Vegan Talk Forums

melissa1780 · Vegan Talk noob Joined: 10 Nov 2007 Posts: 1

Has anyone on this board seen the trailer for the documentary "Raw for 30 Days" You can watch the trailer at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trqkWO2gFt8)
It is about six individuals living with Diabetes on a diet consisting mainly of fast food and then switching to a 100% raw food diet. The results they show in the trailer are astounding!
What does everyone think of this idea? Is it someone anyone here has tried before? Most people in my family eventually develop diabetes and I’d like to prevent myself of doing the same. Does eating an all raw diet work?

The homepage for this film is:

www.rawfor30days.com bigsmurf

BigBecka · Animal defender Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 412

Excellent!

Some sources do recommend a vegan diet for people suffering from Type II Diabetes. Check this:
http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2003issue2/vj2003issue2diabetes.htm

I don't think a raw food diet is necessary, though. Here's why:

Fast food and processed foods tend to contain large amounts of sugar, including refined sugar syrups (glucose syrup, corn syrup, and refined fructose). Eating large amounts of sugar causes your blood sugar to destabilise: your body releases enough insulin to digest a huge volume of carbohydrate, but you have only eaten a small volume of a sweet product, leaving you with excess insulin. This causes your blood sugar levels to drop. If you eat like this repeatedly over time, you can develop Pre-Diabetes or Metabolic Syndrome / "Syndrome X." Eventually you can develop Type II Diabetes. That's a bit of an over-simplification, but you get the idea!

There are other contributing factors to diabetes: genetics, and your body weight and your level of exercise (not everyone develops Diabetes as a result of eating fast food). There's a massive article on Wikipedia about it!

Anyway, you can cook your own food without adding the sugar - that's why I'm not convinced about the need for a raw food diet. It's a good idea to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, and wholegrain cereals, because the fibre slows down the absorption of any natural sugars in your food.

I also read that red meat and cheese can destabilise your blood sugar levels significantly, but I'm afraid I can't back that up right now... I do know that milk was forbidden on some low-carb diets, because of the sugar content!

N.B. I'm not a medical expert and I'm not diabetic!

But I did find that going vegan helped stop me getting blood sugar lows. So long as you lay off the vegan cookies, of course

I hope that’s some help!

Sergio · Vegan Talk Veteran Joined: 24 May 2001 Posts: 224

I think that 6 people is not enough to make a conclusion.
There are other studies also showing improvements on low fat vegan diet, but it's not necessary raw food died.