Everyday Activist - I Like It RAW: A Documentary on the Raw Vegan Lifestyle

Posted on Monday, February 08, 2016 at 03:00 PM

I Like It RAW: A Documentary on the Raw Vegan Lifestyle

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

A new ALBERTA documentary about a 30 day RAW VEGAN challenge is free on YouTube for now. The movie, I Like It Raw focuses on Edmontonians who want to lose weight and improve their health using a raw vegan diet. For those who don’t know, vegetarianism comes in several different flavors. At Food for Peace we cook meals that contain dairy, but no meat or eggs. This is fairly common among East Indian cultures. Vegan is no meat or dairy or any animal by products, such as leather or honey and raw vegan is vegan except they don’t cook their food. Above a certain temperature food enzymes, proteins involved in metabolic processes such as digestion, become denatured or deactivated. Thus if you don’t cook the food then these enzymes stay intact. They also don’t have coffee or alcohol or much in the way of processed foods, leading to a much healthier lifestyle.

While the diet sounds harsh, from the movie you can see the difference in the participants faces; even if they didn’t talk about increased energy and their weight loss. I liked the fact that the documentary highlighted local groups, businesses and doctors who supported the participants. Edmonton has a much better vegetarian scene than Calgary, though if you’re looking for raw vegan chocolate in Calgary, the Light Cellar in Bowness can hook you up. On the non-profit side, because Food for Peace cooks veggie meals at Ronald Mc Donald House in Calgary, it was nice to know that the Edmonton RMHC has two businesses coming together to create a healthy veggie program as well.

I wish the movie would have talked a bit more about the environmental impacts of eating meat, especially since the Edmonton Vegetarians had an impressive turnout to the Edmonton climate change rally, in November 2015. As the film maker learns more about vegetarianism that might be information for a sequel. Cowspiracy (which never had a public screening in Calgary but several in Lethbridge and Edmonton, you can now catch it on Netflix) talked about the environmental impacts, but not the health impacts of eating meat. Recently, the film makers received overwhelming crowdfunding support for a health documentary.

Overall, I Like It Raw was a well done, fantastic public service that should be promoted, as it provides free resources to those interested in learning more about Raw Vegan diets. The participants said that they would keep some of their new found knowledge. Personally, I would only do something like this summer. Eating cold foods in winter doesn’t agree with me. Vegetarian diets are environmentally friendly, but if we create a market such that we need to import lettuce in January from California how sustainable is that really? I eat a lot of squash and lentil soup throughout the winter fortified with frozen vegetables, mostly because it all keeps well so I can have an empty fridge where basically nothing spoils as I travel.

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