To Perfect Body

  If you believed the ads for protein supplements, there would be no way to build muscle and increase healthy body weight on a raw food diet. Bodybuilding magazines usually recommend one to two grams of protein per pound of body weight. It is my own opinion that they’ve advocated such a high protein intake, first, to sell protein supplements, and second, due to the clogging of the cellular basement membrane, which actually creates a protein deficiency. Now, this may be the actual reason some people need that much protein in order to build muscle. But that is not the case with a raw foodist.

  Why? Well, according to my own experience and the researchers at the Max Planck Institute, raw protein has double the strength of cooked protein. That means that as a raw food eater, you require half the protein that a cooked food eater needs to build muscle.
So, how much protein do you really need? I addressed this question back in 1999 while finishing up my book How Long Do You Choose to Live? In chapter 12, “Exercise,” I wrote, “Remember proteins are built from amino acids and your ability to assimilate them is increased with exercise. You only need to increase the exercise, not the amount of protein.”

  In Pumped: Straight Facts for Athletes About Drugs, Supplements, and Training by C. Kuhn, Ph.D., S. Swartzwelder, Ph.D., and W. Wilson, Ph.D., they conclude, “Even heavily training athletes can easily consume enough protein in the average American diet. Men need between 50 and 60 grams of protein daily, depending on their age, and women need between 40 and 50 grams…If an athlete is eating a normal diet, there is no strong evidence right now that taking these bizarre products provides a benefit in terms of muscle deposition or athletic performance.”

  These authors also bring up the use of supplemental creatine, which many athletes use to increase muscular size. They state, “Training normally increases the enzymes that make creatine phosphate: training alone can increase creatine stores by as much as 30%, a change comparable to that claimed by dietary supplements.”
The old-time strongman and wrestler George Hackenschmidt, the Russian Lion, stated in his book The Way to Live, “Man is born without frying pan or stewpot. The purest natural food for humans would therefore be fresh, uncooked food and nuts.” I certainly agree. That’s why I include so many raw, organic nuts and seeds in my diet. I load my salads with high-protein sunflower seed sprouts and alfalfa sprouts, both high-nitro.
If you drive through farm country, the deepest, richest green fields are alfalfa. Farmers know that because alfalfa is incredibly rich in nutrition, they have to feed it sparingly to cattle and horses. But once again, consider how strong and muscular these animals get on grass alone.

  Quinoa is another good protein source, but I get mine from the wild. If you’ve ever seen pigweed or lamb’s quarter, then you’ve seen North American quinoa. In the fall, you can harvest handfuls of these protein-rich seeds into a can or bucket. Then just sprinkle them on your special raw dish. In my newest book, Alive and Well with Wild Foods: A Raw Food Survival Guide, I’ll teach you how to easily find all sorts of muscle-building foods in the wild.

  Remember, building muscle is as much a matter of nitrogen and minerals found in green leafy plants as of protein stores. You will need more calories and more grams of protein than someone who doesn’t work out, but half the protein intake of the cooked food eater.

  In order to build muscle, you must bring oxygen to the cells. In order for muscular contraction to take place, the electrical potential of the nerve and muscle fibers must be high and in place. Well, you might ask, “How do you do that?” With organic calcium. Almost every person living in an industrialized nation is deficient in this mineral. Why? Because drugs, soft drinks, caffeine, and other Western luxuries rob and block calcium absorption. Here’s something to consider: even if a food is known to be high in minerals such as calcium, if it is a poor-quality food, you’ll only absorb around 10%. If the food source is a high-quality organic food, the absorption rate will be around 80%.

  Here’s the reason: calcium supports your liver function so that gastric juices can be produced as well as enzymes. Your entire digestive system will not absorb the vital elements if the food you eat is of poor quality, as is the case with most food produced worldwide.

  Now, you’re probably wondering, “What’s the difference between two carrots, one from your garden, one from the supermarket?” Yes, they look identical—maybe the store-bought carrot even looks more uniform. But all that changes once you take a bite. One tastes sweet and the other bitter. Organically grown produce will always taste sweeter. To what do we attribute the sweetness? As odd as it might sound, it’s the calcium the plant picks up from the soil. This is measured by the plant’s Brix reading—the natural plant sugars the plant contains. The higher the plant sugar, the higher the energy release. Indigestion is simply the failure of a food to release its energy; this is why many cannot digest raw foods. These foods simply lack enough calcium to release the plant sugars as energy.

  Did you know that pigweed or lamb’s quarter is one of the richest sources of calcium you can find? And it’s free for the picking. It’s so strong that Monsanto’s poison “Roundup” weed killer can’t kill it. Here’s another interesting fact: the early settlers were told by the native people to let pigweed grow in their corn patch. Not only did it hold the corn up during windstorms, but it actually made the corn taste sweeter.

  So, the veggies you consume raw with a high Brix reading will grow muscle faster than anyone eating the S.A.D. diet—the standard American diet. Yes, you can build muscle on a raw food diet if you go about it in an intelligent fashion.