been around the block a few times - Raw Food Chat

greenbunny · 07-31-2006

Hi everyone, I used to come to this site a lot before Alex snazzed it all up. Great Job Alex! I've been in and out of live foods for about 20 years now. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the numbers of people that know about live foods these days and the resources available. I recently moved to Austin Texas (like 3 weeks ago) and Whole Foods actually has this awesome live food deli counter. These days if I say I'm into live foods it's a possibility that the other person knows what I'm talking about. I used to have to say that I just prefer to eat like a bunny.

The most interesting thing to me was that when I moved to Florida 6 years ago from NYC I was excited about what seemed to be a large live-food community there but found out that most of the people into live foods were hard-core christians doing it because of the bible. That was something very new to me. That doesn't seem to be case here in Austin. People do it for health and spiritual reasons but rarely because of the bible - at least that's what I've found so far. It is strange to see what I considered to be extremely progessive way of life being led by such conservative people. What a trip! Times do change.

I am hoping to find a community here in Austin and on the website that do it for the same reasons that I do. Firstly, it makes logical sense, secondly when I eat live I'm happy, healthy and vibrant and thirdly, because it opens me spiritually and emotionally. Staying with this lifestyle can get a bit straining and isolating at times and it would be wonderful to have communication with others who "get it" for support.

I'm not 100% live right now because of the move and we are re-doing our kitchen. I swear that the people that lived here before ate nothing but pork grease. It's sooooo gross. I'm very excited about having other live food folks over when it's done. I would like to make an Un-cooking club like the cooking clubs that are all the rage now. I will have my dehydrator where the microwave used to be and a counter put in at the right height for my vitamix and food processor and juicers. Any Austinites out there up for an un-cooking club???????

Thanks for reading - looking forward to getting to know ya'all.
Greenbunny

Rawish · 08-01-2006

Hey welcome to the boards! Sounds like you have had a lot of experience with this lifestyle, can't wait for your stories. I am purely into this for health and spirtual reasons as well, but whatever attracts people to this lifestyle is good.

-Ish

greenbunny · 08-02-2006

Thanks Rawish. Your absolutely right that whatever anyone chooses to do, especially something so positive, that doesn't hurt anyone else, is just fine by me. I guess the reason I brought it up was that although I was surrounded by people doing the same thing externally as I was, I still didn't feel like I had any community. In my experience, the reasons why people do things are just as important or even more important than what they do. I'm looking for community and support with more like-minded people. I wasn't much use to the other people in that community either. I could share recipes but that was just about it. I believe that we evolved over millions of years to eat fruit ideally. We have the fingers and teeth and digestive systems designed for fruit with vegetables as medicine. I also am into the scientific basis of eating raw. Things would just slip out all the time. I was half the time mortified or mortifying others. I've decided to be up front with this because it was a real issue over the last 7 years. I felt totally alone surrounded by people eating raw. No judgements - just throwing out the ball, hoping someone that likes to play the same game will throw it back.

greenbunny

GP94E3 · 08-02-2006

HI! It's funny that you mention that you met a lot of people who ate live foods because of the bible. I live in Delaware and most of the people that do it here are very spiritual, but I have not yet met a person (besides myself) who does it because of the bible itself. That is very interesting. It doesn't say in the bible that you shouldn't eat meat or cooked food, but it says other things like your body is your own temple and you should take care of it and to not be cruel to your cattle or animals. I have met a lot of religious people who live their lives by the bible and most of them are not aware of the animal cruelty and how bad it is to eat meat, but after I tell them, they just say that it doesn't say in the bible we shouldn't eat meat. But then I think about it and it doesn't say in the bible we shouldn't smoke either, but they read other scriptures and reason that we shouldn't do it. Why don't they do the same, when it comes to eating meat? I don't know about you, but that seems a little bit contradictory to me. Just felt like sharing that ..

greenbunny · 08-03-2006

Hey GP, Thanks for responding. I think in the circles that I met it had more to do with Genesis. I don't have my bible unpacked so can't give you an exact quote, but in the garden of eden God told Adam and Eve that they could eat every seed bearing fruit and I believe something to do with leaves. They were not allowed to eat animals. It was after they got kicked out that Adam was sentenced to having to sweat and toil for his food and raise it in crops and raise farm animals and Eve was sentenced to painful childbearth. The idea of the Garden of Eden is to enjoy what God gives naturally in the form that God gave it. In order to eat meat we have to cook it - not a free easy gift. The idea is that if you go back to eating the way that God intended originally you will regain the garden of Eden here and now and go back to innocence and a purer relationship with God. Interestingly, every woman that I know that gave birth while on 100% raw delivered painlessly. In terms of deeper truth and the symbolism involved it is a powerful interpretaion of the story. As a mythological, allegorical teaching I see it's truth fully.

GP94E3 · 08-03-2006

Yeah, I know about the book of Genesis, and THAT was what got me to change the way I eat. When I started being a student of the bible, I started thinking about certain scriptures, like: "Here I have given to you all vegetation bearing seed which is on the surface of the whole earth and every tree on which there is the fruit of a tree bearing seed. To you let it serve as food."-Genesis 1:29 and also, "And to every wild beast of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving upon the earth in which there is life as a soul I have given all green vegetation for food." - Genesis 1:30. When God created us, he intended for us to be raw foodist and vegetarians. We can see that in the shape of our teeth, the lack of claws and our very short intestines, among other things. When I finally reasoned on this, it seemed so clear to me, that THAT was how god intended for us to be. But, my main point yesterday was that (this may be a bad thing), but I have strong believes and I completely disagree with the way farming animals are treated today, just so people can get meat in their plates everyday. I'm so sorry, but how can someone who CLAIMS to be extremely religious and compassionate (claiming to know the bible perfectly, and still participate in today's meat industry by consuming cruelty). I'm sorry I know it's hard and people love the taste of meat, but I just don't understand.. okay.. i'm sorry about that. I get really emotional about this topic. haha

Thanks for your very imformative answer greenbunny. You seem very knowledgable and if in the future I have any questions, I hope I can ask you.

greenbunny · 08-04-2006

Please feel free to ask me anything you choose and I will do my best to answer. I understand how you must feel being religious and feeling like the core of your religion is compassion. I personally don't understand how anyone can defend cruelty of any kind. The problem is that there is a great deal of cruelty and killing in the bible. I don't need to point it out, you know the bible better than I do I'm sure. I've heard just about anything justified by taking one passage or another from the bible. It's a bit of an inkblot. I think that is why I like Buddhism so much. It's absolutely clear that ahisma, non-cruelty and compassion are the core of the religion. Over the thousands of years of the history of buddhism no one has or could justify a war, murder or cruelty and find anything in the teachings to back it up - at least that I could find. I do understand the core of compassion in Christ's message but it makes me a bit sick to see what's been done in his name. It's a bit insane to murder someone because they murder someone else but that seems to be widely accepted by many Christians with capital punishment and even killing abortion doctors and anyone else in the building when the bomb goes off. In NYC I happened to live next to an abortion clinic. Getting home each day was a trial. There were a couple of times I couldn't get home at all because of a bomb. Then again, when Moses came off the mountain he did throw down the ten commandments and order the execuation of thousands of people in a rage. What I mean by that is if I want to murder and do atrocities I can find examples in the bible to back me up in it. When people say that the bible is the actual word of God and everything has to be obeyed to the letter, what exact letter are they referring to????? So when people tell me that the only way to eat is live food because that is exactly what God ordered in the beginning, I can quote a lot of places where God was into us eating other stuff. When you say that God made us with the anatomy to eat the way that it says to in Genesis, it makes scientific, logical and personal sense as well and as a metaphor is a deep teaching - then I can get behind it. If someone says - well that 's what it says in the bible and therefore it's what we have to do, then I say - I beg to differ.

By the way, I have turned many people onto vegetarianism when they ask me why I eat that way I say simply that I love animals, they are my friends, and I don't murder and eat my friends. Just like my dog, other species have intelligence and feelings. I would never eat my dog eventhough in other cultures they eat dogs regularly.

greenbunny

GP94E3 · 08-04-2006

Well.. I personally believe that the problem with the bible is not the bible itself, but the way people interpret it. I know that there are people who take a certain scripture and interpret it, in a way that could benefit them. In order to justify something in their life, that would otherwise be viewed as wrong. People say the most outrageous things and say "it says in the bible that it is okay to.. " but when you tell them to show you where it is, they either don't know or show you a passage that clearly does not mean that or is a little bit open for interpratation. But what I think is that most people don't actually read the bible and its true message, they just take other people's interpretation or what other people may think, based on OTHER books. How many people actually read the bible cover to cover and stop to think about the bigger picture or the main message, which may not be just what it says on the page. ANd it does not say in the bible we HAVE to eat raw foods, because God allowed Noah to eat meat after the flood, since everything was wiped out and all they had left were the animals. So, in the bible it is not wrong to eat meat, but it is TODAY's cruelty that is the problem. Consuming meat in this country is contributing to cruelty to animals AND it is sooo bad for your health. But anyway, I didn't mean to get us started in this subject again. ha-ha Thanks for your response. I'm working on a couple of questions I would like to ask you in the future, so you should be hearing from me soon.