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A Quick Overview of the History of the Raw Food Diet

Raw foods are a more healthy way of consuming foods than is eating cooked foods. On the ladder of evolution, cooking foods is a new conception.

The first documented use of fire by human beings was believed to be for making tools as opposed to for the purposes of cooking. It dates back to 400,000 BCE.

In North America, the first person credited with the start of the raw food diet was Sylvester Graham (1794- 1851). Graham was a 19th century advocate for a healthy lifestyle. Graham wrote a book called "Lectures on the Science of Human Life."

Over the years there were plenty of 19th and early 20th century American citizens who were firm believers in the raw food diet (or in some cases semi-raw diets). Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (the creator of Kellogg cereal and many say, peanut butter) lived from 1852 to 1943. This well known doctor lived mainly on apples and nuts.

Dr. James Caleb Jackson (1814-1895) was known to serve primarily raw foods and lightly cooked foods of a vegetarian nature at his spa called Our Home. Our Home was one of the first successful health spas that got its start in the 1850s.

At the turn of the century, Bernarr MacFadden (1868-1955), the CEO of one of the greatest publishing empires in the United States lived on a diet of raw foods.

Herbert Shelton (1895-1984) is credited with systemizing raw foods into Natural Hygiene over a span of 50 years- from the 1920s to the 1970s- and was himself a proponent of raw foods.    

Research teaches us that many Native American tribes throughout the United States lived on a diet of raw, uncooked foods. The most common foods for the diet of the tribes included acorns which were made into a powder or paste, as well as nuts and dried salmon.

A group of German raw foodists who made their home in Southern California at the turn of the 19th century played a role in developing the modern raw food movement in the United States.

These German-American luminaries included such names as Arnold Ehret, an author of many books on raw foods and fasting, and Dr. Carl Schultz, a pioneer in the field of naturopathic medicine. Another German influence was the fruitarian farmer and philosopher Bill Pester.

What was considered to be the second wave of raw foodism came about thanks to the efforts of Vera, John Richter and Hermann Sexauer.

In 1917 Vera and John Richter opened the first raw food restaurant in the United States. They called it Euthropheon (which means "good nourishment" in Greek). This restaurant remained in business for 25 years and provided a great deal of education to its clients about raw foods.

Hermann Sexauer, a vegan raw foodist opened the first health food store in Santa Barbara, California. The year was 1934. Thus began the start of the raw food movement which continues to remain stro