People who find the concept of a raw or vegan food diet difficult often ask, “But where do you get your protein (or calcium or iron) from?” In the process of becoming passive consumers we have abandoned our nutritional instincts. We act like Big Brother’s enforcers questioning each other on behalf of the dairy and meat industries as to whether we are complying with their propaganda. At the root of these challenges is the premise that consumption of meat and dairy foods are essential to good health. However all the evidence indicates that it is animal protein which is linked to all major diseases, including those caused by calcium deficiency.
The China Study is the result of a 20-year partnership of the universities of Oxford (UK) and Cornell (USA), and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, who undertook a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. It tracked the health of 6500 Chinese and is considered the ultimate epidemiological survey. The results clearly demonstrate the superiority a vegetarian diet for health. Its overall conclusion was that a switch to vegetarianism would have a greater impact in improving world health than all the doctors, health insurance programs and pharmaceuticals that are presently failing to do this.

Inevitably there have been many studies of the longest lived peoples in the world. These groups include the Hunzas of Pakistan, the Todas of East India, Russian Caucasians and Yucatan Indians. These cultures are complete vegetarians or eat meat rarely, and consume only a third to a half of the protein eaten as part of the Standard American Diet (SAD). Their diets always include foods high in enzymes usually from ferments.

Our bodies store a pool of amino acids, the building blocks for proteins, and these are used to complement any newly ingested supply. The World Health Organisation (WHO), revising previous thinking, recently developed a protein standard which states that nearly all complex carbohydrates are sufficient for human health needs. As an article in the Lancet recently pointed out, there is no longer such a thing as second class protein.  The danger posed by protein is more one of excess than shortage. The China Study and other research show us that:

• Chinese people eat one third the protein of Americans 90% of which comes from plants. In America 70% of consumed protein is from animals. Consequently: American women have a five times greater risk of dying from heart disease than Chinese women; middle aged American men have a staggering 1700% greater likelihood of dying from heart disease compared with a man following the typical Asian diet.
• A high flesh food diet is toxic in that it causes extensive free radical damage.
• Excess protein causes deficiency of B6 and B3 and has been found to leech calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium from the body.

It is virtually impossible not to get sufficient protein on a vegetarian diet as most fruit and vegetables provide sufficient amino acids. A standard vegetarian diet provides twice the RDA of protein. If we were in any doubt however, we can stock up on the highest known source of protein, spirulina. It contains three times as much protein as beef and in a form which is four times more absorbable. Thus for the same weight we get twelve times as much protein. Incidentally, half of any protein is destroyed by cooking.

In the West osteoporosis is endemic. It is a disease not of calcium deficiency but of calcium loss. One in three Western women have bones that are so demineralised that they result in fractures and more women die from these fractures than from cancer of the breast, cervix and uterus combined. The best way to prevent this is to decrease the amount of protein in our diets.  Vegetarians have significantly less bone loss than those who have a flesh centred diet. The propaganda of vested interests insists that we need more calcium than is good for us.  The National Dairy Council recommends 1200 mgs of calcium a day whereas the Bantus of Africa get less than one third of this, about 350 mgs, but the women never suffer from osteoporosis and rarely have bone fractures. Their genetic relatives in the USA eating a SAD have the same bone loss as the Caucasian population. American women have twice the level of dietary calcium as that of their Chinese counterparts, yet the former has a much higher bone loss. Very little dairy produce is consumed in China. The consumption of meat is linked to calcium loss because its digestion results in acids that must be neutralized by calcium and other alkalising minerals. Too much sulphur (present in meat) and phosphorous deplete calcium. Americans, for example, have four times more phosphorous than is desirable, because of the standard American high flesh diet.

Large amounts of calcium in the diet turn off the body’s production of the hormone, vitamin D; stop the bone rebuilding process and also seem to reduce copper and zinc absorption in bone tissue. These minerals are essential for proper bone formation.

Iron is plentifully available in a raw vegan diet. Whole fresh organic raw food is not subject to the loss of nutrients, including iron that results from intensive farming, refining and processing of foods. Additionally raw fooders select food for its nutritional value. Some varieties of seaweed, for example contain eight times more iron than beef and all in a form which is much easier for the body to assimilate. Wheatgrass and barleygrass also have high concentrations of iron.