Do people on raw food diets need to take supplements?!
Answers: ...or do they get everything from food?
What Dart said is right on. I just want to add that I've been readng a lot about supplements lately and what they are starting to find out is that often they THINK they know which vitamins in a food are beneficial for certain things, however, when people take supplements they're not always having the same benefits as the whole food has. That means "they" may not know as much as people think "they" do about nutrients. Remember that we have even known what vitamins are for about a hundred years! It's still a new science.
I'll stick with Mother Nature and eat my vitamins and minerals in their natural form.
I eat a mostly raw diet (or try to, anyway), but I found I did better with some cooked root vegetables and sprouted cooked beans. I aim for about 75% raw food and I feel great! My last blood test showed no problems with deficiencies, but I'm going for a full vitamin panel in March so we'll see...
If you are just trying out a raw diet, good luck! I was 100% raw for a month and could not believe how quickly I saw a change in my face, my eyes, and my energy level. It's fun to try something new and there are a lot of great recipes. Good luck!
I don't think they do unless they aren't getting enough vitamins and minerals from their diets especially if they aren't eating a wide variety of foods. But sometimes they do just like everyone vegan, plain vegetarian, a person who eats meat or raw foods.
Hello, half and half. Some take supplements in addition to lots of raw foods and others depend solely on supplements and a few raw foods.
To answer your question some people on raw food diets need to take supplements if they aren't getting what their bodies need from their diets.
A raw food diet will give you not only the freshest vitamins and phytonutrients (not physically altered by extreme heat energy added to the molecules when cooking the food), but also enzymes that help with the digestion of the food. So not only are you taking in the nutrients in dense form from the raw food, but it will help break down the nutrients contained in the food with the digestion enzymes added to it.
Now, you do have to follow the rules of a raw diet. One rule is to soak the beans and grains till signs of spouting are apparent to get rid of the inhibitory enzymes that are on these seeds (thus these inhibitory enzymes are what makes digesting legumes/grains so hard to digest and result in the gas/bloating when eating them). You also have to eat a variety of foods, which means vegetables and fruits of many colors and textures.
You may have to take supplements if you are very active. Though most supplements are just very dense packed nutritious foods. Most raw foodist are also purists and will not take synthetic supplements made from a laboratory. For example, spirullina is a blue-green algae that is dehydrate under the temperature allowed, and has more protein in 1 Tablespoon than an 8 oz. steak! Herbs are another way of supplementing.
They don't "need" to take anything. Some choose to. Some don't.