Having a foot in both worlds (happily, may I add), I often find it funny how both sides consider the other borderline insane when in fact they have so much in common! Today, let’s turn a blind eye on our differences, and focus on the similarities.
Here are the 15 reasons why Raw Foodists and Weston A. Price followers aren’t so different after all!
#1 Both spend a huge amount of the time learning about nutrition, making food, and then blogging about it. Here are some of my favorite blogs:
On raw food diets: Kristen’s Raw (Raw and Paleo), Tera Warner, Russell James, Matthew Kenney, and more.
On Weston Price inspired diets: Nourished Kitchen, The Mommypotamus, Cheeseslave, Grass Fed Momma, and more.
#2 Both sides are crazy for fermented foods.
“Fermented” may sound gross, but oh how delicious cultured veggies can be! Both sides go nuts for sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, water kefir, and more.
#3 Both sides know what enzyme inhibitors are, and how to remove them from the food they eat.
Enzyme inhibitors are present in nuts, seeds, grains and some other foods, and they bind to minerals such as iron, calcium, zinc, etc. and prevent their absorption. Do you think that if a food label lists “zinc: 50%”, you’re getting all that? Most likely, you will get a lot less. Your digestion may not be perfect, the food may have the inhibitors intact, etc. By soaking these offenders overnight, these foods will be more digestible and more nutritious.
#4 Both sides look for nutrient density, even though their definition of “nutrient dense” is different.
One side loves liver, one side loves green juices. The definition of “nutrient dense” differs, but both sides know to get big nutrition every day.
#5 Both hate Monsanto and the genetic modification of the food supply
Ah, Monsanto, how we hate you. You pollute the environment, and sue those who try to keep seeds pure but get contaminated by your products (often on purpose, I am sure). Buy organic!
#6 Both care about animals and will do their best to avoid animal products altogether (for one side) or will strive to get them from ethical family farms.
Many raw vegans would argue that if you kill an animal, then no matter how well it was treated, you’re not caring for it. I understand this way of thinking. The other side argues that eating these very animals is necessary, as they provide us with nutrients that are not available in plants, but that one should care for them well both out of respect and to maximize the nutritional value of the food. I understand this way of thinking, too.
#7 Superfoods, bee pollen and spirulina!
I knew this was the case in the raw vegan community, but I didn’t know the Weston Price Foundation recommended them too. But they do, check out their Guide to Superfoods.
#8 Colon cleansing, anyone? Most people on each side have either tried colonics or are thinking about it.
Many raw foodists recommend them, like Natalia Rose, Matt Monarch and more. Coffee enemas are also part of the GAPS diet.
#9 Both sides recommend a quart of milk a day.
For raw foodists, it’s raw nut milk. For Weston Price followers, it’s raw dairy, (a quart a day is recommended during pregnancy) usually raw cow’s milk.
#10 Both avoid soy like the plague
Unfermented soy is full of estrogen analogs which mess with our hormones, and soy products on the market are incredibly processed. Only fermented soy is used, like miso. For a comprehensive article on the dangers of soy, read this.
#11 Both sides love their fats.
Coconut oil producers could restrict their client base to just raw foodists and Weston Price followers, and their profits wouldn’t suffer! And yes, some raw foodists follow very low fat diets and don’t eat overt fats at all, but they are a minority (albeit a loud one).
#12 Both sides are very protective of their children 🙂
Many of them will consider homeschooling, and will question vaccines, food additives, pesticides and herbicides.
#13 Halloween is a pretty tough holiday for them!
Read this great article from The Mommypotamus! I still don’t know what I’ll do when Halloween is here and Franklin is old enough. I thought I’d avoid junk food in Portland… I was wrong.
#14 Both are considered extreme by mainstream people, but they see mainstream people as uneducated and complacent.
“You don’t eat any refined sugar at all? Isn’t that extreme?”
“Well, shouldn’t refining sugar in the first place be considered extreme?”
“You never cook your food? Isn’t that extreme?”
“Isn’t eating molecularly changed food extreme?”
Etc….
#15 Both sides wonder how the other can get up in the morning on such a crazy diet!
Does anything more need to be said? 🙂
What other similarities have you noticed between the two groups?
Most of what you listed also applies to paleoists. The paleo diet (or variants such as the primal diet) has much crossover with traditional foods. This is because many paleolists have read Weston A. Price and Sally Fallon Morrell. Also, a surprising number of paleolists are former vegans and vegetarians, and it is maybe predictable how most paleolists advocate eating lots of veggies.
There are numerous cookbooks out there combining veganism/vegetarianism with the paleo diet (and/or the ketogenic diet). Two of the best former vegetarian paleolists are Dr. Terry Wahls and Dr. Will Cole; both have good books, but the latter has a great recent book, Ketotarian. Also, see Dena Harris’ The Paleo Vegetarian Cookbook.
About the importance of fats and the historical context to debate, check out Nina Tiecholz, another former vegetarian. Gary Taubes is also great on this topic with a number of worthwhile reads. On a related note, I should give a shout out to Tim Noakes’ Lore of Nutrition. Those three authors, the first two award-winning journalists and the last a world reknown doctor and researcher, will explain what went wrong with the modern industrialized diet like few other authors can.
I’m on a loose paleo diet at the moment. I emphasize low-carb, high-fat combined with restricted eating times, intermittent fasting, and mild ketosis. But I allow some nutrient-dense and cultured traditional foods into my diet, such as ghee from pasture-fed cows and whole milk goat kefir; I splurged last night with a slice of locally made long-fermented sourdough slathered with goat butter.
I’ve known about traditional foods for decades now. I read Sally Fallon Morrell’s first book around when it first came out or maybe the second printing of it. I’ve since read Weston A. Price’s book that gets so often referenced and it is amazing, especially the photographs in comparison to the Americans I see around me (bone structure really stands out).
But I’ve long been interested in diet and health. My mother was generally focused on balanced eating, although her knowledge was limited. Like my brothers, I became a vegetarian in my 20s, although they are still vegetarian today. I’ve been trying to encourage them to eat less carbs and more nutrient-dense foods, which is why I bought them copies of the books by Dr. Cole and Harris. I find it interesting that I eat more vegetables than do my brothers and their families. I eat more vegetables now on the paleo diet than I ever did back when I was a vegetarian. As some point out, most so-called vegetarians should more accurately described as carbotarians.
You should see the eating habits of my ‘vegetarian’ nieces and nephews with a massive intake of carbs and sugar, almost entirely processed junk food. I was a sugar addict and junk food junky when I was younger, but never to the extent that I see with many kids these days. It makes me worry for the future. When these kids grow up, they are going to be hurting. Already, my nieces and nephews suffer from constant sickness and diagnosed with a variety of health conditions: nutritional imbalances, asthma, depression, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc (that is all I know about, but my brothers try to hide their families’ health problems, I suppose for fear of being judged and blamed).
As soon as these kids in my family are old enough, I’m going try to introduce them to knowledge about diet and health. My brothers have good intentions and they love their children, but they aren’t well informed. Despite being vegetarian, their views on diet are extremely mainstream and conventional. Their vegetarianism is essentially the typical SAD diet sans meat. Fortunately, my oldest brother is beginning to think more about his health, as his health has deteriorated to a great degree. He seems to be picking up on the importance of nutrient-dense foods.
I’ve suffered for a lifetime of my own bad eating habits. And it makes me sad to see unnecessary suffering in others. The consequences can be harsh. It took me decades to stabilize my depression, since nothing worked until I tried a LCHF ketogenic paleo diet with all those delicious and nutritious foods. I’ve put my aging cat (in her early 20s) on a similar diet, as she loves seafood, fish oil, and chicken liver. After a thyroid-related stroke, she is doing well for her age. I wish I knew about all of this decades ago, but for some reason until I started learning the paleo view I couldn’t put all the pieces together in a way that actually made a difference.