The Secrets Behind -- "Raw Secrets"

The Secrets Behind “Raw Secrets”
Raw Secrets Book Review and Commentary:

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Review by Roger Haeske
The Raw Motivator

So far the updated “The Raw Secrets,” has been a fantastic book. I love that he included a chapter on the Vital Law of Accommodation. He's also included a new bonus book "Optimal Breathing," by breathing expert and raw foodist Mike White. I can't wait to read that book as well.

Fred has added lots of new, and I believe, important information, to the updated version of his book. I haven't completed reading it. So what you are seeing now is a partial review.

I'll be adding more valuable information over the coming days. So come back to this page every now and then over the coming week for more updates.

What I've read so far is information that will show you the right and natural way to eat a raw food diet. Fred shows you many of the pitfalls new and experienced raw foodists run into, on their path to radiant health.

The chapter on detoxification was a little on the light side. I would have liked a little more information on that subject. But what he wrote about it was quite good. So far this book has been excellent and the best guide by a current writer on how to do an Optimal Raw Food Diet.

I'm going to mine some of the golden nuggets in the book. Stuff about what happens when you eat too much fat. What our closest primate relatives eat. What percentage of the Great Apes diet is meat, etc?

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So What are These Raw Secrets?

I'm going to let you in on some of the secrets behind Frederic Patenaude 's book “Raw Secrets.” I will give you some of the concepts he covers and add my own commentary.

Keep in mind that the conclusions I draw may not be exactly the same as Fred's. While I am drawing from his book, I'm also including my own information and experiences. So what I write below isn't necessarily purely from Fred's book unless it is something quoted directly from the book. I just want to let you know that up front.

Introduction: In the Raw

In this chapter Fred shares his experiences with the raw food diet. He tells about his ups and downs. It's a very interesting story that he has to tell. He had many problems eating raw and he shows you in the book, how he eventually solved them.

Below is a quote from his introduction that gives you an idea of the purpose of the book. From pg 11.

"Radical ideas have much more power than common advice. But in their power lies danger. Like an explosive charge, radical ideas must be handled carefully.

The raw vegan diet is such an idea. It can save your life. It can help banish “incurable” conditions. It can help you feel great all the time. It can give back your joy of living. It can give an entirely different direction to your life or turn it upside down. But it s p ractical application may be difficult. Pitfalls line the path of raw eating. Many people have fallen into them — and they will continue falling into them until they know what these pitfalls are and how to spot them.

Some people are damaging their health by eating the raw diet incorrectly. Mostly, this is because they received poor or confusing advice. This book is my antidote to the false information that is being spread in the raw food movement, hurting people as it goes. This is the book I wish someone had handed to me six years ago when I started on thi s p ath. (My emphasis) I intend it not as an introductory book on the subject, but rather as a book for those who have some knowledge of and interest in the raw diet.”

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Chapter 1: How to Determine Our Natural Diet

This is a fantastic chapter. It is quite thorough and I highly recommend every raw foodist and every person seeking health and truth should read and study this chapter.

The question of what is our natural diet and how should it be determined is attacked from several different angles. After you read this detailed chapter, I think you'll be convinced that we should eat a diet primarily of fruits and vegetables with small quantities of nuts and seeds. I think Fred does a great job of pulling together the research from several fields of scientific study into this chapter.

Nutrition is simple: Quote from pg 17

“Whenever someone tells me, “Nutrition is so complicated,” I respond: “It doesn't seem to be for the animals in the open.” I tell them that wild animals do not think of nutrition as anything complex. They simplified the matter by eating only raw, natural foods for which they are biologically designed.”

Some interesting facts from this chapter:

* Nuts and seeds are only available part of the year in the tropics and they are fresh not dried. In their wild state, they are soft, creamy and the fat content is lower.

* Primates and all animal naturally hybridize the food supply by choosing their favorites and neglecting what they don't like. If a chimp likes a certain kind of fruit, he'll naturally propagate that fruit by eating the seeds and spreading them. Fruits that aren't preferred won't be spread.

All foods are naturally hybridized, so don't be overly concerned about hybridization. You may want to reduce your intake of certain seedless fruit varieties like seedless grapes and watermelon.

Keep in mind that some fruit grows wild without the need for seeds. Bananas and papayas are examples. Other than that, you should be fine as long as you also eat plenty of vegetables and leafy greens.

* The great apes have larger canines than humans and even they eat little to know animal foods. They subsist primarily on fruits, vegetables, roots and shoots. (There is some argument that the chimps hunt these days due to a loss of habitat and a lower food supply. Even with them hunting their diet averages 5% or less in animal foods. Bonobo's eat much less in the way of animal foods. This chapter goes into detail on the diets of the great apes. It also talks about specific fruits and foods that they like to eat.

* Carnivores can swallow bones and meat without chewing and digest them because their stomach acid is ten times higher than ours is. Yet if we don't chew a kernel of corn we can see that whole, undigested piece of corn in our excrements.

This should give you a st ron g clue that we aren't carnivores. We just don't have the digestive power to handle the digestion of meat and bone that carnivores and omnivores are capable of eating.

True omnivores by the way, are also much more similar to carnivores than they are to us. They also have stomach acid which is ten times st ron ger than that of humans.

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Why Should we Base our Diet Upon what Animals Eat?

I recently had someone say to me, “Why should we base our diet upon what animals eat? This person was thinking that we as humans are superior to animals and so he believed there wasn't a good reason for comparing us to animals.

Actually, we should base our diet upon what our natural diet should really be. One of the easiest ways to determine that is to compare ourselves to our closest biological relatives the bonobo's and then the chimpanzees.

The problem with many people is that they attribute all the childhood sicknesses and diseases that people get as they age, as being the normal way of living. Therefore, why should we compare ourselves to animals if what we are doing is just fine?

It's a sad statement but, being sick is normal for most people. They have no conception of the happy, energized and disease free life they can be living.

Taking antidepressants and being obese is not healthy. But some people think that is normal and even argue that they are healthy by eating this way. They think they are completely normal and healthy with conditions such as these.

I've also come to realize that people's brains on a cooked diet often do not function at their peak level of effectiveness. They are often irrational, I know I certainly was. Cooked food got me into a depression for six and a half years. So this can explain the so-called logic of some cooked eaters.

What most people don't realize is that human diets vary tremendously and the health results vary tremendously as well. We have the capability of eating many kinds of foods without dropping dead immediately, because of this many people think they are omnivores.

However we also know that cows eat grass but in this day and age they are fed dead cow meat as well. Does that now make them omnivores? I think not.

Humans have actually been classified as frugivorous or a primarily (not exclusively) fruit eating species. Humans are also classified a s p rimates. Wouldn't it make sense that we would eat a diet similar to other primates?

The closest primate to us is the bonobo which has 99% the same DNA as humans. They eat primarily fruit and eat less than 1% of their diet from animal products and they eat very little in the way of nuts and seeds.

Wild animals don't get the diseases of man. Sure they can get sick but if they eat their wild diet, their health and strength is superior to humans. It isn't normal to get a cold three or four times a year. It isn't normal to get arthritis. It isn't normal to have asthma or allergies. All of these health conditions and many more, are directly related to a poor diet.

But the average person doesn't realize that. So when I say that we should compare our diet to that of primates that are closest to us in design, it doesn't make sense to their egotistical minds. Most people have next to no knowledge of nutrition and even less about raw food nutrition.

They are living in a delusion as to why their health is deteriorating. They think they are getting old. But we should be active, happy and living life to it's fullest till our last days. Ageing is really the accelerated disease process, it doesn't have to be this way.

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Chapter 2: Fat pg 23

Here's a great quote from pg 23:

“Our body doesn't need to eat fat in order to make fat. It can create its own fat from the other non-fatty foods that we consume. A natural diet of fruits and vegetables, with some nuts and seeds or avocado, provides essential fatty acids in sufficient quantities. Some “experts” on the subject have greatly exaggerated their benefits in order to sell their special, expensive oils. But even green vegetables contain fatty acids.”

Some Fat and Nutrition Facts: Out of total percentage of calories in the food.

* Romaine lettuce is 15% fat calories, 18% protein

* Spinach is 14% fat calories, 30% protein

* Boston lettuce is 14% fat, 25% protein

* Red leaf lettuce is 12% fat, 33% protein

* Celery is 10% fat, 12% protein

* Tomatoes are 9% fat, 12% protein

* Bananas are 3% fat, 4% protein

* Apples are 3% fat, 2% protein

* Grapes are 4% fat, 3% protein

So you can see it is essential to eat lots of vegetables and leafy greens to make sure you get enough essential fatty acids in your diet. Leafy greens and fruit do contain essential fatty acids in small quantities. If you're diet is low in fat then you should be getting a good balance of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids.

Another interesting quote from pg 23:

“It has been shown that a drop of oil retards digestion for two hours.”

Many raw foodists end up eating too much fat because they can't satisfy their hunger on vegetables alone. So if they have heard (falsely I might add) that eating lots of fruit is bad for you, then they will be forced to make up the caloric deficit by eating lots of fat.

There's a good quote in there from Dr. Graham about the problems with too much fat consumption and why that often gives people poor health results, even on a raw food diet.

If you feel tired all the time it might be from eating too much raw fat. Frederic explains how tired he used to be all the time on the high fat version of the raw diet.

Fred gives 7 tips as to how to eat your fatty foods and not go overboard. He also gives food combining tips specifically related to fats.

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Chapter 3: Protein pg 26

Chapter 4: Nuts and Seed s p g 28

Chapter 5: Dental Health and Raw Food s p g 31

Chapter 6: Grains and Beans, pg 34

Chapter 7: Detoxification, pg 37

Chapter 8: The Law of Vital Accommodation, pg 40

Chapter 9: How to Give Up Bad Habits, 42

Frederic gives an easy technique to gradually give up bad habits.

Making the argument that most change is too slow. Increase your fruits and vegetables but you can still smoke or eat meat. Assuming people can't make big changes in their diet. This leads to a cure mentality. Take a drug or supplement and all will be well. Or juicing instead of looking at the cause of the problem.

There is a problem with improving one aspect of your diet but still having other bad health habits. It's the other bad habits. Eating 100% raw is good for the very reason that it instantly stops you from doing so many bad habits.

You won't eat bread anymore or chocolate or candies or cakes. You won't have any food additives, or preservatives in your diet. It's not so much what you do but what you no longer do, that makes much of the improvement.

Quote pg 43:

“In other words, it doesn't matter so much, however healthful it may be, that you eat "lots of fruits and vegetables," that you "juice daily," and that you," work out four times a week," if, on the other hand, you indulge in coffee, bread and meat. Your health will be directly affected by your bad habits, no matter how many good ones you have. These bad habits create illness. You will not get rid of them no matter how many new good habits you implement, unless you reform your lifestyle entirely.”

I love this quote from page 44:

“You will never “burn off” the effects of your poor diet no matter how many miles you run, how many supplements you take, or how much sunshine you get.”

So many people think that they can just exercise their way to health. That they can eat all the desserts and fried food they want as long as they exercise enough. If you believe this, you are gravely mistaken and just don't understand the facts. You might be able to keep yourself thin, but health has many components and you are only as st ron g as your weakest link.

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Chapter 10: Supplements and Superfoods: pg 45

This chapter will blow you away. The problem does not seem to be that we aren't getting enough nutrients, but that we aren't absorbing or assimilating them well enough.

There is an example of people who are anemic and yet have very high levels of i ron in their cells. It's just that they can't absorb it. Upon fasting their red blood cell count actually goes up. This is because the fast helped to increase assimilation and not because more of a nutrient was added to the body.

As mentioned in the chapter on “The Vital Law of Accommodation,” if you eat toxic foods like garlic, hot peppers, raw apple cider vinegar, coffee, chocolate, etc, your body has to defend against these toxic substances. By defending against these toxins your body also decreases its ability to absorb nutrients. He included an excellent example of what happens to your lungs when you smoke.

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Do You Believe in the Enzyme Myth?

He also presents a very logical argument of why the enzymes in raw foods don't really make a big difference. It isn't the enzymes in raw foods that makes the diet so successful but the fact that we are now eating foods we were originally designed to eat.

This is a big myth in the raw food movement. But when you realize the truth of the matter, you'll know that the enzymes in fruit are mostly gone by the time they ripen. We still mostly use our digestive enzymes to digest food regardless of whether or not the food is raw or cooked.

I'll be adding more information in the coming days.

To Your Radiant Health, Happiness and Fitness, Roger Haeske

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- posted by Roger Haeske @ 10:57 AM