Liz Kersjes is correct in her column Eating raw for better health (SN 10/22) to say that we can learn much from raw food vegetarian diets. Diets that shun heating food more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit are naturally prohibitive toward most meats, and the dietary changes needed to make up for lost nutrients are worth studying. However, some of the statements she made regarding the benefits of an all-raw diet are a stretch.
It is true, for example, that humans once ate all of their food raw — that is of no dispute. The assertions become shakier when Ms. Kersjes begins to tout the natural-is-better line that we see in advertisements for dietary supplements and herbal remedies, a line trumped by simply asking how to exactly define “natural” and why its proponents don’t shun all technology — from the Internet to the nail file. The truth is that natural is not necessarily better: Imagine illness without vaccines and antibiotics, salt without iodine and your teeth without braces. In addition, humans used to eat raw meat to get most of their protein and fat. Would you? Isn’t that “natural?”
A point in her article that particularly troubled me concerned her citing of a 2005 study from the Washington University School of Medicine in the Archives of Internal Medicine that showed raw foodists having a “lower body mass (index) with less body fat, less inflammation … (and) a lower risk for certain types of cancer than people who eat the typical Western diet.” Sounds really great, doesn’t it? That is, until you realize that the researchers only used the typical Western diet as a control group.
Meat plays a very strong part in the typical Western diet, and prior research has already shown that consuming meat can contribute to a higher BMI, higher inflammation and a higher risk for cancer. No vegetarian group was tested in this study because the primary aim of the article is evident from the title: “Low Bone Mass in Subjects on a Long-term Raw Vegetarian Diet.” Furthermore, the researchers themselves remarked on the small sample size of subjects who were recruited primarily through advertising, adding that all of the raw food subjects were already convinced of its beneficial effects. If your raw food diet failed to turn up benefits, would you flaunt your dietary choices?
This by no means harms the validity of a raw food vegetarian diet or the people who advocate it. When done properly, such diets can provide all the necessary nutrients. Still, we must be wary of extolling their virtues without checking the science, lest all-raw diets become just the latest fad.
Michael Saelim
physics and mathematics senior
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