Raw diet promotes beauty. To begin with, one reaches his or her ideal weight more readily and maintains it with much less effort than on a cooked diet. Many people lose 15 pounds in a month or two with no feeling of deprivation whatsoever. Obese people lose much more than that while eating raw fats all they want, including raw "ice cream," avocados, nuts and olives. Raw fats (from avocados, olives, nuts, seeds, coconut butter et al.) are actually needed by the body to maintain youthful skin, hair and glands. They are rich in the essential fatty acids linolenic acid and linoleic acid that are denatured by heat.



Raw food pioneer Dr. Ann Wigmore wrote, "The effectiveness of live foods and fresh juices, especially wheatgrass juice, has bankrupted many complex theories about why we become fat and how to reduce quickly ... Among our guests at the [Hippocrates Health] Institute, the average weight loss per week is between four and fifteen pounds" (The Wheatgrass Book, p. 59).



Studies have shown that raw food is less fattening than the same food cooked. According to Dr. Edward Howell, raw fats are not fattening and seem to belong in "a special pigeonhole in nutritional speculations" (Enzyme Nutrition, p.109). While cooked fats accumulate in the body and become very detrimental to our health, raw fats contain lipase (deficient in many obese people), the enzyme involved in metabolizing fat properly.



The word "Eskimo" means "raw eater," as the Eskimos traditionally ate nothing cooked but subsisted chiefly on raw meat and blubber. Dr. V. E. Levine examined 3,000 primitive Eskimos during three trips to the Arctic and found only one person who was overweight.



Cooked starches are also very fattening. Farmers have even learned that it is necessary to feed their animals cooked food to fatten them up for maximal profit. Hogs do not get fat on raw potatoes, but cooking the potatoes makes them gain weight.



In addition to reaching your body's ideal weight, many other beauty factors blossom on a raw diet. Cellulite, which is thought to result from eating heated fats, gradually disappears with the consumption of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice. On a raw diet, elimination of cellular waste and increased lymphatic drainage helps remove cellulite.



As the body's old cells are replaced with new, healthy cells through proper nutrition that only a raw diet provides, your hair grows in thicker and at times wilder. It may even regain color after having been gray, as did Ann Wigmore's. Your skin may become as soft and smooth as it was in your youth. Your nails will be strong, clear and shiny. Facial lines may fade or disappear; the face's pasty, white complexion becomes ruddy or rosy. People may remark on how much younger you look. Your eyes will sparkle.



The Hippocrates Health Institute, one of the places where people have gone to learn about the raw food diet, was once described by Cosmopolitan magazine as the "well-kept secret" of beauty and rejuvenation of various famous Hollywood movie stars and celebrities. Now the news media are letting the secret out.



When Demi Moore appeared in a bikini in the Charlie's Angels movie Full Throttle and looked every bit as great as the women younger than her, the word went out that the secret was her raw food diet. Other celebrities who have caught the wave include Alicia Silverstone and Woody Harrelson.