The National Enquirer, January 15, 2002

To see the original article, click here.

WHO:
The menu at raw-food guru Juliano’s first San Francisco restaurant, Organica, tempted Barbra Streisand’s taste buds and Angela Bassett tried the trendy raw food diet. Former “Cheers” star, Woody Harrelson was so smitten with the idea of eating raw that he opened an oxygen-and-raw-foods bar called “O2” in West Hollywood.

WHAT:
Whipped up by San Francisco-based celebrity chef Juliano, “The UNCook Book” touts eating food raw. Food is chopped, blended, pureed, juiced, dehydrated-but always raw. In short, if you have to cook it, you can’t eat it.

Strict believers think that cooking destroys many vitamins, minerals and essential enzymes in foods—and that cooked foods clog the intestines and colon, leading to ailments such as cancer and diabetes.

SPECIFICS:
Raw foodists eat only uncooked, unprocessed fruits, vegetables and seeds. Totally taboo are meat, fish, eggs, dairy and animal products. Other big no-nos include coffee, tea, beer, distilled liquor and vitamin supplements. Wine, however, is acceptable because it goes through no heating process.

Calories are obtained from monounsaturated fats like avocado, coconut, olive and flax oils. Protein and minerals come from leafy greens, seeds, nuts and bee pollen.

POSITIVES:
Raw means healthy, its advocates say. “Out of every living thing on the planet—animals, plants, insects—none are overweight or out of shape except for the ones that eat cooked foods,” according to Juliano, founder of the Raw Living Foods restaurant in San Francisco.

“By eating raw foods, you are doing a great service not only to the planet, but especially to yourself.”

Adds Ed Douglas, director of the American Living Foods Institute: “The source of most health problems is what we eat. Whoever started cooking food 40,000 years ago didn’t realize that we are not designed to eat cooked food. Were designed like other species to eat food in the raw form.”

NEGATIVES:
The theory that eating raw is eating healthy largely defies medical science. In general, “I don’t think there’s a lot of scientific basis for what they’re saying,” said Rebecca Reeves of the Baylor University nutritional research clinic in Houston. Food safety experts also express concern. “I can understand the principle, but it’s fraught with danger,” says Nicols Fox, author of “Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth About a Food Chain Gone Haywire,” “In terms of pathogens, we are looking at a whole host of bugs we haven’t seen on vegetables before, including salmonella and cyclospora.” Cooking with heat is one way to eliminate those hazards.