Uncommon to popular belief, raw food diets consist of more than just fruits and vegetables. They are the cornerstone of the diet, but there are different interpretations of raw food diets that can also include nuts, seeds, milk, cheese, sprouted grains and even fish. People who eat all raw are considered "raw foodists." When you decide to take this path, there are pros and cons.
Variety
One of the biggest advantages of raw food dieting is the variety it offers. You can make a lot of different dishes, snacks and even desserts to always keep your meals interesting.
Work Load
There are pros and cons with the work load that is involved with raw food dieting. It is easy to grab an apple, a banana, half a handful of raw nuts and eat them on your way to work. But when you start using a dehydrator to make things like flax crackers and dehydrated fruits and vegetables, there is a lot more work to do. You need to cut, slice, chop and arrange fruits and vegetables on racks. You then have to dispose of all the rinds and clean up the mess that is left behind. Then you have to wait several hours for the food to dehydrate. But once it is all done, it can be stored in containers and used for several days to weeks, which makes it convenient to grab when you are in a hurry. You can see how the preparation has a lot of advantages and disadvantages.
Expense
The idea with raw food diets is to eat the cleanest food possible. This entails the purchase of organic foods which are generally more expensive than conventional. When you repetitively buy fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, you can end up paying a high grocery bill on a weekly or daily basis.
Eating Out
Following a raw diet makes it harder to eat out and go to social functions. At restaurants, you have to make special requests for salads and raw vegetables, and at parties you have to hope there are fruit and vegetable trays available. If you are strict about your food being organic, this proposes another problem in both of these situations.
Nutrition
Raw food diets have good points and bad points when it comes to nutrition. Foods are not processed or refined, so you don't have to worry about getting contaminants from meats and fish. Raw foods are also generally high in healthy fats and fiber. But there are some disadvantages as well. Certain vegetables require cooking to release key nutrients. Tomatoes for example have an antioxidant called "lycopene." The best way to get this is from ketchup, stewed tomatoes or tomato sauce. Carrots have carotenoids in them that are more bioavailable when they are cooked. Raw food diets can also cause you to have lower bone mass due to the fact that they are low in calcium and Vitamin-D. In order to keep your Vitamin-D levels up, you need to get exposure to sunlight. If you are following a raw food diet and you live in an area where there is not a lot of sun, then you run the risk of being Vitamin-D deficient.
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