The Raw Food Diet: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?

This morning, I am reading through a book called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Raw Food Detox. I know, I know, why am I torturing myself with such stuff? I don’t know. I find nutrition and the way people think about it interesting.

It does make me wonder what the point of a raw food diet is, however, when I read the section on the “Symptoms of Healing” that are a “cleansing reaction” to a diet of nutrient-dense raw foods. Common cleansing reactions include:

• Headaches
• Body aches
• Fatigue
• A coated tongue
• Itching or rashes
• Slight fever

The author describes his reactions to a cleansing spa in Thailand where he was fatigued and ended up with the “shakes.” He went to bed early with “a mild fever and chill” that kept him wrapped up in a blanket. He did say that he woke up feeling symptom-free but I am left wondering why substituting these symptoms for the symptoms of a non raw-food diet are any improvement.

It’s not a ringing endorsement of the raw-food diet. I have enough trouble without going through all this to “feel better.” Anyway, didn’t they just find out a lot of this stuff is bunk–kind of like colon cleansing?