Spring Foods

Around The New School, many students engage in alternative diets. Some are vegetarians or vegans, and some adhere to a raw diet. A raw diet is made up of foods that have not been heated to more than 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lack of activity and the consumption of heavy foods during the winter can make you feel depressed and left with very little energy. Spring is here, but the fatigue does not wear off immediately. Over the past few weeks, I've been exploring a raw diet in search of extra energy.

Online, there are scores of commercial and community websites advertising raw eating. Just about every site I visited advocated a raw diet, emphasizing "increased energy" along with weight loss and other health benefits. Each promised these benefits, but gave very little to no

scientific evidence for their claims. I was skeptical of these raw enthusiasts and their personal accounts, so I began to explore some nutrition and biochemistry journals.

Harvard anthropologists Richard Wrangham and Nancy Lou Conklin-Brittain released a study in which they announced that "raw-foodists were vulnerable to energy shortage. Of the 18% that followed a 100% raw-food diet, 31% were judged to suffer from Chronic Energy Deficiency. The negative effect of an inadequate energy supply was indicated by women’s reproductive performance, which worsened steadily with larger amounts of raw food." Their research was building off the work of Corinna Koebnick, food scientist and researcher. Koebnick concluded that "energy shortage was [a] problem," and that "a strict raw food diet cannot guarantee an adequate energy supply."

“I definitely feel the benefit from eating [raw and vegan] foods. I started eating this way, and the more reading I did the more I learned to love knowing what was going into my body,” explained Kelly McMahon, a sophomore who, due to food allergies, observes an alternative diet which falls somewhere between vegan and raw. "As my body adjusted, I experienced energy like never before, both physically and mentally. My mood is better, my skin is better, my nails are stronger, and I sleep more peacefully." McMahon claims that she may have a leg up over the fatigue that many of us Lang students feel, because of the healthy amount of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries that she consumes.