The History of Raw
The true history of Raw eating; on where it originated, when, and whom can be pointed to as responsible will forever be truly unknowable Our records simply don't go far back enough to know for certain. Logical reasoning helps us generalize this question a bit so let's go way back. Standard Accepted history of man dates us dawning as a species half a million years ago. Out of nowhere essentially we pop up, and best I can drown at this point we were on the meat eating hunter-gatherer bandwagon. Evolution says we descend from great apes and slowly overtime Evolved into what we see today, and so at some point we started eating meat in the flesh, as we look, at our cousin apes we see no flesh eaters amongst them, so somehow we develop into this diet. We can speculate all we want as to why I howl when we incorporated this food into our diet. It is believed that we have been eating meat since this point in our evolution. Sometime after this the discovery of fire occurs allowing us to cook our meat and possibly vegetables as well. To be clear although we as a species are generally eating meat it is unknown of all segments of humans are doing this and it is believed that the most of what we eat is not meat. We eat meat but not often, more on a couple meals a week basis, at most. Foreword we travel in three, and following the standard model we continue on this hunter-gatherer path until just after the end of the last Ice Age. We now become farmers, we start planting and grooming crops, domesticating animals. Our meat consumption as a society skyrockets, we now have a bankable source of meat through our domestication. We are no longer hunting as much and so meat is far more readily available. In the historic records we know of two prominent first written appearances of Raw vegan-like diets. In the brahmin sects of Indra, and with Pythagoras and Hippocrates in Greece. The Brahmins of India were priests of the area they believed that only through a plant based lifestyle did one achieve complete enlightenment and a return to God. Hippocrates is looked at by many as the father of Holistic natural medicine. Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food-Hippocrates. Raw food there was an outlier for such a time, with the majority of civilization cooking and eating. Forward in time to the early twentieth century. In 1930 Dr. Paul Kouchakoff found that "normal" toxic reactions, known as "Digestive Leukocytosis," only occur when food that is cooked is eaten. When eating raw plants this action does not happen bending us to the thought that "normal" to us might be something completely different then we were led to believe. With studies like these being performed all throughout the early 1900’s the idea of Raw begins to gain momentum in the people. Although it has been a slow push of evidence the truth is coming to light and more and more people everyday consider the ramifications of being Raw and plant based. We now have all around us schools of thought on this subject places that now treat untreatable diseases with the introduction of this radical shift in what and how we consume our food. These places are beacons of the path that lies in front of all humanity moving us to a more sustainable healthier future of food consumption. Within the research lies a plethora of data to help guide our choices for instance; Dr. Max Gerson published a 30 year long study titled, “The Cure of Advanced Cancer by Diet Therapy.” He found that individuals who increase their consumption of raw organic fruits and vegetables dealt with and cured these advanced stage “incurable” diseases such as; heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. We know now that the body seems designed to digest and consume these raw fruits and vegetables, that by switching to a raw based lifestyle things that plague the everyday individual including; excess inflammation, increased acidic build up, higher risk of every debilitating
disease, higher blood pressure, higher stress levels, lethargy, even things such as depression, effect and infect the raw foodist less frequently if ever at all. In conclusion I believe the power of Raw is effective and for those of us who wish to enjoy their lives fully live longer healthier and better in each moment, what are we waiting for?