Green Oddyssey: From Vegan to Raw (Part Two)
by Cy
PurityandVerve.com
To read Part 1 of Green Oddyssey: From Omnivore to Vegan click here.
In the first part of this series, I gave an overview of my vegan journey. I discussed my constitution, upbringing, food culture, early influences, transition to vegetarianism and leap into veganism. Here I will pick up from my first days as a vegan through my shift into a raw vegan lifestyle. I’ll cover many missteps, my experiences with the vegan learning curve and inspirations that propelled me to eliminate the majority of processed vegan foods. This ultimately led me to focus on raw food, which helped open the gateway to greater health success.
Early Vegan Days
I have fond memories of my early adventures in veganism. I was in college, studying, working and involved in lots of extracurricular activies. I was experiencing some health challenges but I was feeling free, learning, meeting people and figuring out aspects of my self. Veganism was integrating into my self-concept as an adult member of society.
Back in those days, vegans were few and far between, but I remember the few dear vegan friends I had fondly. There was my floormate Jess, a classic Libra; smart as a whip with her head in the clouds. A trip to India had profoundly impacted her and she was preparing to study Eastern medicine. She was a free spirit and someone I knew I could always count on to join me to scrounge for vegan food at the dining hall or to go on trips to the local co-op to stock up on vegan goodies. Then there was Vaga, my friend who I met through activist and art and music circles I ran in. He was the most brilliant artist, bringing anything he envisioned to life in black and white or brilliant colors, at his choosing. He made the connection between veganism and all forms of oppression, understanding the deeper, karmic and social justice components of the lifestyle. It meant so much to have friends around to validate this new mode of existence I had embraced.
Late 1990s/early 2000s veganism was a vastly different landscape than it is today. We didn’t have the assortment of products available now and many eateries didn’t offer vegan options. Simply trying to explain what veganism meant eluded many people. Today there are substitutes for EVERYTHING! Plant-based options abound. The mainstreaming of veganism is quite a novelty to me. However, the dearth of options in the context I grew up in necessitated greater simplicity, an important value I have carried into the present.
From a health standpoint, veganism was both a step forward and a step back for me. I had to navigate not well understood dietary terrain and I didn’t always make optimal choices. A typical day for me was caffeinated beverages between classes, and a salad or vegan sandwich at night. Or sometimes vegan takeout. I recall a tasty spinach and black bean burrito from a Mexican spot that is no longer around. And you could always find falafel, a 1990s/early 2000s vegan’s go-to.
As palatable as they may have been at the time, these kinds of foods are not ideal for human beings. Vegan or not, high starch, high protein, processed food products and caffeine are not fit for human consumption and this lifestyle took a toll on my wellbeing. New vegans can be a bit dogmatic and overzealous in their interactions with non-vegans. Some of this is a part of the process, but a better approach would be to look at what can be made better within the vegan context, within ourselves. How can we, as vegans, eat in greater alignment with nature and with our own wellbeing?
Is a vegan lifestyle comprised primarily of grains and soy really an improvement from the typical omnivore diet? Sure the karmic load of the meat and dairy industries is alleviated, but so is the balance that comes with eating home-prepared meals that include vegetables and fruit. In retrospect, a better approach would have been to gain a greater awareness about how to practice the diet healthfully before embarking on full-fledged veganism. Nevertheless, it was all part of the experience and I grew tremendously during these early days.
Alongside veganism came other expressions of self. Perhaps the removal of meat and dairy opened up space and energy to do more. I’ve always been a human-in-motion but I became even more physically active, working out at the gym, riding my bike for miles and miles around the various campuses that comprised my university, and walking everywhere. I love walking very much and my college town was the most beautiful place to explore by foot. People thought I was crazy for trekking the distances I would but it felt natural and right to me. I was also exploring my artistic side. I had enrolled in a black and white photography class and I carried my camera with me all the time. I would walk down streets and take photos of apartment buildings, stores, schools, mostly architecture and landscapes. There was a cemetery near the co-op where the sun shone and shadowed perfectly. I could have spent all day there. There was a crispness and beauty in the light of that town that imparted itself upon my soul. Or maybe I had opened my heart to appreciate it?
Soon after, I graduated and took off for the next phase of life. I returned to Southern California, the place of my birth, to attend graduate school. This experience gave me time to develop new interests and delve farther into my evolving vegan lifestyle. It was the first time I truly lived on my own. I had to shop and prepare food and figure a lot of things out by myself. My knowledge about food and options expanded. I also ran head first into several classic vegan mistakes and I’m so glad I did. Without these bumps in the road, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Traditional vegan food pyramid
Vegan Untruths
A major problem is the abundance of misinformation that has become doctrine within the vegan diet. Researching veganism, you’ll find the traditional vegan food pyramid or some variation of it. It focuses on grains, recommending 6-11 servings a day, followed by vegan proteins like beans and soy, then vegetables and fruits. The top of the pyramid features sweets and other things that should be eaten sparingly. In no uncertain terms, this pyramid is a complete disaster and needs to be ABOLISHED. I mean cast into the abyss. It’s so far off, it’s incredulous! It highlights the first major problem with conventional veganism which is removing meat and dairy and makes grains the center of the diet. No wonder some people give up on veganism. Who can subsist primarily on grains? The human body simply isn’t built to assimilate them (1). The notion that we need grains for energy, vitamins, minerals and fiber is preposterous!
Thinking I was educating myself, I dove into the labyrinth of vegan untruths. I remember purchasing a book called The Soy Zone. I figured soy is protein and vegans need protein, right? I had come face to face with The Protein Myth, albeit a veganized version. The Protein Myth is the idea that humans need to consume a large quantity of protein to grow and maintain the structures of the body (2). This book recommended an exorbitant quantity of soy-based protein per day, to get into some kind of optimal “zone.” What that zone was meant to do is a mystery to me. What I do know is that while I felt better drinking fruit and soy milk smoothies than I did eating sugary, but completely vegan breakfast cereals, I still felt like crap. I quickly abandoned aspiring towards any kind of “zone” and went back to my anything vegan goes approach.
In California, the food is pretty incredible and I had access to many vegan options. Growing up in a simple way, it was a new experience for me, trying many foods for the first time. Since I wasn’t yet used to cooking, I bought a lot of prepared foods. I didn’t know these weren’t the best choices, laden with preservatives and hard for the body to break down. I patterned myself after my mother, prioritizing convenience and cost over quality and health. I remember buying canned chana masala, veggie burgers, vegan cookies, vegan gummy worms, and exploring the plenitude of vegan-inclusive restaurants. I recall experiencing my first semi-authentic tastes of Asian cuisines like Thai and Malaysian. Unlike on the east coast they weren’t afraid to turn up the spice level which was exciting for me. I made an effort to include fruits and vegetables in my diet. I remember the town I lived in had a citrus farm and I would drive up to the farmstand and buy organic oranges and grapefruits which were extraordinary.
Little did I know that I was about to hit a brick wall. It must have been about a year later that I came down with a tremendous, months-long cough and cold. It wasn’t a passing sickness that came and went. It was a relentless dry, wretched cough that scared the wits out of me. I’m not one to run to the doctor but this sent me in. He had no idea what was going on. I remember being given nebulizers and a prescription for the off-label use of an asthma medication. I thought I was dying and I very well might have been. I blamed it on the change in climate. Going from a humid temperate to a dry system with completely different flora and fauna must have tripped up my immune system? But I felt something deeper was going on. This health scare woke me up and propelled me to look further into healthier eating. I insisted on staying vegan and aspired to practice the lifestyle at a higher level.
Here is where I differ from many vegans. I’ve lived through the anything vegan goes approach and I know the disaster it is. Subsisting on an anything-so-long-as-it’s-vegan diet is not a step up from an omnivore stance. If the net fruit and vegetable content is higher on the omnivore diet, while the vegan option is highly processed, full of sugars, starches and mock meats, I believe the omnivore side is healthier. To this day, I advise anyone transitioning to a vegan diet to skip the indiscriminate so long as it’s vegan phase. Our bodies simply can’t make sense of these products. While I don’t endorse meat-eating, a diet inclusive of meat that is high fruit and veg is superior to a largely processed vegan diet. Argue this point against me. My view based on my experiences and I’m open to learning and discussing this further. Turning back the clocks to the beginning of my vegan voyage, I would have ditched dairy and eaten a small amount of meat along with high fruit and veg while I learned how to transition to a healthful and proper vegan lifestyle.
Once my health crisis subsided, I began reading about detoxification and came across The Master Cleanse (3). The Master Cleanse, sometimes called The Lemonade Diet combines lemon, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water into a spicy mixture. Taken with laxatives and salt flushes, the intention of The Master Cleanse is to clean the intestinal tract. I jumped right in and completed 30 days. It was incredibly challenging but I thrived in pushing forward. I think The Master Cleanse is helpful in some respects. It’s affordable, accessible and detoxifying. But I find it unnecessarily stressful to the body. A person taking on a cleanse needs to prepare themselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, which, in my opinion, is overlooked in The Master Cleanse. You can check out Dr. Morse’s resource on Lemonade Diet Fasting here. Transition properly, take out the stimulant laxatives and The Lemonade Diet becomes a great tool to release toxins from the body.
One thing The Master Cleanse helped me to do was to get in touch with my essence. Flushing away waste revealed me on a level I hadn’t experienced. In the midst of all of this, I came to terms with the reality that the graduate program I had selected wasn’t a good fit and I transferred into another program across the country. It was when I moved to New York to continue my studies that my health journey, for better or for worse, truly took off.
New York, New York, Big City of Dreams
Growing up a few minutes outside of New York, I was never a “city girl” like some of my friends who proclaimed that they were going to move across the river as soon as they came of age. I relished light, nature and quiet too much. But I discovered new parts of myself in this megacity of dynamism and chaos. New York was big and bold and harsh and I quickly learned how to compete in this feisty gray world that had become my new home. I eventually came to appreciate New York. There is a frantic energy there that can be alluring for a time. I’m adaptable to a fault and I quickly adjusted to this strange, largely inhospitable place. I was never terrified or overwhelmed and my good instincts kept me safe and mostly out of trouble.
New York is a land of extremes, innocence and debauchery, grays and yellows, land and sea, stark poverty and paramount wealth. Multimillionaires purchasing toilet paper in the same bodega as someone from the projects. Humans experiencing homelessness brushing shoulders with the hedge funded. There are plenty of cars, but to fundamentally experience New York, one has to get out and walk and take the subways and busses and see everything come together in sometimes beautiful ways. Though I am not resource-rich, living in a megalopolis gave me forms access I wouldn’t have found in any other way. What’s unique to New York is you gain a physical proximity to resources that’s invaluable. I don’t think there’s anyplace else where this can be done so seamlessly. Other locales have gatekeepers, barriers, intricate ways of denying access. These tactics of separating the haves and have-nots exist in New York too, but they do so alongside more direct forms of contact across traditional social barriers. This exposure benefitted me in health and in other ways.
Michio Kushi, Photo Courtesy of KushiInstitute
“If you are eating well and your condition is pure and clean, life itself becomes like the dreams or visions that you have when sleeping.” ~Michio Kushi
New Inspirations
Michio Kushi was one of the first educators and authors I came across that assisted my transition to a healthier vegan lifestyle. Kushi is a macrobioticist and while I don’t advocate this dietary approach, learning about Kushi’s work was a stepping stone that helped me eliminate refined grains, refined sugar, effectively everything refined from my diet (4). Although I only followed macrobiotics for a few months, I will always credit Michio Kushi for helping to propel me forward.
I first leaned about raw foodism through my explorations and studies in various health food stores around New York. Seeing raw vegan departments, books, and labels helped me to become aware of the raw approach as an option for living. The first raw vegan book I read was David Wolfe’s Eating for Beauty. I took off from there, reading as much as I could between work and classes. Then there were the raw food restaurants I would frequent, 7 or 8 with partial or complete raw vegan options, the most well known being the now-infamous Pure Food and Wine. Others included Quintessence, Bonobos, Rockin’ Raw and the still standing Caravan of Dreams with its always awesome sunflower sprouts and live music. Live Live and Organic, Life Thyme Natural Market and High Vibe were stores with raw vegan options that I patronized. I would visit the mom and pop-style health food stores too, which brought knowledge from places like West Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. These often had juice bars where I could get some quick hydration. The mid-2000s timeframe aligned for me with my geographic presence in a city with a vibrant, albeit short-lived raw vegan scene (5)
I embraced raw food wholeheartedly and I spent a lot of time increasing my knowledge about this new way of life. Guided by the theories and perspectives I was learning, I stepped into the next level of veganism, consuming only pure, natural foods not rendered by food scientists. Foods developed by our great Creator, not solely with a profit motive and shelf-life in mind. This was radical work on a physical level and it impacted me mentally, emotionally and spiritually as well.
Raw veganism was experimental at first. A fun way to experience life, an explosion of flavors, an exciting dish at a raw restaurant. Then the physiological responses set in, the reduction of inflammation, the release of waste, the healing crises. I let go of a lot during that period, physically and emotionally. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, I can see that I was moving very naturally towards fruitarianism. I didn’t crave raw nut and oil-heavy raw meals. I largely wanted fresh fruit, juice and smoothies. I can now see how my experiences back then revealed a path I would circle back to later on.
Upper Bay, South Brooklyn
There was a beautiful moment where things came into balance for me. I could say I was perfectly content with who I was, taking palpable strides towards what I knew to be my essence. I remember celebrating this moment by walking along the beaches of South Brooklyn where I lived at the time; always by the water, always at peace in my chaos. I was living in a crappy, buggy courtyard-facing apartment that would only get direct sunlight for about an hour a day, but I was perfectly alone and perfectly fulfilled.
This point led me to envision leaving New York, a city that had taken everything away while giving me so much. I’m still processing my relationship with that city. There were cracks and things that didn’t make sense about it. Cities are criticized and revered, and New York might be the most criticized and revered of all, but the accolades don’t make up for the real shortcomings. Access is the high point, but there are many lows - the grayness, the dearth of light, the cutthroatness, the lack of basic human decency. As a petite woman, I felt it on a corporeal level, literally being pushed out of the way on occasion, someone’s rush deemed more important than my existence. There’s a human side that’s also palpable, but it seems to exist less and less as time goes on. Concurrent with my perfectly imperfect life at the time, eating in a highly natural way put city living into perspective and revealed the ways in which it could never make sense in the long run.
I felt a pull to align my life more with the health focus I had become so enthralled with, so I hatched an escape plan, something I had thought of doing for years. I prepared to take off for a tropical paradise where I would spend two years in sunshine and warmth, in the company of the best fruits imaginable. The raw scene in New York would come apart while I was away. This precipitated further challenges which propelled me towards (back to) frugivorism/fruitarianism. This was the beginning of my life as a healthy raw vegan. I thought I had reached the pinnacle. I didn’t know it at the time, but the real revelations that would take me farther than I ever imagined lay ahead. To be continued…
Notes
(1) I don’t speak only from the stance of theories. Any claims I make, I have tested out on my own body. I’ve lived without grains for many years now and I know how the difference looks and feels. I’ve also seen the wreckage grains bring upon others. I would encourage you not to take mine or anyone else’s word and to similarly test things out for yourself. That way you will live the truths you discover, which is far more powerful than anything anyone can say to you.
(2) Don’t Swallow the Protein Lie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Xp2Y0IST8
(3) Burroughs, Stanley. The Master Cleanse. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39776949-the-master-cleanse-by-stanley-burroughs
(4) The Macrobiotic diet largely recommends a diet of whole grains, proteins and vegetables.
(5) I don’t think raw vegan restaurants and initiatives are necessarily sustainable in large, menacing cities like New York. New York was the greatest city in the world for many years. But it’s soul is incompatible with the integrity of high quality raw vegan food. Restaurants are about money. Reduce costs, upsell wholesale ingredients, make money. Integrity clashes with the bottom line. Operating costs and regulations are astronomical. You can see it in the widespread vacancy in these cities. You have to keep up or remove yourself from it entirely. That unsustainability also transfers to the consumer in exhorbitant costs of food. Talking to someone with limited resources about high end raw food in this context becomes farce. These businesses were the center of life for raw vegans in the early-mid 2000s but most are gone now.