Raw Vegan diet or Paleo diet?

Which diet would you recommend for long term optimal health?

If you are considering a raw vegan diet, I would recommend doing an approximate percent of that diet.

For example, 80% of my diet is raw vegan, while the other 20% consists of high protein products like: fish, egg whites, and plain Greek yogurt. Although I personally do not eat any other meat besides the occasional fish, if you are a meat eater, lean turkey and other lean meats can be included in this 20%.

One may wish to make it 90% raw & 10% lean protein or 70% raw & 30% grains and lean protein.

(I guess dividing it up into percents would somewhat resemble the paleo diet.. But then lean protein would have to exclude yogurt and legumes, which I, personally consume.)

Anyway, my point is that I wouldn't recommend going 100% raw because it may be difficult to get the optimum amount of certain nutrients, like protein, B12, vitamin D, etc. (although it is not impossible!).

A paleo diet then, if forced to choose between the two diets, may promote optimal health in the long run, but this is all my opinion. Feel free to argue with me! (=

Considering the our ancestors didn't live all that long I would go with neither. I think the best diet is the one incorporates variety of foods.

UD

Hello Darien -- is this a repeated post?

Hopefully it is and you were able to read my very long post on the topic before it was removed. And none of the diets you ask about are optimal for weight gain.

Good luck

Yes, I did read your reply and I replied before the topic was deleted. It was very informative, thank you. However, I can't help but wonder why there are so many people claiming to be doing so well on raw vegan and also paleo diets after several years. And when I search for raw vegan stuff, I can only find a few sites that have anything bad to say about it. It's mostly just people saying how it healed their diseases, gave them more energy, etc. But people on the Paleo diet make similar claims.

I was not interested in it for ethical reasons at all. I actually enjoy meat, eggs, fish, etc. If I knew it wasn't the healthiest diet, I definitely wouldn't be interested. What about the enzymes in raw food? They say we waste more of our own enzymes if we eat food without the enzymes. And that after eating raw for awhile we need less food because the raw food is full of so many nutrients. And that raw food has life force in it.

And I am not promoting this diet and don't recommend anyone try it. I am just trying to get information from a forum that is unbiased towards the diet. If I were to suggest that the diet might not be the best possible diet on a raw vegan forum, it'd most likely be deleted. When I was new to the diet and was asking why meat, eggs, fish, etc. aren't healthy, I got some very rude responses for asking such a question. 

 

Unfortunately, extreme diets such as raw vegan etc., are a magnet to people with an existing tendency towards disordered eating.   Because so many foods are 'off the list' and the rest tend to be high-bulk, low calorie it makes it 10x easier to justify restriction.  The number of people claiming to be vegetarian or vegan in ED clinics would suprise you. 

No website set up and dedicated to a particular diet is going to make it sound bad.  Few people would bother to write testimonials if they'd had a bad experience.

Some raw food in the diet is a good idea, of course it is.  However, the rule about 'everything in moderation' always applies because human beings are omnivores.   Living entirely on raw food can become impractical and .... if the person is not 100% clued up about nutrition and energy.... unhealthy

I have tried both diets.

In fact, I only recently stopped the raw vegan diet - because it was not working for me.

I tried it for about half of this year - not 100% all of the time, but most of the time I aimed for raw vegan.

I have tried both ways of eating and currently eat a paleo type diet - although I do not MAKE myself HAVE to follow it -  it is just naturally how I eat -  

And even though I am not certain that dairy is 100% essential, I still eat goats dairy products -

I do not only force myself to make all my food decisions based on what I feel is scientifically and physiologically “right” -  I eat cheese because I like the taste!

Firstly - every one is entitled to their opinion.

A lot of experts and non experts think that the standard food pyramid, with grains and dairy foods, is the best way to eat.

But there are also a lot of people and experts who think the food pyramid is completely wrong.

I am currently training/studying to become a health professional, in the areas of exercise and food science

Personally, I am not convinced that the standard, ‘conventional’  way of eating, such as the food pyramid, is necessarily the OPTIMAL way for people to eat.

In fact - I strongly feel that each persons body is different, and therefore different people suit different ways of eating better than others. So it really is a trial and error process - you need to try and see how you feel after eating a certain way.

Once again - I want to stress that I am not en expert, and I do not know the exact science behind the different theories of eating that you mentioned.  I have simply read some research, and done what makes the most sense to me.

I would LOVE to talk to you about my experiences on these diets!

Unfortunately, I have to respect this website and not go into too much detail - because this site supports the main/conventional way of eating -  which includes dairy, grains, and all food groups.

I am not going to recommend them, or tell you how to follow these diets, because it would be irresponsible of me - I am not an expert, and my advice is only based on my own experience.

Firstly; 100% raw vegan was very bad.  I ended up getting sick  -  despite the fact that I was getting enough calories.
You also need to eat a HUUUUUGE size, and actual amount of food -  even though you may love to eat - to get enough calories each day, a raw diet requires HUGE amounts of raw fruit!  
As in - 8 apples, or 6 medium bananas for one meal.
Furthermore, some people’s bodies do not tolerate simple sugars - such as fruit - very well.

The paleo diet is less restrictive -  dairy and grains are basically the only foods you cannot eat.

Personally, I feel fine eating about 25 - 30% of my diet from animal protein - but I found that you need to be careful to have enough carbohydrates - which, in the paleo diet, can only come from raw fruit, seeds, nuts, and raw vegetables.

I do not feel cutting dairy or grains is restrictive - because there are so many other foods to pick from - however, most people are not familiar with this concept, therefore I will say no more about it.

If you cut out dairy, I think it is essential to take a calcium supplement though.

Lastly, if you have an eating disorder, DO NOT try to research food or nutrition until you are over the stage of restriction.

There is nothing wrong if you are genuinely interested in achieving optimal health through food - I have always been since well before I ever got an eating disorder.

But you SHOULD NOT focus on it until you have recovered

When recovering from eating disorders - the worst thing you can do for your recovery is to think about food - the less you can think about food, the better -

Because an eating disorder comes with a preoccupation with food - therefore, researching about nutrition and food is putting effort into thinking about food even MORE - which is the OPPOSITE of what some one recovering from an eating disorder should be doing.

Original Post by personaltrainer87:

I have tried both diets.

In fact, I only recently stopped the raw vegan diet - because it was not working for me.

I tried it for about half of this year - not 100% all of the time, but most of the time I aimed for raw vegan.

I have tried both ways of eating and currently eat a paleo type diet - although I do not MAKE myself HAVE to follow it -  it is just naturally how I eat -  

And even though I am not certain that dairy is 100% essential, I still eat goats dairy products -

I do not only force myself to make all my food decisions based on what I feel is scientifically and physiologically “right” -  I eat cheese because I like the taste!

Firstly - every one is entitled to their opinion.

A lot of experts and non experts think that the standard food pyramid, with grains and dairy foods, is the best way to eat.

But there are also a lot of people and experts who think the food pyramid is completely wrong.

I am currently training/studying to become a health professional, in the areas of exercise and food science

Personally, I am not convinced that the standard, ‘conventional’  way of eating, such as the food pyramid, is necessarily the OPTIMAL way for people to eat.

In fact - I strongly feel that each persons body is different, and therefore different people suit different ways of eating better than others. So it really is a trial and error process - you need to try and see how you feel after eating a certain way.

Once again - I want to stress that I am not en expert, and I do not know the exact science behind the different theories of eating that you mentioned.  I have simply read some research, and done what makes the most sense to me.

I would LOVE to talk to you about my experiences on these diets!

Unfortunately, I have to respect this website and not go into too much detail - because this site supports the main/conventional way of eating -  which includes dairy, grains, and all food groups.

I am not going to recommend them, or tell you how to follow these diets, because it would be irresponsible of me - I am not an expert, and my advice is only based on my own experience.

Firstly; 100% raw vegan was very bad.  I ended up getting sick  -  despite the fact that I was getting enough calories.
You also need to eat a HUUUUUGE size, and actual amount of food -  even though you may love to eat - to get enough calories each day, a raw diet requires HUGE amounts of raw fruit!  
As in - 8 apples, or 6 medium bananas for one meal.
Furthermore, some people’s bodies do not tolerate simple sugars - such as fruit - very well.

The paleo diet is less restrictive -  dairy and grains are basically the only foods you cannot eat.

Personally, I feel fine eating about 25 - 30% of my diet from animal protein - but I found that you need to be careful to have enough carbohydrates - which, in the paleo diet, can only come from raw fruit, seeds, nuts, and raw vegetables.

I do not feel cutting dairy or grains is restrictive - because there are so many other foods to pick from - however, most people are not familiar with this concept, therefore I will say no more about it.

If you cut out dairy, I think it is essential to take a calcium supplement though.

Lastly, if you have an eating disorder, DO NOT try to research food or nutrition until you are over the stage of restriction.

There is nothing wrong if you are genuinely interested in achieving optimal health through food - I have always been since well before I ever got an eating disorder.

But you SHOULD NOT focus on it until you have recovered

When recovering from eating disorders - the worst thing you can do for your recovery is to think about food - the less you can think about food, the better -

Because an eating disorder comes with a preoccupation with food - therefore, researching about nutrition and food is putting effort into thinking about food even MORE - which is the OPPOSITE of what some one recovering from an eating disorder should be doing.

for love of God: PARAGRAPHS.

I personally choose to respond to ppl in short phrases -  because I find it harder to read normal or longer sized paragraphs, with a lot of words grouped together.

Large blocks of writing are harder for me to read fast on the computer screen.

 

Paragraphs function to organize ideas that address a common theme. They facillitate cohesion and help a reader follow the progression of an argument or idea. If I had to guess, I'd say that your aversion to paragraphs reflects the lack of organization and cohesion of your ideas. And the consequences of not using paragraphs is that your posts read as incoherent rambles that take up significantly more space than almost all other posts...kind of like a huge plate of empty calories.

The fact I do not use proper paragraphs does not reflect my linguistic competence. It is a personal preference.

I actually find it easier to read other people’s ideas when they are shortened and organized in such a way.

However, when writing larger responses I can see how it takes up too much space.

So I will keep this type of response to short answers like this

By the way - I am studying linguistics as part of my university degree, and I got a high distinction in it last semester.  

I use paragraphs every day in essays,  and frankly, I only FEEL like writing very brief, short, passages of writing.

My mother has also been an English teacher for over 35 years, and can understand the way I write (in her emails) just fine.

So - the way I chose to respond does not reflect my ability to use paragraphs.  

Lastly, it is not necessary for you to talk to me as though I am an idiot incompetent in the area of English. You do not KNOW me, or my academic history, and have no idea if I lack the ability to express my ideas.

I am being 100% neutral and nice to you - but you talked down to me as though I am stupid. There is not need to talk to me in this way.

In answer to the question, paleo.  This is the caveman diet, right?  I don't keep up with the contracted names.

In answer to the broader question, neither of the above.  But use the cc methodology if you decide to do either.  It works, and there is no conflict.

In answer to eecummings-in-training #87, I like to write in bullets, too. For powerpoint and poetry yes, for longer prose no.  Since this forum is pretty aphoristic, random bullets work well enough.

Original Post by personaltrainer87:

The fact I do not use proper paragraphs does not reflect my linguistic competence. It is a personal preference.

I actually find it easier to read other people’s ideas when they are shortened and organized in such a way.

However, when writing larger responses I can see how it takes up too much space.

So I will keep this type of response to short answers like this

By the way - I am studying linguistics as part of my university degree, and I got a high distinction in it last semester.  

I use paragraphs every day in essays,  and frankly, I only FEEL like writing very brief, short, passages of writing.

My mother has also been an English teacher for over 35 years, and can understand the way I write (in her emails) just fine.

So - the way I chose to respond does not reflect my ability to use paragraphs.  

Lastly, it is not necessary for you to talk to me as though I am an idiot incompetent in the area of English. You do not KNOW me, or my academic history, and have no idea if I lack the ability to express my ideas.

I am being 100% neutral and nice to you - but you talked down to me as though I am stupid. There is not need to talk to me in this way.

my underlines for emphasis.  this was short?  man. 

i'm not going to derail the thread further.  i think you made the point about your level of, ahem, "competence" brilliantly in your post.  if you can't understand the beautiful irony there, i don't have much hope for you.

and to the OP: restrictive diets for individuals with a history of, or in recovery from, EDs is a horrendous idea.  you can ask PT87 how much it's helped her make huge strides in her recovery by gaining a whole pound.  eat a balance of foods.  there are no gimmicks when it comes to health.  don't waste time trying to find the secrets.  just get moving on living your life.

Original Post by darien95:

Yes, I did read your reply and I replied before the topic was deleted. It was very informative, thank you. However, I can't help but wonder why there are so many people claiming to be doing so well on raw vegan and also paleo diets after several years. And when I search for raw vegan stuff, I can only find a few sites that have anything bad to say about it. It's mostly just people saying how it healed their diseases, gave them more energy, etc. But people on the Paleo diet make similar claims.

I was not interested in it for ethical reasons at all. I actually enjoy meat, eggs, fish, etc. If I knew it wasn't the healthiest diet, I definitely wouldn't be interested. What about the enzymes in raw food? They say we waste more of our own enzymes if we eat food without the enzymes. And that after eating raw for awhile we need less food because the raw food is full of so many nutrients. And that raw food has life force in it.

And I am not promoting this diet and don't recommend anyone try it. I am just trying to get information from a forum that is unbiased towards the diet. If I were to suggest that the diet might not be the best possible diet on a raw vegan forum, it'd most likely be deleted. When I was new to the diet and was asking why meat, eggs, fish, etc. aren't healthy, I got some very rude responses for asking such a question. 

Glad you got to scan through my huge post.

You are right that many sites dedicated to a raw diet are self-selecting and all forums (this one included) primarily provide anecdotal evidence (people's personal stories).

Human beings will place selective emphasis on things after the fact. This is why there is no clinical evidence as yet that stress causes cancer. Although studies show that after women are diagnosed with breast cancer they will post-reflectively indicate they had an increased period of severe stress prior to the diagnosis, that is the messiness of memory in the human brain and not an evidence-based conclusion of causation.

Probably a third to even a half of all the success people have on these specialized diets could be attributed to the placebo effect -- you believe it will work and the body will make it so. And how miraculous is our mind-body connection that we can believe and therefore make it so?

But you are not looking to believe in it and want the facts and research.

While some whole foods lose some nutrient value with cooking, others have nutrient value released by cooking. And, as I mentioned, some foods are indigestible or poisonous unless cooked (casava, rhubarb).

The concept of life-force in food I can't really touch -- that's just faith-based stuff. The enzymes within food are not used to digest the food, they are released by digestion for other biological functions.

Micro-organisms in our gut outnumber our own cells 10 to 1. They live symbiotically with us and allow us to digest everything we eat. So they are the ones creating all the enzymes to digest food.

It is far more damaging to these micro-organisms in our gut (that we depend upon to transform food into energy) to take a single course of broad spectrum antibiotics than it would be to eat only cooked vegetables and meats for life.

In fact, as 70% of all antibiotics produced are used on the animals we eat, this may be more why vegetarianism and veganism has some proven health benefits today (unless you eat only organic and free-range animals and dairy products).

Apart from destroying our gut biota with antibiotics, the only other biological system we know wears out with a diet high in processed foods and sugars is the pancreas' ability to produce insulin. 

There is an emerging field of study in nutrigenetics or nutrigenomics -- the premise is that our diet can be more closely tailored to our genetic makeup.

The most well known example of eating a diet based on a person's genetic makeup is celiac sprue where the patient must avoid all gluten-based grains as the body mounts an attack on the protein chain which damages the gastro-intestinal tract.

Or lactose-intolerance which is extremely rare in people in or originating from Northern European countries because 97% of them have a genetic mutation that allows them to digest milk for life. However, lactose-intolerance is extremely common in most other countries where people stop producing lactase to digest milk as soon as they are weaned.

Other studies show that aboriginal people in North America can reverse Type II diabetes, obesity and chronic inflammatory diseases when they eat a traditional or ancestral diet (which I mentioned in my first post).

However, the field is in its infancy and is set to be an area of particular interest to entrepreneurs looking to make a lot of money off of desperate people looking for answers to all their dietary woes. It will be a buyer beware world for sure.

Suffice to say you can't go too far wrong by recognizing that processed, petrochemical- and pesticide-laden food increases your body burden of toxins and risks subsequent illness, especially over decades' worth of ingestion.

As omnivores we are meant to eat a wide array of whole foods but that's more challenging in today's industrial commodity-based food production system (organic or not).

I hope this gives a balanced bunch of data for you to consider and I can also recommend Google Scholar for actual research on paleo or raw diets as a way to get more unbiased info.

 

Oh yeah, and because I wasn't clear and I'll be called on it:

I absolutely recommend people take antibiotics as prescribed (right to the last pill) for infection!

Antibiotics save lives and are a big part of the reason we have the life expectancies we do.

However, shoveling them in our animals because we grow them in conditions that are rife with infection and misery is not o.k. and this exposes all our digestive systems to unnecessary risks of dysbiosis (flawed digestion).

And when we do absolutely need to take a course of antibiotics to survive, we need to know that there is always the risk that doing so will irreversibly damage the very sensitive and critical bacterial makeup in our guts and cause chronic digestive ailments as a result.

And that's why antibiotics should be used for life or death or serious risks of complications only.

So would you say someone eating only organic meat and dairy would be just as healthy (or healthier) than a vegetarian/vegan/raw vegan? Or would they all have to be both organic and free range to be as healthy as a vegetarian/vegan/raw vegan?

Would you say all processed foods wear out the gut and the pancreas' ability to produce insulin? I used to think processed foods could be healthy as long as they don't have certain ingredients like partially hydrogenated oil, corn syrup, enriched wheat flour, aspartame, artificial colorings, etc. Are all processedfoods petrochemical and pesticide-laden? And do you believe everyone is better off being gluten free?

Ooo lots of questions.

So first, there are two books I would recommend both by Michael Pollan In Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilemma. Also check out ewg.org and their work on body burdens http://www.ewg.org/content/research/15

The higher up the food chain, the more concentrated the toxins. In fact, in Europe they are placing very stringent rules on crematorium facilities precisely because we humans (at the top of the food chain) are laden with heavy metals, flame retardants and carcinogenic chemicals.

On that basis, the pyramid of food consumption for us should be to eat the most amount of things furthest down the food chain (plants) as possible and eat the least amount of the mega-fauna (cows, large fish like tuna, hogs). Wherever possible animal meat should be organic, grass-fed and free-range.

Generally a vegetarian/once a week meat eater likely has the best chance of long term good health. A pure vegetarian would be next and subsequently a vegan. As I said, vegans do have to work to get protein, but it is still viable long term for good health. Raw vegan has a high risk of deficiencies over the long term. Part of the reason I would put it in this order is that there is an easiness of good nutrition the more broad the food spectrum can be for an individual. The more restrictive the spectrum, the more diligence, discipline and time must go into ensuring adequate nutrition.

Processed foods are built as commodities and not food. What this means is that the more complex the ingredient list the more protected the producer is when generating the necessary profits for share holders. And this is because they can swap out ingredients based on the pricing of the day and the consumer tastes nothing different.

For example "natural raspberry flavor" does not involve a raspberry -- as long as the flavor is not synthetic in origin, then the flavor can be generated anyway the producer sees fit. So usually natural fruit flavors are actually high fructose corn syrup. That's just one example. (I'm stealing that data from Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma -- that FDA allowance was a new one even for me!).

The problem with all processing is that it is meant to mimic tastes that appeal to millions of years of our natural selection to pursue things high in sweetness and fat.

So, for example, low-calorie sweeteners like Splenda? Well, turns out that they can mimic multiple sclerosis nerve damage for some genetically vulnerable people.

So while you've got a good list there of suspect chemicals to avoid in processed foods, what about the bags and containers they come in? They are all sprayed with preservatives and that doesn't have to be listed in the ingredients list...it's tough to stay ahead of it all!

As for gluten-free that's a tough one. I am gluten-free because I am celiac, so it's a no brainer for me. And it's easy enough to have the mouth swab genetic testing for anyone now who may have celiac disease in the family and is curious about whether they have the genetic predisposition to develop celiac disease (it doesn't tell you if you have celiac disease, just that you could get it at some point in your life if the genes are turned on in some way (usually with intestinal infections or hormonal changes)).

There is one recent bit of research that indicates perhaps all people mount a response to the gliadin peptide and that therefore it is universally hard to digest (details here): http://www.celiac.com/articles/21878/1/Non-ce liacs-Show-Interleukin-15-Production-when-Cha llenged-with-Gliadin-Peptides/Page1.html

Work in Finland indicates celiac disease is under-diagnosed and seems highest in older patients (which may mean that a lifelong diet high in gluten-based grains eventually causes celiac responses even in patients without a genetic propensity to develop the condition) -- details here:http://www.celiac.com/articles/21869/1/High-R ates-of-Celiac-Disease-and-Detection-in-Finla nd-/Page1.html

I wouldn't suggest anyone go gluten-free just cause at this point, but I'll be watching follow-up research on the above to see if that approach needs to change.

Best of luck!

Eat organic meat and organic dairy products in moderate amounts.... i.e. meat two or three times a week, dairy products once or twice a day and you'd be getting a very healthy diet.  Free-range is a good principle but not always practical in winter when they need shelter.  Ideally, knowing your food sources helps a lot.   Where I live in the UK I have a very good farm not too far away that I can visit, talk to the owner, see the cattle grazing in the fields and the hens in the next field and buy the meat/eggs/etc. at his farm shop..... I think that's as good as it gets.

Processed foods don't actually give the gut much work to do.... wholefoods are harder to break down so if anything's going to 'wear out the gut' it would be them.  LOL!  Processed foods are only unhealthy if eaten to excess... in small amounts the body can manage them no problem. Production of insulin is different..... put stress on the body to overproduce insulin by repeatedly eating excessive amounts of sugar/refined starch or by eating very large meals to the point of being overweight and you can find insulin production gets more inefficient over time.

Only certain people are intolerant to gluten...  Therefore, as a rule, do not cut basic food-groups out of your diet on a whim or a hunch - only if you get clear evidence of allergy supported by a diagnosis from a doctor.  Wholegrain and wholemeal foods provide a lot of very important vitamins and minerals..... enjoy them in moderate amounts.

As a general note... your body is a very efficient and adapatable thing.   You don't have to treat it 100% perfectly to be in good health....  Indeed, you could easily find that you adopt some mega-healthy, macrobiotic diet and 20 years down the track are diagnosed with some terrible illness in spite of it.  That's life.  Just do the best you can within your limitations and resources.  Eat what looks good in reasonable amounts.  Be a little fussy about your choices rather than obsessive.   Be a healthy weight.  Be active.   Find time to relax.

hedgren - Thanks again for your long detailed posts. But I still have more questions. Since you only put raw vegan in last because of the difficulty involved, would a raw vegan that was able to get all their nutrients from raw food be the healthiest?

When you say once a week meat eater, are you referring to red meat once a week? So this could include chicken, poultry, and salmon during that week too? Or is salmon considered a large fish? 

I shop at Trader Joe's and some of their processed foods say "no preservatives" so are these clean? Is everything that doesn't say no preservatives sprayed with them? And about the raspberry flavor example, does this mean there can be high fructose corn syrup in products that don't have it listed on the ingredients?

Is phlegm a symptom of celiac? I used to have phlegm pretty often but haven't noticed it nearly as much lately and I have been gluten free the past couple months due to trying raw vegan.

 

gj-jane - Processed foods are easier to break down? But raw vegans always say raw foods are the easiest foods to digest. You make it sound like processed foods are a good thing. And what kind of meat two or three times a week? Red meat?

And about the sugar and insulin, does the sugar in fruits also overproduce insulin? I have been getting at least half my calories from raw fruits.

Overproduction of insulin from eating fruit sugar? I haven't heard about this before.  I thought that a high sugar diet might cause a deficit of insulin.  But that question aside....

Excessive eating of fruit sugar will induce hyperglycemia.  Been there, done that. Raw grapes, dates, bananas and oranges will do the job just as effectively as cane sugar and HFCS do.  How many calories are you talking about? 1000 per day?

 

Original Post by darien95:

gj-jane - Processed foods are easier to break down? But raw vegans always say raw foods are the easiest foods to digest. You make it sound like processed foods are a good thing. And what kind of meat two or three times a week? Red meat?

Raw food is the hardest food to digest.   Cooking food makes it much easier to digest.  Think about a potato.... hard, crunchy, and will give you a bad stomach-ache if you ate it raw.  Now think about a baked potato.... fluffy, soft, and easy to digest.  A raw or undercooked kidney bean can be not only indigestible but also toxic.... a properly cooked one is safe and nutritious. 

Processed foods are the easiest of all to digest..... they are refined, ground, pulped, extruded.... converted from the whole food and much of the nutrition is lost in the process.  Like baby-food....   Bodies don't need to do any work to covert these foods to energy which is why it is generally held to be not a good thing to eat too many processed foods. 

Red meat I'd say once or twice a week is enough for anyone.  Other meats like poultry & fish once or twice a week on top of that.   Rest of the time try vegetable proteins like beans, lentils and tofu.  And as thhq says..... you can quite easily eat too much fruit.  Sugar is sugar is sugar at the end of the day.... ask a diabetic.

Do you have actual health problems or are you just one of life's 'Worried Well'?