The Middle Road?

One of the most common things I hear when I tell people I'm only eating raw food for a certain duration is that I shouldn't be too extremist and moderation is best.

My question is, what is moderation?

In a raw food book written by two siblings brought up on raw food (Victoria Boutenko's kids), they were visited by a child services worker at the door once. Some school kid's parents thought they were suffering from child abuse because of the strange lunches they brought to school. They asked the kids what they had for lunch today, and, knowing what this child services worker wanted to hear, they said "we ate McDonald's." The person was satisfied and left.

Eating pizza and burgers is considered moderation today, an average middle-of-the-road diet. Wasn't it just 50 years ago that people commonly had 3-martini lunches? Old movies just crack me up because there's barely a scene where the characters aren't drinking straight whiskey, bourbon, or scotch every time they're home. That was moderation.

Then you tell someone you're going to eat an incredible variety of plant foods and not cook them, and they think you've fallen off the deep end. But slicing potatoes and deep-frying them in grease--that makes sense. The only nutritional concept they're familiar with is protein--that's in meat!! But ask them where they're getting the maybe two dozen required vitamins and minerals, and they probably can't identify where to find even one of these nutrients--let alone tell you how THEY are fulfilling these requirements for themselves.

The extremists are the average Americans.

As I read in one of my favorite books, most people take better care of their cars than their bodies. The mechanic has a tizzy if you wait an extra month before getting your oil changed. But the doctor doesn't really mind what you do, there's always a pill!

The middle road isn't the sum average of what everyone in your culture is doing. We are blessed to have some pretty sophisticated techniques now to understand what happens when we do certain things to our bodies. It's time to let science rather than the overwhelming number of unhealthy grocery and restaurant chains guide our idea of "moderation." Culture and popularity so often reign in these decisions such as what we should eat. And Americans pride themselves so much on their freedom, their open-mindedness, and their individuality.

So let those values run free a little!