No fries, no pizza, no soda, no coffee. Demanding only un-cooked and un-processed foods, raw food diets are difficult-to-follow. Regardless, I attempted the challenging regimen.

My week-long stint with the diet limited the majority of the food encountered in day-to-day life, and required increased time and creativity in the kitchen.

Though some may question the benefits of eating only raw, or “living” foods, as some call them, at its root, a raw food diet serves to force dieters to eat more healthy foods.

“The main benefit is that it helps to increase your intake of plant-based foods… such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds,” Melinda Johnson, dietitian and national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, said in an interview.

Though this eliminates a large portion of fat and unnecessary chemicals from the diet, raw dieters must also be wary of cutting too much.
“One of the primary mistakes is not getting enough nutrients,” Johnson said. “Things like protein … can be difficult to get enough of since you’re usually eliminating high-protein foods. Iron can also be hard … what little iron is in the raw food diet is also harder to absorb.”

Ziad Al-Jawadi (11) agrees that lack of nutrients would be a problem.
“You would still need to find a way to get protein,” he said, “But there are obviously health benefits … especially if you’re trying to cut down weight.”
Johnson suggests a less extreme diet to balance health benefits with proper nutrient intake.

“There are different ways to interpret the raw food diet, some more strict than others… [in raw food diets] you’re going to end up eliminating a lot of foods just because they’re not quote unquote raw,” Johnson said.

She prefers the vegetarian diet to its more extreme raw counterpart.
“The raw food diet doesn’t really have good science behind it, so I don’t recommend that people go on an entirely raw food diet,” Johnson said. “I prefer just the generally healthy vegetarian diet if people are trying to eat more plant-based food.”

One reason Johnson leans away from all-raw diets is because she believes that the stricter the diet, the higher the likelihood that important nutrients will be neglected.
“I find that people … spend so much time trying to fit their diet that they just end up having a low variety [of food],” she said.

This is especially applicable to students, as one out of three meals a day is within a cafeteria.
“Eating raw [foods] at school is probably possible if you really wanted to try it,” Karan Das-Grande (9) said. “[But] it would be pretty tough.”

Even the salad bar is dangerous terrain for a raw food dieter in training. Croutons, ranch dressing, bacon bits: a large percentage of the salad toppings are obviously ruled out. Even some of the less blatant additions turn out to be off-limits: balsamic vinegar, though a tasty topping, involves boiling in the production process.

The options are much wider when it comes to dinner and breakfast. On just a one-week raw food diet, a plethora of simple but tasty raw dishes can be discovered. The majority of these rely on a blender, a fast tool that can create everything from fruit smoothies to salsa or guacamole. Necessary sources of protein and fat such as nuts and avocados can also be more easily incorporated into meals.

Jackie’s Weeklong Raw Food Diet:

Day 1: A breakfast of blueberries and raspberries — a lunch of vegetable slices and fruit salad – and a dinner of sashimi with a berry smoothie.

Day 2: Skipped breakfast (woke up late), salad with cut carrots, green onions, pineapple slices, and grapefruit slices (my usual), and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Day 3: Breakfast of berry/carrot smoothie, my usual salad for lunch, and dinner of tomato slices with olive oil, sea salt, and basil, pine nuts, and carrot/apple/celery juice

Day 4: Breakfast of tomato juice. My usual salad for lunch. For dinner, a dip made of pine nuts, olive oil, and sea salt with carrot sticks. Fruit salad with blueberries, raspberries, and orange.

Day 5: Breakfast of blood orange slices, tangerines. Lunch of salad, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and dinner of guacamole with tomato slices, vegetable and fruit smoothie. Salad with dressing (made of lemon juice, olive oil, sea salt, sesame seeds)

Day 6: Breakfast of orange juice and blueberries, my usual salad for lunch, and sashimi for dinner.

Day 7:
No breakfast, slept in. Lunch of salad with berry and vegetable smoothie. For dinner: tomatoes in olive oil and sea salt, vegetables and pine nuts, and avocado slices.