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Hello, my name is Carolyn Dean, drcarolyndean.com. I'm a medical doctor and a naturopathic doctor
and I live in beautiful Maui. I've finished my 22nd health book, I have a free newsletter
and I also have an online wellness program that you can join. And today in this series
I'll be talking about dieting. A raw food diet is what you would call an extreme diet.
I think the raw food diet these days is like the vegetarian movement in the sixties. It's
carbohydrate heavy- for sure because you're mainly using plant foods. There is a segment
of the movement that is moving into raw meat and raw fish because some woman feel they
aren't getting enough nutrition from the vegetables. With a raw diet, here's a lot of processing.
For example, when you use grains or beans, you need to soak those foods Beans and seeds
require soaking and sprouting. There's one recipe I noticed with balgar wheat that you
have to soak the wheat for three days. So, you have to be prepared, there's a lot of
work to do this diet. The food is delicious but it takes a lot of time to prepare so those
are the things you have to make when you're doing this diet. The other thing is, it's
not for everybody. In my telephone consulting practice, I work with a lot of people who
have yeast overgrowth. And they've told me that a raw food diet increases their yeast
problems. That's because,as the Chinese say, a raw food diet is cold and can cause dampness
and be a breeding ground for yeast. So you have to consider that as well. In fact, most
of the population is not going to be able to sustain such a rich diet. The reason raw
food diet is promoted is because cooking food destroys enzymes so raw food proponents say
having the enzymes in the food helps them digest better and you don't need to pull the
reserves of your own enzymes to do the digesting. There are a lot of good reasons to do a raw
diet but I just tell people to pull some of those foods into their standard good diet.
You'll do well by lowering your portions of food, drinking water between meals- all the
good advice that you read in all these books, without being fanatic.