Vegans do not lose out on strength

Dubai: American doctor, sports nutritionist and chiropractor Doug Graham is the founder of the 80/10/10 low fat raw vegan diet — known as 811rv to followers. The diet's name refers to how much of your food intake will be made up from simple carbohydrates, protein and fat in that order.

A ‘raw fooder', a term used to describe people who only consume raw fruits and vegetables, could eat two or three large fruit meals of 15 bananas or six mangos during the day, plus a large salad in the evening with a few watermelons thrown in as snacks.

This can be hard to grasp for people that have never followed an eating plan, let alone cut out all cooked foods permanently; however, the results are incremental, says Graham, a raw fooder since 1978.

"How much difference would you expect from folks that are just 30 [years old]. Check them again at 40, and 50, and by 60 there is a good chance you will only be checking the one. Smoking, drinking, exercising, sleeping, and many other factors add up to a lifetime of health or a lifetime of sickness. The wonderful thing is that we get to choose," he says.

"I think that health and disease are gained and lost cumulatively. If diet made life and death difference in just a few meals, well, everyone would be dead. The differences are incremental. You create your health one bite at a time, or you destroy it the same way," Graham says.

It can take a year to adapt to the diet according to personal accounts on Graham's website foodnsport.com. While some report not getting sick after starting the diet, it was often illness that led them to it. Some misconceptions of only eating fruit and vegetables are that it might somehow be bad for you — you will feel weak or have headaches. Not so, says Graham, who has worked with many athletes on eating to improve performance.

"Whether you want strength, speed, or endurance, fresh raw fruits and vegetables are the ideal foods to support your training. I think the biggest misconception is that people think that cooked foods or animal products somehow help with sports performance. They don't, and the science is in to prove that they don't," he adds.

"Organic is always my first choice…When we cook food, not only are 9,999 out of every 10,000 nutrients damaged, deranged, or outright destroyed, but toxins such as carcinogens and mutagens are formed."

Cooking food denatures the proteins, renders the fats carcinogenic, and caramelises the carbohydrates. Many other nutrients are damaged by the heating process, leaving mostly empty calories.