For my parents generation, catering for vegetarians was certainly not the norm. In fact, vegetarian wasnt a recognised term like it is today plenty of people had never met a vegetarian before, and to embrace that title was to identify yourself as completely outside of the mainstream. Since then, social stigma has greatly improved and its rare to not find mushroom risotto on a restaurant menu, let alone expect a look of confusion or even repulsion from friends or family as a free side-dish accompanying their order.

Veganism is also gradually being accepted. Whilst its rare for someone to say they are vegan without being scrutinised for their dietary choices or posited counter-arguments, the situation has swiftly improved as it becomes more accepted and options like cheese alternatives and egg substitutions become available. I distinctly recall one particular lunchtime in year 10 when my best friend had mince thrown in her face and plate by a boy shouting various abusive terms; she had just turned vegan and was the first in our entire school. At the time, no one questioned his actions, and I was told off for demanding his apology. This all followed an ordeal with the catering staff who tried to serve her bacon-wrapped chicken with gravy. Even after repeating that no, she really didnt eat meat, they offered a plate of chicken without the bacon, and for about a month she made herself content with oily chips.

That was four years ago. Now, most people would (hopefully!) not tolerate such actions, let alone perform them, and would respect my friend for her choices regardless of their own beliefs. Figures from a survey by The Vegan Society indicates veganism is also gaining popularity, with approximately 600,000 vegans in the UK in 2018 just over 1% of the population[1].

But in the background is another diet that receives less attention: raw foodism.

I have to admit that I was completely ignorant of what a raw food diet actually meant before writing this article. What follows is a disclaimer: having never actually met anyone who follows this diet, Google quickly became my best friend.

BBC Good Food seemed the most logical place to start. Here I learnt that a raw diet consists of unprocessed, untreated and unrefined foods that have not been cooked more precisely, never heated above 48C (although figures vary between sources). Apparently it all began in the late 1800s after a doctor named Maximilian Bircher-Benner cured his jaundice by eating raw apples, stimulating a series of experiments into the effect raw foods have on human health. Few people follow a 100% raw diet, and it ranges from raw vegans to raw omnivores who eat uncooked or dried meat, unprocessed dairy products and even raw eggs. Generally speaking, however, dieters avoid pasta, bread, pastries, alcohol (maybe this explains why Im yet to meet a raw student?), chips and table salt (which rules out Hassans perhaps another reason), refined sugars and flours, pasteurized dairy the list goes on. Not even coffee or tea are permitted. Ovens, microwaves, hobs, barbeques are all ruled out and replaced instead with juicers, blenders and dehydrators.

So to summarise, raw foodism is based on a principle of eating unprocessed and uncooked foods. So what do people like Woody Harrelson actually eat?

Depending on how strict you are, the list includes fresh fruits and raw vegetables, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, raw nut butters, nut milk, coconut milk, coconut oils, fermented foods like sauerkraut, seaweed, (for some) raw fish like sushi and raw or dried meats, and soaked and sprouted beans, legumes and grains (for easier digestion).

Placed in context, here are a few examples of what a day could look like eating only raw foods:

Now for the critical question: what are the benefits, if any?

As it turns out, the benefits are few and far-fetching. Supporters argue that raw foods have higher nutritional values as some minerals and vitamins are destroyed during the cooking process, in particular the water-soluble ones like vitamin B and vitamin C. For example, tomatoes lose approximately 10% of their vitamin C content when heated above 57C for just two minutes. However, other fruit and vegetables benefit from cooking by breaking down the cell wall, making nutrients easier to be digested and absorbed, such as beta-carotene found in carrots and sweet potatoes (a compound converted to vitamin A in the body). Likewise, bonds in the tertiary structure of starch and protein are broken into smaller and easier to digest chains.

It is also argued that vital enzymes needed for digestion which are found in our food are denatured during cooking when heat breaks the bonds holding together the polypeptide chains that maintain an enzymes shape. Im no scientist, but doesnt our body produce its own enzymes for digestion? Besides, enzymes found in food are denatured in the acidic environment of the stomach, so scientists believe this argument is fairly weak.

I came across one raw food advocate called Fully Raw Kristina who was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes aged 16, and decided two years later to convert to a completely raw food diet. She ate peaches for two weeks straight when I began, and two years later she no longer diabetic. Since then, she started a business entailing a YouTube channel, recipe books and FullyRaw Retreats in Bali and St. Lucia. But and heres where the numbers really crunch to benefit from her recipes, answers to FAQs, meal plans and shopping lists, you have to join the Inner Circle costing $47/month. This subscription roughly equates to 38/month, adding up to a grand total of 450/year. Now also seems an appropriate time to say that there is limited scientific evidence that support the claim of preventing or controlling diabetes.

A raw diet does make the national five-a-day goal seem like a walk in the park meaning individuals benefit from a higher intake of minerals, vitamins and fibre. It also means you avoid processed foods containing chemical food additives to lengthen shelf life and added sugars and saturated fats to cater for the sweeter tooth of modern ages both have long been associated with negative health impacts. Studies note that raw food diets seem to lower blood cholesterol, as well as lowering the number of carcinogens consumed which increase cancer risk. A raw diet is also effective for people trying to lose weight, although some doctors online have said the demands and restrictions of the diet make it hard to maintain in the long run which can lead to more weight gain after coming off. More importantly, one group of researchers found that about 30% of women under 45 developed amenorrhea, a term for when menstrual periods stop due to insufficient calories.

There are, in fact, plenty of health concerns, especially in those following the diet strictly or over a long time period. For starters, without taking supplements, individuals have a lower intake of vitamin B12, vitamin D, iron and calcium. And whilst omnivores obtain their protein from meat and fish, vegetarians from eggs and vegans from legumes like lentils, chickpeas and beans, raw foodists mostly rely on nuts. Furthermore, there is a significant danger of food poisoning from Salmonella bacteria for those that eat raw eggs and meat, as well as from Listeria bacteria in unpasteurised milk.

Other drawbacks include the expenses. Organic ingredients are usually more costly and some people may be required to travel much further afield to find a grocery or speciality store that stocks a wide range of raw and organic products. Then there are the appliances: from blenders to juicers to dehydrators to food processors for slicing, grating and shredding, a quick search on Amazon indicated these run from 80 well into the hundreds.

Food preparation is also more time consuming, accounting for the time spent sprouting seeds, germinating nuts, dehydrating foods and juicing and blending. One online recipe for raw granola takes three-days with steps like soaking raisins and dehydrating the entire mix.

Above all else, the diet strikes me as very isolating. Its hard to eat out unless you can find a speciality restaurant because even a salad may have a dressing which contains ingredients that arent raw or natural. Staying around a friend or relatives house would likely be very challenging for them to cater for you unless they too were raw foodists, so it would be easy to find yourself feeling guilty or even cancelling plans due to your inconvenient dietary choice. Dont get me wrong there seems to be an entire online community supporting one another, but as the diet is far more limiting than vegetarianism and veganism its not nearly as popular and so chances are you wont have an immediate social network of raw foodists.

It would seem that the negatives far outweigh the benefits, some of which lack strong scientific evidence. This doesnt discount the diet entirely as we could probably all benefit from eating a few more vegetables and fruits, but balance is key. Raw foodism is an overarching concept interpreted differently depending on the dieter, with the degree of strictness varying between individual. But there is clearly a reason why doctors ask pregnant women, young children and seniors, people with weaker immune systems and chronic medical conditions like kidney disease to avoid this diet, and why many dont recommend to anyone. Raw foodism seems to me to be an example of where too much of a good thing isnt good anymore.

[1] https://www.vegansociety.com/about-us/further-information/key-facts

Image Credit: Sasha Gill

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The Raw Revolution - Oxford Student

environment

We mustlearn Covid-19's lessons for our relationship with the planet and help nature restore the living systems on which human life utterly depends, writes Rod Oram

(This is the first of three articles at Newsroom in conjunction with Pure Advantage and the Edmund Hillary Fellowship on the importance of regenerative agriculture. Tomorrow: The Good, the Bad and the Opportunity, by Alina Siegfried.)

Natures rebound is one of the upsides of the otherwise calamitous Covid-19 crisis. Atmosphere and waters cleared, land quietened, and birds, fish and animals returned. When we took our foot off the neck of nature, she responded with renewed vigour and resilience. But we gave nature only a temporary reprieve while lockdown lasted.

Speed is another surprise about the virus, in ways frightening and uplifting. It is spreading with astonishing speed through the human population. Harmless to the bats it came from, it is deadly to some people it attacks. Yet, people have responded fast, individually and collectively, magnificently and abysmally. One way or another, humankind is getting through this crisis.

We could choose to ignore these lessons of nature and speed. We could carry on the way we were before the virus struck. If so, nature would respond ever faster to the destructive pressure we humans put on it. Climate catastrophe, species extinction, ecosystem destruction and degradation of air, water and soil would all accelerate with frightening speed. With every species we eliminate, we break one more thread in the web of life.

Or we could choose to apply these lessons to our relationship with the planet. If we did, we would help nature restore the living systems on which human life utterly depends.

We could make our towns and cities healthier and more productive, in terms human and natural. Ways to do so include travelling less by relying more on virtual communications and walking, cycling and public transport; by restoring our urban rivers and coastal waters; and by bringing more of nature back into our urban environments to help us feed ourselves and restore our urban ecosystems.

Beyond our towns and cities, we could help nature rebuild its diversity and vitality, resilience and fecundity in all of Aotearoas land, waters, atmosphere and oceans. Ways to do so include eradicating predators from our native bush; helping threatened species recover; making infrastructure compatible with natural environments; ensuring tourism and other human activity dont degrade pristine places; and using natural resources in ways that help renew and regenerate the ecosystems which provide them to us.

An inexorable logic runs through these great ambitions. We must learn how to work with nature, not against it. In all we do.

One expression of this is the regenerative economy. This is a radical change from the exploitive economy which has driven human progress through the two centuries of industrialisation to date.

The bankruptcy of the exploitive economy is abundantly clear. One measure of its ecological failure is our breaching of some of the nine planetary boundaries defined by Earth systems science. One measure of its economic and social failure is the UNs Human Development Report.

Of all the enormous challenges of creating a regenerative economy, the greatest is learning regenerative ways to use land to grow food. Yet, doing so will have multiple benefits to the planet and people. It is the bedrock on which we can build sustainable human societies.

For the past century or so, the industrialisation of food production has had its triumphs. It has made much more food available to far more people at prices ever more affordable for many of them.

But such farming systems are the greatest human drivers of changes in land use, in ecosystem degradation and species extinction. Cumulatively, they are the greatest single cause of climate change, which only compounds and accelerates the other problems they create.

Moreover, some industrialised food consists of empty calories,those which provide energy but little or no other nutrition. Consequently, there are now more obese people (from a number of causes, not just nutrition) in the world than malnourished. This is causing a health crisis.

Overweight and obesity are linked to more deaths worldwide than underweight. Globally there are more people who are obese than underweight this occurs in every region except parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the World Health Organisation reported recently.

The twin goals of healthy people and a healthy planet are inextricably linked. But we cant achieve them by incremental improvements in existing systems. They are too broken, their damage is too great and our time too short. Only radical, fast reinvention informed by nature itself will work.

A wealth of investigations, initiatives and organisations have embraced this essential truth in recent years. They range from long-established bodies such as the World Economic Forum and The Commonwealth,to new alliances such as the Food and Land Use Coalition, which published a report last September entitledGrowing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use.

One of the best guides to how we can feed a healthy diet to 10 billion people (the likely human population by 2050, up from 7.8 bnow) within the planetary boundaries is the work of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health. This joint venture between a Scandinavian NGO and a British medical journal published its definitive report early last year.

Its starting point was to establish healthy reference diets, then to work out how much the shift to them would reduce the environmental impact of current food and farming systems.

Transformation to healthy diets by 2050 will require substantial dietary shifts, including a greater than 50 percent reduction in global consumption of unhealthy foods, such as red meat and sugar, and a greater than 100 percent increase in consumption of healthy foods, such as nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes.

The reports data, analysis and graphics are compelling. For example, red meat consumption in North America is five times the recommended healthy intake per person; in Europe and central Asia it is three times. Dairy consumption in those three regions is only moderately above the recommended intake. But the adverse environmental impacts of dairy production per serving are similar to red meat so they share the same transformational challenge.

In addition to changes in diet, new forms of food will play a crucial role too. Two alternatives to red meat and dairy products, for example, are substitutes made from plants or grown from stem cells. Both have significantly reduced environmental impact compared with the farmed versions, as do plants grown aeroponicallyand in other forms of indoor horticulture.

Here in New Zealand, our red meat and dairy sectors argue they have two advantages over their farming competitors abroad: they are more efficient, and their pasture-based systems have lower environmental impacts compared with feedlot farmers overseas. Thus, they believe they will always have plenty of consumers overseas who are willing to pay high prices for their high-quality products.

But thats as logical as if Volkswagen said it will always have plenty of customers for its high quality, reliable, safe and relatively low emission fossil fuel cars. Quite the contrary. It is designing thelast range of fossil fuel engines it will ever make. They will go into production in 2026 to tide it over until electric, hydrogen and other zero-emission technologies are ubiquitous. Along the way, Volkswagens customers are gaining substantial economic and environmental benefits.

Our farmers need to make a similar transition. Yes, they will keep producing quality meat and milk, just as Volkswagen will keep making cars. But how can they transform their science and practices to turn their farms from sources of greenhouse gas emissions into carbon sinks? This would help turn their farming from an extractive system to a regenerative one. And with zero nutrient losses due to the improved soil filtration of more diverse pastures with longer roots, their farms would be more productive and environmentally sustainable.

Transitioning rapidly to regenerative systems, our farmers would build ecological and economic resilience and establish this new competitive advantage, even over such farmers overseas. Our farmers will have a deeply compelling story to tell about their pivotal role in restoring Aotearoas unique ecosystems and species, and in encouraging urban Kiwis to bring true regeneration to their built environments and economic activity.

By helping nature rebuild the ecosystems on which their farmingdepends, they will be agents of positive change. Doing so, they will build far closer relationships with their customers at home and abroad, and with their fellow Kiwis who would applaud and support such a transformation.

A growing number of Kiwi farmers are already on the journey, as Pure Advantageand the Edmund Hillary Fellowshipexplore in their newly launched initiative Our Regenerative Future. This column is part of that series of articles laying out principles, practices and case studies of regenerative agriculture in New Zealand. Alina Siegfried is the lead author of the series, edited by Simon Millar at Pure Advantage and Im an EHF Fellow.

This is absolutely the right time for us to begin to regenerate. The virus crisis is forcing us all to think and act better and rewarding us for doing so. Nature is showing us the way.

Tomorrow: The Good, the Bad and the Opportunity, by Alina Siegfried.

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Rod Oram: Nature is showing us the way - Newsroom

A month ago, I invited you, my punderful readers, to submit your best original preys on words. Within hours, a punami of more than 50 original puns poured in, and by the deadline for submission, I swam in a torrent of more than 200. From start to finish, every day was Punday.

Such a response demonstrates that a good pun is its own reword. Heres a sample of the top puns. Ive posted a lot more on my website: http://www.verbivore.com. Lets get right to wit:

After my dinner date with Bo Derek, my cannibal co-workers at the electronics lab said, You know, that was attenuate. Erik Hanson, South Park

Letting those darned seals overpopulate down at the Childrens Pool really defeats the porpoise! Todd Hoover, La Jolla

What do you call a waffle at the beach? A Sandy Eggo. Bryant Berk, Normal Heights

The new movie with Harrison Ford about the love life of a misplaced garden tool is titled Ardors of the Lost Rake. Michael Punaro, Encinitas

Sometime in the late 1980s, I was covering the Masters golf tournament for the Union, sports columnist Barry Lorge at my side. As we worked on our stories, Barry suddenly asked, How do you spell cirrhosis? I answered, possibly correctly, and added, In these fast-paced, deadline-pressured circumstances, it can be helpful if you just stop to spell cirrhosis. Hank Wesch, La Mesa

Did you hear about the Boy Scout who started a business fixing broken car horns? He called it Beep Repaired. Patrick Elms, Carmel Valley

A donut baker bemoaning his girth lamented, I cant believe I ate the hole thing. I should cut down this roll around the middle. Linda Gross, Carlsbad

A mycologist wanted to add to her mushroom collection, but due to spore planning, it was such a sporgasbord, there wasnt mushroom for anything new. Claudia Lopez, Oceanside

A doctor insisted on stitching up his own wound. The nurse said, Suture self. Christopher Boyle, Glendale, Ariz.

What did one Neanderthal say to the other regarding a misunderstanding about the local flora? Him peach meant. Dawne Adam, National City

Whats the difference between me and garbage? Garbage gets taken out once a week. Mary Jo Crowley, Escondido

Did you hear about the swami who was in a fender bender? He was having an auto-body experience. Tim Hart, Carlsbad

Even though baseball players are on furlough, umpires are still working from home. Doug Miller, La Jolla

Why did the ghost win the pie-eating contest? Because he was the best at goblin it up. Lara Hardin, Escondido

Why didnt my husband go outside when he got dizzy? Because he didnt know vertigo. Vee Weaver Roebuck, Kearny Mesa

What do you call a one-of-a-kind trumpet? A unicorn (unique horn). John Silcox, Serra Mesa

I bird-proofed my home. Now its impeccable. Matt Strabone, North Park

Hurrying to get to the airport on time, Giovanni backed his Alfa Romeo out of his garage and drove over his suitcase containing his clothes. Anguished, he shouted, Mama mia! I have a flat attire! Howard Crabtree, Coronado

All this social distancing has given me an inferiority complex. Staying at home used to be enough, but now I have to go hide in abasement! Andy Tao, Los Alamitos

I attempted to eat a clock the other day. It was really time consuming. Carl P. Hennrich, Encinitas

Im a very skeptical person. The doctor recently told me that I needed a diet that was low in sodium. I took the advice with a grain of salt. Abraham Perez, San Ysidro

One mans meat is another mans poisson. Judith Leggett, Escondido

Why did the former vice president have to give up dancing? Because he couldnt find his Al Gore rhythm. Ren Halloran, Rancho Bernardo

When the HOV lane goes underground, it becomes a carpool tunnel. Peter Lawson, Carmel Mountain Ranch

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Jest for the pun of it, pun for all and all for pun! - The San Diego Union-Tribune