Nature's practical and cosmically* presentable "Raw" is healing, wonderful and comfortably do-able! And if you are set free with truth, your body will take you there at its own speed -- if you don't let your own or someone else's brain get in its way. You don't have to force it! It will happen! If you begin Vegan your body will take you appropriately there -- gently and correctly! -- again, if you don't let your own or someone else's brain and the purchased philosophy of ignorant men get in its way!

But as there is too much unreal "rah rah" in the "Raw Foods" movement! it now frustrates me, and I am provoked to write. To write when I would rather be enjoying my restored health with my family and working to care for them and sharing uncomplicated wisdom when I can. But out of caring for you I risk this time, voice and writing -- making many others unhappy with what I know as permanent and universal truth!

Promoted as "far superior" and touted as way ahead of Vegan or True Vegetarian, most of the current raw promoters have rolled over much truth like a run away freight train that derails and leaves casualties, ripped earth, debris and dissolution in its wreckage!

Sadly the majority of its current "authors" and promoters, however, have not all been fully experienced, educated or observant of reality and nature -- so have not understood all -- or have deviated from important fundamental knowledge of true human physiology, true physics, true biology, true nutrition, true nature and natural energy actions and reactions endemic to all biology, all life and the environment, on this inescapable and unavoidable energy oven on this cosmically bathed, permeated, radiation intense earth. 

Incompletely understanding earth's reality, the promoters fall into a simplistic parroting of each other's flawed clichés that misinform, separate, create fear and judgment, as well as make their "raw program" super restrictive, flawed and corrupted -- and in many cases not sustainable or practical on this planet -- especially for transforming and transitioning challenged individuals, children or multi membered families and cultures, or do it within geographical restrictions, economic limits or societal situations.

For most garden foods (but not all), it is true that the fresher and less manipulated they are, the higher their nutritional co-efficient or nutritional bio-availability is! Also true, is that high, super heating (as in frying or pressure retorted), sustained heat, radiation or chemical doctoring with most foods make certain components of these foods digestively unavailable, bio-encumbering or more important, deleterious, disruptive, even noxious to toxic. 

But the cosmic reality is not all foods are available, exist as or are consumable as "raw"; especial the important extended storage foods, reserved and primary supporting grains, legumes, as well as many nuts and seed. Many are not edible in what is described as a "raw" or even "sprouted" state (e.g. rice). In narrowly and ignorantly mandating "raw", starvation would be delegated to too many of the worlds people, even in the best of politics, economics and food distribution conditions.

So presuming that all "cooked foods are poison" relegates too many millions to an even greater malnutrition or death by starvation, and anyway, it is not true! Think about it simply. If it were true, mankind would have gone extinct long ago! -- including you!

God has not bought into the "cooked food is poison" concept!
-- and certainly neither has earth, nature, nor the entire *cosmos!

"Cooking"-- that is, "denaturing" (at the earth's and the cosmos's ambient or natural background temperatures and energies) -- is an eternal reality, experienced by all matter, including all foods, seeds and tissues - no mater how carefully you think it has been harvested, protected or stored.

The universe is cooking everything! You cannot stop it! --  So God compensated for it! Do you know how?
If you don't understand nature's natural denaturing, i.e."cooking",  process, and the compensation mechanism you have always has in place and you desperately want to know now, you can call me directly. Call 801-298-9095 (caller ID is displayed and recorded for call to process and ring) and I will quickly explain! 
[I do plan to write extensively on nature's denaturing and those compensating  physiological mechanisms already built into you, later as I have some time and after I have restored some family resources and reserves! It will be a while though, as I am still without the convenience of gas heat and hot water for my family since March after a resource sacrificing year and a very difficult winter. Trying to teach and help you and others through our labors and maintaining this Web effort has been my worry and  priority even above our own expenses and needs! So I hope you are worthily  benefited and do appreciate it!] 

Another ill-conceived concept in the Raw Foodist, as well as in too many other health practitioners and so called "natural healing" disciplines, is the idea that we come into life with a finite reserve of enzymes. And because of that, you soon run out and deplete your pancreas and "enzyme stores"??? as you age! So where did you get your whole lifetime's supply? -- especially when in the beginning you began only as a one-celled zygote, barely visible under a microscope?
--  It is not cooked foods and the generation of supplemental enzymes from the pancreas for their digestion that depletes the pancreas or your enzymes. But it is the auto immune assault from your own antibodies developed against pancreatic equivalent (antigenic animal sourced pancreatic sluffage) tissues, ingested and surviving the failed lysing (digestion) attempts of your life-long offended, hence failing liver that triggers the pancreas' self destruction and enzyme production failure! It is a life of meat, milk, eggs, honey, all aquatic life and any other animal products and their contaminants that has triggered pancreal damage and limited your enzyme production, --not a depletion of your "Raw foodists" foolishly conceived "finite enzyme supply"! (See: Supplement your Enzymes?  below, when finished!)

Other corruptions to the current proponents "raw" programs is the restrictions to exclusions of grains (wheat, rice, etc.)! or the reduced up-take consequent to only consuming what will sprout, and in some "disciplines", the additional avoidance of certain nuts or certain legumes (e.g. soy, etc.). This reduces the availability of heat and cosmic stable, lipid vehicled B vitamins and more, particularly important to healthy white and gray mater, hence that reduction increasing nervous system dysfunction, aggravation and disease opportunities. I am not suggesting that if you personally have an adverse reaction to wheat, certain nuts or any other specific food that you should eat it, but you probably will be able to enjoy them after your digestive system repairs. In the mean time other grains, nuts or foods close to them will fill the potential nutrient short-falls their specific exclusion may present until all is healed and allergies vanish -- as they usually do as you stay wisely vegan with more and more fresh foods, particularly using juicing as a healing advantage (see my juicing advise below)!.

The introduction of honey in some "Raw food programs" is intense and in all respects flawed. I guess they somehow justify it good as being "raw"! But they have forgotten the extortion and death of the larva, queen and many in the colony as humans manipulate and "harvest" it from them (as I used to do) and they have for gotten about the bee's transport of animal viruses, mycobacterium, antigenic proteins, steroids and messenger molecules consequent to the bee's digestion of nectar and regurgitation of processed honey for their larva, queen and whole colony -- as their specialized "worker-bee-processed food" (See my correspondence writing: Honey - A Sweet Delusion)

The introduction or inclusion of Seaweed, algae or so called sea vegetables (a serious mis-nomer), based on the foolish and mass-held belief that these are plants! They are not! They are cyanobacterium! Any worthy marine biologist knows that! As obligate carnivores all seaweed, that is "algae", are filter feeders that are loading up on decomposing and dross animal tissues and waste, viruses, bacteria, man's wastes, agricultural and industrial run-off, as well as all Nature's liquid trash. The sales pitch on Sea vegetation is the high iodine content -- for the thyroid, they claim; but they forget to tell you about all the heavy metal absorbents included (so the thyroid never really does heal), of mercury, lead, cadmium, plutonium, fluorides etc, the organo-phosphates and everything else ejected into the sea and concentrated into its cells! See my Algae Spirulina Seaweed Warning (also Carrageenan)

The "Raw" Gurus also promise quick or instant miracles, super healings and/or cures. The mind can be fooled and produce a sense of well being, but over time the body ultimately realizes true so does not agree with this one! It requires time, patience and "long suffering to bring into honest order your 90 to 110 trillion cells and the billions of chemical reactions in process in every one of those single cells. Those wild promises which apparently are designed to garner followers and build book and product sales, create many false hopes and expectancies that may not be timely realized -- and many, not healed as promised, will "fall off the wagon" never to return, not even to Vegan or Vegetarian! because they were fooled and philandered, even by well meaning but incorrectly educated "disciples" of "raw". I have watched this sad fallout occur over my dozen years of eye to eye and nose to nose interaction with the key players -- none of which are old, vigorous and truly pleasant to be with -- I out-senior and out-vigour all that I have met in the last ten years (except one, who is now deceased) -- and I have dealt with their discouraged, too often betrayed, vacillating and ultimately abandoning converts.

Unfortunately the "raw movement" - as it is has been made!!! in the hands of most of its current (younger) proponents, over real time, in real numbers tends to fail and discourage more than it permanently helps! Their wrongly conjured harsh limits makes any sustainable and stable changes too restrictive and too hard to facilitate and stick to it. It also makes too many self righted, self-righteous individuals with too many judgments and no soft options for those just barely coming out of the western world of carnivorism, industrial and kitchen manipulated foods. Then sadly too, the "Raw movement" too often breaks up the more kindly support groups and mechanism for the just newly transitioning persons, those coming from the worst traditions of society, family and personal appetites! Vegan or true vegetarian groups usually quietly include, embrace, as well as stresses the practical part of "raw", but too many "Raw foodist" on the other hand are critical, harsh and exclusionary.

I wish these were not my observations nor my complaints of wrong things done to intelligent "Raw", but hopefully I alude to accepted corrections for those sincere in quest for best. So I gave up this day to write, make many players unhappy and wrestled with this issue that is fracturing the gentle, already fragile Vegan (with inherent correct raw) efforts and those support groups for those floundering in a sea of propaganda and mistruth - which is always mingled with enough truth to make some opportunist another sale and snag another dependent!

-- This time, "he" really is offering the apple! -- but as usual, even his "fruit" offering is missing the "of these thou mayest freely partake!"

I and many are frustrated with the break-up within the larger efforts that the new consummate "raw" have bought, and how it has divisively fractured the inclusive, more embracing, important, whole earth and humanity healing labor. 

Caring for others en mass must be the rule! Or we will lose even our own lives as well! 
We must first stop the shedding of innocent blood and the violation of all our fellow earth beings! 
Then how best to eat your food will come comfortably and naturally through the voice of your 90 to 110 trillion friends (your own cells and their intelligence) within and the Divine beings above!

6/21/03 5am  tlr- more coming on this issue as I have freedom in resources and time.