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John: Alright, this is John Kohler with okraw.com. Today we have another exciting episode for
you and we got doctor Doug Graham. He's been to the raw foods movement for a long time
now and I respect and admire this man. He's taught me a lot. So, today I'm here, but also
you guys are here, to learn more up from his teachings about the 80/10/10 diet that he
wrote the book on. So, Doug, today's question is very simple. How important are leafy greens
on the 80/10/10 diet? I mean, I know a lot of people try to be fruitarian, maybe some
people eat 30 bananas a day and maybe no greens a day. Is that really healthy? Is that really
what 80/10/10's all about? What's your opinion on that?
Doug: That's a really good question, really good question. I stress the consumption of
greens. I stress the consumption of vegetables. I like fruit as much as anybody could ever
like fruit, and I know there's times when I'm not really in the mood for vegetables
and I eat fruit, but there's times in really in the mood for vegetables. I'm good friends
with vegetables. I'll sometimes eat vegetables for breakfast. I'll sometimes just have vegetables
either at the start, the middle, or the end my lunch, balancing it out with fruit or sometimes
even just having vegetables for lunch. I know how much fruit I need. I've had enough practice
there and make sure that I never ever shore myself on fruit, but I also never ever short
myself on vegetables. Does that mean you have to eat vegetables every single day? No, it
doesn't mean that at all. It means that in the course of the year, in the course of a
decade, you need to be eating your vegetables. I've never seen anybody succeed for ten or
fifteen years on just fruit, only fruit. I've seen people go month, I've seen people go
year, I've met a couple people who want a few years on only fruit. I mean, literally,
the fruit like you think of as fruit. Not like a cucumber here and there and a tomato
here and there and calling it fruit, but I mean just fruit. I've seen people succeed
for short term of months or even a year or two. Usually these are people who aren't super
physically active, don't sweat much, don't exert hard, aren't asking for maximal muscle
contractions, but they can coast through and be quite good and be very clear minded and
whatnot and in pretty good health, but I've never seen anybody do that for a long time,
but at the time they're saying, 'oh yes, well I've been fruitarian for five years,' and
I go, 'could you describe it?' and they go, 'well we eat tomatoes, and we eat cucumbers,
and we eat leafy greens, and those are fruity stuff, you know, and we eat almonds because
they count as droops and therefore they're fruits, and we certainly eat the avocados,
and the durian, and the jack, and the jump jack and the aqui and the other fatty fruits,'
and we go, 'oh, you know, you're really stretching your fruit definition pretty far, which I
don't really care. I don't get into the naming of it all. It's not about the naming of it
all. It's about staying healthy. So, the question, how much fruit? I usually find if people don't
eat enough vegetables, that they fail. They start craving salty foods, they start losing
muscular strength, they start losin' mental focus, their teeth rot, they bump into various
mineral problems or mineral related problems. Why? It's not that you can't minerals out
of fruit. You can get a ton of minerals out of fruit, but the mineral to sugar ratio in
vegetables is extremely favorable for minerals, and the amount of minerals in a small amount
of vegetables is extremely favorable for minerals compared to that of fruit, and if you need
some way to measure it, there's different ways to measure. I'd say about half of the
volume of the food I eat comes from vegetables. I'd say, typically when I measure, that's
about 4-5% of my total calories, but I've seen people do fine on 2% of their total calories
from vegetables, especially from leafy vegetables, but if you eat none, I've seen people eat
nothing for 60 days. That doesn't prove that they can live on nothing. I've seen people
eat nothing but watermelon for 18 months, but they couldn't sustain it and by the time
nine months had gone by they were already losing their memory, and by the time 18 months
had gone by, he just about lost his mind, had almost no muscular strength left at all,
and only by introducing vegetables, it would bring the man back to health. So, I'm a big
fan of vegetables. I think that the young tender leafy greens are some of the best you
can possibly eat. I'm a big fan of the fruity vegetables, the cucumbers, and tomatoes, and
okras, and peppers, and even the zucchinis and the other vegetable fruits, the vegetables
with seeds inside, such as okra. I like all of those, but I really focus in on leafy vegetables,
tender leafy vegetables. I make a big deal about eating those. To me they're like candy.
I know fruit is like candy, too, but for me vegetables are like eating candy, especially
when its homegrown stuff. For home-grown vegetables, I just take 10, 12, 15, 18, 20 leaves in my
home grown lettuce and then just roll it up into something that looks like a giant, when
I'm rolling it feels kind of like a cigar. By the time I'm all done it looks sort of
like a Mexican burrito or something and I've got this big thing, I just eat it down, and
I don't know what it is, why that's so tasty, but to me it's just candy.
John: Wow. Well said, Doug. You know, being into athletic performance, how can somebody's
athletic performance suffer by not eating leafy greens?
Doug: Well, this is the deal. Without sufficient minerals, especially the sodium that we get
from dark green leafy vegetables, you can't provide maximal muscle contractions. There's
no way. Muscular strength depends upon sufficient sodium, and what you find is fruit you have
a lot energy and you can go, go, go but if you want to be strong, which is certainly
a part of any athletic endeavor, if you want to have strong muscular contractions, there's
got to be sufficient amount of sodium, for starters. You got to have the potassium, for
inside the cell, but you got to have the sodium for the outside, and especially when we're
on a diet where we're not eating any salt whatsoever, you still have to provide some
and it's going to come from vegetables. It's really, I mean, fruits a great source of potassium,
but vegetables are a great source of sodium and this allows for muscular strength, including
heart muscles, including peristaltic muscles, including those kegoles pelvic floor muscles
that you got to pay attention to or you're going to wet yourself and embarrass yourself
in other ways. I mean, including the muscles for swallowing, all the muscles, not just
your voluntary big frame muscles, but everything else that happens as far as muscular contraction
in your body. If the contractions aren't as strong as they're supposed to be, then, you
know, you're just barely hanging on by the skin of your teeth. That's no way to thrive.
John: wow. So, it sounds like part of the fruit based diet is actually a vegetable-based
diet to get, you know, the synergistic effect. I mean, somebody could eat all fruit and they
could go sodium deficient, right Doug? Doug: good question. A wide variety of minerals,
but especially sodium, our body's pretty good sparing sodium, but when you sweat, you lose
a little sodium, you lose a little sodium in urine, you lose a little sodium here and
there, you know, if you're not taking enough in, eventually you're going to, you know,
you can't overspend every day and expect not to run out of whatever you're overspending.
So, I find, if you can't contract your muscles, you start feeling weak, it becomes a continual
cycle. I see a lot of people who say, 'oh, well, the answer must be eat more fruit,'
and that is not the answer. It's like drinking seawater when you're out to sea and you're
drowning so you drink some seawater and it makes you thirstier so you drink more seawater.
This is not the answer. In this case, eat more fruit is not usually the answer to this
problem. You got to eat your vegetables. Besides, vegetables just make fruit taste better.
John: alright, let's talk about what are leafy vegetables for those you guys that may not
know, and, you know, I know a lot of people may just eat romaine lettuce, romaine hearts
each and every day. 'Oh, I'm eating my leafy green vegetables. I'm eating romaine hearts.'
If somebody ate romaine hearts, like one head or 2 heads a day for a year, Doug, would that
be, you know, good or would it be bad or should we really do something a bit different?
Doug: well, I don't know if I would call it good or bad, the judgment call there. Would
it be sufficient? Probably. Probably would be sufficient, but our bodies really thrive
on variety. We do well with variety and most folks, we fall into patterns and sometimes
resist the variety. I remember one time, had to be twenty years ago or more, but I remember
one time I'd been eating fruit for quite a few days and then I decided to try some lettuce,
and I kind of decided to try, but I really wasn't too keen on the idea, because I'd just
been so happy with my fruit and it was the height of summer and it was mango season and
just things were good that way, but it was, 'oh, you know, I haven't had vegetables in
a long time. Seems like it's been weeks and weeks since I've had vegetables,' and I tasted
vegetables it was like, 'that's what's been missing. This is the best thing ever,' but
in my own garden I usually grow six or eight different kinds of lettuce. I grow a couple
dozen, heck I grow a couple different kinds, dozen different kinds of miny.
John: Yeah. Those are all leafy greens, right? Doug: Those are all leafy greens. I grow any
herb that I can grow and those are all leafy greens. Those all count as leafy greens. I
love dill. I really enjoy cilantro. I get a tickle out of basil and there's so many
those that I really enjoy and they're just delicate mild tender leafy greens, but there's
dozens and dozens of kinds of lettuces to grow and all those oriental vegetables that
are just spectacular and each has a place, each has a recipe that that just, is just
begging you to use that particular leaf in that particular recipe because then it works
really well and I recommend people exchange throughout the year and be willing and open
to try the different lettuces and try different greens and the younger greens and the oriental
greens and see which ones and you might find a few that are your favorites. Most people
have a favorite lettuce. Does mean only that lettuce every single day? I'm going to eat
oak leaf lettuce lots of times in the summer because I can grow Oak leaf in the summer
with no slugs. They just don't go for the leaf lettuce, you know, and then I can grow
like some little head lettuce that just all it is is slugs. It's like it's too much trouble
to clean and it's too much trouble cleaning and so I'll grow that in the different of
year when slugs aren't such an issue, you know, in early spring or late autumn when
they've already gone to bed and just grow different kinds in different ways. I'm really
fond of kaas lettuce because kaas lettuce is just fantastic just fantastic but I grow
tons and tons of different kinds and it's well worth, even celery. There's different
kinds of celery and it's worth tasting the different kinds of celery to see which ones
you like using them. Same with cucumbers. I mean, how many? There's Persian cucumbers
and the British cucumbers and all kinds and I want to, I like to mix it up but I'm not
going to tell you you have to be methodical about mixing up your greens or exchanging
going from one to the next. You could probably do your own romaine. Would be no big deal,
would be kind of boring and, you know, when the, you taste something else and it just
lights up you taste buds, you know, I need to be a little more of that.
John: Wow. Well, thank you Doug. This is definitely very valuable, you know. I want to always
encourage you guys to start growing your own food and what I've learned is the food that
you grow yourself has more nutrition in it 'cause it's picked fresh and goes right into
your mouth instead of into refrigerated trucks and to warehouses and into your store, plus
it's going to be less expensive, plus you could grow all kinds of varieties, especially
the varieties that Doug talked about. Doug: and it tastes better
John: it's just a win-win-win for everybody. So, if you want to learn how to grow your
own food, you want to check out my other YouTube channel, growingyourgreens, and if you want
to learn more about Doug's 80-10-10 diet, because it is done a specific way, and, you
know, you can't learn this through five-minute YouTube videos. You got to really buy the
book. So, Doug, where can somebody get your book?
Doug: they can go to foodNsport.com, my own website, with the word food letter N and the
word sport. 10 letters and you know you got it right. foodNsport.com. They could go to
Amazon to buy the book if they really want to. You can go to the library and get it for
free. Any library in the US that doesn't carry it, just walk in, request it. It's already
on their system that they can request that book and get a free copy to give away to people
in the library, and I would love for you order it from library, in fact, and I'd like to
see that book in every library in the United States.
John: Wow. Well, once again, read the book, know what it's really about. There's a lot
of people teaching this stuff that may not be entirely what Doug would teach. I mean,
Doug's learned this over many, many, many decades of trial and error, doing it right,
and then years, for years he didn't even have a book and then he finally came out with it
and it's definitely a masterpiece. I highly encourage you guys to pick it up. So, hopefully
you guys, after watching this episode, you've realized that leafy greens are really important.
They're definitely a staple of my raw diet and I believe should also be a large part
of yours. Once again, my name is John Kohler with okraw.com, we'll see you next time, and
remember; keep eating your fresh fruits and vegetables including your leafy greens. Doug,
what's the difference between and 80-10-10 diet and a 30-bad diet or one of the diets
that being promoted as being similar to the 80-10-10?
Doug: That's a great question.