Wednesday, June 25, 2014

The Secret Raw Food Society

A friend of mine saw Kate Middleton up close in Brisbane when the Royal couple visited this lovely sun-drenched city as part of their wildly successful tour of Australia. Her key comments can be summarised as follows:
  1. She is actually quite tall - much taller than she had expected;
  2. She is much slimmer in person than even the photos of her suggest; and
  3. Possibly as a result of her slimness, she is a little too gaunt in the face, causing her to look a little older than she is (although in her defence, she does have a baby to look after).
         

I had simply, erroneously concluded that she must have been following the Dukan Diet (which was apparently the secret to her post-wedding transformation) like a maniac, however apparently the real secret is a diet of raw food.


Just like quitting sugar is now a foodie phenomenon, with cook books aplenty and celebrity endorsements left, right & centre, so too is raw food. With Kate Middleton now linked to the food movement, I have a feeling it may be about to gain in popularity.

Kate's diet apparently involves feasts of watermelon salads, gazpacho, goji berries, tabbouleh and almond milk as well as ceviche, a Latin American dish of raw fish marinated in the juice of lemons or limes and spices.

Ok... Lots of watermelon actually doesn't sound totally terrible
   

Raw food advocates are generally vegans who often have only one type of food at each meal, and who do not cook their food (they claim cooking food reduces the nutritional value of the food, and that cooking introduces certain enzymes which make the food difficult for the body to digest). Without getting too far into the science, most studies of raw foodies find that they are ... undernourished. And as we know all too well, one person's undernourished is another's supermodel (or princess, as the case may be).  Approx 50% of females who follow a raw food diet become so undernourished they stop having their periods (i.e. reduced fertility). For the sake of the royals, I hope Kate is proceeding with caution.

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