Raw Freedom: Combining the Best of Raw with Healthy Cooked Foods for the Ultimate Diet

Frederic Patenaude is the voice of reason for people who want to eat mostly raw but want to eat some cooked food. I especially like the flexibility. No special menus or hard-to-find ingredients. Instead, Frederic offers a basic plan that is inexpensive and can be followed by anyone.

I have followed Frederic's writing for some time and know him to be an online marketer with a full understanding of what to put into a market place for financial return. Does it make what he writes any less valuable no I do not think so, indeed he has been one of the few that have basically said ' hey I was chasing a RAW FOOD dream and I was wrong but here is how I was wrong ' then followed by but please still trust me and buy more of my stuff about traveling the world and gasp shock horror how to make money selling .......you guessed it ..EBOOKs.Hey good on him, the book has some good points that will come back to bite him on the butt one day,but it's a big world out there and new people come and go and there will be most likely another RAW titled offering from him to cash in on the market.I hope the message of the need for Foods to be served in their most unadulterated form farmed with environmentally sustainable practices does not get thrown out, with his dirty bath water.

Love the ideas for food in this book, makes it easier to know what to buy and to make for dinner or any meal.

First, this isn't a diet book. If you are looking for recipes or a specific menu plan, this book does not contain any.It's mostly a reflective piece on the journey Patenaude has gone through to become increasingly dietarily rigid to a point where he no longer has any "rules," with some dietary suggestions that you can choose from. Patenaude talks about the physical and emotional problems of a purely raw diet, and how he worked through those issues to find a solution that works for him. He's not suggesting his specific solution to his readers, but informing them of what problems exist with a raw diet balanced with what problems exist with the standard American diet (SAD), and how we can each find our own sweet spot somewhere in the reasonable middle ground.I eat a diet with a lot of raw foods and have been all raw. My doctor supports both approaches. As a scientist myself, while I have found and reaped the benefits of such a way of eating, I have been horrified by the pseudoscience claimed by many raw foodists about the benefits of eating raw. Patenaude covers all of those myths and discusses why they are incorrect, which I very much appreciated. I think a diet high in raw foods is healthy for a number of reasons, but I would like to see valid science used to support such a way of eating, not wives tales that make the general public unnecessarily skeptical of the raw or high raw lifestyle and that make us look like a bunch of uneducated kooks.I also appreciated Patenaude's discussion of raw lifestyles as well as the variety of lower fat vegan diets (McDougall, Esselstyn, Fuhrman) as well as the comparison.If you've read Esselstyn, you know he believes that "moderation kills." McDougall has a similar philosophy. That is, most people in developed nations aren't able to eat a healthy diet with occasional splurges--we are too gluttonous and can't just have one cupcake once in a while. This is true for some people. This is also true for people who have already developed serious diseases of excess, such as heart disease, diabetes, or serious chronic inflammatory diseases. This is also more true for the older population who are suffering from the results of a lifetime of excess. But it is not necessarily true for those who have not yet eaten themselves to the edge of the grave or for those who are younger and have not yet reaped the punishments of decades of such self abuse. This book is for the healthier and/or younger folk who have not yet found a happy, healthy middle ground. This book is NOT for those with heart disease, diabetes, etc. If you are in that category, you would be better served by the suggestions of McDougall or Esselstyn and probably do need a strict and more restrictive way of eating.I also agree with Patenaude's discussion of the amount of fat we should have in our diets. He basically does not take the once size fits all approach of 80-10-10 or Esselstyn or McDougall. The 10% fat approach is appropriate for some, but not all. I maintain a total cholesterol in the 130s with 12-17%. That works for me, and is where I feel best. My mother is older and needs a lot less fat in her diet, more in the 5-10% range. An endurance athlete may need more like 20%. Patenaude has a sensible discussion of this, and also a discussion of what happens on a diet too high in fat, particularly a raw diet too high in fat. I found this a useful section.Patenaude's book is also only for those who have overcome their food addictions and don't suffer from binging issues. He has some suggestions for those who do have cravings and who binge, so those may be valuable to you, but be aware you may just be one of those people who can't have one french fry and walk away. That's something you will have to evaluate for yourself. If Patenaude's book is anything, it's an homage to the discovery of moderation through a lifetime of deprivation. Which is good for those able to be moderate. Unfortunately, that's just not all of us.If I had to select an overarching theme for the book, it's self tolerance and self forgiveness of not achieving dietary perfection, and finding that sweet spot for you where you are free to eat whatever you want at times (within reason) and yet remain healthy.I find most of the dietary suggestions firmly grounded in science, with the exception of the suggestion for a calcium supplements. (The science I have read does not support the use supplemental calcium). The book provides a very practical approach to diet, with a dual focus on health and reducing/eliminating "rules" that restrict your life through your diet. While the emotional and psychological approach in the book is relatively unique, the actual dietary suggestions didn't seem too different to me than what Joel Fuhrman suggests or what you might deduce about diet from reading the China Study.This book is useful for anyone who has or is exploring a raw or cooked plant-based diet. I am not sure it is relevant to those just starting out on a healthy path or those on SAD who don't understand the subcultures of the plant-based world. But for those of us who do, I think it's a healthy, important discussion of topics relevant to our lifestyles, whether we agree with all points or not.

ok, so the book isn't that bad. many useful tips but some are just disturbing such as GMO products aren't that bad and we shouldn't really fear them according to the author. what??? it would've been nice if he researched the subject before writing that. this book is very different to his Raw Secrets book where he was preaching against all bad stuff like salt, alcohol, meat etc. so i'm really confused after reading this book because now its ok to drink and almost eat mc donalds. not exactly your typical health diet. it seems like he wrote it to justify himself eating rubbish.

I found this book brought together all the threads of 'healthy eating' that I have been mulling over and experimenting with for a long time. For anyone who is puzzling about how to get the best out of a raw food diet and to make it sustainable, and how to square it with other healthy ways of eating, I say read this book and try out the suggestions for yourself. I hope they will help you as much as they have helped me. Thank you Frederic.

I've followed the raw movement for a while,and found it way too extreme and in manageable,so was so please Fred made this book.....easy read..but somehow expected more gut reading

This book was perfect for me. I had been on a raw diet for about 4 years and needed to go off of it, because of where I was moving to, that being a very cold place. Without this book explaining how to buid up your digestive system after a raw diet I would have been in trouble. Also it explains how to maitain the same health eating a cooked food diet and raw diet combined. Thanks to this work I maintain the same energy level clear thinking etc. and feel the same as if I were on a totally raw diet. Plus of course, no more cravings for cooked food. This book was a God send.

Good if you are tired of the hype..Im not a raw food person so bought this to see what its like..and I certainly wont become a raw food person after reading this book..