Hey, just thought I would add... I had some BLOODWORK done a week or two ago, and all of my levels are fine... including iron and B12.

I've been vegetarian since 2004, raw vegan since 2008... and apparently, B12 deficiencies can be detected as early as 3 years in. I do eat LOADS of fermented food. Kimchi, sauerkraut (unpasteurized!), vinegar pickles, miso, kombucha, cultured nut cheese... if you don't learn to do it at home, some of the fancy stuff gets expensive. I don't know about many studies, but I've personally encountered enough anecdotal evidence to gamble my life on the salubrity of fermented foods, and so far, no problems.

You could also get a human composting toilet. There would be loads of B12 in the garden that way.

One sketchy thing about B12 supplements is that often, they are created with genetically modified bacteria, and a quick Google search will reveal plenty of (even recently breaking) articles that equate GMOs with organ damage and infertility (passed on generationally).

I would love to see some effort going into studying how to rebuild the intrinsic factor, so that people who HAVE lost the ability to synthesize it don't have to take shots eternally.

The things post-WW2 farming have done to the soil could be a contributing factor.

Basically, you have to be happy with your diet for it to help you. Whether you eat meat or not, you're going to benefit from things like tons of raw plant matter and probiotics... Something often overlooked is, despite what you DON'T eat, health is equally as much what you DO eat... and that's where junk food vegetarians fail.

Jamie & Minxx,

I'm curious, do you dehydrate any of your own food?

Either way, what are the pro's and con's in your experience?

yeah we have a food dehydrator.

Pros and cons of dehydrated food? I like dehydrated foods and eat some I just have to not eat too much of it. My body likes water dense foods so I learned over time that I do best eating small ammounts of dehydrated foods and tons of fresh water dense foods.

I think at first though I wanted to eat more dehydrated foods and it is more similar to the western diet..like raw vegan pizza and sprouted seed breads etc..

Yeah, I guess the thing I like most about the raw foods I've prepared so far is that they go down quite easily... refreshingly so!

I prepared a pizza last night from an Ani Phyo recipe book using the wet 'Instant base' and the texture seemed quite strange to me. It was also very rich compared to a fluffy dough pizza so I managed to consume less per square inch, about 1/5 size slice of a 12 inch base. I poured olive oil on it and left it in the fridge overnight and adding some extra toppings to balance out the ratio of vegetables to nutty base and today it tasted great. A dehydrated base would have been much easier to handle though.

I'm also looking into dehydration for making raw breads as I'm not the sort of person to sit still, so I love the convenience of a sandwich/wrap format that I can handle as easily as I can with fruit.

Meat and dairy seem to promote cancer (China study) so I'm primarily vegan for health reasons. Don't care about subjective morals and ethics.



Emergen-C contains aspartic acid, which I'm pretty sure is an excitotoxin in sufficient quantity, so you might want to be mindful of how much of that stuff you put into your body. V8 is processed, pasteurised crap, so you won't find much nutrition in that, just so you know. (marketing scam, IMO) For a better way to get your iodine and vitamin C, along with other micronutrients and enzymes, you might want to make a fresh, tasty green SMOOTHIE



With all due respect, this just seems a little over-dramatic and idealistic.

I feel safer buying my weed from a trusted friend who gets it from an indoor grower, than growing my own. And, no suffering and bloodshed, unless the grower accidentally snips his finger while trimming his plants.

While the study has many data, the book seems to interpret them quite weirdly.

http://healthcorrelator....arch/label/China%20Study
http://www.cholesterol-a...lth.com/China-Study.html

Wow, that's a lot of information to go through, but thank you for the links, I'll read them when I have more time.

I'm sure there is criticism of this controversial evidence, but I have looked at other nutrition information sources that point to similar conclusions. In the end I look at the big picture, I pay attention to how my body and mind feel, and listen to common sense. Plants are healing and eating them makes me feel light, happy, focused, energetic, and emotionally stable. Animal protein makes me feel heavy, slow, scattered, tired, and emotionally unstable.

I have always intuitively known and felt this, even before I was into health and so I do not think it's placebo, plus, it's too apparent, too obvious. The scientific evidence I've seen back this up so that's why I think there's a strong case for it.

I'm a lacto-vegetarian for 20 years now (started in '91-92) and even before that I didn't eat meat as a normal people because we didn't have what meat to eat . I'm leaving in a country who has been in communism all of my childhood and teen years and, with no exaggeration, I saw some meat only at the Sunday dinner table. And when meat products invaded the stores I started with vegetarianism.

I have many friends, acquaintances, who are vegetarians for the same period of time or even more, I was part of a very large spiritual movement where all are vegetarians.
Just only recently I tried eating meat for 1 year, fish and chicken only, I think in 2009.
Then renounce again and return to vegetarianism

Now, it's just a habit, I'm not sure if its any real benefit or not, I just hope the benefits are greater then the downsides.

What I observed and what I can say about vegetarianism through my experience and which is true only for me and some of my friends is:
1. is possible that being vegetarian to have a better health, I'm not sure, I cannot know that, I didn't had any health issues that solved renouncing to meat, was a decision taken in a spiritual context. Is possible vegetarians to have a healthier life in the long run but it's hard to scientifically/precisely determine that as the changes (determined by this diet) occur over big periods of times and this is difficult to quantize.
Plus, recent (last years) news from my fellow colleagues from the spiritual movement I've been with for almost 15 years do not support 100% the theory that vegetarians are free of diseases. I've heard about 8-9 peoples I knew (not personally, but I saw them at least several times when participating at different activities) died of cancer, yes cancer. They were all vegetarians for at least 15 years, some more, with ages between 35 to 55. When I heard about them I was thinking: WTF? How would be to be a vegetarian for half of his/her life and die of cancer? Is this vegetarianism good for health or what?

2. for me, without any doubt, eating without meat means less daily energy. I think this is one of the main reasons normal people find hard to renounce to meat (the other being the taste of the food).
When eating without meat you finish the meal and do not feel full, there is a constant hungry sensation somewhere in the background that accompanies you all the time. I got used to it but I can still feel it.
I ate a full/normal meal as the breakfast from high school, not just a slight snack most people do. When I go to work I eat a full meal in the morning and after 3h at the job I'm feeling a hungry again.
These all disappeared when I started eating meat again, it was a 1 year experiment. I ate less in quantity, I felt full and no hungry sensation for 4-5 hours till the next meal, AWESOME Without meat I just fill my stomach but there isn't a true sensation that I indeed just eat something.
This of course depends on the organism/metabolism and age of the individual. For some of my friends this is all true, for others maybe not, others maybe do not have the attention exercised to notice it.
Yes, I know, elephants are big an strong, rhinos and other big herbivores the same BUT they eat ALL day long. Carnivores stays with their belly in the sun most of the time.
Regarding this I remember a part of a history lesson where the teacher said that early humanoids made a big progress in their evolution when they were able to hunt. Because now that can get the required food easily and in large quantities and were no longer forced to spend all day searching for food/eating, so more time remained for other activities for their own development.

3. It's hard for me keep my body weight under control as a vegetarian. As a vegetarian you eat mostly hydrocarbons and the protein sources have other undesired 'components': cheese has fats, soya has estrogen precursors (even so it's not satiable at all), beans... how often can you eat beans?, eggs have cholesterol.
In the 1 year of eating meat I managed to get my weight under control easily, with no effort (took down like 16 kg) and since then I'm struggling not to put them back.
As vegetarian you'll need to eat more to have the same level as energy as a meat eating guy, but if you eat more (mostly hydrocarbons) you'll get fat.

3. I've never been sensitive to cold temperatures, but in the last 10 years or so I've begun to. I'm the guy who wear a jacket when everyone else wear T shirts. And this is true also for some of my friends. Before I used to like winter now I cannot stand it because it's cold. Of course during the 1 year of meat I got big improvements in tolerating cold, go figure.
But again this can depend on the organism.

I know people who eat meat and are:
- thin or fat
- healthy or died of cancer (or other terminal illnesses)
- full of energy or more lazy then me

I know people who are vegetarians for at least 15 years (starting at early age like 18-20) and are:
- thin or fat
- healthy or died of cancer (or other terminal illnesses)
- full of energy or more lazy then me

So, if someone will ask me if they should eat meat or not I truly cannot advise them either way, because I don't know.

" for me, without any doubt, eating without meat means less daily energy. I think this is one of the main reasons normal people find hard to renounce to meat (the other being the taste of the food).
When eating without meat you finish the meal and do not feel full, there is a constant hungry sensation somewhere in the background that accompanies you all the time. I got used to it but I can still feel it."

This is becasue of what you are eating..not necessarily because you are not eating meat.

"As vegetarian you'll need to eat more to have the same level as energy as a meat eating guy, but if you eat more (mostly hydrocarbons) you'll get fat."

This is not true either..this is becasue of what you specifically are eating. It has nothing to do with not eating meat. Im not fat and I could eat all day long. I just dont eat tofu and eggs and cheese etc. I also dont eat any grains at all. I eat raw fruits veggies, nuts and seeds and that is it. I can eat as much of these as I want and I will never get fat.

To be healthy and balanced on a vegan or vegeatarian diet you have to eat a certain way.

"When eating without meat you finish the meal and do not feel full, there is a constant hungry sensation somewhere in the background that accompanies you all the time. I got used to it but I can still feel it"

yea jamies right. its not normal at all to feel hungry all the time, and to not feel full after nice meal. Just eat more good food..if you feel hungry- your not eating enough..if you don't have energy- eat better food. my stomache is bulging right now and overloaded with smoothie! still have tons of energy though to

It's also important to be able to tell the difference between what is real hunger and "toxic hunger".

I actually find without meat I have more energy. Especially after eating, I feel the benefit of what I have just consumed much more promptly and I don't get that after dinner drowsiness.

Thanks to meat-eaters, the human race will no longer have any weapon against bacteria within the next few decades. We´re going back to the pre-pasteur times, with a little more nicely mutated swine-cow-and-bird flew virusses on the side. Nice job, people. Great gift to your childeren and grand-childeren.

Not that i expect meat-eaters to care about these kind of objections or to change their behaviours....People who have a strong tendency to base decissions not just on short-term self-interests, but who also take moral factors into consideration are obviously less likely to become meat-eaters, SUV-owners or goldman sachs employee´s.

I just like to rub it in, that your grandchilderen may die prematurely because of some mega-resistant bacteria, you co-created with your naive and selfish consumerism.

No hard feelings, i´m just the messenger.

Care to explain how meat eating contributes to bacteria resistance ?

Because the industry has to kill a lot of animals to provide for the 'needs' of meat-eaters and because they want to squeeze as much money out of it as they can, they have to keep as much animals as possible on a surface, as small as possible.
Ofcourse, this increases the risk of all kinds of ugly diseases. Therefore the animals are injected with huge amounts of antibiotic´s, so they don´t get sick: one sick animal could infect an entire stock, so commercialy speaking this makes a lot of sense: it´s cheaper then having smaller stocks spread over larger amounts of space.

The result is that 1-bacteria that live inside animals become resistant to antibiotic´s and 2-that humans ingest antibiotic´s through their consumption of meat so that bacteria that live inside humans become resistant as well.

These are all well known facts. The EU is trying to ban or diminish the use of antibiotic´s for this purpose, but as you can imagine it´s facing a tough lobby from the industry, so they won´t succeed in doing so.

In the mean time, resistant bacteria are becoming more and more, a common phenomenon. And they´re becoming more and more agressive. Medic´s all over the world are very concerned about this phenomenon....increasingly, even the toughest, most toxic and nasty antibiotic´s become useless once you´ve managed to become infected with a resistant strain.

This is pure darwinism: Only the most immune bacteria will survive the ongoing bombardement of antibiotic´s. All the evolutionary competiters are gotten rid of and they live in an environment where they can quickly multiply and spread on a massive scale.

No wonder, mankind is losing this race...no pharmaceutical company in the world can innovate against this supersonic form of darwinism.

Question. What contributes moar to bacterial resistance in humans. Usage of antibiotics or transferable antibiotic resistance from animals treated with antibiotics ?

EU has banned the use of antibiotics used for growth promotion in 2006.

600 000 million vegetarians worldwide, some of the loveliest news I have heard in a long time...

Check out this incredible speech: Animals Should Be Off The Menu


Much Peace and Sunshine

Both
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/9/6434.long


Also are you really defending that industry (I'm not trying to accuse you of anything which is why I am asking if you really are defending it)? It's a crummy industry man. Meat is fine (cow shit makes good fertilizer), but not the way it's raised now.

okay so I feel I owe it to all of you to share my own experience here with my health, being sick, feeling cleansed with a raw vegan diet etc..and now recently concluding that yes, humans do require some animal products and a 100% animal product free diet is likely a nutrient deficinet diet.

I was vry sick at one point and tried many things..finally I got off tap water and onto wild spring water which I think is one of the best things I have ever done for my diet hands down. Then I got into this 100% raw vegan all organic etc diet and doing juice feasts etc and that has been great. I think that diet is the best way to detox from a western diet full of pesticides and weird growth hormones etc..I spent periods of time being fruitarian and that was interesting.

The last 6 months I have introduced small ammounts of steamed potatoes into my diet because after nearly 2 years of this diet I felt like I had done so much work purifying my body and I def got WAY better than I got listening to doctors-but I started to feel something else was missing after a while..eating some cooked potatoes here and there did help somewhat..

It has really hit minxx though. She has been totally raw vegan for 5 years..all organic and on only spring water sinse she met me. She was also fully fruitarian for a good long while a few years back...she was also vegan for 2 years before that..so 7 years vegan in total..lately over the last year she has felt more and more run down slowly with other symptoms of projesterone deficiency..her period got all weird(and dont worry she knows I am posting this) and she was spotting before it came etc..I was already wondering about the whole cholesterol thing(which is just totally lacking in plants) for the last 6 months or so and getting more and more in Daniel Vitalis who was a big name in the raw vegan circle for about 10 years until he felt it came up short as well and changed his views..

Here is some of his stuff that I really resonate with..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwNMreagPzM

Minxx went to a naturopathic physician that specializes in this kind of thing. This guy worked at one point at a raw vegan retreat so he understands the lifestyle..anyway long story short-yes she is low projesterone and he basically said he would not tel her she has to eat animal products..but that in reality she might want to at least look into eating an egg every other day or something..which we have been doing. This was enough for me to verify what I have been wondering lately about the shorfalls of a vegan diet long term. Our b12 levels have been fine..protein is fine..but the cholesterol thing is a problem..and I cant find anything at all the says that bonobos who are our closest relatives eat no animal products. They always eat some animal products..they eat rodents and insects but not often. They mostly are fruitarian but never fully vegan.

I want to approximate a primate diet and IMO if you have no animal products at all in that diet it is not really a full approximation. This is just how I have felt after living like this for some time, thriving at first and feeling great and detoxing from illness and a crap western diet, and then feeling later like even that diet while being great for certain things short term is still missing some things.

At the moment I am dead set on getting a long bow and learning to hunt birds and starting to fish again. I want to learn to bow hunt birds and maybe just get a bird every other month or so and maybe a fish every month and eat a few free range organic eggs. Not much animal products at all and I plan to stick on a high high raw plant based diet with minimal animal protein.

I just dont want to mislead people because I came to this forum a meat eater with an illness and went raw vegan and spoke about it in many threads here the whole time..so I need people to know that I did live that lifestyle and while I fully believe in eating a diet high in raw foods and mainly plants, it's my experience now that some animal protein is necessary. Who knows I could be wrong but I have been torn over this for a while and watching minxx go somewhat downhill and then having all of this verified is enough to make me change my strategies.

^ now this is an awesome post, Jamie. I really appreciate the realism and the reasoning in what you say, besides the fact I instinctively agree with the idea of eating mostly vegetables and fruits and little amounts of animal protein.

Thanks a lot for sharing.