Nurses, how do you feel about raw food diet?

[AddisonLawrence03]

Do you think this should be recommended to most patients who are overweight/obese and want to improve their health?

[steelcityrn, RN]

Raw food diet is old. I know I would not like it. Lawn in a bowl. But hey, if it works for you:)

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says.
   

My grandmother doesn't recognize sushi or mangoes as food.

Do you really know what your great grandparents ate? I've investigated traditional African-American and German foods, and I wouldn't want to eat most of them.

Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks.

"Enjoy meals with the people you love" can be the opposite of eating with family.

[hiddencatRN, BSN, RN]

My grandmother doesn't recognize sushi or mangoes as food.

Do you really know what your great grandparents ate? I've investigated traditional African-American and German foods, and I wouldn't want to eat most of them.

"Enjoy meals with the people you love" can be the opposite of eating with family.

Yes, but do you disagree with the basic sentiment? I think the idea that food is not just for sustenance but also for social bonding is a good one. And most discussions of family I've seen lately talk about the fact that family is what we say it is, not simply biology.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

As a UC patient, it would kill me - literally.

And as a nurse, given that most of my pts are getting serious amounts of chemo and/or radiation, it would kill them too in many cases.

[Asystole RN]

Does not appear to be a very healthy way to eat. There are several reasons why you should cook; kills bacteria and neutralizes toxins, denatures proteins making them easier to digest, makes certain vitamins and nutrients more available to absorption, increases the amount of foods that can be consumed etc.

Eating a raw diet certainly means you are not eating a balanced diet nor does it by itself change the lifestyle, which really is problem.

C. Koebnick C. Strassner I. Hoffmann C. Leitzmann, (1999).

Consequences of a Long-Term Raw Food Diet on Body Weight and Menstruation: Results of a Questionnaire Survey. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. Retrieved from EBSCO Host.

See Attached.

RawFoodDiet.pdf

[Spidey's mom, ADN, BSN, RN]

I'm not quite understanding completely why eating raw food is bad. (not talking meat here )

The tomatoes, onions, green chili, lime I just used to make salsa were all raw. I do not like cooked salsa.

Salad - all raw stuff.

Fresh fruit - raw.

Raw almonds, walnuts, etc. YUM.

But I'm with the majority of you who does not like fad diets or diets period.

It is a life change - either that or you'll gain the weight back.

steph

[glutton4punishment]

"It is embarrassing to me that anyone in the medical/nursing field would promote any "fad" diet.

Did you take any nutrition, biology, or chemistry courses to get your nursing degree? Can you explain to me at a chemical, molecular, TCA, level, why "raw" fats carbohydrates and proteins would behave any differently in your digestive system than un-raw fats, carbohydrates, and proteins?????

The only thing that stops me from getting too upset about wacko nutritional/medical/nursing advice is the Darwin Awards."

You get embarrassed easily:lol2:

And actually, yes, I can explain to you that when you add heat to something, the chemical structure is changed. Have you ever heated water?

[jcbhappy]

For what it is worth, some foods such as tomatoes are better for you once they are cooked. A simple google search regarding vegetables raw vs cooked will yield valid arguments for the veggies that are more healthy raw and the ones that are more nutritionally sound cooked. Protein is invaluable, never underestimate the value............

[chuckster, ADN, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

. . . And actually, yes, I can explain to you that when you add heat to something, the chemical structure is changed. Have you ever heated water?

Not to put too fine a point on things but the "chemical structure" of water is not really changed by heating. Water exists in 3 states - as a solid, liquid and gas and in all 3, it's chemical structure is one O atom and 2 H atoms, bound together via a covalent bond with each water molecule attached to the other by a hydrogen bond. When water is boiled or frozen, what changes is the nature of the hydrogen bond, not the actual molecule. Water is H2O whether it is ice, liquid or vapor; it just has more (or less) space between each molecule depending on the state.

This is very different from what happens when food is cooked. When predominantly protein foods such as meat are cooked, many of the molecules are denatured and altered substantially along with many other changes such as Maillard reactions (a reducing reaction between a sugar and an amino acid), browning (an oxidation reaction) and the triggering of other enzymatic reactions by the heat of cooking and the movement of water molecules. So in the case of cooking food, it is legitimate to say that "chemical structure" is changed. Not the case for water however.