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Chronically low weight or energy levels, and/or
continual hunger are a common experience among raw-fooders.
Find out why, and what the solutions are.


The Calorie Paradox of Raw Veganism

by Tom Billings
Copyright © 1999 by Thomas E. Billings. All rights reserved.
Contact author for permission to republish.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Craig Woods Schiemann for introducing
this topic to me, and for reviewing an early draft of this paper. Thanks also to
Lee Hitchcox for reviewing an early draft, and for valuable suggestions.


A detailed TABLE OF CONTENTS linked to all portions of the article can be
found at the bottom of this first page of introduction
.



Introduction: The Paradox in a Nutshell

The calorie paradox for raw vegan foods can be stated succinctly, as follows:

Compelling insights into raw diets to be gleaned from analyzing the "calorie paradox." After first laying to rest an outdated but still-popular rationale for why some people believe that calories don't matter and are irrelevant, we'll then take a look at the caloric values for each of the classes of food types permissible in a raw vegan diet, and the amounts of each type of food necessary to meet daily caloric requirements. The resulting figures provide compelling insights into the various types of eating patterns seen among raw vegans and demonstrate why these commonly seen patterns inevitably exist. Finally, these same insights and figures also provide hard criteria by which to assess the credibility and truthfulness of individuals claiming to have bypassed the raw vegan calorie paradox.

The discussion here of the calorie paradox is inspired by the discussion of the topic in The Natural Hygiene Handbook (1996, American Natural Hygiene Society, pp. 46-47), although they don't use the terminology "paradox." Careful consideration and evaluation of the raw calorie paradox provides valuable insights into raw veganism, and goes a considerable way toward explaining why so very few people succeed or thrive, long term, on 100% raw vegan diets, and also why so many raw vegans are extremely thin/emaciated.


Table of Contents


PROCEED TO FIRST SECTION OF ARTICLE

(Calories ARE Relevant: A Critique of Herbert Shelton on Calories)

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