Raw Food Diet

[Roboramma]

Hi all. Well, I'm in india now, hanging out with a bunch of western yoga students. Conversations range from bigfoot to [i]what the bleep do we know[/] ("They should show that movie in schools", said one commentator. A few minutes later discussion turned to that great movie, "Loose Change").

This morning a girl mentioned something called "live blood analysis". Her description of it was that they take your blood, put it under a powerful microscope, and can tell a lot about your health from this. She said that from this they told her she had a number of parasites, etc (sorry, don't recall what the etc. was, except that she said her blood cells were oddly shaped and clumped together or something, which made me a little skeptical).

I wasn't sure what to make of it. Something about her description (and the fact that she was diagnosed with so many apparent problems so easily) made me skeptical.

Here's what I turned up on a quick google:
http://www.normanallan.com/Med/blood.html
(he seems to think it's a useful tool, but many practictioners are woos).

Here's the website for the guys who promote it: http://www.live-blood.com
Hmm:. Can you see diseases in the blood?
In theory no and in practice no. But you can still tell a lot more from a complementary perspective that opens a holistic viewpoint unavailable to conventional medicine. This relates especially to bioterrain and specifically relates to hydration, toxicity, congestion and stress.

Okay, so it sounds pretty woo. Is there some use to be made of it?
Just trying to inject a little skepticism into a difficult crowd.

[Capsid]

You can see many parasites in blood with a low power microscope. Oddly shaped red blood cells is diagnostic of sickle cell anaemia. What doe she mean by a high powered microscope? An electron microscope would be able to see virions inside cells but the diagnosis of most viral infections can be done much easier usually by an antibody test.

Reading the website, it's woo. They use terms such as bioterrain and colloid physics without explainign what they mean. Seems to me the company have bought a normal microscope and video camera and then have dressed it up to give the impression that viewing your own live blood somehow is beneficial. This is the best quote (highlighted in red)
12. What else can you use a microscope for?
Patient Education! Patient Education! And Patient Education! Also an excellent Door stop, .

[JJM]

It is also known as "live cell analysis."
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/livecell2.html

[Puppycow]

Did you have a question about raw food diets (more woo, of course)?

[Capsid]

I watched the movie. The main emphasis is on rouleau formation where the red blood cells stack up on each other. Perhaps someone else can chip in but my understanding is that rouleau formation can occur if the blood smear is not done properly. I'm not sure if that applies to preparing live blood analysis. In the movie the blood of a "healthy" person is shown with rouleau formation yet this is not mentioned. It's poor science IMO, an observation is being linked to medical conditions in a non-objective manner.

[Jorghnassen]

Thread subject does not match thread title...

/was hoping to talk tartare

[MortFurd]

Hi all. Well, I'm in india now, hanging out with a bunch of western yoga students. Conversations range from bigfoot to [i]what the bleep do we know[/] ("They should show that movie in schools", said one commentator. A few minutes later discussion turned to that great movie, "Loose Change").

This morning a girl mentioned something called "live blood analysis". Her description of it was that they take your blood, put it under a powerful microscope, and can tell a lot about your health from this. She said that from this they told her she had a number of parasites, etc (sorry, don't recall what the etc. was, except that she said her blood cells were oddly shaped and clumped together or something, which made me a little skeptical).

I wasn't sure what to make of it. Something about her description (and the fact that she was diagnosed with so many apparent problems so easily) made me skeptical.

Here's what I turned up on a quick google:
http://www.normanallan.com/Med/blood.html
(he seems to think it's a useful tool, but many practictioners are woos).

Here's the website for the guys who promote it: http://www.live-blood.com
Hmm:

Okay, so it sounds pretty woo. Is there some use to be made of it?
Just trying to inject a little skepticism into a difficult crowd.

Puts me in mind of some folks I once knew. Their daughter developed a persistent cough, and they couldn't get rid of it. They took the kid to all manner of alternative "doctors" in looking for a solution - going to a regular doctor didn't enter their heads.

After a couple of years of various quacks, they came upon one who did the blood viewing thing, and said the girl was deathly ill and would die if they didn't feed her these special pills - and, oh surprise, quack doc just happens to be the owner of the company that manufacters the pills.

A while after that, they moved to a new apartment (they were building a house and wanted to live closer to the constructions site) and my wife and I helped. While taking apart the bed in the daughter's room, guess what I found? A wall damp from a leak in the roof, and green mold growing under the wallpaper at the head of the bead. Source of the problem found. The daughter hasn't had a problem since, and stopped taking the funky pills.

Mom and Dad had never considered that the mold on the wall might be a problem. Too obvious. They'd rather run from quack to quack looking for a woo cure. Mama woo was into everything alternative - including powerline breakers to keep the powerlines in the wall shut off until you actually plug something in and turn it on.

Freaking woos.

[MelBrooksfan]

I, too, was hoping to discover a discussion on the subject of raw food diets.

[ponderingturtle]

I, too, was hoping to discover a discussion on the subject of raw food diets.

Then lets start one.

The fundamental premise that you get more nutrition out of uncooked food than cooked food is crap. This is because while sure it might have more vitamins and essential amino acids before cooking, if you can't extract more of them in an uncooked state the whole premise is garbage.

And to show how cooking and treatment can improve the bodies ability to extract nutrients look at field corn.

To quote from Good Eats
DD: Well, because the Spaniards took back the material but not the technology to make it healthful. The way the native American style of making it was with alkali that it would change the cellular structure in the amino acids and make it a more healthful product.
AB: Ah, so the Europeans didn't do that.
DD: No, they just cooked it and made it into mush and made into bread and all kinds of things and then they started getting this nutritional deficiency disease that became known as polegra.
AB: What are the symptoms of that?
DD: Well, first you get this rough skin, and then you get diarrhea, and then that goes on to dementia and then death.

Link (http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season2/Corn/CornTranscript.htm)

[casebro]

To quote from Good Eats
Quote:
DD: Well, because the Spaniards took back the material but not the technology to make it healthful. The way the native American style of making it was with alkali that it would change the cellular structure in the amino acids and make it a more healthful product.
AB: Ah, so the Europeans didn't do that.
DD: No, they just cooked it and made it into mush and made into bread and all kinds of things and then they started getting this nutritional deficiency disease that became known as polegra.
AB: What are the symptoms of that?
DD: Well, first you get this rough skin, and then you get diarrhea, and then that goes on to dementia and then death.

It's spelled Pelagra. It is the origin of "red neck"-ediness. The rough red skin on the back of the neck, the dementia, caused by the lack of one amino acid. So redneck jokes shouldn't be any more PC than jokes about other illness. But nobody has Pelagra anymore.

You know, lots of traditional recipes called for a pinch of wood ashes, to aid rising the dough. Ash is the source of lye, used in pre-treating corn to break down the proteins into amino acids. Baking soda biscuits, anyone?

[tkingdoll]

/was hoping to talk tartare

Oh god yes. Properly mixed with chopped capers and mustard, with a beautiful fresh egg yolk perched on top and some toast or crusty bread.

:drool:

[ponderingturtle]

It's spelled Pelagra. It is the origin of "red neck"-ediness. The rough red skin on the back of the neck, the dementia, caused by the lack of one amino acid. So redneck jokes shouldn't be any more PC than jokes about other illness. But nobody has Pelagra anymore.


But the jokes are cultural in nature not based on medical problems.

[spiteme]

Did someone mention raw meat?!

[Roboramma]

First, thanks for the responses, everyone. I love this forums.

Second, I guess I should explain - there are so many woo ideas discussed here, I have too much to choose from. At first I wanted to ask specifically about the raw food diet because while some people were talking about it at breakfast yesterday morning, someone made the claim that there are many studies showing that people on the raw food diet are in great health, and more specifically, that they show no nutritional deficiencies. I found it hard to swallow.
I was hoping someone might have a study showing the opposite (which i find likely) because the raw fooder here has a few people considering going on this diet. I, alas, don't know enough about nutrition to argue with him at this point.

But, the live blood analysis thing was also on my mind, and I decided half way through starting the thread to go with that instead.

Anyway, thanks everyone, and continue! :)

[ponderingturtle]

First, thanks for the responses, everyone. I love this forums.

Second, I guess I should explain - there are so many woo ideas discussed here, I have too much to choose from. At first I wanted to ask specifically about the raw food diet because while some people were talking about it at breakfast yesterday morning, someone made the claim that there are many studies showing that people on the raw food diet are in great health, and more specifically, that they show no nutritional deficiencies. I found it hard to swallow.
I was hoping someone might have a study showing the opposite (which i find likely) because the raw fooder here has a few people considering going on this diet. I, alas, don't know enough about nutrition to argue with him at this point.

But, the live blood analysis thing was also on my mind, and I decided half way through starting the thread to go with that instead.

Anyway, thanks everyone, and continue! :)

Here there are several different things. First the idea that seems to be presented is that a raw food diet is sufficient, and this might well be true, though I would wonder about a possible correlation between raw fooders and dietary supplements.

Then there is the issue of is a raw food diet better, that is a different argument than is it sufficient to avoid malnutrition. This seems unlikely as the main arguments used for it are simply not true.

[casebro]

Why would anybody expect deficiencies in a raw food diet? Raw food is what we evolved to eat. Do wild animals have defieciency diseases?

I would expect possible deficiences in the cooked food diet, if any difference at all. We do know that cooking does destroy some elements, while also doing some beneficial things to other elements. But I would doubt that there is any REAL advantage either way, to most people.

[ponderingturtle]

Why would anybody expect deficiencies in a raw food diet? Raw food is what we evolved to eat. Do wild animals have defieciency diseases?


Not necessarily. First you need to figure when cooking started, and how long it has been a standard in food preparation and how much our metabolic processes have changed since cooking became standard.

This is rather like looking at monkeys and saying we evolved eating only plants so that must be the best, but many people studying human evolution think that when eating meat become more prevalent it permitted a larger brain because being nutritionally more dense it could support more.

[Mojo]

Do wild animals have defieciency diseases?

Not for very long. Wild animals that aren't well tend to die.

[Amapola]

Do wild animals have defieciency diseases?


Yes, animals can have deficiency diseases. The one that springs readily to mind is selenium deficiency...... this is a trace mineral that is abundant in some soils in the US and deficient in others. In wild horses (and domestic ones, too) foals born with a severe selenium deficiency can not nurse because the tongue is paralyzed. I've seen this in new born lambs too - they are sort of born "stiff". You can sometimes give them a shot for it, if you catch it quickly enough, and save them. It's called "Bo-Se". Here's an article about this condition in sheep and goats: White Muscle Disease. (http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/WMD.html)

It's important to know whether soils are deficient or not, because the forage grown on those soils will not supply proper nutrition to the animals, wild or domestic, that eat the forage. Like Mojo said, if the animal is wild and becomes ill it will simply die.

Don't a lot of human diets have problems with things like trace minerals as well? I don't raise humans, :D , so I am not as familiar with managing them.

[DmKrispin]

Pellagra is a niacin deficiency treated by providing foods rich in niacin. Pellagra isn't caused by mushing up corn and baking it, it's caused by a very poor diet. The treatment of the disease is to add milk and fresh produce to the patient's diet.

Saying that pellagra is caused by processing food is like saying that scury is caused by going to sea. It's not a matter of what you are eating, it's a matter of what you're not eating enough of.

Quote from MedicineNet.com: (bolding mine)

" Today pellagra continues to be a problem in developing countries where there is significant malnutrition or where niacin-deficient foods such as corn and rice are the primary sources of nutrition. "

[ponderingturtle]

Pellagra is a niacin deficiency treated by providing foods rich in niacin. Pellagra isn't caused by mushing up corn and baking it, it's caused by a very poor diet. The treatment of the disease is to add milk and fresh produce to the patient's diet.

But corn is has plenty of Niacin, your body can just not extract it unless it has been treated with an alkali. Grinding and cooking field corn is not enough you need to treat it with slaked lime or wood ash.

Saying that pellagra is caused by processing food is like saying that scury is caused by going to sea. It's not a matter of what you are eating, it's a matter of what you're not eating enough of.

No Pellagra can be caused by the lack of processing food properly and eating it in a more raw fashion.

So the corn has enough of it in it, but you can not extract the niacin unless you treat the corn with an alkali, that is my point. It does not matter if you damage and reduce the amount of niacin in it by alkalizing it and cooking it, you are making what it has easier to extract and so preventing pellagra.

Quote from MedicineNet.com: (bolding mine)

" Today pellagra continues to be a problem in developing countries where there is significant malnutrition or where niacin-deficient foods such as corn and rice are the primary sources of nutrition. "

And if the corn was alkalized it would be better.

[ponderingturtle]

Link (http://www.killerplants.com/plants-that-changed-history/20040224.asp)

But native peoples with diets high in corn and corn meal (tortillas and hominy) did not have a high rate of pellagra. The answer was simply a matter of preparation. Corn for cornmeal and hominy was treated with lye, limestone, or wood ashes. The addition of "cal" to the making of cornmeal for masa (corn dough for tortillas) or lye for making hominy broke the chemical bond and freed the niacin for absorption by the body.

[SYLVESTER1592]

First, thanks for the responses, everyone. I love this forums.

Second, I guess I should explain - there are so many woo ideas discussed here, I have too much to choose from. At first I wanted to ask specifically about the raw food diet because while some people were talking about it at breakfast yesterday morning, someone made the claim that there are many studies showing that people on the raw food diet are in great health, and more specifically, that they show no nutritional deficiencies. I found it hard to swallow.
I was hoping someone might have a study showing the opposite (which i find likely) because the raw fooder here has a few people considering going on this diet. I, alas, don't know enough about nutrition to argue with him at this point.

But, the live blood analysis thing was also on my mind, and I decided half way through starting the thread to go with that instead.

Anyway, thanks everyone, and continue! :)

Roborama, I think you have posted a lot of interesting subjects in this thread. There are some previous threads discussing organic food and raw food inspired by the skeptic podcast sometime in Januari this year, as you might already know. I have to get back to you on the live blood analysis.

For the nutritional deficits of people eating raw food…

As long as you eat enough and varied and are in good health, it is very hard to get a nutritional deficiency. Even most anorectic patients only acquire symptoms of nutritional deficiencies after some time, because the little amount they do take in is often enough to postpone the symptoms of a deficiency. Of course as mentioned before by DmKrispin, the complete lack of many kinds of food in developing countries will make getting any food far more relevant and the choice for better food is not one they get to make. When you start excluding food sources and maintain a diet based on limited ingredients, that’s when you increase the risk of getting specific deficiencies.

Cooking food or otherwise processing food only makes the digestive process easier. Especially in the digestion of plants, extracting vitamins and minerals, cooking or processing is a valuable tool we need since we only have one stomach and don’t ruminate. Fruit is less of a problem and so is meat.

The symptoms mentioned in the table in the attachment are seen in people with serious deficiencies.
Most well known deficiencies are caused by general famine, our own selectivity/stupidity (alcoholism, dismissing nutritional parts of food, no variation in diet by lack of choice,…)

Most often the reason is disease or medication… (you also want to classify alcoholism as a disease, but also a lot of malabsorption syndromes,some thyroid conditions,... )

If we regard metabolically essential organic substances that are not or not sufficiently synthesized by the human body as vitamins, then these may be called vitamins:
See the table in the attachment below.
(I'll stick with vitamins to show my point, but there are more essential substances in food: minerals, fatty acids)

You still have a lot of reserve: (? = 1) I don’t know ,or 2) no data because this stuff is everywhere and therefore hard to exclude or 3) synthesis in the body)

Note that some vitamins are not mentioned, they are not really vitamins (for instance B4), but historically they have been named as vitamins and some people still use these historical terms.
For example:
Vitamine: Vit B4 (not really vitamin) Chemical:Choline Reserve:? Presentation of deficiencies: Disorders of autonomic nervous system? (Own sufficient synthesis)

Overdoing vitamin intake is not a really good idea either.
Link to http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html to check Vit C and Linus Pauling

Maybe there is a relation between good health and eating raw food, but whether this is a confounding factor, a correlation or a causal relationship (as the raw fooders you mention claim) is not clear to me. I would say there is a good chance that it is a confounding factor: they are actively pursuing a healthy lifestyle (by choice or circumstance) and eat raw food as a part of that lifestyle. That doesn’t necessarily mean the raw food is doing the trick. I think the healthy lifestyle is a safer bet…

SYL :)

[SYLVESTER1592]

I think live microscopy can be a useful tool, especially in microbiology, andrology or neurophysiological research, but not in the way the people you reference use it, not with those tools and not with those interpretations. It sounds something like the misuse of iridoscopy.

When you only have a hammer every problem is a nail

SYL :)

[Roboramma]

Thanks a lot sylvester. :)

One thing to mention also is that the raw fooders are also vegans. Oh, and sometimes they cool things. Apparently the rule is that if you cook it with the sun, it's okay. But I don't think that makes up a major part of the diet.

Mind you, the raw food guy I know ordered a palak paneer with nan the other day - which is neither vegan nor raw. I thought - okay, that's cool. Just made me wonder why he preaches so much.
Anyway, thanks! :)