Raw Foods for Runners?

LONDON (Reuters)

By Martyn Herman

LONDON (Reuters) - World marathon record holder Paula Radcliffe said on Thursday she had a stress fracture of her left femur and that some specialists had told her it would be impossible for her to compete in the Beijing Olympics.

The 34-year-old, who made the announcement via a teleconference, said she was still "90 percent" confident she could be fit but would only go if she felt competitive.

"It's not good news and not the news I wanted to hear, but I will give myself every chance," said Radcliffe, who has been on crutches and has changed her diet dramatically to attempt to speed healing.

"I've read up on the raw food diet and how it speeds up injuries so I've been eating about 20-30 bananas everyday and I feel like I've recovered 3 times faster than if I ate my normal diet of Ostrich meats and Porriadge."

"I have to thank the bloggers on letrun.com to showing me the way. I feel 99% now that I will recover and be ready for Bejing thanks to the Raw Food Diet!"

I had a large bowl of watermelon, honeydew, and cantaloupe not even 2 hours ago and I am already hungry again. You sure this diet works?

um, you didn't have any bananas. sound like you may have slept through raw food 101.

summa runna:

If I had just melon, I would be hungry pretty soon again too. Melons take up a large volume, but are very low calorie, and move out of your stomach extremely quickly. Their weight is mostly water. Although you feel you had a large meal, it may have only been 300-500 calories.

I enjoy a cold melon after a hot run. But then I always follow it up with a more dense fruit with a higher concentration of carbohydrate, like banana, mango, persimmon, or dates. These are digested more slowly than melon.

It may take you a little bit to adjust to this diet. That's why some people try it, stop, and then try it again (see livinlite's comments on the first page of this thread). I know I did feel a bit strange in my first week on it. But then my body adjusted, and then I felt better than ever before. Good luck, and keep us posted.

Your girlfriend was kind of raw when I ate her last night.

areyourich wrote:

Thanks for the response. I will have to read up on the environmental benefits of orchard as opposed to grain. I think someone else here asked how I thought this could harm the earth. I was basically working off of a large assumption:

The U.S. consumes much of the worlds resources and much of this is imported. I remember hearing that we consume many imported bananas (from Jamaica, etc.) in relation to other nations as well. I simply assumed that this would force more land in other nations to be used for bananas and consuming mass quantities of bananas (20-30 in a sitting) would further perpetuate this process. Perhaps my assumption is incorrect and perhaps there it is just impossible to be a moral consumer while living in America.

Broski, ANY fruit based vegan diet is always going to be better for the environment than a meat and dairy and grain based diet. Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to "grow" a pound of beef, pork, or chicken? Do you have any idea how much the dairy industry pollutes our water, how much energy it uses, and how much filth it puts out in the world?

Sure, for most of us, our fruit and veggies have to be trucked in...but this is an imperfect world and given all available ways of getting food to sustain us, the raw, fruit based diet is the best one for the planet.

Someday I'd like to have land and a grow-dome on it to simulate a tropical environment so I can grow all my own food...but until I win the lottery...ain't gonna happen.

Don't count on getting your B-12 from fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I googled that Australian cyclist Harley mentioned earlier and found that he's seriously B-12 deficient: http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=288483

But what has science and measurements and blood tests got to do with it?

I am running faster than ever and am helping the environment and am losing weight!

Any vegan diet is NOT better for the environment than meat or grain. I've said this before on this thread, there are places that you can graze cattle and raise them to be grass fed, something that takes no grain. Yes, this meat takes more energy to grow than bananas, but if you don't raise cattle there its going to be worthless land, because its impossible to grow fruit there...just like it is in most of the world.

This is a perfect example of how asinine some of the ideas that crop up on here are. Minimalism? Okay...maybe I can buy into that a little bit. I can see the theory behind wearing lightweight trainers, but you morons take it to the extreme and start wearing aqua socks for your long runs, then blame that darn pavement when you rip all of the tendons in your feet apart.

This is another example. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables is great, but eating exclusively those is absolutely insane. As has been pointed out, you'll be deficient in half the vitamins in the books before you know it. You idiots always take every good idea to the extremes.

A NORMAL vegan diet is manageable if you're very careful abotu what you eat (see Scott Jurek), but nobody actually eats fruits and vegetables all day. Why the hell would you change what you know works already? Yes, eat more fruits and vegetables, that's a great idea, but you need grains like rice and wheat to sustain you. Mark my words, you "raw diet" fools will not get enough calories, not get the proper nutrients, not get enough fat, not get enough protein, and your training will go into a tailspin. As for me, I'll be chowin' down on pasta.

Damn letsrunners.

Educate yourself please. Check out this link. Check out some of the articles first before you badmouth something you know absolutely nothing about.

http://www.foodnsport.com/joomla/content/view/102/26/

Another good article:

http://www.foodnsport.com/joomla/content/view/89/26/

I think you are conused wrote:

Any vegan diet is NOT better for the environment than meat or grain. I've said this before on this thread, there are places that you can graze cattle and raise them to be grass fed, something that takes no grain. Yes, this meat takes more energy to grow than bananas, but if you don't raise cattle there its going to be worthless land, because its impossible to grow fruit there...just like it is in most of the world.

well, you are completely wrong, actually. there are HUNDREDS of well-researched articles that conclude exactly the opposite; that meat-centered diets are not only way less environmentally friendly than plant-centered ones, but they are actually our greatest source of environmental destruction. this is just one of the hundreds of articles that addresses yr point in re: land unsuitable for use:

country boy wrote:

Don't count on getting your B-12 from fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I googled that Australian cyclist Harley mentioned earlier and found that he's seriously B-12 deficient:

http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=288483

since b-12 is a bacteria found in organic soil, it's actually easy to get enough if you grow your own veggies and don't go crazy cleaning them off. we don't need much b-12 and it stays in the body a long time. granted, modern agricultural practices that scrub our foods to death make it very difficult for vegans to get b-12, but there are many foods that are supplemented with it.

country boy:

I seem to recall reading about what happened to Harley on the 80/10/10 discussion forum, located at

http://www.vegsource.com/talk/raw/index.html

.

I think Harley got tested for B12 after a time when he had been eating a raw vegan diet which was relatively high in fat. But then I think he switched to a low fat raw vegan diet (more in accordance to the 10% fat intake dictated by the 80/10/10 program), and then got tested for B12 a second time several months later. My recollection is that his B12 levels were 4x higher on the 2nd test.

But this is just from my memory. I think there are some old posts on the 811 board related to this.

The reason for the abrupt jump is that it appears that fat inhibits the absorption of B12...another reason to have a low fat diet!

I think you are confused:

I guess the thought is that if we have more orchards, more mouths will be fed with less land, so that then we can leave more land in its natural state, uninfluenced by human development. Presumably it is preferable from an ecological standpoint to allow land to be undeveloped, rather than let cattle graze on it.

Another raw food ethic point which I don't think has been mentioned here: Raw fooders are not cooking! We are not burning fossil fuels to prepare out food.

777:

All I can say is that I disagree. I think fruits & vegetables are much richer in vitamins & minerals than grains. Sufficient calories, fat, & protein are all available in raw foods. I don't think humans are natural grain eaters; the only natural grain eaters are birds. Grains cannot be eaten in their natural state, they must be processed (i.e. cooked). No other species on Earth has to cook food...why should humans be different?

Find me a species that can make fire.

to The Onions:

Humans have evolved brains which allow us to control fire, and cook with it.

But humans have also evolved brains which allow us to create nuclear weapons, and destroy the planet.

Just because we have the ability to destroy the planet, it does not mean that we should. Similarly, just because we can cook, doesn't mean that its good for us to do so.

So, I don't think your argument holds water.

to All:

I understand that from the modern human perspective, this diet sounds extreme. But from an early human perspective, or from the perspective of wild animals today, it looks quite ordinary.

Take, for example, the concept of a "mono-meal". This is making a meal out of one food (like bananas), and eating until satisfied. This is something foriegn to most on a standard American diet, and something which most people on a low-fat raw food diet do fairly regularly. Most Americans love their sandwiches & pizzas, and other concoctions which involve a whole slew of ingredients. But did early humans ever eat like this? Do animals today eat like this? Not much; they have mono-meals. Ever wonder why digestive trouble is so common in modern man? I think this has got a lot to do with it.

I was not disputing the fact that fruits and vegetables are better than beef or chicken. Even though it may be the case that beef can be raised in a sustainable manner, we know most of the beef in restaurants in grocery stores and restaurants does not come from such farming. This is part of the reason why I don't eat meat.

However, I was questioning whether eating mass quantities of tropical fruits can also be a wasteful way of living if it is taken to the extreme.

sorry for the typo[s].