After about 35 years years ( did not start searching till I turned around 14) of searching for a way to eat that would not harm me and be healthful I have found the species specific diet for humans.  I tried the zone diet, the Atkins diet, the blood type diet, vegetarian, and vegan ala Dr. Joel Fuhrman, and Dr. Mac Dougall, raw gourmet, macrobiotic and many more with limited ability to sustain these diets long term. I did not fail because  I am weak or lacking in willpower but because these diets are not optimal for human beings. Although a vegan low fat diet is better for our health than the Standard American high fat and meat diet there are still some tweaks that can make you fell better and function better over the long term. I was elated to finally find the missing pieces to the information  I had gleaned from vegan nutrition books.

I have suffered from depression, chronic fatigue, allergies, frequent colds and flues since I was a kid. so I have left no holistic health, self transformation or diet book unopened in my quest for health and balance. Though diet is not the only key to balance and happiness and health it is the foundation on which to build all three.

The 80 10 10 Diet is more than a diet. it is a lifestyle that includes fresh organic, low fat raw foods as well as a reasonable amount of sunshine, exercise, adequate hydration and sleep, community, right livelihood and more.

When  I follow this raw low fat diet even for a few days I find my mind working better, my digestion and elimination improved and my focus and energy and happiness level enhanced. Using only food and staying away from supplements, super-foods and artificial expensive drugs this diet is radical in that no one is going to get rich from sharing this knowledge.

If the word gets out about how well this works to heal chronic illness, depression etc the big food conglomerates who sell us corn, rice, wheat, meat and dairy are going to be irate at first and then fearful and out of business second. The same with traditional medical doctors, holistic health professionals and others will have to find other creative things to do because there will be so many fewer chronically ill people suffering from diabetes, overwieght, depression, heart disease and the rest.

So what do you have to do to do the 80 10 10 Diet?

• Leave everything you have heard about nutrition from the dairy and meat industry behind
• let go of gourmet mixed meals of cooked foods and embrace the simplicity of raw fresh fruits and greens
• eat 80% of your calories from carbohydrates, ten% from fats and 10% from proteins

This sounds too good to be true

This sounds radical because we have been fed a lot of lies and miss-information about what is good for humans to eat. I heard about raw foods years ago and that was the high fat version. It made sense to stop cooking the food. After all no wild animal cooks its foods or suffered the diseases we humans and our animal slaves do. But the raw diet did not make sense because it was so high in fat. Virtually all the raw gourmet recepies I tried were laden with oil, nuts or avocado. this turned out to be a diet higher in fat than the usual SAD or Standard American Diet.

But 80 10 10 did away with the fat and substituted it with much more fruit. I was shocked and fearful. If I tried this I would instantly die of a diabetes. But not so fruit sugar is much different from refined sucrose or any of the other human made sugars and refined foods in combination with a high fat diet that is the culprit in  many diseases we suffer.

A low fat vegan diet is a good start but I found it hard to digest the beans and whole grains and hardy heavy greens suggested for macrobiotic or vegan diets. that is because we are not made for eating these foods. if it cannot be eaten in its raw state and savored as a mono meal it is not human food. Cows can eat grains and seeds raw and savor them. Birds can eat seeds because they have a craw to sprout seeds. Chipmunks and squirrels sprout them in the ground first and stick them in their cheeks to soften and sprout a little to make them more digestable but primates eat mostly fruits and tender greens that taste delicious raw right from the tree.

Written in a concise and clear manner the 80-10 Diet takes information from early writings on raw foods and natural hygiene and brings them into the 21st century. The hype is gone and only the facts are left for us to clearly follow if we dare to or ignore if we must. As Dr. Graham says there is no “right” or “wrong” only consequences of actions. If you want great health, and optimal functioning in life you cannot expect it while eating food that is not optimal.

What about protein?

According to the world health organization the protein need for humans is much less than what the meat and dairy industry in this country has been telling us. It was hard for me to finally get this through my thick skull but we only need ten % protein maximum in our diet as primates. More than that causes our bodies to chelate minerals like calcium to keep our blood alkaline enough so we do not die!  so it is too much protein not too little calcium that causes white middle class female first worlders to lose bone density faster than any other population

Don’t take my word for it google around. Read the 80 10 10 Diet and read the China Study by T Collin Campbell a study done over a 20 year period on people eating a plant based diet.

What about Vitamins and minerals?

I was under the impression that we needed to use man made supplements and super-foods like seaweed, blue green algae and other expensive additives because of soil depletion. but more is not necessarily better. Admittedly food grown composted organic  soil is much better than SAD foods but the main reason people feel tired and depleted is not due to missing supplements and super-foods but because high fat refined foods and cooked foods are very hard on the body. Once you take out much of the cooked stuff and add enough healthy organic, fruity calories to give you the energy you need you may find supplements uneccesary

Why The World Is A Mess:

Yes, we are in dire straits BUT, (and what saddens me) is that the USA at least, we are in the middle of all the resources for change and growth and happiness any species could possibly ask for but we are soooooooooooooo slow to process ideas that it will be over before we “get it”. I fear that by the time we see what is right to do the inertia of our habits and erroneous beliefs will be too ingrained to overcome.

The majority of us can’t even remember to bring our own cloth bags to the store much less stop watching TV long enough to meet our neighbors and clean up our local environments. It is overwhelming new behavior that is beyond our comfort zone. So instead of getting started, many of us do nothing. We watch the news and get even sadder and our immune systems get even more compromised.

We are like the frog being boiled alive, you know the analogy, you put the frog in boiling water and it jumps out. But if you put the frog in a nice pot of warm water it will stay and not notice the gradually heat increase until it is way too late to jump out, and so that is how you make frog soup.

Dietary Madness

A“Frog soup” example of human behavior is how fat we are getting. We are creating diabetes or heart disease in our bodies. We cannot see the connection between the package of cookies eaten today and every day for the next 20 years in front of the TV with the inevitable hundred pound weight gain and the numbness in our feet due to compromised circulation. The doctor tells us “Well, diabetes, heart disease, fill-in-the-blank-disease, is a hereditary disease. Yes, I agree with the doc. all primates as well as all other creatures get sick if they over eat on chronically on high fat, denatured meat and dairy based diets. That is indeed “hereditary”.

I speak from experience having only just now gone vegan last year at the age of 49 after years of not getting the connection between dairy and damage to the environment by factory farming. I was a semi-veggie-raw-foodist-want-to-to-be who rarely ate chicken or fish. My diet was extreme enough as it was, right?

Wrong!! Somehow, liberal and educated and informed as I am I did not get that it takes thousands of gallons of water to produce one measly gallon of milk when you connect all the grain that has be planted, watered and fed to the cow that produces the milk. I did not know that factory farming is subsidized by the government by giant agri-corporations.

I did not choose to realize that the meat or dairy we buy for 3 dollars a pound actually costs twice that much to create. I was lulled by all the beliefs around me just like everyone else is. They were all eating without questioning it so I was eating it too. As a matter of fact  we all began eating this way before we could talk or question anything. We are told that we need tons of protein.  We are told that vegans are weird and crazy and unhealthy while the standard American diet is normal wholesome and “good for you”. These ideas are is implied at every meal.

Even though 20 years of research by Ivy league universities has proved otherwise I was confused by the “Got Milk”  and “beef, its what’s for dinner” ads  I kept seeing all around me. Take a look at The China Study by T Collin Campell for starts or check out my book list for proof that a low meat diet is actually healthier than our SAD diet.

We cannot see that driving the car to work every day for 20 years instead of making the drastic change to get a job closer to home or to taking public transportation or biking or walking is truly making a huge difference over time. I know intimately from experience because I dumped my car 6 months ago and changed jobs and moved 1000 miles to a place that has public transit. I am so much happier than I ever thought possible and have 500 dollars less in bills each month. Plus I am finally getting a normal amount of exercise.

The time I used to spend at the gym for cardio and in traffic is spent seeing humming birds up close on daily basis and get to eat low hanging fresh sun ripened fruit wherever I go. I slow down now and plan ahead and get more done. I realize that I never needed the car to begin with.

My ex husband suggested I get a car at the age of 28 when we lived in Boston. I had never needed a car there because the subway system was so inclusive. He grew up in a normal, middle class American family in the suburbs were people drove everywhere. I grew up with a mom who did not drive. We took buses, trains, planes, subways and bicycles and used our feet all our lives with no undo restriction or hardship. We moved large objects with the help of friends or rented trucks on occasion and we socialized with friends and saw plays and operas and went to museums as much or more than families with cars.

To my well-meaning ex-husband and to our society it was a rite of passage for me to get a car, finally at the age of 28. To be a respected, mature adult meant having a car and paying off a car note. But I realize now that those values are simply ignorant and misplaced. Had I been more educated and forward thinking about environmental issues and connectedness I would have forgone the car and urged my ex-husband and I to relocate to a city and jobs with public transportation when we moved from Boston to California instead of wasting all that gas and money and gaining 20 pounds from being so much more sedentary from the age of 28 to 49!

Undaunted by my initial failure I tried to grow a lawn and a row of Zinnias in the front yard.  It seemed normal to want a lawn since every other family on the block had one except for one or two brown-dirt house fronts where the poor folk lived. And then there was my mom and I. We seemed to be outside of the normal class categories. Mom was an intellectual, a composer so worrying about appearances was beneath her.

My Mother is a history buff so as I nurtured and watered my little plot of grass seeds mom explained to me that these little plots of grass we saw in front of every house oar apartment complex where a vestige of the English gentry; symbolizing disposable wealth.

Mom stood on the creaking porch and lectured as I weeded and watered: “Having a lawn is a luxury that means you are of a class that can actually waste land on something other than growing food or grazing sheep. Throughout most of agricultural history what ever land a family was lucky enough to have was used to graze animals and grow crops of food to sell for cash and for eating.” Mom paced back and forth on the bleached, rotting boards as she got into it.

“So having acres and acres of freshly cut lawn and doing nothing with it proved one was rich enough to have so much extra land one could intimidate visitors with a leisurely drive from the front gate to the mansion. The lawn was a statement of indolence and wealth beyond anything most people could afford. “

Mom plonked down the aging steps and gave a seedling a little thrust with her fuzzy slippered foot, for emphasis, and continued her tirade…

“This custom of growing a lawn of inedible grass was brought to the new world by the English merchants and continues to be a symbol of status. If ones lawn looks a little shabby what will the neighbors think?” Here mom made a mock look of angst and put one hand to her heart with a little theatrical gasp. Then she went back inside and started plonking on the piano again, working on her latest orchestral piece. My mother did not care what the neighbors thought and made it a point that every one should know she was so intellectually superior that she had no need to keep up with the Jones.

My lawn did not look anything like the neighbors thick green lawns because I did not know anything about soil or fertilizer or that I should add compost or rock dust or add other nutrients so it was amazing that anything at all grew in the sandy stony soil.  Eventually I gave up on the thin little lawn that looked like it was prematurely balding no matter how much I watered it.

My friends had better luck in their yard across the street. They began growing a garden of vegetables, which they watered methodically morning and evening when it was not too hot and so that the direct sun would not boil the wet plants.  The plants quickly grew so tall that you could barely see the girls as the weeded and watered.

I abandoned the front yard and started a garden in the back near a faucet so the short hose I had found in the basement would reach. It was amazing how easily plants sprang up in the rocky sandy soil. I had carrots, potatoes, lettuce and zucchini in a few short weeks just from adding seeds and water and a little manure! The crops tasted a little bitter because I had done little to prepare the soil but to this day I am amazed at how much food can be grown on a piece of ground the size of a large dining room table.

I heard the window creak open and Mom leaned out and looked at my little garden one day. Nodding sagely, she began another lecture…

“When I was a kid growing up during the depression we had what was known as ‘victory gardens’. Every vacant lot and yard was filled with vegetables because we could not afford gas or coal to move food ridiculous distances the way growers do now a’ days. We had truck farms ringing the outskirts of Chicago where I grew up as a kid.

“All the food was locally grown. I used to have to help my mom can zillions of jars of fruits and vegetables every fall. That’s what we need to do now is grow locally!” Mom noshed on the carrot I had washed for her and tromped back to the living room to plonk on the piano.

When I drive around these days, and see lawns and median strips and ornamental plants on campuses, and business and everywhere I go I fantasize that they are gardens and fruit trees. All the palm trees turn into date palms and coconut palms in my mind. All the ornamental maples and flowering shrubs turn into peach trees, and berry bushes. The illegal gardeners who now tend all these inedible plants are gathering baskets of yummy nourishing organic foods for everyone, including themselves, to eat for free. The grocery stores and shopping malls go out of business and everyone goes vegan. We turn them into cooperatives and green houses with big sweeping skylights for the tropical fruit trees we grow there during the winter and share in distributing the foods we grow in our gardens.

Recently I have been looking at permaculture sites. There are whole university programs on growing local food and pretty much just doing things sensibly for a change, how to build things without wasting water, heat and air conditioners, how to put things where they are accessible, for instance growing food locally so you can eat it fresh.

You can get a degree in how to grow food with a minimum of replanting and weeding and tilling and laboring.  You can get a degree in how to catch and save water and reuse gray water, How to reuse everything so nothing is wasted, composting, using solar power. windmills and more. Common sense has become a science. Basically we have to go back and relearn the things that people did naturally a couple of hundred years ago.