They are great as long as they are ripe. Plantains skin should be black when you eat them.

Mine is wild blueberries. Those are only available a couple months out of the year. When they're not available then my favorite is organic blackberries.

I am also starting soon, I thought I would reply bc I live in Charlotte as well :-)

Raw butternut squash is definitely a no-go for me   (as always, YMMV). Even soaked and blenderized I found it tough, bad-tasting and it gave me indigestion and nausea and dried out my mouth.

A month or so ago I tried raw parsnips and found that I liked them and they've gone on my regular shopping list. The more I eat them it seems like the more I love them. It combines two of my favorite flavors--sweetness and the mustard/radish spiciness of the crucifers (though it's not a crucifer itself). Yuli put it well--"spicy sweetness". To me there's no comparison--raw parsnips beats raw butternut squash by a mile. I find soaked sweet potato to also be superior to raw butternut squash. Once again it's interesting the wide variation between different individual's responses to the same foods. What works for me is not necessarily going to work for others and vice-versa.

Raw parsnips taste awesome... I've been eating a lot of them lately as they go along very well with all kinds of meats and seafood.

I was a little surprised that I liked the raw parsnips so much because I had always disliked my mother's parsnips. I realize now that the problem was she always boiled them to death to make a mashed-potato alternative, which made them rather bitter. I shouldn't have been surprised, really, because my mother also used to boil broccoli to death so that it had a gross texture and was bland and slightly bitter. One day I tried a raw broccoli flowerette before she could boil it and was surprised to find that it tasted sweet and good. I asked her if we could have it raw sometimes and she started putting broccoli flowerettes in the raw salads (the stalks were too tough and lacking in flavor for us, but I later learned an Asian trick of angled thin-slicing of the stalks and lightly steaming or stir-frying them to make them easier to chew and digest, though I know that's out here and when markets started selling broccoli heads without the stalks years ago I started buying those instead of dealing with the stalks).

That's one thing that causes me to question the pro-cooking dogma. If cooking veggies like parsnips and broccoli flowerettes is so natural and essential and we have adapted to it so well, why do they taste better to me raw?

I like the mustard/radish taste of daikon too, but found that I can't eat a whole small daikon without getting stomach upset, whereas I can eat multiple parsnips with no problems, so it's nice to find something that gives me a similar taste sensation without any unwanted side effects.

Hello, folks. I joined this forum today, after doing a search about raw food and leaky gut syndrome. I've been eating a raw vegan diet for about a month. My plan was to test each individual food for allergy reaction and then add back in foods that did not cause problems. My primary difficulty is pain, caused by inflammation. The very first food I tested was eggs - cooked. Two days later, I was back into massive pain. I assumed egg allergy until I discovered the relationship between leaky gut syndrome and protein. Then my daughter suggested that there might be a difference between cooked or raw protein. That started another direction in my search and led me to the idea of eating animal proteins raw instead of cooked.

I'm game to try anything that will help me. The pain in every joint is simply unbearable and no longer worth living through. I'm also morbidly obese and game to try anything that will help me lose weight without making my health worse.

I am also rabidly anti-allopathic medicine. The only place allopathic medicine belongs is in the emergency room treating accidents. There, they shine. But the only thing MD's do for disease is make the patient worse.

I live with my husband in wilderness, off-grid, in the mountains. I'm 62, have three grown children and ten grandchildren. I'm part of a small community that is working toward self-sufficiency. I have 30 goats. My son has four cows and a bunch of pigs. We also have chickens. We're working on creating a garden. It's a challenge at 8000ft. elevation.

I'm hopeful that I'll discover a way to maintain raw food and improve my health. I've tried raw vegan several times, but never lasted because I started craving meat so badly. Maybe this is my answer.

I experimented with baked squash when I was pre diabetic, I had mixed results. My sugars wouldn't spike as much as it did with grains but I still had trouble with carbs in general.

Right now my main carb is coconut and lemon water, although I have had a few berry's without any issues, it seems my diabetes has been cured but I still want to play it safe by waiting a little longer to add more carbs.

It doesn't say how much starch is in there, that's the point.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2647/2

By the way, can anyone shed light on the starches in squash?

The nutritional info says about 12g carb/100g. About 2 from sugars, about 2 fibre. No figure for starch, so I guess this is the difference about 8g/100g. Maybe they don't measure this separately?

Also Stas86, can you get decent quality chicken in the US to eat raw. Or do you eat non-organic, grain-fed meats raw?

What are these benefits you mention from high meat? Surely not the taste!

Thinking of trying out some in the near future.

Worth it?

Phil

thanks

yeah I wasn't criticizing, I was more curious how you are actually testing for these things. I get my thyroid checked but it from a conventional doc, and I hear those are not very accurate. I've been experimenting around the same time, with around 3 years of raw veg before that. I experienced alot of really negative symptoms you describe when I first attempted a 100% raw primal type diet and had little access to animal fats and butter etc..was doing mainly fish which is why I asked. I have alot of skepticism with all this stuff. I came into VLC again this time around with major adrenal type symptoms and sleep, and while i'm sure it is not completely resolved, I still seem to be on the upside of the hill at the very least. :/

My problem with Stone is he has so little personal experience that he's equally bad to all the fruitarian upstart gurus in not really knowing the end results. I mean I have other stoo but that suffices. I was really strutting my 100 VLC temp a few months back but after a few weird responses from some wintery handshakes I took my temp this week and it was down in the 97s FWIW. Ive been trying (cooked) starches myself here and there so yeah, i'm genuinely interested in this stuff and interested in long term health and yeah getting the most bang for my buck in workouts and other 'superficial' things. As I've said on this forum before i've had pretty reverse effects in regards to positives and negatives commonly related to VLC diets, so its all interesting to me how this shit works out or not for people. I definitely do not think 'carbohydrates' are bad. I do tend to think there is a reason that traditional peoples choose starch over fruits (of which most modern varieties may cause problems in excess), and it ain't taste or 'addictions'.

do you read Lyle McDonalds stuff? there must be a more reliable source other than 180.