to go to sleep, because your jaws would be so tired. You would only need to eat 14 lbs. of sprouts, or 10 lbs. of raw sweet fruit, to reach the 2,000-calorie mark … but that’s still a pretty heavy commitment of time to chewing, and … excreting. (The raw-foods diet is a very healthful experience for your intestines, as you may have imagined.) Fortunately, you are able to eat other things besides raw fruits and vegetables on the live food regimen: sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans, dried fruit, and seaweed (grains and beans must be sprouted or soaked, though, sometimes as long as 30 days). This getting-enough-calories thing is something of a problem for the raw foodists; almost all raw-foods regimens rely on juicers and food dehydrators to some extent, as well as packaged “superfoods” that help get the calorie count up in the survival range.
Noted author and raw-foods guru David Wolfe was in town recently, explaining the raw-foods diet and extolling the virtues of two superfoods: raw chocolate, also known as cacao nibs, and goji berries. He himself gets much of his daily caloric requirement from chocolate, which (in its raw state, of course) is extraordinarily good for you (raw chocolate has 13 times the antioxidants of fresh green vegetables, as well as tons of magnesium, natural antidepressants and MOA inhibitors, to just name a few of it’s rare qualities). Getting to eat all the chocolate you want: That certainly does take some of the sting out. Wolfe takes a very relaxed attitude about conversion to a raw-foods diet, an attitude I found refreshing. “It isn’t about denying yourself things you want to eat,” Wolfe explains, “If it becomes all about denial, you will never succeed. Start by adding raw foods and superfoods to your normal diet. It is better for your body to make the change gradually, in any case. The more vibrant, alive foods you eat, the less you will want dead, unhealthy foods” (such as “hormone and antibiotic-filled glow-in-the-dark factory-farmed milk,” the description of which made me laugh, and simultaneously lose my appetite for milk – forever.) According to Wolfe, it’s about making positive choices, and choosing what works for you. He is no diet nazi. “Even if you never achieve a 100% raw-food diet”, he adds, “even getting 50% of your daily intake via raw foods will have a dramatic effect on your health.” Wolfe also places an emphasis on seeking out organic foods whenever possible, which is also a fairly obvious “better choice.” The vitamin and, especially, mineral content of organic foods are phenomenally higher than in conventionally grown foods, since the soil they are grown in is living soil that actually contains minerals.
Smoothies, salad, nuts, and seeds not sounding like enough, even with unlimited raw chocolate? Well, it’s not enough for the go-go Hollywood crowd; the stars have been hiring chefs to prepare gourmet raw food for them, to round out the experience a bit. Said chefs have been obligingly jumping on the raw-foods craze, opening raw restaurants and writing raw cookbooks, and real creativity has been employed to come up with satisfying, recognizable entrees. Right here in Austin we have our own raw-foods restaurant, (okay it’s more of a lunch counter) at Whole Foods Lamar, as well as superfood-conscious Daily Juice on Barton Springs Road. 
This article appears in May 5 • 2006.
