Getting Enough Protein While Eating Raw Foods

I’ve started to ease into a raw food diet since deciding to take my chronic fatigue, that sets in around 3pm everyday, into my own hands. I'm drinking green juices in the morning, green smoothies in the afternoon, and a cooked meal with a strong base of veggies in the evening. I don’t consume a lot of tradition protein.  When I do, it often isn’t until after 7pm when I get home from work. And surprisingly, even without a more protein heavy diet. I’ve been finding that my body is exploding with energy. I can think clearly and I don’t feel as that sluggish tired feeling that I used to when I would eat three “balanced” meals a day. My meals aren’t balanced in the tradition sense, representing fat, carbohydrates and protein, equally as people following the Zone diet in the 90s used to do. Instead, my meals are packed full of veggies and the nutrition that comes from them. I am following Natalia Rose’s Raw Food Cleanse that places an emphasis on how we mix foods rather than on the types of foods that we actually eat. Of course, on the cleanse, the foods are mostly veggies.

But how is it possible to feel so much energy without eating protein, in the traditional sense, at every meal? On a raw food website, Rose is quoted as saying that “Just as a horse will manufacture all the protein it needs for its strong musculature from greens, so too will a human.” Rose suggests getting protein from green juices, small quantities of goat cheese, fish or other fleshes (but not more than once a day), and eggs if need be.  She evens stresses the diet’s success with athletes. So how does it work? Rose says that it is all about food combinations. Keeping starches separate from dairy, both separate from nuts and dried fruit, eating fruit on an empty stomach, and eating mostly veggies and green juices. She highly suggests keeping cow dairy out of the picture all together as well as most meats, though she does prioritize saying that the smaller the animal, the lower the negative impact consuming its meat will have on our digestive systems. 

This idea of food mixing is not unique to Natalia Rose, many other raw foodists and scientists alike are taking into consideration the effects of properly combining foods. The Hay diet, for example, places food into three different categories depending on their pH level.