sunshine

raw food & cheese etc.

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O.k. Maybe this has been answered in the other topic... excuse if it was...

 

In Oleg Tcherne" course I just attended he had a strong opinion about eating meet creating Karma... while eating fish does not as fish have no "fear centre"... (my words)... we eat mainly raw food plus rice & chease... I will question Eduard Nima about this... In Chinese Medicine eating meat (while not forbidden) is not "that good" as it creates dampness in the body... further eating mainly raw food creates cold in the body, over the long run both deplete the boday of its energy... I wonder if there are simply different rules for practitioners and those who do not practice... is cheese necessary for a cultivator to keep his energy in control? Or other raw food? Do they not create dampness & cold in a practitioner as they would in somebody not practicing? What do you think?

 

Harry

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i personally like the ayurvedic model of diet as it takes into account each individuals personal disposition.

 

for example i am very much vatta (air-ether) and have tried the raw food thing. i rapidly waste away, have lowered energy levels and become very cold.

this is because i am cold and dry by nature.... warm, moist foods go great with me.

 

i have another friend who (even though he hasn't had his disposition read) is very much a pitta. he thrives on raw foods with increased energy levels and his body becomes very balanced.

 

diet is such an individualistic thing that the perfect 'balanced' diet just does not exist as a general thing.

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I am definitely not an expert in nutrition. I eat ovo-lacto vegetarian because it seems to me that is a logical conclusion of the precept of non-killing (if I buy meat at the store they didn't kill it for me, but they gotta kill one to replace it, etc). I try to eat my fruit and veggies and take vitamins.

 

I don't try to convert people to my way of eating, or try to tell them that they're wrong for wanting to eat meat, but I would take issue with the "ok to kill fish" idea. I've heard it before from people who are otherwise vegetarian, and it just seems like a justification to me. If someone wants to eat fish, I think they should just eat fish without saying that fish don't mind being killed. All beings love their lives and hate death. Even an ant will run away if you try to squish it. If someone has ever seen a fish struggle on a hook or in a net, or seen them gasping for air on a boat I think they would agree that they don't look like creatures that are ok with dying.

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Im just shooting from the hip here,but doesnt Traditional Chinese Medicine discourage cheese ? A freind of mine who was heavily into TCM kept describing cheese as "evil stuff"!Anything to this ? :) Regards,Cloud.

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In Oleg Tcherne" course I just attended he had a strong opinion about eating meet creating Karma...

besides questions of cheese and meat, how was the workshop??

 

just curious,

affenbrot

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Interesting, I always thought TCM was very pro-meat... including it in every meal, etc. Balancing the five flavors, etc.

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Why?

 

My advice: stay away from it like all dairy products. Very damp and unnatural stuff.

 

I co-sign this. This winter I've had my dairy intake to a minimum and I haven't had a proper flu yet. Whenever my kids eat dairy I have to listen to them snore, cough and gurgle through the night so this is personal !!! :D

 

The energy of most cheese is stagnant and congests the lungs and intestines. Fresh sheep's cheese may be ok sepecially for those with fiery digestion.

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Dairy contributes to mucous production on a massive scale. If you must intake dairy (I do sometimes, still), DO NOT do it when you're already sick or feel sick coming on. Never do it too close to bedtime. Limit it, and only eat active culture yogurt-raw ideally. The enzymes are all lost in pasteurization, but active cultures can promote digestive health.

 

If only cheese weren't so delicious...

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Unmike,

just curious, are you a vegetarian? I was recently a pescatarian for a few months but couldn't help myself at Thanksgiving, I love turkey too much :lol: , it was an organic natural hormone free turkey though.

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I was going to start a thread about cabbage and heads of cabbages and cabbage pickling per the latest issue of "The New Yorker". I found it all very "Taoist". Half in irony and half because I am eating cabbage as I write. Then I found that this thread had already been led down the Wallace n Grommit garden lane and further serious debate about cheese, fermented food and human microbiology now eludes us. Till next time :P

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I was going to start a thread about cabbage and heads of cabbages and cabbage pickling per the latest issue of "The New Yorker". I found it all very "Taoist". Half in irony and half because I am eating cabbage as I write. Then I found that this thread had already been led down the Wallace n Grommit garden lane and further serious debate about cheese, fermented food and human microbiology now eludes us. Till next time :P

 

Well, let's see if we can rescue it a bit.

 

One of the hidden dietary perils in modern Western diets is the frequent absence or near-absence of fermented foods (of the kind not killed by canning). These are a major contributor to health due to beneficial bacterial cultures that in a healthy digestive tract are abundant enough to account for about 2 lb of weight. They produce certain vitamins in the gut not really available from other sources (e.g. vitamin K, a major player in vascular health, among other things) and do half the work digesting our foods for us and making sure we get what we eat broken down to bioavailable bits and pieces. They can become extinct after a course of antibiotics, or very poorly represented if no fermented foods are consumed regularly.

 

Fermented dairy products are the only ones worth eating these days, and they are far from perfect (not because of the junk science that denounces them on the basis of we're not baby calves and so on -- with this logic we would have to conclude India, Pakistan, all of the Middle East, etc., are populated exclusively by baby calves, billions of them -- and have been for all of their recorded history, since there's no recorded history of these parts of the world not consuming dairy at any time in their existence -- on a daily basis whoever could afford it, or as often as they could for everyone else),

 

but because of the horrible things done to modern dairy that make it into what it's naturally not. However, if it is organic AND fermented, half the battle is won -- it is predigested by the critters in the process of fermentation and made bioavailable for humans this way (unless it is "fat-free" or "low fat" -- nothing can make a human body metabolize these properly, because high levels of calcium present in dairy only become bioavailable to the body in the presence of fat and fat-soluble vitamins, otherwise it turns into building blocks for kidney stones and never makes it to the bones or anywhere else it might be needed).

 

So... cheese. The story of cheese, an ancient staple of Indo-European but not East Asian cultures, is the story of a simple, nutritious, healthy product, very useful in situations where growth is desirable (due to polyamines it is particularly rich in, which are growth facilitators -- and the reason behind Ayurvedic, traditional European, etc., medicinal uses -- primarily for children who are not growing well, are skinny, lag behind in physical or mental development, are prone to illness and weakness, and for adults convalescing from an illness or suffering from any number of digestive problems, which are often alleviated by this mild, easy-to-assimilate food). Of course if the cows were molested, so is the milk and so is the cheese; but otherwise, if it's just cheese, from a healthy non-factory-farmed animal's milk and with no harmful additives, it's quite wonderful.

 

East Asians, in the meantime, pickle, ferment, and otherwise preserve with beneficial critters everything that moves or doesn't move, eat it pretty much on a daily basis, and that's where they get their share of beneficial bacterial cultures. I used to buy something almost every day from a particular vendor in Xi'an who was selling homemade, un-canned, fermented goodies -- dozens of varieties of vegetables, but not only -- and that's how I got by on no cheese in China.:)

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My buddy is a raw foodist but he's not vegan, he consumes raw dairy as he feels it's healthy, and I agree.

 

He started as a raw vegan, but found it difficult to get enough protein in his diet, so he got a raw milk dairy share from a local family owned dairy farm in our town, and he said that he feels 10 times better.

 

Raw dairy is a GREAT source of protein for raw foodists in my opinion. As mentioned by other posters it isn't mucous forming like pasteurized milk, and it's suitable for lactose intolerant people as well. It's also alkaline forming to the body unlike homogenize pasteurized milk.

 

I understand that people want to be vegan because of animal cruelty, but if you get it from a local family farm that you can see that the cow's aren't mistreated, that's about as cruelty free as you can get! I also have a dairy share and drink raw milk very regularly but I also like organic unsweetened soy milk.

 

While I do eat plenty of raw food meals with my buddy, I am lacto-ovo vegetarian and like to eat hot food. I don't think I can live without beans and unfortunately you can't really eat beans on a raw foods diet.

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You guys feel the same about kefir? I tend to not eat too much cheese. I love the taste, but I do tend to feel somewhat bloated afterwards. I usually drink kefir in the morning and it makes me feel pretty good. Can't report any negative effects, and all the probiotics are great for you

 

Oh and speaking of dampening and mucus producing.. you guys ever try kombucha? My parents make it so I drink it sometimes. I know it's supposed to be great with probiotics, but I always get mucus from it. Really gross.

Edited by Sunya

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Fermented dairy products are the only ones worth eating these days... However, if it is organic AND fermented, half the battle is won -- it is predigested by the critters in the process of fermentation and made bioavailable for humans this way (unless it is "fat-free" or "low fat" -- nothing can make a human body metabolize these properly, because high levels of calcium present in dairy only become bioavailable to the body in the presence of fat and fat-soluble vitamins, otherwise it turns into building blocks for kidney stones and never makes it to the bones or anywhere else it might be needed).

 

I guess you're talking about kefir then. Is there really a difference between organic vs non organic even by the same company? My local shop only has Lifeway kefir and there's like a $1.50 difference between organic and non-organic. Are the organic cows fed better or something?

 

What you say about "low fat" is interesting. Where can I learn about this? I should send this to my mom because she refuses to eat whole fat yogurt/kefir. She's afraid of saturated fats.

 

My girlfriend was telling me that we should make kefir ourselves, and we can use goat milk too. She said non-pasteurized tastes better and is better for you, but that's also kind of risky isn't it? What do you think about pasteurization?

 

I loooove the taste of kefir. I don't know why. I'm Russian so I probably had it as a child... I'd love to get the most out of it for the health benefits though.

Edited by Sunya

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Organic kefir is definitely a step in the right direction, but raw kefir is best. Get a raw dairy share if you have one in your area.

 

I suggest you get some kefir grains, and culture it at home. The taste is much stronger and you get a lot broader spectrum of bacteria. Unlike kefir culture powders, kefir grains will continue to culture pretty much for life.

 

http://www.happyherbalist.com/kefirlivegrains.aspx

 

It's probably going to be cheaper to make your own and it's healthier and fresher. Making yogurt this way is pretty easy as well.

 

You can also ferment your own veggies at home too, I LOVE homemade kimchi!

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