[bigrosiegreenbaum]

Does anyone here practice a raw food diet? Dr. Lustig says that a raw food diet - the 'Paleolithic Diet' - would reverse Type 2 D in a week's time because of all the high-fiber that you normally lose from cooking.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Shanny]

Does anyone here practice a raw food diet? Dr. Lustig says that a raw food diet - the 'Paleolithic Diet' - would reverse Type 2 D in a week's time because of all the high-fiber that you normally lose from cooking.

Any thoughts on this?

Dr. LUSTIG said that? I better go back & watch yet again.

 

[Patdart]

Bull corn! I didn't see that either.

 

[bigrosiegreenbaum]

Dr. LUSTIG said that? I better go back & watch yet again.

Yep, Shanny, that's exactly what he said - toward the end. He said that if we ate exactly what our ancestor's did - 100-300g of fiber - every day without cooking our food, Type 2 would be reversed "on a dime" and he did say "in a week's time". I know people without D who've eaten raw and swear by it.

 

[bigrosiegreenbaum]

Bull corn! I didn't see that either.

I'm sure you meant to say 'raw bull corn'

 

[bigrosiegreenbaum]

Dr. LUSTIG said that? I better go back & watch yet again.

Just Google Dr. Lustig and Paleolithic Diet...

"The ancestral human diet is termed the “Paleolithic Diet” (more on this in a later post, but it basically means eating like a hunter-gatherer: eating everything as it came out of the ground RAW). On this ancestral diet, the fructose intake from fruits and vegetables is about 15 grams/day and fiber intake about 100-300 grams/day. Today, the average fructose intake is over 70 grams/day, and fiber is about 12 grams/day. Dr. Lustig claims that going on this Paleolithic Diet -- and thus increasing intake of fiber to about 300 grams/day -- would CURE Type 2 diabetes. And it would take about a week."

 

[jwags]

Before Diabetes I was a vegetarian eating around 50 grams of fiber a day and no fat. I can't imagine eating 100-300 grams of fiber. I know there are a lot of scams out there claiming a Raw Diet cures diabetes. The problem is everyones diabetes is different. I ate very healthy before diabetes. Now, if you took someone who was eating 5,000 calories of sugar and junk food and switched them to a raw diet, maybe their diabetic symptoms could be reversed but many of us are diabetic for other reasons besides bad eating. My daughter alternates between a vegan diet and a raw diet. Besides being very hard to do she finds it is way too expensive to keep up for more than a few weeks. I would just try to add some more fiber into your diet. I try to get 10 per meal and 5 per snacks.

 

[bigrosiegreenbaum]

Before Diabetes I was a vegetarian eating around 50 grams of fiber a day and no fat. I can't imagine eating 100-300 grams of fiber. I know there are a lot of scams out there claiming a Raw Diet cures diabetes. The problem is everyones diabetes is different. I ate very healthy before diabetes. Now, if you took someone who was eating 5,000 calories of sugar and junk food and switched them to a raw diet, maybe their diabetic symptoms could be reversed but many of us are diabetic for other reasons besides bad eating. My daughter alternates between a vegan diet and a raw diet. Besides being very hard to do she finds it is way too expensive to keep up for more than a few weeks. I would just try to add some more fiber into your diet. I try to get 10 per meal and 5 per snacks.

I don't think Dr. Lustig is scamming us, but I also don't know how do-able it is - for the average person - to eat that much fiber. I know that a friend of mine is a devout raw foodist and wouldn't touch cooked food for anything, but he's kind of a New Age kook, so it's easy for him. Most of us can't imagine eating some of our favorite veggies raw, I know I can't, but I am going to make an attempt to eat way more fiber, because I really haven't been. I gave up my salads for lunch because I got sick of them. I'm gonna go back to them for the fiber alone.

 

[fgummett]

I do recall him saying that in his Sugar: the bitter truth presentation but I never took it as serious... it sounded more like an off-the cuff remark to me... but hey I have been wrong before.

The only raw food diet promising cures that I have heard of is the one promoted by a documentary featuring the scary (and in my view dangerous) Gabriel Cousens.

I also recall seeing a documentary discussing whether it was cooking that gave modern humans the edge by freeing up more food to be more readily digestible. During the programme they showcased a group of volunteers who lived in an enclosure at a zoo (next to the chimpanzees) for a few weeks and ate only raw plant-based food (I guess raw could include raw meat or fish but I think generally it is assumed to be plant-based only). Anyhow it turned out that there was not enough time in the day to eat and especially chew all the food that each person required (as determined by dietitians)... and they also kept running out of toilet paper!

It seems that our jaws and teeth are more gracile than other great apes and we have a shorter gut... both of which suggest that we are no longer well adapted for raw food in quantity.

---

Did the discovery of cooking make us human?

...

 

[jwags]

I remember when my daughter would do her raw food phase she would be sprouting sprouts in jars or chopping up raw cauliflower to use in her veggie sushi instead of rice. Just think nothing you eat can be cooked or processed. So bascially only fruit and raw veggies and seeds. So no bread, crackers unless you dehydrate the sprouts and seeds which she would do. It is very time consuming.

 

[d33na]

I really like this guy Dr Kurt Harris his blog..he always has interesting articles...based in science...I can't remember is it was him or someone else that said it is all very well to eat raw but the world has changed since Paleo times...the earth is missing the precious minerals that was one there...the protein we eat is depleted of essential nutrients...

I find it difficult enough to find organic whole foods...I cook everything from scratch and it seems like a full time jobs some days...I don't think I could source raw foods and have time left to chew it...

 

[ColaJim]

cellular asphyxiation

just my personal opinion:

Dr. Lustig may be correct if you are a new type 2 diabetic and still have a carbohydrate/insulin ratio of 20 or higher, that is 1 unit of insulin would cover 20 grams of carbohydrate, but we that have more like 1 carbohydrate to 1 unit of insulin are just metabolic zombies. Why we are alive no one really knows, we really should be dead already, but we are dying of cellular asphyxiation because of poisoning and poor nutrition. No diet or program can change this in one week or one month. I tested this using the Budwig Protocol and in three months my insulin sensitivity only increased about 10 mg/dl per unit insulin, from 5 mg/dl/IU to 15 mg/dl/IU. That's about 3 grams per IU or 1/7 of what it would take to even consider reversing type 2 diabetes. Not much but at least it enabled me to drop Metformin that was destroying my kidneys while using the same 50 IU of insulin per day.
This concept has been proposed on these forums before and has only been ridiculed by the "there is no cure for diabetes" people who would rather die of diabetes than make an effort to reverse their condition.

Cola Jim

 

[Bugg]

I believe in the big gut, little brain theory ... I have a big gut...

buggnow knowing why he doesn't know

 

[gphx]

Does anyone here practice a raw food diet? Dr. Lustig says that a raw food diet - the 'Paleolithic Diet' - would reverse Type 2 D in a week's time because of all the high-fiber that you normally lose from cooking.

Any thoughts on this?

All I can say is the more my diet tends towards this the better I feel. If it were me I wouldn't bother listening to those who don't believe in it unless they've tried it. I didn't believe in low carb/high fat for many years until I tried it and discovered what I was missing.

If it only takes a week try it and see how you feel. Nothing to lose but a week.

 

[fgummett]

I hope my post is not being characterised as one who doesn't believe because I haven't tried it..?

I have listened to a couple of follow-up interviews with Dr Lustig at Jimmy Moore's The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show : Dr. Robert Lustig From ‘Sugar: The Bitter Truth’ (Episode 378)... and ‘Encore Week’ 2011: Dr. Robert Lustig...

As I said above I heard the comment as an off-the-cuff remark and I wonder if some others on the paleo-blogosphere have taken it and run with it further than he intended... as he says to Jimmy Moore he had no idea the video would go as viral as it did... otherwise he would have worn a different tie!

I am all for a "real whole food" diet and if you want to make that raw, then more power to you -- we are opportunistic omnivores so I see no reason why it cannot work. That means it comes with a natural balance of fibre but I guess I just don't see any need (for me) to go out of my way to add fibre (cellulose) for it's own sake.

I do however take great exception to any suggestion that I am not willing to try new things and would rather die than try and reverse my symptoms.

:hippie:

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For reference here is the original presentation.. well worth a watch if you haven't yet done so...

and a short version...

---

If you want to read more on real whole food from someone who does promote fibre you could do worse than Surgeon-Captain (Royal Navy) T. L. Cleave's The Saccharine Disease - Conditions caused by the Taking of Refined Carbohydrates, such as Sugar and White Flour...

...

 

[jwags]

I think whether a Raw diet would work or not depends how much insulin production you have left. If I eat things like fruit, a small apple will usually raise my bgs anywhere from 30-50 points, so fruit is totally out of the question for me. I do eat a lot of veggies, raw and cooked and I do believe adding them to your diet. I know eating around 40-50 grams of fiber a day I tend to be in the bathroom several times in the morning, if you know what I mean. I can't imagine eating 4 or 5 times that amount, I would be living in the bathroom.