The Next Step

		This was originally produced as a booklet that I wrote in 1997 in response to the apparent lack of any book about the ethics of choosing a raw food diet. The cartoons were drawn by myself as fillers as I was preparing to move to Eire. I donated the booklet to the F.R.E.S.H. Network, which was being run from the house where I was living in Devon & left it at that. Upon returning to England a year later I attended the National Vegan Festival in London, where I met John Coleman selling my booklet. The F.R.E.S.H. Network had relocated to Cambridgeshire & he had been asked to edit the booklet for publishing. Even at that time I already had a few things that I wanted to change in a revised edition, but like a lot of things to do with my writing it has sat untouched ever since. This is how it was published in it's first edition, with John's contributions & my dubious cartoons. A revised edition is now long overdue.....

The Next Step

This booklet has been written primarily for vegans and explains the many links between vegan and raw food philosophies. It seems that vegans are more likely to choose the diet for ethical rather than health reasons and while raw fooding is a logical extension of both arguments, in this booklet I deal mainly with the ethical reasons for making the change. Health issues are already dealt with in great detail in many of the other publications available from the F.R.E.S.H. Network.

Our food choices have many hidden consequences, but once we become aware of them we can use our purchasing power to have our say. During our lifetime we consume a vast quantity of food. so 'voting with our stomach' really is a powerful way to push for change.

The raw food vegan diet is the most ethical diet that we can follow and this book explains why and how we can easily make those changes, for the good of our Earth, those that share it with us - and ourselves.

"Opinions on matters held by the public to be 'obvious', long considered natural and necessary, are so only because they are shared widely without question."

Maria Chiara Giardini

Raw food veganism

I was given the task of finishing a section off, editing and setting 'The Next Step' for the FRESH Network. I have attempted to change the author's original message as little as possible while trying to improve the technical content.. Here is my personal message to you, if you are a vegan.

Most of us did not begin life as vegans. We were indirectly fed the remains of meat, cheese and processed "foods" even before we were born. Therefore it stands to reason that fundamentally, this is what your body was being made of. You may still retain chemicals from these things in your body.

The unnatural substances absorbed from cooked animal food diets do not disappear once one becomes a vegan. The ability of these substances to cause ill health persists until a dramatic improvement in dietary habit is practiced for a while.

Raw food veganism transforms one's body into a true vegan body at the molecular level because it allows a greater degree of detoxification to occur. By applying the principles in this book, you can be reborn into a new body and a new and brighter consciousness.

John

Preface

I have written this booklet to fill what I consider to be a gaping hole. As we approach the new millennium, there are now plenty of books available discussing individual ethical issues such as veganism, the environment and human and animal rights. There are also a large number of books discussing the health benefits of eating raw foods. What I have yet to come across is a written argument linking the two issues. The ethics of veganism, logically extended, can lead to no other choice than the adoption of a 100% raw food diet. Once the facts are known, falling anywhere short of that goal can only be the result of us lying to ourselves.

There are many pressures that can cause us to compromise our ideals from time to time. I know that as vegans (this booklet has been written primarily for vegans, though some vegetarians may also feel ready for these concepts) we have already stood up to those external pressures because of what we believe to be right, even though this has as a result placed us in a minority group. The number of vegans in the UK continues to grow steadily, yet so does the number of raw-fooders, as more and more people learn the truth.

Far from being dangerous, intelligently applied raw food eating can dramatically reduce disease and improve your enjoyment of life to the maximum. Just as we tend to enjoy being outside in the sunshine and fresh air of wild, natural places, so our natural food must also be the most enjoyable and the best for us. What could be more natural and more logical than eating raw food?

HEALTH WARNING:

RAW FOOD EATING CAN LEAD TOWARDS A HEALTHIER AND CLEANER CONSCIENCE!!!

Reading on may change your life.......

Introduction

The Vegan Society currently states that "Veganism may be defined as a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." {1} This philosophy has always driven vegans to avoid eating, wearing or using any products taken directly from animals. The meat and dairy industries' workers kill millions of non-human animals every year.

Farm animals are just the 'visible' casualties of the food industry as a whole. In fact it is estimated that "the lives saved by adopting a (cooked) vegan diet are no more than a tiny fraction of the animals killed to provide vegetable food by conventional farming methods" {2} This statement is taken directly from an article published in the Vegan magazine a decade ago and yet the full horror of it clearly never sank in. What is being referred to is the systematic destruction of habitat in order to grow food crops for ourselves. Additionally, the use of artificial fertilisers and chemical sprays on these crops creates many more casualties. The article goes on to very eloquently equate veganism with organic (veganic!) farming practices, but take note of those last three words; "..conventional farming methods.." for they are very important to us. By changing our dietary habits and farming with rather than against nature we can dramatically reduce this unnecessary carnage. Such steps are "...possible and practical..." and I intend to take you through all the whys and hows. In fact:

The 100% raw vegan diet is a logical extension to all of the ethical considerations that lead a person to veganism. What's more:
The 100% raw vegan diet is more health promoting than any other diet involving cooked foods of any kind. (But it does still depend on what you eat and how you were to start with!)

Now these are both pretty bold statements for me to be making, but when you see the truth within them, your conscience will compel you to take action.

We'll touch more on ethics in Part I, but let's study that second statement for a minute. We all assume that the more you restrict your diet, the more difficult it becomes to maintain good health. Yet, haven't we already learned that cutting meat and dairy products out of our diet was a positive move for health, as well as drastically easing our conscience? The same principle applies when switching to a raw food diet. Firstly, cooking can only damage nutrients in your food, so by eating everything raw you become better nourished by your meal. Those things that are inedible unless cooked just aren't human food, so we're better off looking for something edible raw. By eating a lighter (more easily digested and less toxic!) diet we reduce the burden on our bodies too. All things considered, a 100% raw diet has to be the finest - and it is! More about all that later...

By the time you turn the final page of this booklet, you will see that to really fulfil those ethical choices you made when you chose veganism, you need to take the next logical step and add yourself to the ever-increasing number of compassionate people becoming 100% RAW FOOD VEGANS. Every careful step in this direction will also help you though. But do learn how to do it from experienced raw foodists. Making sudden and dramatic changes to your diet can sometimes be problematic and require support.

Misconceptions

As a vegan you will, no doubt, have become used to being viewed by some people as being 'extreme', often because those very people don't understand the reasoning behind your food choices. This can be most frustrating when those people have already reached their own (completely wrong) conclusions about your motivations and won't even give you the time to fully inform them. Their actions are driven by fear; the more they know, the more their conscience compels them to act in response. They don't want to understand because it threatens their view of the world and they fear change. Their common defence is to create a caricature of the very thing they fear, to help them to justify their decision. "Vegans are thin, unhealthy, animal-loving human-haters (because they have no friends?). Who would want to be like that?". "Unfair!" you cry and quite right too, but what is the image you have in your head of a 'fruitarian'?

I expect you have pictured in your mind a small, almost mythical group of people who just sit around all day under fruit trees waiting for them to 'give forth nature's gifts' - people who (unrealistically?) have a respect for all life - including plants. They eat only fruit because it is the one food freely given without any damage, or worse still, death occurring to the plant in the process. However, you never get to meet fruitarians because this is all they do. Their diet provides them with so little nutrition, they never have any energy to do anything useful.

You see, that's just the sort of misconception that we regularly have to deal with at the F.R.E.S.H. Network, often from vegans who should know better! (to my shame, I too once believed this.)

The critical generalisations about raw foodists can be a serious problem when you're trying to promote a way of life, and as misconceptions go, this is a pretty big one. I've no doubt that 'out there' somewhere there are people whose choice of a raw food or fruitarian diet was motivated by just such a respect of all life. The truth is that most people come to raw foods for health reasons, and as I said before, these will be explored a little later.

However, I would like to see many more vegans choose raw foods for the very same strong ethical reasons that originally caused them to adopt veganism. Knowing what I do now, I don't see how a line can be drawn between the two.

In Part 1 of this booklet I will proceed to look at all the different ways that we degrade and waste the food we grow and why urgent change is imperative. Part 2 looks at why the choice of a raw food diet is a positive step forward in changing things for the better. Part 3 then examines the 'ins and outs' of putting the diet into practice and Part 4 draws together the necessary conclusions.

Part 1: So what's wrong?

Feeding the world

Currently we are not doing a very good job of feeding ourselves, with the richer countries turning good food into junk and many millions in the poorer nations dying every year from starvation. Yet the Earth can easily support far more humans and animals than even current levels, if only we'd stop the insanity. We have reached a point where many of the World's poorer nations rely almost entirely upon the success of one or two staple crops, often poisonous 'luxuries' (like coffee or tobacco).

Their whole farming system has been geared up to produce something that has to be exported to be turned into currency - for them to buy food with. These nations are at the mercy of international markets and should their crops fail (a real risk in a monocultural system), then a major disaster looms. Even those poorer countries that do grow food crops for themselves often still rely upon getting a good harvest to avoid a potential famine and yet current farming methods are making such events more and more likely each year. Meanwhile, the richer nations are deliberately over-producing food for 'economic' reasons(!), causing excessive use of fertilisers and sprays.

Then the excess is either stored (at what cost?) or dumped! Vast amounts of food are just thrown away and not just at this stage. Any fruit or vegetable that isn't the right shape or size is discarded - because it doesn't look good enough - whatever happened to food value? Then, if it hasn't sold before the 'sell-by' date (a terrified response to the phenomenon of 'food poisoning'), it is thrown away. This leads to the absurd situation of many supermarkets discarding ripe and unripe fruits because they have been Inaccurately labelled or are unsold. "We're not even allowed to give it away" I was recently told, "in case it makes you ill". The situation clearly couldn't get much worse, but what steps can we take to change things?

Well, it is certainly true that the worldwide adoption of a vegan diet would free up a large amount of the nutrition currently wasted when fed to livestock, but we would still have some serious problems to solve. Arable farming is very energy-intensive and results in a massive loss of topsoil and vital minerals every year. Changing to veganism would not remove these problems, just temporarily reduce the scale of them. The world's land mass is already 41% dry land and desert! {3} Our forests are shrinking and our deserts expanding. Our capacity to provide food in the long term is rapidly diminishing - worldwide. What we grow and eat needs drastic re- evaluation at a basic level if we are to turn this mess around and save both ourselves and all those species we share this Earth with.

The ethics of our food choices

Food is a basic human need for survival and we cannot avoid consuming part of our environment. However, when we did this in balance with nature, we took only what we needed, and left our waste products to fertilise the soil. We were once truly part of nature's cycle and we lived sustainably. This is of course, the minimum impact scenario and one that is still followed to some degree by a few remaining indigenous peoples around the globe. On the whole though, we are now completely out of balance with our environment, because of our increasing separation from where our food is grown.

Most of us travel around between sleep, 'work', and socialising and eat food from everywhere but our own locality! This wastes vast quantities of the Earth's fuel resources and creates considerable pollution while also increasing our own stress levels. What can be the purpose of such a system? To create 'growth'. Yes, believe it or not, all this insanity equals 'economic growth' and is viewed by the politicians as a good thing. Even an environmental disaster creates jobs. What politicians are somehow unable to see is that people can be put to work instead making things better. In the meantime we as conscientious individuals have to vote with our purses and buy food that has the least impact on our fragile world, but to do this we need to know a lot more than we are told.

Western culture has been particularly bound up with the idea of intellectual segregation. Instead of approaching the world's problems as a whole, we have decided to split them into categories, like pollution and waste, over fishing, famine and so on. However, if we accept that we are part of an ecosystem we see that in reality they are all inextricably linked. Damage to the planet affects all animals and people who live upon it. Poorer countries exploit their own environment and animal populations to pay back obscene interest charges on unrepayable loans from the World Bank, just so they can continue to feed themselves. We cannot be driven to reform one 'area' of injustice and not be fully committed to all those other areas too. The solution to any one human problem is the same solution for all of them.

Only by looking at the whole picture and being aware of the full repercussions of our actions, can we make the right choices and start to turn things around. We have to be the ones to tell the truth and show the way, we now have the knowledge and the responsibility is ours. Our food choices are vital because diet absolutely determines the state of human consciousness, and the sicker people are, the narrower their awareness becomes. Not only can we directly reduce the demand for unsuitable produce and encourage the growing of good crops; we can also arouse the curiosity of our friends and family, opening the door for those truths to be passed on again. Maximum efficiency in food production is essential; every time we create waste in the chain, more land is required to meet our nutritional requirements and that means more wild habitat destruction. Any interference with nature results in the death of animals, either directly or by destroying habitats and food supplies {2}. We are directly in the firing line as well when we damage the ecosystem.

Just as the earth is in need of relief from human destructiveness, so also, are we. The United States boast about how much they spend on "healthcare". What they mean is that they spend more on tending to the sick, because healthy people do not require any "healthcare". Disease equals profit and exploitation. Our worsening state of physical degeneration is the most obvious evidence of our rapid drift towards extinction.

Food Production

Worldwide, humanity's staple foods, wheat, corn and rice (and to a degree, potatoes) are all prairie crops; that means that we create a bare-soil environment in which to sow them. As a result, every year massive quantities of topsoil are blown away or washed into watercourses from ploughed fields, causing an obscene use of artificial fertilisers to try to replace this loss. It is estimated that the U.S.A. has lost over 75% of it's precious topsoil, resulting in the use of 20 million tons of chemical fertilisers every year {4}. As a rule, only three main elements get returned to the soil (Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium); however, it is now recognised that we need in our diet at least 84 of the 106 known elements for optimum health {5}.

This has caused a serious imbalance in our soils, which has been passed on to the food plants that we have grown in them. While many of these minerals are only required in trace amounts, their absence may lead to serious health problems. As current agricultural land becomes exhausted and devoid of fertility, more forests are cut down to put to the plough to feed expanding populations.

Over 90% of the UK was once covered by trees (a similar figure must also have applied world-wide). Today we have very little of that woodland left and most of that has been 'managed'. Along with the woodland habitats, all the animals, birds, insects and plants that once made their homes there have gone.

Yet this all seems to me to be very bizarre behaviour for a primate species who developed its incredibly powerful brain (of which we apparently now only use around 10%!) by primarily eating tree fruits. Have we really forgotten what a relaxing environment the forests were, and indeed still are, for us?

Food Processing

We have already touched upon far too many areas in which valuable human nutrition is wasted and yet the worst crime of all I have yet to uncover. As long as our food remains raw, it still contains a good balance of nutrients and vitamins to nourish us with. Yet it seems that we are intent on turning all our good food into empty calories, for the sake of what? Well, recipes can be patented and earn money for a start - a lot of money for the major multinational food processing companies.

Meanwhile we are all being tempted to try the all-new fortified-wonder-breakfast cereal by loud TV advertisements and colourful packaging (How do you feel about them telling you what you should be eating?). Now you may think that you're too strong-minded to be influenced by such things.

Well, just stop for a minute and think hard about that; maybe you really do have that willpower, but you would be a rarity in this society. The big food companies use images of 'trendy', beautiful (on the outside!) people consuming their products to convince us that it is the fashionable thing to do - because it works.

Most of us are being told what to buy in such a way that we think that it's our own decision. Companies (people) who want nothing from us but our money are cleverly controlling the information we receive. Then when we become 'ill' from eating all that processed food we demand an instant cure. The pharmaceutical industry promises us just that and so we give them another large chunk of our money. But neither will give us health; it's not in either of their interests, so we die an early, often painful death wondering what we ever did to deserve it.

When we think of processed foods, items like dried soups and pot noodle come to mind, but in reality virtually everything we buy in the shops has been processed. Bread we think of as a natural food; "Sure, white bread has had all the goodness taken out, but not wholemeal!" Think about it: just as you wouldn't take a bite out of a cow, you could not eat raw wheat - unless you sprouted it first. What we do to that grain to turn it into a loaf is a catalogue of horrors. Along the way large amounts of energy are expended which turn the living grain into yet another dead food. Yet some people even toast their bread after all that - can you believe it?! Pasta undergoes a similarly destructive process - as does pastry, cakes and biscuits; wholesome raw food turned into a useless dull mass - all for the gratification of our tortured palates.

Even the average vegan diet still contains a high percentage of processed foods. The original vegans are said to have had difficulties obtaining vegan "alternatives" to some common processed foods. Yet perfectly nutritious and delicious raw vegan foods have been available all along! The reality was that old eating habits should have been abandoned in favour of raw fruits and vegetables.

The existence of a 'Health Foods' boycott list demonstrates that a lot of the smaller brand names are actually owned by larger companies with interests in rather less pleasant things. Who is your money ultimately going to? The false assumption that we need a relatively high intake of protein (the result of typically erroneous animal experiments) has created a large market among vegetarians for meat substitutes. Soya is the food-processors dream; it seems that you can make it look like almost anything, but what do they do to it to turn it into all those things?

Powerful and toxic substances are used to remove the unpleasant flavour of the raw soya bean and process the 'food' into something palatable. The plain soya bean is only truly edible if you soak and sprout it, but it doesn't look or taste particularly appetising, so the processors go to work on it and turn it into a dead meat-like substance. Who really wants to eat something that reminds them of murdered animals anyway?

I know from experience that you really can't tell the difference between some soya products and the real thing and that's pretty scary, especially when you hear the occasional story about meat getting into supposedly vegetarian pies. We can't change what we ate in the past, but what are you eating now? You can only trust food that you can identify. What are all those unpronounceable ingredients? And what about the additives and contaminants that remain undeclared? Know what you are eating.

Boycott all processed foods!

Cooking

Then if all this madness hasn't already turned our meal into empty calories, we finally finish it off in a number of very destructive ways. Remember, every time we reduce our food's nutritional value, somewhere we are creating further demands on our environment. Some cooking methods are slightly less damaging in some respects (steaming being far preferable to microwaving), but they all reduce the nutrient content well below what was already insufficient. The result is mass malnutrition, with over-nutrition of the calorific nutrients and under-nutrition of vitamins, minerals and the other essential nutritional factors.

We tend to be much more aware of the loss of vitamins during cooking, but what do we know about the damage done to minerals, proteins and fats and those nutrients (possibly crucial to health) that we have yet to discover? Some amino acids are simply rendered useless by heat (bad enough), yet cooking oils and fats can actually make them poisonous, even carcinogenic {8}. Similarly it is also accepted now that a chemical called creatinine in meat forms "heterocyclic amines", or HCAs when cooked at high temperatures.

Give your cooker to a good cause ; someone who won't use it to murder food!

These substances have been found to be highly carcinogenic. Any food when cooked to browning point must be slightly burnt and must contain the fumes from the burnt bits. Isn't this a bit like smoking via the stomach? Not only is our food drastically stripped of it's nutritional value by heat, the permanent changes made to cooked and processed foods causes our body to recognise them as harmful invaders. Because our cells are unable to assimilate the damaged cooked food matter, white blood cells rush to the site of 'attack' (the intestines) as soon as cooked food enters the mouth. {9} Cooked foods constantly stress our immune system.

....And then there's all the time involved in cooking - and all the energy expended by manufacturing, transporting and using the cooker (stop using yours and see your fuel bills shrink dramatically!).

....And down the drain and into the bin....

Then there's all that awful washing up. If it's welded that well to the pans and plates, what's it doing inside your body? Most people use large amounts of detergent to clean their dishes with, when a raw diet usually requires nothing or little more than a quick swish under the tap, if anything. Some detergents may be marked as 'biodegradable', but how long does that process take and what damage will it do in the meantime and is the chemical plant that made it biodegradable?

Whenever we create 'waste' (i.e. something of no use to us) we have to put it somewhere. The easiest waste to recycle with nature is uncooked fruit and vegetable compost, great for the garden and in good supply on a raw food diet. Anything else is too damaging to the environment to be dealt with 'at home' and so the authorities take it away from us out of sight so that we don't have to think about the insanity of our purchasing decisions. Only when the waste services go on strike (and they haven't done for a long time) do we suddenly become aware of all this disgusting mess that we are creating. If we were made more aware of all this rubbish, I am quite sure that we would have put a stop to this madness a long time ago. Cooked food cultures are dependent on a stream of lies, distortions and disasters.

Let's think about some of the other waste that leaves our home for a moment. Processed foods tend to be highly packaged for 'hygiene' reasons; shouldn't that be enough to put us off? What happens to all this packaging? The Tetrapak, in which we are used to buying our soya 'milk', UHT fruit juice, etc. is a recycling nightmare: plastic bonded to card bonded to metal foil and yet we bury thousands of tons of these monstrosities in landfill sites every year. The man who invented these things is a multi-millionaire. Packaging can, of course, be a problem with any type of food, but at least when you buy raw foods it is much easier to avoid.

Most of us have grown accustomed to using a complete armoury of hygiene products to mask unpleasant "body odours" so that we are approachable to others. We are brought up to believe that our unpleasant body smells are natural; even part of primitive mechanism for attracting a mate. How can such an unpleasant smell be attractive? Bad smells derive from toxic substances, and inferring that our body naturally produces these to attract mates is illogical.

It needn't be this way. After a while on a raw food diet you smell 'good'- fruity even! No longer do you have to choose between an armoury of soaps and deodorants or the more ethical, but less sociable avoidance of such products. You can be ethical and not suffer with body odour. Your clothes will be easier to clean too, meaning less washing and again less detergent expelled into the environment. "Normal" human sewage is extremely toxic, requiring considerable treatment at the sewage works. Raw food excrement smells inoffensive, simply because it's not fall of toxins. It is perfect for fertilising the soil and certainly does not further pollute our environment.

Most people like the smell of flowers, so much so that we make perfumes from them. In more recent times fragrances have become adulterated by the chemical industry's poisons. But why do we find the smell of flowers preferable to the supposed 'body' odour (which is actually rotten cooked food odour) of humans?

In the Far East it is not unusual to find edible flowers on the menu and in Africa children may also eat sweet, nectar-laden wild flowers. Perhaps this is a modem throw back to our previous diet, because one of the favourite wild foods of our genetic relative, the chimpanzee, is figs. Figs are flowers and chimpanzees also eat many other flowers.

When it comes to smell, natural raw food nutrition offers you a perfumed colon. Eating a cooked food diet often leads to toxic, constipated bowels and nasty body odour.

The importance of health

One of the most stupid excuses I hear for living on a vegan junk food diet is that it saves time that can be used instead to go out campaigning. What rubbish!! There is no faster food than fruit - deny it if you can! Just pick it up and eat it. No packaging, no eating implements. It is cheap (what do you really pay for 'fast' junk foods?), easy to buy almost anywhere and easy to take with you anywhere. Any inedible parts are totally biodegradable. Fruit is true fast food. Fruit is real food. What about all the waste that junk food creates in the environment and what about all the waste that it creates in your body?! This poisonous detritus undermines your health. How can you go out and campaign when you are ill? If you do, what sort of an impression are you giving of the vegan diet?

Being healthy is our responsibility; the healthier we are the more we can do and the better we can do it. The first rule of First Aid is to protect yourself; it's the only way we can be of use to anyone else. We must choose health; we owe it to the causes we are fighting for. Health is fun, disease is pain.

It's really that simple, so why don't we choose to have health? After all, it's the easiest choice once we know. Have we decided that we must punish ourselves for collective humanity's evil deeds? This philosophy can only ever be counter-productive. If we don't respect our own bodies, how can we ever say that we respect all life and how can we truly be Vegan? Shouldn't we first be kind to our own body & liberate ourselves from pain before we set out to liberate the other animals?

Part 2: The way forward

Working with nature

The only way that we can sustainably harvest the food we need is to work with nature, yet all modern systems of farming and most past methods do exactly the opposite. If we continue to plough the land we are going to lose all our valuable topsoil. If we continue to grow large areas of single crops (monoculture), then we are going to have an increasingly worse disease and pest problem. We need to protect the soil and to work with nature's own system. We need to cultivate a system that works with the wild animals. Attempts to control "pest" species are doomed in the long term as new stronger pests evolve to fill the arising ecological gaps.

Traditionally farmers have been so obsessed with seeing wild animals as pests that they have never noticed that we can be of mutual advantage, to each other. The only way that creatures like rabbits for instance can cause us problems is if we choose to eat (unnaturally) what they eat! (yes, cereals are grasses!) If we were to consume a mainly fruit based diet, they could come along, graze around the trees, fertilise them, look beautiful (of course) and be a useful link in our system. We have created the problem and until we see what we have done wrong, it won't get any easier. A primarily tree-based system would provide us with an annual crop for minimum maintenance, while giving protection to the different layers of plant life being grown beneath the tree canopy. Of course, the canopy itself provides an extra habitat too, by utilising more of the vertical dimension. Tree-culture is the most space-efficient form of food production. The trees' deep root systems, which also draw up nutrients to the surface for other plants, enrich and protect the soil, too.

Once established a tree-based system will give much greater yields per acre than arable methods while providing a stable environment in which wildlife may thrive. Crops can be grown to their mutual advantage as anyone familiar with companion planting would know. Such a biodiverse system would always yield well, because if one crop were to fail, there would always be plenty else to eat. Crop failure in a monocultural system is an all-round disaster and a main factor in famine around the globe. We could even afford to 'lose' a percentage of the harvest to the wildlife as there would be plenty for all. What's more, to illustrate the wholistic nature of our problems and the solutions, planting more trees would also greatly reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. All we need to do is change our eating habits; it's really that simple. The principle of supply and demand will help to do the rest.

Real food

So if we stop consuming all cooked and processed foods, what's left for us to eat and can we really survive on such a diet? Well, consider what wild animals eat; firstly it's always raw and often it's little more than a few species of plants or animals. Even by choosing only raw vegan foods we humans still have a huge array of different fruits (most of which we've never even heard of as they don't transport or grow well commercially), vegetables, nuts, seeds leaves, roots & tubers available for us to eat. We really do have an incredible variety - we've just got used to being extremely greedy and uncreative. Traditionally we've been taught to think of raw foods (fruit, salads etc) as being somehow lacking because they feel so light in our stomach. But they feel this way because we digest them so easily, not because they lack nutrition.

Let's look at those wild creatures again; the strongest animals in nature are perhaps the elephant, the gorilla, the rhinoceros or perhaps the ox. What do all these animals build their incredibly strong bodies from? Raw plant foods, that's what: grasses, wild flowers or leaves, nuts, a few fruits maybe, and yet with little more than these foods they all build strong healthy and perfectly formed bodies. The flowing rhythmical movements of wild animals stands in stark contrast to those of humans degenerated by processed foods. We may have eliminated rickets, however we still suffer leg length differences and the lack of full and symmetrical skeletal development is most pronounced in the faces and jaws of modem populations. Malnutrition created a market for dentists to extract or straighten teeth. Humans should have a robust form, just like those other animals. It's our birth right.

How about speed? Who rates their chances against a racehorse, a gazelle or even a rabbit? They all eat a purely raw plant food diet. The carnivorous animals that prey on these vegetarians have to rely on surprise and a short burst of speed to make a kill, but they just don't have the stamina for a long chase. It all seems to defy what we think we know about nutrition! Yet it seems that if you want health, strength and stamina, a 100% raw plant diet is clearly your best option!

But why raw? Well, let's turn that around; why cook? It's dirty, a waste of energy and a criminal waste of nutrients. It's a tricky one, isn't it? The main reason we do it seems to be habit and subsequently perverted taste buds. Maybe, long ago in our history a major climate change forced us to scavenge foods that weren't edible in their raw form (maybe even meat) and our behavioural adaptability enabled us to survive through a crisis. But that versatility was at the expense of optimum health and the habits and tastes we developed then we still hold onto unnecessarily today. We may cook much of what we eat at present because it is inedible or even poisonous in its raw state, but shouldn't we be asking ourselves instead why we are eating those things at all? Even many of the good nutritious living fruits and vegetables we cook into poisons in the name of cuisine.

When I say poison I mean just that. Remember all raw foods contain the basic molecules of life in their natural form, just as we would have found them throughout all evolution. This means that we are better able to assimilate all the nutrients available (and they are all still there) within those foods. The remaining uncooked fibre acts as a perfect intestinal 'broom', ensuring that nothing is left behind to rot and poison us. Did you know that on average "normal" people carry around 10 to 12 pounds of part-digested food impacted onto the inner walls of their intestines - YUK!

When food is cooked, new chemicals are formed, although some of the food molecules stay in their raw state. The unnatural molecules are indigestible and cannot be assimilated at the cellular level because our digestive enzymes are only compatible with raw foods and because our cells have no use for cooked food! Worse still, these chemicals cannot be excreted very easily because our enzyme systems are also involved in this process, but once again they can only deal with natural food toxins properly.

Some of these cooked food molecules are known to be toxic, and many will accumulate in the tissues causing inflammation, and burdening the immune system. As these toxins accumulate in the body, the cooked food eater gradually evolves into the chemical likeness of the broken down chemicals from their cooked food. The raw food eater absorbs and excretes their food molecules efficiently.

Raw food for companion animals too

As humans, we are not alone in eating unsuitable foods; we have also subjected many animals to the same fate resulting in similar health problems. Although 'pet' keeping is clearly unnatural and leads to much animal cruelty and neglect, good arguments can be made for and against keeping companion animals. I have good friends in the animal rights movement, some of whom would never have a companion animal and some of whose homes are full of them. They all make their choices because of the same good intentions and both arguments seem equally valid.

There are clearly a lot of domesticated animals needing good homes and they cannot in most cases ever be able to fend for themselves again. So we either kill them (let's not make this sound better than it is) or we try to make their lives as pleasurable as they can be when we have forced them to live under our control (even if that control is applied for their own safety in our dangerous environment). They essentially become our slaves; they eat, exercise, defecate, etc. when we allow them to. Either option is a compromise - there is no best choice, only the best we feel we can do. If we do take animals into our homes, are we sending out a message to those that see us that it is okay to keep 'pets'?

If we do choose to care for companion animals, then we surely want to do the best for them and that must include giving them the most suitable food for their healthy existence. Like all other species, first and foremost this must be raw. The great queues of sick animals in veterinary surgeries are testimony to the health- destroying properties of standard cooked and processed pet foods. In many cases it just takes a little bit more effort to seek out raw equivalents of what is already being fed and for naturally vegetarian animals this can be quite simple, but for animals that are naturally carnivorous it can prove to be a problem.

Dogs and cats are the most popular (and most abused) pets in our society and their wild cousins both include raw organs and flesh as part of their diet. As scavengers though, dogs seem to do quite well on just about anything and a raw diet of vegetables, fruit and sprouted grains should provide everything that they need to maintain health. However it cannot be denied, that given the chance they will almost always eat a carcass or two from the roadside. We may find such things unpleasant because for us this is not our natural behaviour, but if we choose to share our lives with these creatures is it fair for us to impose our morals at the expense of their health?

Cats are a different case; they are natural carnivores and it is recognised that there are certain amino acids that they need for health that are unavailable in a vegetarian diet. A vegan supplement (Vegekat) is now available, but firstly this is an artificial supplement (see later) plus you'll have to add some pretty horrendous flavourings to make those meals taste meaty enough to curtail any hunting instinct. Cats will always be killers; it is their way. I have seen the devastating effect a feral cat population can have on small wildlife populations (and they are animals too). They will nearly always hunt, no matter how well fed they are; it is instinctive. The only way to control such behaviour is to imprison them indoors. So our choice becomes to either feed a raw vegan diet with Vegekat (far from ideal, I feel) or to feed raw meat. The latter choice will always be unpleasant and as far as I can see, the only option that won't support the butcher is to collect road casualties.

All things considered, the choice is still not easy. During the '80s I spent five years working full-time at an animal rescue centre and while there took on the care of two unwanted dogs. Although Trudi and Wug are no longer with me, I treasure the time I had with them. That was all before I heard about raw food though, so I can't share any experiences of my own with you. These days I'm too busy campaigning to give any companion animal a good enough life. Today I live with just humans; my own species and with whom I'm meant to socialise. If we had all got on better with each other in the past, and not enslaved wild animals for food, we would never have created this mess in the first place. We would just have given all our wild companions the respect they deserve, as we lived amongst them. Isn't that just how we picture the Garden of Eden to be?

Part 3: How to do it

The problems of raw fooding

Once you become a raw fooder, some of those little things that you had to do previously, like looking on packets for suspicious ingredients or hunting out vegan foods are no longer a problem. All raw fruit and vegetables are 100% vegan, and are available in most places! However, there are some new games to play and just a few hidden nasties to look out for. Follow me and I'll point out the main ones for you.....

Which is the most ethical place to buy your food? The answer to this is probably the organic seed catalogue and then to grow it yourself, either in your garden or your own sprouting jars. This involves minimal transport cost (postage?), fresh air and exercise for you and at the end of it all, fresh organic bursting- with-life nourishment. Having said that, even the most expert gardener would struggle to provide a full supply of food all year round in our UK climate and would be hard-pushed to bring any tropical fruit to the table (we are after all a tropical primate species). So, the next best option is your local farm shop (keep money in the local economy whenever possible), then your local greengrocers. Ah, haven't we forgotten the health food shop? Well, think about it, how many raw true biological foods do you find in those places? I can hardly think of any, just a few dormant seeds and nuts....

So we have 'health food shops' that don't actually sell many healthy foods! Don't we have a Trades descriptions act? Finally, supermarkets should be used as a last resort because of their poor environmental records and multinational activities. Yet, here we hit upon a dilemma: as they are starting to sell more organic fruits and vegetables shouldn't we be encouraging them by ensuring that these products sell well? Most people these days do shop entirely in these places for convenience and, if organic foods are not available there, then they are unlikely to buy them. Getting them established there would create a significant increase in demand and encourage more growers to change. So, there are again it seems no right answers; we make our own choices and have to hope that we are doing the right thing.

Organic vs. chemical?
When it comes to food quality, there is no doubt that organic foods are not only safer but they are often from healthier plants, making them more nutritious. Organic foods may be more expensive, but you can eat less and still be better nourished. Organic farming practices are also less damaging to the soil, and to the environment in general. The one dilemma comes from the fact that 'organic' almost certainly means fertilised with animal manure or blood, fish and bone. Is supporting organic, supporting the meat industry? No more I would say than current alternatives. The best option still remains home- grown where you are in complete control. If you are lucky enough to know somewhere that farms veganically, that would be next best thing. Until then, plain old 'organic' seems to be our next best option in the shops. Many growers now also run box schemes that can also be a cheap source of fresh produce collected from the farm shop or delivered to your door. Details of local suppliers can be obtained from the Soil Association. Don't forget to search your local countryside for wild berries! You could find cherries, blackberries and raspberries in woodland and hedges.

Is food irradiation safe?
The food retailers are becoming increasingly nervous when questioned about irradiation and their produce. It is a practice that is seemingly becoming common without such produce being labeled as such (as once promised). The process was developed to preserve fruit and vegetables for longer, but it does so by stopping the ripening process. Only ripe fruit is truly nourishing; irradiated food never ripens and you could never grow another plant from its seed, it is dead food. Avoid.

What about imported food?
I believe that because we originated in the tropical forest, we are still designed to eat the foods that grow there. Who can deny the unbeatable flavour of a good mango, papaya or custard apple? We are drawn to these foods because they contain elements necessary to nourish us. Since leaving our forest home we have developed nothing but poor health. I believe that while we can live very well on plant foods grown in the UK, we still need some tropical and sub-tropical fruits for true health and vitality. I've yet to meet anyone who has been able to disprove this to me. In an age where a large number of hi-fis, cars, timber and many other unnecessary things are being shipped around the globe, it is absurd to question such a valuable resource as fruit. Certainly, let's put an end to apples and pears from New Zealand when they could be grown here, but let's not question foods our climate cannot support. 'Plants for a Future' are rediscovering a vast number of useful plants that thrive in the UK. They should be your first stop for your garden plants and Ken Fern's book is an excellent guide.

Are there any things to beware of?
Yes, but thankfully not many to remember. Fruit juices are a 'danger' area. Cartoned and bottled juices which have been pasteurised or UHT'd are cooked and not 'live' juices. They are acid-forming in the body and are not nourishing. 'Freshly squeezed' can mean that the juice is up to twenty-four hours old and a lot of nutrition can evaporate away in that time. The best juice that you can drink is that which you make yourself at home, fresh and still full of all its nutrients. It involves the purchase of a juicer (buy the best you can afford), but fresh juice is the best supplement you can take and it will pay for itself in no time. Over 90% of shop-bought supplements are synthetic, by the way {10}, and not worth the silly money being asked for them. While mineral depletion in our soils can produce a similar problem in our foods and then our bodies, most mineral supplements are virtually useless.

Dried fruit and nuts are also processed foods. While it was once common to dry fruit and nuts in the sun, these days the process is more likely to take place in a kiln. This is far more destructive to nutrients. The essential oils present in plant foods are damaged by heat, light and air, so imagine what heating in a kiln does. Nuts bought in shells are also regularly bleached and re-coloured to make them look more attractive. It seems that presentation is more important than content these days. Speaking of which, most shops sell fruit very under ripe because it's less fragile and looks better if it's not 'mashed'. As a result, most of us don't know when unfamiliar fruit are actually ripe. Eating an unripe papaya or avocado could put you off for life, but a ripe one can send you to heaven! Make sure you ask someone who knows (and don't necessarily rely on the shopkeeper).

What about eating out?
Being a raw fooder can be easier than a normal vegan. After all what can be simpler than a diet of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts or seeds and nothing else? I've had some terrible raw meals and some great ones when eating out; I just make sure I only go back to the places where the chef had some imagination. A 'phone call to warn them that you are coming' is always advisable, but most eating places keep in some raw fruit and vegetables that they can turn into a salad for you. Maybe one day we'll even be able to publish a guide on the best places to go. But top of the list might be the blackberries near a local wood.

Scare stories

Every time an article about raw food diets gets published in the mainstream press, it is accompanied by a health warning. One national newspaper recently published such an article on a prominent UK raw fooder {11}. On the opposing page was a similar article on the eating habits of a popular children's TV presenter, in which she confessed to living on junk food and smoking. However, no warning accompanied this particular piece. A note to the paper suggesting that they had placed the health warning under the wrong article never made it onto the letters page. Surprise, surprise.

Current ideas on nutrition are flawed as they are based mainly upon the results of irrelevant animal experiments. The studies that are based upon human requirements have been done on cooked-food eaters. Yet by switching to a raw diet we dramatically unload the body of toxins and actually reduce its needs. Much of the energy requirements of cooked-food eaters goes into digesting all the inappropriate 'foods' that they put into their stomachs and to make safe and eliminate all the poisons created as a result. This elimination process also draws upon valuable minerals and vitamins.

Not only is the quality of raw food far better, it also dramatically reduces the body's energy usage and nutritional requirements by taking away that toxic load, so giving you more energy. Don't let those so-called 'nutritionists' tell you that raw food diets are inadequate; they don't know because they've never tried them! These are often the same 'scientific' authorities who claim that animal experimentation is 'necessary'.

There is now a great deal of research showing the many health benefits of the diet (no room here, but these are covered in many of the other raw food books sold by F.R.E.S.H.). Many people have got better after suffering from life threatening diseases, by adopting raw food diets. Talk to other raw fooders about their experiences (through the F.R.E.S.H. Network contacts list), but best of all, try it. Discover for yourself what real health feels like.

Part 4: Conclusions

Sadly, no amount of good intentions will turn around the world's problems in an instant. It has taken centuries to create this mess. We may not live to enjoy all the fruits of our labours, but we have to be the ones to take those first important steps.

The idea of a World once again covered by trees may seem little more than a dream, but if we start to create a demand for more fruit now, then the growers will respond in turn. We can dramatically reduce our negative impact on the environment by making all the right choices in our own lives. It's in our power both to reduce our own demands on this fragile Earth and to influence others by our actions to do the same. We all need time though to make these changes in our own lives. While vegan processed foods (especially soya) are useful for making the transition to an increasingly humane way of eating, the cooked vegan diet should only ever be regarded as a stepping stone. A fully raw vegan diet should be our goal because it is the most compassionate one. Yours is the one body, the one part of this great universe that you have complete ability to change. You now have this awareness and you should act upon it. It is the responsibility of every one of us to follow through our vegan principles to their logical conclusion and to adopt a 100% raw food vegan diet.

It's as easy as....

Are you ready to make the change?

Because we're ready to help you.

And while you're waiting for your information pack, you can make a first positive step by giving up your usual breakfast and substituting it with a light fruit meal - you'll start the day with much more energy.

Final note

Am I perfect? Of course not, but I'm doing the best I can to try and make this world a better place to live in. I will never close my mind to new ideas that may help take me nearer that goal. Only by constantly striving to do my best can I ever live at peace with myself in this messed up, yet beautiful World.

My booklet could help you take another step closer to finding that same peace inside yourself.

References

The Vegan magazine (Vegan Society).
The Killing Fields: Nigel Dudley (The Vegan, Autumn 1987).
The Food System, p18: Tansey & Worsley (Earthscan).
Diet For A New America, p357: John Robbins (Stillpoint).
(Research by Dr Carey Reams in the U.S.).
Living Health, p277: Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. (Bantam).
Living Foods For Optimum Health, p152: Brian Clements (Prima).
Raw Energy, p37-40: Leslie & Susannah Kenton (Arrow).
Raw Energy, p40-41: Leslie & Susannah Kenton (Arrow).
Living Foods For Optimum Health, p150: Brian Clements (Prima).
Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers, 8th April 1997.