FRUIT: Most participants derive 50% to 80% of their calories from fruit! Fruits are exceptionally healing.

In WFPB circles, different docs have different views on how many fruits to consume daily; some like Dr Greger, Dr Barnard, Dr Klaper & Mastering Diabetes team are okay with a lot of fruit; others like Dr Esselstyn & Dr McDougall ask us to limit fruit intake to 3 per day. Dr Peter Rogers says that it's okay to eat extra fruit if we're exercising a lot. See How Many Fruits Per Day? for details.

I was surprised to learn that in a raw vegan system, many people consume a LOT of fruit, deriving 50% to 80% of calories from fruit alone!

LEAFY GREENS: A super important food group. All raw vegans in the summit consume copious amounts of leafy greens daily: abut 1 lb to 2 lbs daily - that's a LOT of greens. Primarily in 2 forms: a green smoothie, and as a large salad — their salad plates are surprisingly large. See Why Are Leafy Greens So Important? for scientific details.

RAINBOW VEGGIES: All raw vegans in the summit consume a variety of colors through veggies daily, consciously seeking them in their daily meal plans. Why rainbow colored food plates? See Diversity of Fruits & Vegetables for scientific reasoning behind diversity.

STARCHES? To my surprise, starches (from whole grains and sweet potato like veggies) were not emphasized! Some of the summit participants consumed some starch-rich foods daily, others occasionally. See Tubers for details.

Dr McDougall emphasizes starches from whole grains and starch-rich veggies like potatoes and sweet potatoes. In fact, one of his books is called Starch Solution (368 pages, 2013). So I was surprised to learn that we may choose not to eat starch-rich veggies in abundance! Since 2012 (when I adopted WFPB), I have been under the impression that starches from whole grains or tubers like sweet potatoes are critical. Apparently not! We can derive nutrition (macro- and micro-nutrients) from fruits & (non-starch rich) veggies alone if we compose our food plates carefully.

NUTS, SEEDS & AVOCADOS: Surprisingly, some of the raw vegans interviewed (like Robby Barbaro of Mastering Diabetes program) don't consume any nuts, seeds and avocados. In one of his educational videos, Dr Rick Dina explains that we do get Essential Fatty Acids from a combination of fruits & veggies, plus copious amounts of leafy greens alone.

Some of the participants started with a high fat raw vegan system and shifted to a low fat later. A few of them mentioned that they gain weight (and get high cholesterol) if they start consuming nuts, seeds & avocados in large quantities — these are actually addictive. By removing or significantly reducing these fat-rich foods, both weight and cholesterol came down. Most of the participants use nuts, seeds, avocados in small, measured amounts to make salad dressings. Many of them limit their choices to flax, chia and hempseed — the three seeds with more Omega-3's than Omega-6's. Perilla seeds is another seed with this property but it's relatively unknown in the West.

For more info, see articles in this section: Essential Fatty Acids.

WFPB doctors generally recommend a low fat food system, with target fat percentage around 10% to 12% fats. See The Emphasis on Low Fat for details. But should we strive to consume even lower amounts of fat? Dr McDougall targets 7% fat and Dr Peter Rogers suggests that we drop it down to as low as 5%! What is his reasoning? See Dr Peter Rogers: "Fats Are Bad!" and Lipotoxicity — Dr Peter Rogers.

My understanding is that we don't have good epidemiological studies for very low fat food systems. We do have some interventional studies, for example, Kempner Diet was very low fat. Personally, I'm convinced that Dr Peter Rogers is saying something meaningful, and that a very low fat system (with target fat percentage of 5%) is sensible. Over time, I'll strive to follow it.

OILS: No raw vegan in the summit uses oils. None. Why? See articles in this section: No Oils!

BLOOD SUGAR SPIKES: None of them report any. In fact, 2-3 of them actually measured themselves with CGM to see how their blood sugar levels respond to eating so many fruits daily.

WHOLE GRAINS & BEANS: Only in sprouted forms. Beans were more popular than whole grains, especially sprouted mung beans. But not everybody consumes whole grains & beans.

GREEN POWDERS: Green powders like barley grass powder, wheatgrass powder, chlorella and moringa leaf powder are helpful for their micronutrients (modern soils are less nutrition rich than soils from a hundred years ago: see this article by Dr Nathan Bryan). And maybe include small quantities of Brazil nuts for selenium.

JUICES: Some raw vegans have introduced juices into their daily meals. These juices are similar to green powders in the sense that they provide micronutrients without making us feel full.

SALAD SIZE: This may be surprising: every raw vegan ate a LARGE quantity of salad, typically as dinner. How much? A large bowl that would normally serve 4 people (maybe 6 if we dispense small-sized salads). And the salad had a LOT of leafy greens.

HOLISTIC APPROACH: Every participant emphasized that food wasn't the only protective factor; we really need to exercise, sleep properly and keep our mind calm. All of these put together are the formula for vibrant health. See Six Pillars of Lifestyle Medicine for some information.

On the whole, I must say that a raw vegan WFPB system is difficult to adopt; it needs a fair bit of nutrition knowledge and we don't have enough practitioners around to guide food plate composition keeping various macro- and micro-nutrients in mind. Dr Rick and Karin Dina have a principled approach and teach classes. Some raw vegans adopt a high fat approach (which was generally discouraged summit participants); some raw vegans don't emphasize leafy greens — these are very important. We have to watch out for such pitfalls by learning more about nutrition through coaches like Rick and Karin.

Cronometer: One day, I entered my food intake into Cronometer to verify that I was indeed getting all macro- and micro-nutrients. Yes! And I did discover that I probably wasn't getting enough selenium — but some of that would come from green powders (barley grass powder, wheatgrass powder, chlorella) which Cronometer doesn't let us enter.

NDS (New Diet System): I'm now able to grasp how the NDS System in India (New Diet System), a raw vegan food system, may be made to work: which food groups are important, how to compose food plates, and so on.

Brenda Davis (WFPB nutritionist) has a book and presentations on raw vegan food systems: Raw Food Diets: Myths & Realities (64 mins, 2018) and Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets (352 pages, 2010) — these can indeed be made to work if we understand nutrition guidelines well.