Should You Take on the Raw Vegan Lifestyle?

In the world of diets, the most competitive diet on earth has to be the raw vegan diet. The raw vegan diet has a straight and narrow focus on veggies and fruits and it is intense.

Let’s be honest it’s not easy eating veggies and fruits all day with nuts and grains that aren’t cooked. This lifestyle can provide some serious antioxidants and nutritional value.

There are some folks that will moderate the diet a little and will go 70/30, meaning 70% will be raw and 30 percent of what they eat will be whatever they want. This has value because it’s more sustainable over a lifetime.

In the past 20 years, supplement manufacturers have marketed antioxidants as enemies of the free radical. Free radicals are damaged cells that are missing a molecule, and they desperately need to replace it. They do this by attacking healthy cells and leaving them damaged as well. Diets that are very rich and high in antioxidants tend to rule the world just for this very reason.

Advertisers have been informing people that antioxidants are highly advantageous substances for the human body because they keep free radicals from destroying healthy cells. They also state that antioxidants could delay and even prevent the body from developing some diseases. People shouldn’t be dieting just to lose weight; they should be dieting to increase the amount of antioxidants in the blood. Not by drugs either, but real foods that have real antioxidants.

The Best Way to Obtain Antioxidants
You can increase the amount of antioxidants in your diet by taking supplements but it doesn’t work that well. The best way to ensure that your body absorbs them is to derive them from raw foods. These antioxidants include beta-carotene, lutein, lycopene, selenium and vitamins A, C and E. In order to have a diet full of these antioxidants, you must eat several different fruits and vegetables.

Beta-Carotene and Lutein
Beta-carotene is the plant-based form of vitamin A, and it is a substance found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It is believed to reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and age-related macular degeneration. Lutein can be found in vegetables like kale, spinach and yellow carrots, and it helps to prevent eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and cataracts. 

Lycopene and Selenium
Lycopene can be found in tomatoes and red carrots. It is great for the heart because it prevents hardening of the arteries and heart disease. It can also forestall several cancers, including prostate, breast, ovary, colon, lung, pancreas, and bladder cancers. Selenium protects the body against damage from free radicals and the negative effects of infection.

Vitamins A, C and E
Pro-vitamin A is abundant in vegetables. It is most commonly known as “beta-carotene” as was described above. Vitamin C is extremely important because clinical research has shown that it provides protection against immune system deficiencies, eye diseases and cardiovascular disease. The citrus fruits and vegetables like broccoli, potatoes and tomatoes contain copious amounts of this element.

Vitamin E is another antioxidant that protects the body from cell damage due to free radicals. It ensures that the immune system is strong and ready to fight bacteria and viruses.

The Raw Vegan Diet
The diet that has the antioxidants your body needs is the raw vegan diet. A vegan diet does not contain foods derived from animal products, and raw means that 75 to 80 percent of the food is not cooked above 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of this, the raw vegan diet contains foods that are the highest in antioxidant content.

The fact is that cooking these foods causes them to lose what is most beneficial. For example, cooked spinach has 64 percent less vitamin C than it had before the cooking process. Heat also removes significant amounts of lycopene and lutein from spinach and tomatoes.

Leafy greens, kale and broccoli contain sulforaphane. This enzyme is touted for its ability to fight cancer, but it is destroyed when the food is cooked. Similarly, foods high in the B vitamins are not as nutritious as they are before heat is applied to them. This means that if you are not partaking in a raw vegan diet, your body loses some very important properties, such as vitamin B1’s ability to create healthy cells and vitamin B2’s capacity to prevent heart disease.

Foods That Have the Highest Antioxidant Levels
Several types of foods have high levels of antioxidants, so it will be easy for you to vary your dietary choices. They include fruits, vegetables and nuts, such as the following:

• Dried beans
• Wild blueberries
• Pinto beans
• Cultivated blueberries
• Cranberries
• Blackberries
• Prunes
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Apples
• Pecans
• Walnuts
• Hazelnuts
• Cherries
• Plums

As you can see, the foods permissible in a raw vegan diet are low-calorie foods. Therefore, you will enjoy better health as you lose weight. With so many advantages associated with the raw vegan diet, it will be worth your while to try it.

Go for it, you will never regret eating more veggies and fruits in your life.