Many of  you have heard about the incredible benefits of the food vegan diet.

There is ample data to support that.

There have been two major studies (a third is in progress) of the lifestyles of Seventh Day Adventists in California. By not smoking or consuming excess alcohol, eating a plant-based diet, eating nuts several times a week, engaging in regular exercise and keeping a trim weight, the average Adventist men lived 6 to 7 years longer and women 4 years longer.  Those most closing following this lifestyle lived even longer, up to 10 years on average. They also had greater quality of life as measured by their having less chronic illnesses. Compared to other Californians,  breast cancer rates, for example, were 85% lower and coronary heart disease rates 66% lower for men and 98% for women! Positive lifestyle factors were tracked including eating a plant-based diet (with legumes, nuts, tomatoes, and whole meal bread) along with 5 or more glasses of water.

Increasing the eating of red and white meat correlated, as with The China Study, a corresponding rise in cancer incidences.

Of note, the Seventh Day Adventist study showed that vegans outlived vegetarians. They especially had less cardiovascular diseases given their lower body weight. The average Adventist vegetarian weighed about 16 lbs less and the vegans 32 lbs less. The eating of nuts substituted for the eating of fish and fish oils to gather Omega-3 fats and proteins.

In regard to the vegan diet, it was not so much emphasized is that one can be vegan and still eat largely junk food! Ultimately a major step is to shift the diet to whole plant-based foods rather than foods that are highly processed. Otherwise the most highly-processed sugar, flour and oils remain “vegan” and supposedly healthy.

There a numerous studies available that touch on the raw vegan diet. However, there are several essential problems with most of these studies.

First most are too recent to evaluate the raw-food diet’s impact on longevity and long-term health. This is because the introduction of the raw-food lifestyle largely began in the 1960’s and 1970’s and only recently caught the attention of a significant population group in the past decade.

Secondly,  innovative diet centers such as the Hippocrates Institute (which claims to have helped more people to  reverse chronic diseases thereby) rarely publish studies. This may be partly for defensive political reasons. For example, Brian Clement, the director of the Hippocrates Institute, has yet to publish his landmark study made decades ago that compares a 75-80% raw to a 100% raw-food diet.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the few studies that are extant tend to be classically reductionist.  They analyze this or that very minute, narrowly focused chemical marker and in the classical style of the mechanical (death-ridden) view of nature. It is virtually anti-holistic. Thus many of these studies are largely worthless. Examples can be found at the anti-vegetarian site.

Studying the most minute lab details – quite perfectly measured to myopically call a study “scientific” – and rather than gathering a whole (true objective) view of things, there’s  no real means to fathom why raw food diets represents such a significant breakthrough.

There are, however, some notable exceptions.


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  1. Diets doesn’t just vary in peoples interests on foods. Religion itself has to do with diets. Some religions are limiting their members on what food to eat  and not to eat. Raw diets are a healthy diets, they contain lots of nutrients and minerals that is beneficial to kids nutrition and so with the adults.

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