Being a food writer has its occupational hazards – mainly in
the form of being really bad for you. Foie gras, cheese, booze and chocolate
are all pretty tasty, but it ain’t health food. I have to admit, after some
meals, I feel like the restaurant owes me a side of Lipitor just to make sure
that I don’t keel over at the table.
The
dirty little secret to restaurant dining is this: the reason why the food taste
so damn good is not just due to the talents of a genius chef. It’s the fat. And
usually gobs of it. A couple of months ago there was a giant hullabaloo over
Paula Deen’s deal with Novo Nordisk after revealing she had diabetes.[1]
In the large debate over the Queen of Butter’s conduct, an intrepid reporter
did a side-by-side nutritional profile of Deen’s “Oven Fried Wedges” vs. Thomas
Keller’s “Tasting of Potatoes with Black
Truffles.” Keller’s received the
heart attack on a plate award with 484 calories vs. 328 for Deen’s.[2] The price for this indulgence? A mad gym
schedule, health problems or both.
On
the flip side, as a someone who writes often on health and sustainability
issues, I have probably seen every single trendy diet out there – paleo, vegan,
vegetarian, extreme caloric reduction, low-carb, Atkins, acai berry, tapeworm,
human growth hormone, implanted feeding tube…you name it, I’ve seen it. But up
until now, I haven’t tried any of them -mainly because they’re crazy fad diets[3]
that have no sound scientific (read: double-blind test in a peer-reviewed
journal) evidence for them.
But
one diet has intrigued me as of late – the raw diet. Touted by celebrities such
as Woody Harrelson, Natalie Portman, Sting and even famed Chicago based chef,
Charlie Trotter, the diet is supposed to help your loose weight, detoxify your
body and increase your overall health and make you look as good in a bikini at
40 as Demi Moore (who is also an adherent to the raw diet cult).
The raw diet is basically what it
sounds like. You only eat raw food.
So no yogurt, no cheese, no bread, no rice, no cooked meat (but sashimi
and steak tartar are fine) or roasted vegetables. But it’s not that simple. If
you look at the labels of most foods, there is likely some component that has
been cooked.
I,
like many, am quite suspicious of any health endorsements, especially of the
celebrity kind. But what got me thinking about the raw diet were not only the
amount of people latching onto the diet, but also the amount of “scientific”
information backing up these claims. The source of all these claims? Enzyme Nutrition by Dr. Edward Howell.[4]
Basically,
Howell says that raw foods contain enzymes that help with digestibility. By
cooking foods, all those enzymes are destroyed, thus forcing the body to
produce digestion enzymes that it otherwise wouldn’t need to produce. Because
those enzymes are a finite resource and a “life-force”, wasting them on
digestion would reduce the amount that could be used for other functions, such
as overall health and longevity. Because raw foods still carry those life forces,
enzymes, our body preserves its own enzymes for better health.
Pretty
kooky stuff, eh? But people love it, citing it all the time as the scientific
justification for a raw diet. Never mind that the science is from the 1920’s
and 1930’s.[5]
Never mind that the empirical science is never demonstrated. Never mind that
the logic is completely ass-backwards.[6]
According to raw foodies, it’s ALL true!
Since
the fad took off, several scientists, anthropologists and nutritionists have
blasted the “science” of raw food. Chief among them is the physical
anthropologist Richard Wrangham. In his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Wrangham posits that large
evolutionary moves in hominid history are largely attributable to larger
caloric consumption in the form of cooked food.[7]
By cooking food, Wrangham suggests that prehistoric food sources became more
bioavailable-that is food becomes easier for the body to digest thus saving
calories for other activities, like growing cranial and brain size. It explains
the shortening of digestive tracts, it explains the shrinking of jaw and teeth
size, and it explains the rapid development of earlier forms of hominid species
to the modern homo sapien. In short, for Wrangham, cooking food was the key in pushing human evolution.
I’m
all for brain growth. I’m also all for easier mastication. But in the spirit of
empirical research, I have decided I am going to put all these rawist claims to the
test and actually try it for 10 days. Granted, I am not the most
objective observer. But if I feel better at the end of 10 days, maybe there is
something to be said for this diet…or maybe I will only be more convinced that this
diet is a piece of @$#@$^!
So
for the next ten days, I will blogging about my experience in the RAW. God help
me and someone please call an ambulance if you don’t hear from me in a while. It’s
going to be a LONG haul.
[1] If you want
to relive some great moments in food notoriety, read my post on Paula Deen
here….. http://www.edo-ergo-sum.com/2012/01/paula-deen-and-american-dream.html
[3] The vegan
and vegetarian diets are exempt. There are plenty of good reasons to do both,
and for the most part, they are very good for you and the planet. Vegans
usually have to supplement their diets with some vitamins (due to incomplete
protein sources) but for the most part, most scientists and nutritionists will
agree that being vegan or vegetarian won’t hurt you and probably would even
make you a healthier person.
[4] While the
book has been published since 1994, the original manuscript is much older –
from the 1946. Howell, Dr. Edward. Food
Enzymes for Health and Longevity. 2nd ed. (Lotus Press, 1994).
[5] Yes, I do
realize some science from the 1920’s and 30’s still holds, as in Einstein. But
this stuff? Uh…handily defeated by something called biochemistry….
[6] For those of
you interested in the logical fallacies, it’s the one called argumentum e
silencio (or argument in silence). The argument basically says the argument
must be true because of “lack of evidence.” In other words, just because no one
has argued against the theory doesn’t mean that the theory is true.
[7] Wrangham,
Richard. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made
Us Human. (New York: Basic Books, 2009). While Wrangham’s is a
popularization of the larger debate in physical and developmental anthropology
about fire and hominid development, the book does a nice job describing a lot
of very complex academic arguments regarding cooked food and the use of fire. Most of these debates revolve around the
timing, effect and physical evidence around cooked foods and human development.
For the articles regarding these debates, just go to the footnotes (says the
footnote girl).
