12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Addiction to Cooked Food [Paperback]

I was surprised to see reviews of 2 stars for this book, but they have a point. The book is mostly about one person (or family) expressing their experiences and ideas from going 100% raw.

Other reveiwers say that the book is contradictory, unclear, needs scientific evidence, unprofessional, and full of 'beliefs' and not 'facts'.

I would argue that anybody who is a true raw-foodist would say that the first 130 pages of this book speaks more truth about nutrition than 95% of the 200-400 page "professional" books on other diets. There are books that are scientifically backed up the yin-yang (The Zone books come to mind) but say things that are just not true. I would also argue that raw foodists discovered the truth not through being presented with scientific evidence or "facts", but through personal experiences. I doubt that the author is a liar and made up the whole book, or that she is delusional and inaccurately attributes her experiences to the diet. So I trust her views more than "facts" from other books.

There are books that have no evidence at all but are right on the money. I would like to say this book IMO is a great example, but sadly, I do not have any scientific evidence to back that up.

I was better off eating junkfood and exercising than eating healthly and not excerising at all. Physical exertion should go hand with hand with eating right.

When training I ate primarily raw fruits and veggies, supplemented with proteins shakes and plain tuna. Since I was training I was also working out 4-6 hours a day. I was sleeping 5 hours a day and was completely rested. I'd workout 8-2, go to work 4-midnight and had energy every step of the way.

As I grew older I noticed it was to my benefit to eat less.

I went off my diet after 6 months to "treat myself." I had a McDonalds value meal with a shake. I was bed ridden for 4 days.

Also, after eating primarily raw for that length of time, I went to my parent's and had deep-fried catfish dinner. I could not digest the oil. It came out in my stool totally un-digested.

Since I studied martial arts I also practiced chi kung and meditated, so I was acutely aware of how my body reacted to things. Though subjective I realized it took several days... almost a week for meat to leave my body. In that time, I noticed my body responding as if I was poisoned. I did some research and found that because the meat is not digested right away, it has time to rot in your body and the body interprets the by-products as toxic. I learned that lions, tigers etc., animals that eat meat, have very short digestive tracts. The meat goes in and out in about a day, 24 hours. Humans and animals like rabbits have very long tracts. Rabbits are vegetarians of course so it made sense that humans should at the very least be eating raw foods for the majority of their diet.

As far as the type of cooking that my body responded to best, it was steamed. Overly cooked or fried foods appear to be highly toxic.

All this I learned before I ever heard of the book. So despite the book's subjective nature, my personal experience supports a large majority of it.