Little 80/10/10 update

Well over a week into 80/10/10 I’m still going strong. The extra energy is still there and I’m able to keep going for longer at work before craving rest. Quite aside from the physical energy I think it’s the mental energy that I’ve noticed most - the sharpness, clarity. Perhaps that just means I was often a little low on blood sugar before (I was eating a very low fruit diet, Hippocrates-ish).

A few days ago I reported that the high fruit content of 80/10/10 was making me wee more. This actually seems to have subsided a little. Also I’ve realised I’m not getting thirsty or feeling the need to drink as much water. Interesting.

I'm not being totally 80/10/10 is the evening - perhaps a little too much fat in my evening meals - but I'm not far off it.

More 80/10/10 experimentation

Well, I'm a few further days into Doug Graham's 80/10/10. I've tried to follow it pretty much to the letter although I might have some cold pressed oil in a dressing for an evening meal or seasame seed hummous or somesuch, which theoretically may push up the fat content to beyond what Graham recommends. However, I've never been into regularly eating the big gourmet raw meals featurinf loads of oils and nuts in one sitting.

I need to dig out some good recipes for no-oil dressings.

Another way I'm struggling is simply consuming the amount of fruit prescribed. I mean it's a lot. I don't always feel like that much in one sitting. Instead, I'm spreading it out a bit with some spaced snacks of fruit, rather than single meals. I feel quite good on it. Also, although I'm enjoying reintroducing more fruit into may diets and loving things like kiwi many hybridised fruits taste positivively syruppy. I just don't have that sweet a tooth.

Energy levels are still very, very good if I get near to the sheer amounts of food suggested. Still need to wee more.

Overall, still willing to keep going with 80/10/10 follow it even more closely and see what transpires.

Fruit and trying 80/10/10

Many healthy eating regimens are anti fruit to some degree. The Brian Clement/Hippocrates approach is against the runaway sugars of hybridized fructose. Macrobiotics suggests only a little fruit as it's generally very Yin. The GI/GL dietary approach is anti-fruit as most are quickly burned-up by the body unlike slower burn complex carbs - some exceptions are apples, pears and berries.

So when someone comes along and advocates near-fruitarianism, as with Dr Douglas Graham's 80/10/10 diet, it instinctively feels wrong to me. I'm someone who likes the feeling of not having wildly fluctuating blood sugars and the highs and low in moods that can bring.

However, the raw low/non-fruit idea can present problems when following a hectic daily lifestyle. It's not always possible to have enough calories on hand. Thus, instead of the highs and lows of fluctuating blood sugars caused by refined sugars in the standard western diet (or by too much fruit according to many healthy eating advocates) you are left with frequent hunger, cravings and a constantly lowish blood sugar. This can leave you wan, listless, lacking get-up-and go. Too little gloucose and brain function is impaired and it becomes hard to organise one's thoughts. Beyond that, one can get a bit woosy.

80/10/10 has some very vocal advocates in the raw food movement singing its praises to the rafters. To be honest, far fewer people are so vocal in their praise of the no-fruit Hippocrates appraoch with its seemingly complex time-consuming sprouting, raw grain breads, green juices, wheatgrass, sunflower greens, algaes, etc. The mega-greens, mega-sprouts, approach might be good if you can make food prep a full-time job.

Doug Graham's 80/10/10 shuns superfoods, shuns sprouting, shuns all grains (even sprouted ones), all supplementation, doesn't even prescribe organic produce as a must. The fairly simple concept, backed up by various bits of nutritional science, is that 80% of our calories should be in the form of fruit and vegetables (mostly fruit), 10% should be protien (again coming from fruit and veg) and 10% fat (from limited intake of things like avocado and coconut). Low protein, low fat is now accepted by many healthy eaters, not just raw ones and is the basic conclusions of health masterwork, The China Study. It's the high-fructose content that raises eyebrows with the 80/10/10 approach.

Put simply, Graham suggests that the body needs to work less hard to convert the simple sugars, the simple carbs, in fruits to useful energy in the body. He's anti the complex carbs that most of us get from grains, which is in stark contrast to the Hippocrates approach or the slow-burn-is-good GI/GL theory. Many people might eat fruit if they need fast, easy energy for, say, sports but Graham suggests eating loads of fruit every day. Basically, it means a big fruity brekkie, a fruity lunch and a big greens and veggie salad in the evening.

Still, you can't ignore all the voices of those who didn't feel like they'd 'cracked' the raw diet until they went 80/10/10 so I decided to give it a go. I've decided to give it a month, which is a reasonable timeframe, and see what happens. At the time of writing I'm five days in to the regimen and I'm following it pretty close to what Graham's book suggests to give it a fair go. It's a lot of fruit!

What have I noticed so far? Well, let's start with the positives. Remember, I'm just a few days in to this way of eating.

I feel quite energetic with the extra fast-burn energy food inside me - you do have to eat a lot of fruit, mind you. With a big fruit breakfast and a fruit lunch, hunger's been pretty minimal and if any hunger at all has been seen I've just had a little piece of fruit and that sorted me out without further cravings. The added simple sugars has given me rather more mental clarity and I haven't had any of the mental listlessness I'd get if I knew I simply hadn't eaten enough calories on no-fruit raw. Following the 80/10/10 diet is very easy - you just have to buy a bunch of fruit and veggies and it's easy to eat what the diet suggests. There's no worries that I forgot to sprout something in time to make this or that or where the wheatgrass is at. It's really, really easy to eat. I still drink very minor amounts of coffee in my very-high-raw life but the 80/10/10 diet seems to supress caffiene cravings very well. In fact, I haven't craved anything on it so far.

What are the downsides, then?

Well, I'm not sure I really like the sweetness of much of the fruit I've been eating. In nature, here in England at least, wild fruits are seldom as sweet as what you buy in the shops, organic or not. I'm eating pears, apples, peaches, nectarines, bananas, etc. that taste positively syrupy. This syrupy taste hangs around in the mouth for ages. I'm just not used to it. I've eaten some wild English blackberries and mulberries recently - they are either mild and subtle in flavour or slighty tart, nothing like cultivated fruit. Am I being bona fide natural eating all this bred-for-sweetness hybridised fruit? Is the energy I've seen nothing more than a big sugar buzz, a phoney energy, that can't possibly be sustained over any length of time? We shall see.
Also, I seem to need to urinate at least twice as often on so much fruit. Of course, most of it has a high water content but can that really be good?

Just a few days in, all I can offer are first impressions. Unless the diet makes me feel obviously bad I'll continue with 80/10/10 for a month.

Big shock! Aussies say Red Bull is bad for you.

Crazy as it may sound, sugar and stimulent slop Red Bull is bad for you. That's bad for you as in, 'can kill you'.

The results showed "normal people develop symptoms normally associated with cardiovascular disease" after consuming the drink, created in the 1980s by Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz based on a similar Thai energy drink.
Red Bull is banned in Norway, Uruguay and Denmark because of health risks listed on its cans, but the company last year sold 3.5 billion cans in 143 countries. One can contains 80 mg of caffeine, around the same as a normal cup of brewed coffee.
The Austria-based company, whose marketing says "Red Bull gives you wings," sponsors Formula 1 race cars and extreme sport events around the world, but warns consumers not to drink more than two cans a day.
Rychter said Red Bull could only have such global sales because health authorities across the world had concluded the drink was safe to consume.
But Willoughby said Red Bull could be deadly when combined with stress or high blood pressure, impairing proper blood vessel function and possibly lifting the risk of blood clotting.
"If you have any predisposition to cardiovascular disease, I'd think twice about drinking it," he said.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080815/twl-life-australia-redbull-dc-9020220.html

If you look at the Great Apes they share most of our DNA, have reasonably similar GI tracts, reasonably similar dentition.

They eat a completely unrefined diet of mostly green plants, some fruits, a few incects and some eat a small amount of raw meat in certain circumstances.

Even at the zoo, chimp food's green plants and a bucket of fruit. It would be 'wrong' to feed them human staple foods like rice and grains.

What do you suppose would happen if you fed apes at the zoo...

Vodka and red bull
Fry upsRefined sucrose in large amounts
A few coffees a day
A few healthy glasses of red wine a week
Aspertame diet drinksPastuerized dairy from alien species
Cooked stodgy dinners
Topps PizzaMassive amount of refined grains and cereals
McDonalds

How many fat diabetes-ridden apes with cancer, strokes and heart attacks would you have?

Even if you left off the obvious junk food it would be a dire diet by natural standards.

I could have told you Red Bull was a killer for a glass of green juice.

Raw food cafe or restaurant Bristol?

Long before getting into raw food I always had some dream opening a cafe bar. It wouldn't just serve wholesome real food but would offer a space for music, art, poetry - something along the lines of the literary cafe, or the stateside bohemian joint.

Since I first held that vague, fleeting ambition - I was probably still in my teens - the big coffee chains have opened everywhere. In less cloney towns, there's been an explosion of indies too, displacing the old British greasy spoon experience. However, some of the indies seem worryingly modelled on Starbucks, a me-too entry to the market.

There's no shortage of struggling samey cafes up for sale and many would be ripe for conversion into something more specialist. A bona fide raw foods, powerfoods, superfoods outfit would be more of a destination shop for raw foodists and health-seekers and, if the food was interesting enough in and of itself, curious experience-seekers as well. With the music, the art, the talks it would be well known.

Bristol has a relative wealth of organic stuff, wholefoods stuff, veggie and vegan stuff, not to mention a big green and alternative seen. Among that, a raw food cafe could be a great addition to the mix. Given the right team of shared-vision people, it could happen. If it seemed like a goer, I'd be up for it.

Olympic nosh musings

I find the Olympics very boring. All the media hype about posh Britons winning medals in sports with fairly small global playing populations, hype about pumped up sprinters running at high speed and then being revealed somewhere down the line as being drugs cheats.

One thing the media really hyped this time is the unhealhty or junk food diets of Michael Phelps (huge fry-ups and refined carbs galore) and Usain Bolt (chicken nuggets). The producers of low-grade food must love it and also those on poor diets growin obsese and shortening their lives.

'See, I knew all that healthy eating was nonsense! My diet's the same as top athletes!'.

It's not just Olympians that superficially thrive on bad food. Many people eat stellar diets and constantly battle their low energy levels. Quite often stress or mental outlook is a factor. A thoughtful, sensitive person in a boring job they don't enjoy, or carrying - to use that horrible word - 'issues' may be more lethargic than the paunchy sales rep high on sugary coffee, Mars bars and junk who basically likes the thrill of sealing a good deal and any stress can be dealt with by a round of golf or an episode of Top Gear. He's happy until the heart attack, the cancer scare, the diabetes. Meanwhile the person with an enviable 'great career job' might feel thoroughly miserable, feel stressed and worn out just at the thought of a job they don't enjoy to any degree, and no amount of healthy food or yoga can fix the fact they can't stand their life as it stands. They dream of escape.

Michael Phelps has a young, powerful body and a single-minded determination to succeed in his present career. He's got the mind and the spirit in the bag and - presently - the body. But for how long? Will he be swimming the the top level when he's 45 or 55? What's his health going to look like then if he keeps eating rubbish?

Kids and young adults, like the seeds of plants, are supposed to be hardy and have a fighting chance at growth and survival. Although I always liked fruit and veg and wholegrain bread as a kid I didn't half eat a lot of utter garbage including aspertame lemonade and day-glo sweets with who knows what in them. If I ate the diet did when I was 12 for a week or two now, I'm sure I'd be very sick, very fast.

Bad food choices can be cumulative and show up years down the line, although now even hardy kids are coming down with middle-age lifestyle disease like Type 2 diabetes. Young people tough, but they're not that tough. How much can a body take over time?

Funky Raw 2008

My wife and I camped at the Funky Raw Space of love festical over the weekend. We enjoyed pottering about, chatting, meeting people, dropping in on workshops. It was a small festival with, we were told, around 150 people. The atmosphere was something of a retreat-cum-festival and I felt more relaxed that I had in a while. We’ve both been quite busy and my day job keeps be coupe up in a fluo-lit office, often gawping at the computer, with a constant rumbling, quite loud background noise. A weekend of peace and raw food went was just what we both needed.

Brighton’s Raw Food Cafe ran the on-site cafe, producing a couple of different dishes each day. As we’re still fairly new to experiencing other people takes on raw cuisine we ate at the cafe for most meals. Most meals consisted of a light green salad, a tasty dressing and something dehydrated like crackers, or ‘neatballs’ or sunburgers. Aside from the crisp crackers these, you could say, we’re only lightly dehydrated and they’re weren’t too heavy like some gourmet dehydrator recipes.

My favourite dish was the ‘sea spaghetti with pesto’, made with seaweed. That was lush to the extreme and must’ve been packed with goodness.

Shell and Lara of the Raw Kitchen held a food prep session on the Sunday, impressing the audience with a superfood-packed raw chocolate cake. It was the food prep workshop’s we enjoyed the most, especially one on oriental styles.

Despite the washout forecast, the weather was as good on Friday and Saturday, even warm and sunny at times.