Lab rats live longer on a raw vegetarian diet

[SamuelWilson]

Does anyone know if a university or private company has ever did a study to see if lab rats live longer on a raw vegetarian diet as compared to a cooked food diet?
http://www.awionline.org/pubs/cq02/rat-4.jpg

[sweetgoddess]

I dont know of a rat study but I do know of one done on cats.
You can buy the book at Amazon.com and im sure if you surfed a bit maybe find another way to read it. Its called Pottinger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition.
Dr. Frances Pottinger studied degenerative diseases and nutrition, but he was a pulmonary disease specialist. He did a famous study called Pottinger's cats.
One group of cats he fed all raw, the other all cooked. Check it out if you have the nudge --it is fascinating.

Blessings~

[SamuelWilson]

Do you mind posting the results if you know them?

[rawpriestess]

Here's the info

http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/PottsCats.html

[SamuelWilson]

I found some information, here is some stuff I obtained...

"In the 1940, a medical doctor named Dr Pottinger wanted to know how processed foods affected our health. He financed his own research, so he wasn't influenced by any big business interests to come up with certain results. Dr. Pottinger studied 900 cats over a period of several generations."

"Dr. Pottinger divided his cats into 5 groups. The first two groups he fed raw food and they remained healthy throughout the experiment. The remaining three groups were fed processed foods. The first generation of these cats developed degenetive health conditions (arthritis, allergies, diabetes, etc) near the end of their life. The second generation cats developed the same health conditions during the middle of their life span. The third generation of cats developed the same health conditions very early in life."

What more proof do we need? I wonder why the U.S. Government doesn't try to migrate U.S. Citizens towards a diet like this?

[Maverick]

Reading the study got me thinking.

Question, what about cat owners that feed there cats canned food all the time? Isn't the canned food cooked and processed? People I know that do, there cat's seem fine.

Any thoughts?

[SamuelWilson]

Maverick, I am sure the cats look fine. It would probably be healthier for a cat if it ate raw natural food. As crazy as it sounds, I know people who feed their cat grasshoppers. However, if you think about it. A stray cat will catch and eat grasshoppers.

[sweetgoddess]

Reading the study got me thinking.

Question, what about cat owners that feed there cats canned food all the time? Isn't the canned food cooked and processed? People I know that do, there cat's seem fine.

Any thoughts?

If you noticed in Pottingers study, it was the following generations of cats that suffered most of the consequences. Looking fine on the outside means nothing. A lot can be going on on the inside that is not visible to the eye. And as this study shows, it changes a body genetically, which in turn effects future offspring, and also longevity and quality of life.

Blessings~

[livenraw]

I agree with what SweetGoddess said, and actually, this can be true with humans as well...

Take someone who says and believes that they are truly healthy (despite eating a lot of wrong foods but they exercise 6x a week for an hour or two a day) Put them on a 4 or 5 day water fast. Around the 3rd or 4th day, their breath will become putrid and their urine will become evil smelling. (I read about this in the Miracle of Fasting book - great book, btw!) They say they are healthy and they may look healthy, but something else is going on inside of them...

Even Einstein said that the healthiest diet of all was a vegetarian diet. And that guy was a genius! So I'm convinced just from hearing it from a genius!

[Arky]

Hold on, here. Pottenger did demonstrate the benefits of eating a raw, as opposed to cooked, diet, but his studies with cats were not of an exclusively vegetarian nature. He fed the cats raw milk and raw meat (various combinations depending on the experimental group). Indeed, he fed his human patients raw meat, too, and achieved some impressive therapeutic results, like it or not.

I think choosing a vegetarian or vegan path is a wonderful thing to do, on a number of levels, but that is not what Pottenger's work was about. What it did do, for us raw-food enthusiasts, is offer very powerful evidence for the benefits of eating raw, as oppsed to cooked, foods.

The China Study points towards veganism as a beneficial dietary path, though, of course, this research concerns humanbeings, not cats, and the evolution and physiology of our respective species differs dramatically.


J.

[Arky]

Take someone who says and believes that they are truly healthy (despite eating a lot of wrong foods but they exercise 6x a week for an hour or two a day) Put them on a 4 or 5 day water fast. Around the 3rd or 4th day, their breath will become putrid and their urine will become evil smelling. (I read about this in the Miracle of Fasting book - great book, btw!) They say they are healthy and they may look healthy, but something else is going on inside of them...

This is simply the process of ketosis kicking in - the breaking down of body fat. As Fuhrman puts it, in 'Fasting and Eating For Health', "A special adaptation occurs in the fasting state whereby thebrain can fuel itself with ketones instead of glucose. By the third day of a total fast, the liver starts generating a large quantity of ketones from the body's fat stores. As the level of ketones rises in the bloodstream, the brain and other organs begin to use these ketones as their major fuel, thus greatly diminishing the utilization of glucose by the body. This significantly limits muscle wasting. These keto acids are utilized for fuel primarily by thebrain, muscle tissue, and the heart. This productionof ketones, called ketosis, develops within 48hrs in females, and 72 hours in males, and muscle wasting at this time decreases to very low levels. This is known as protein sparing. Thus, the human body responds to the fasting state by attempting to maximally conserve its muscle and lean body tissue".

Whether one eats a raw vegetarian, or cooked carnivorous diet, therefore, one's body will still consist of a certain proportion of fat and one will still undergo the process of ketosis if undertaking a water fast.


J.

[sweetgoddess]

his studies with cats were not of an exclusively vegetarian nature
Very true. Cats are carnivorous by nature. I see my cat daily eating mice outside. regardless of what food I provide her.
Cats, however, have a different genetic makeup. They do not need to worry about bacteria from their raw meat, while we do. Interesting fact in itself.

[pfc]

I did my own experiment with cats...
I had two kittens and within a year of adopting the female was overweight, could not breathe and hid every time her brother would start to play. She could barely jump on the couch.
I took them to a vet for a one year eval and he said she had several diseases, charged me over $400 for meds and said they both had to take them as the boy would begin to suffer the same. He said he wanted to do a series of 200+ blood tests.
At the time I was on homeopathics and thought, "How can I give these creatures antibiotics and all this other gunk when I wouldn't even consider doing this to myself."
So, I contacted a homeopathic vet, he made a housecall and said, before any homeopathics he wanted me to start feeding them a different diet. He gave me the number of a woman who delivered raw meat/veggie/grain disshes, frozen, in NYC. I started them on it as quickly as possible and within a month (a month!!) they were different animals. A friend who hadn't seen the female for about a month actually asked where she was when she was looking right at her. She thought I'd gotten a third cat!!! They were happy, playful, rejeuvenated, their poop didn't stink, it was amazing.
Funny enough, I didn't make the raw food connection to myself until a couple of years later when I read Arnold Erhet's Mucusless Diet Healing System. Funny that.
Another funny thing, they could really only eat the chicken and turkey meals she prepared. I tried beef a few times (how many 'house' cats do you think could take down a cow and take a bite?), the female wouldn't touch it and the boy loved it so much he'd scarf both bowls super fast and within minutes puke it all back up. I didn't bother after the first two times.