In Awe of Raw (Guest post by Miz Capsicum)

Miz Capsicum has been a friend of mine for more than a decade, and is a singer-songwriter who has been eating a vegan and half-raw diet for about two and a half years. As I have received multiple requests for posts on eating raw, I asked Miz Capsicum to guest blog about her experience.

Also, recently, I had caught a cold, and was supposed to meet up with Miz Capsicum and our mutual friend, and canceled our get together both because I wasn't feeling well and because I was concerned about infecting them with my cold virus. I was really struck when Miz Capsicum was so unconcerned about possibly catching my cold -- recently, her partner had had one, and she hadn't caught it even from him. So I have been wondering, does Miz Capsicum's diet hold the secret to better immune system functioning?

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About my diet: I am 99% vegan but occasionally eat bread and desserts which may contain any number of non-vegan substances that I pretend not to notice. And sometimes I put butter on that bread too. : ) As well as being vegan, at least 40% of what I eat in a day is raw, with no more than one or two meals with cooked foods in them per day. (I would like to include more organics, but conventionally grown foods are much easier to come by in my neighborhood, and much less expensive, so unfortunately I don't get as many organics as I'd like.)

Prior to becoming vegan, my diet looked more like Miz Masala's: vegetarian with fish here and there, plus eggs, and unlike Miz Masala, I also handled cheese and milk.

I used to have acid reflux all the time, and terrible indigestion. I was losing my voice and canceling shows. But I have experienced a huge improvement in the past two and a half years. I'm still working on making my diet more consistent and managing my impulsive eating urges (I have a sweet tooth), and on continuing to help my body's natural detoxification systems re-balance and function as they ought (I still have one major persistent symptom: acne) through a gradually lighter diet and colonics.

Miz Masala asked me if I felt that eating more raw foods and staying vegan enhanced my immune system, and the simple answer is, Yes: increasing the amount of raw food in my diet has benefited my immune system. How and why it works as it has been taught to me operates on a set of principles that are at some variance with the assumptions underlying Western medicine. One of the views I've adopted as my own as I've learned more about healing the body through nutrition is that the cause of illness is the presence of toxins in the body. Toxins increase via the consumption of poisonous substances, but also through indigestion and improper elimination, a much more common circumstance than we think.

The cleaner, more alkaline, and less toxic the body, the smoother its intricate and beautifully designed systems can function. Raw foods, when eaten in the proper dietetic combinations, serve to alkalinize, cleanse, and facilitate proper digestion and elimination.

As for my own health, I'm so grateful that I've been learning more about healing through food. It's a lifestyle and a commitment to your own health in the short and long run. I find that I really enjoy learning about food and health and watching my body heal.

Thai lettuce wraps from the popular all-raw restaurant Pure Food & Wine in New York City. (I have tried them, and they're delicious.)

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What is the raw diet? The raw food movement prescribes a diet of unprocessed, preferably organic, plant foods that have not been heated above 116 degrees F. The theory underlying this diet is that cooking destroys the enzymes in plant foods that assist in the absorption of nutrients and elimination of toxins and diminishes the nutritional value and "life force" of food (which sounds very similar to me to the "prana shakti" concept in Hinduism). People are considered to be on raw diets if 75% or more of what they eat is living (raw). Raw "cooking techniques" to make dishes of varying textures and easier digestibility include sprouting seeds, grains, and beans; juicing, chopping, and julienning fruits and vegetables; soaking raw (not roasted) nuts and dried fruit; making "milks," "creams," and "ice creams" from nuts and young coconut; and blending, dehydrating, culturing, fermenting, and pickling raw foods.