By Alexandra Nicolas
Globe Staff Writer
JOPLIN, Mo. —
Their “spaghetti” is made from zucchini and the bowl that looks to be filled with french fries is actually filled with sliced jicama, a root vegetable, covered with cayenne.
None of it has been cooked.
Christa Tullis and her boyfriend David Burt have been on an almost entirely raw food diet since October 2009. To be considered a raw foodist, like Tullis and Burt, 80 percent or more of what one eats must be kept under 120 degrees. That means, for the most part, very little meat, no conventionally prepared breads, crackers or pasta, no coffee, no roasted nuts and no pasteurized dairy products. According to Tullis, the diet concentrates on not killing the natural enzymes in food through cooking.
Since starting the diet, both Tullis and Burt have lost weight, though that wasn’t their goal, and both say they feel better physically, mentally and have more energy.
“I’ll come home at night and not be able to sit still long enough to watch a movie,” Tullis said. “And that’s after having been at work all day.”
Tullis said she feels full and tired after eating cooked food because the body spends more energy trying to leach nutrients from processed foods.
Burt agreed with her.
“We’ve been bombarded with products that don’t resemble what we think of as food,” he said.
Since taking up the raw diet, Tullis and Burt have swapped out ovens for food dehydrators. She now only uses her stove to heat water for tea, while the microwave serves as a clock. Burt doesn’t even own a microwave.
They eat lots of fresh and dried fruits and vegetables, raw nuts, super-foods like goji berries with cacao nibs and unpasteurized milk and cheese. In the dehydrator they make their own “bread” from hemp and flax seed, wraps made with zucchini and “bacon” made with eggplant.
Pilates instructor, cardiac ultrasound technician and full-time student Carol Stauffer had been maintaining a mostly raw diet “on and off” until a trip to California’s 118 Degrees restaurant prompted her to take up the diet more seriously.
“I learned that I could do this, that it wasn’t impossible,” she said. “The biggest benefit is the way I feel. I’ve lost a little bit of weight, but that wasn’t the purpose. I always say I eat to run. If you’re going to eat, you don’t want to cook out all the vitamins and minerals in your food.”
Though Tullis, Burt and Stauffer find benefit in the raw food diet, it may not be for everyone, according to Debbie Herbst, a clinical dietitian at McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital in Carthage.
“Of course pasteurization kills harmful bacteria, which is what one does to milk, that’s to protect people,” she said. “Like a pregnant woman, that can be a concern for unpasteurized cheese.”
Herbst said consuming unpasteurized dairy products can be an “unsafe practice” for a pregnant woman and for infants and young children as they are more susceptible to bacteria.
Tullis doesn’t feel the need for a lot of dairy in her diet, but Burt visits area dairies specializing in raw milk to check on the quality of his products. He feels confident that his dairy is clean, safe and produced with the health of the animals in mind.
While anemia can be an issue for those choosing not to eat animal protein, Herbst said it is possible to maintain a healthy level of protein while on a raw diet, something Tullis said she doesn’t have an issue with.
“You can do so if someone really works at it Ñ they’re called complementary proteins. Meat has all the enzymes, but you can get it elsewhere,” Herbst said.
Though it can be time intensive, both in research concerning appropriate raw foods and in preparation, the extra effort is no different from the time other people put into their lifestyles, Tullis said.
“People spend hours and hours researching before buying a car,” she said. “Sometimes they spend hours researching before they buy a handbag.”
For Tullis and Burt, however, choosing raw and organic foods isn’t just an issue of health and nutrition.
According to Tullis, the standard American diet, referred to humorously as S.A.D., includes not only items that are unhealthy, but foods produced in ways that are harmful to the environment.
“There’s not a lot of guilt in this (raw food) lifestyle,” she said. “I honestly believe this diet could change the world. You vote out corruption.”
