RAW VEGAN FOOD - AN ALTERNATIVE TO

TRADITIONAL FOOD

Adina SCHNAIDER - Professor, coala

Superioar Comercial ,,Nicolae Kretzulescu,
Bucureti, adinaschnaider@yahoo.com
Abstract: Different studies have revealed that raw vegan
food is an alternative against cancer as it detoxifies the
body and brings a lot of minerals, fibres and proteins to
our body. The benefits of this diet are diverse and that is
why it becomes more and more popular all over the
world. A case study made on 50 people in Bucharest to
evaluate if the raw vegan food can be adopted in public
food service establishments in Bucharest reveals that
there is an increasing interest for such a diet, despite
there are not so many raw vegan restaurants, and
surprisingly, the persons most interested are not those
eating healthy, but those who do the opposite.
Key-words: raw food, vegan food, live food, public food
service establishments, Bucharest
JEL Classification: I11-Analysis of health care
markets
INTRODUCTION
Over the years, there have been some mysteries in
the medical world that made many researchers think in a
different way: both the doctors and medical staff who
have not vaccinated their children, even if they have
passed all the medical records in this world and
interesting, doctors who refused chemotherapy against
cancer, both for themselves and for their family and
certainly had their reasons. One reason is that
chemotherapy has low results, while having a healthy
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diet, like vegane or raw food and detoxifying, our body
can defeat cancer.
Vegan food without fire began to develop in
Romania about two years ago and today becomes more
used. Without promoting extremism or use of 100% raw
vegan diet, Ligia Pop says that "live food" would be a
large proportion of the diet of man, whether it sprouted
grains, green leafy vegetables and fruits or just prepared
special recipes.
Raw food is very filling, because of the use of
large quantities of sprouted grains, root vegetables and
different kinds of nuts soaked not fat, but they are very
nutritious. It seems that vegetarians are associated with
concern for healthy living, although it seems not a sine
qua non.
Live food is simply a diet based on unprocessed
food without being cooked by fire, and often organic (or
at least traditionally grown). Raw vegetables, fresh or
dried fruit, nuts, seeds (roasted and unsalted) germs in
pure grain, eggs, fish, even meat to some extent, all these
are part of herbal nutrition and not containing
conservants or additives, not chemically processed or
obtained by other methods than traditional textbooks.
So far, "Raw food" is a diet and lifestyle rather
they consume mostly raw vegetable, alone or in various
mixtures. The fundamental difference between raw vegan
diet and other diets is that, generally, it is not followed
only in order to lose weight, but primarily for its
extraordinary benefits it can bring to health.
Clearly, after 90s, this diet gained new adherents,
even if just to mention a niche in training. For its
caregivers, healthy life consists of eating correctly, closed

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to nature and philosophy, in the same tone. The
movement "raw food" (live food) is not an invention of
the 21st century, the most famous adept being the Swiss
physician - Maximilian Bircher-Benner who put into
question the treatment of raw food and set up a clinic in
1897 in Zurich, in order to treat patients suffering from
various diseases through healthy food, cooked without
fire. His name is retained in history as the inventor of
"muesli" The 80s basically meant developing this type of
diet.
'Fast food' movement is related to the last
century and unfortunately, it is responsible for many of
the health problems of the world population. In the
United States, the "raw food" movement extended much
faster because it has been promoted by various public
representatives - actors, actresses or artists. As the mass
tendency is to follow the example of a public person, it is
obvious why many Americans started eating healthy and
cooking without fire.

CASE STUDY: CULINARY TENDENCIES OF A

POPULATION SAMPLE IN BUCHAREST AND
THE RAW VEGAN FOOD ADOPTION IN
PUBLIC FOOD SERVICE ESTABLISHMENTS
short questionnaire was developed and applied to a
number of 50 people in Bucharest.

QUESTIONNAIRE
1. Do you consider that you have a healthy diet?
a) Yes; b) No
2.What do you think about the statement: "A day without
a salad is a bad day"?

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a) agree; b) disagree; c) whether
3. Used to thermally unprocessed food consumed?
a) Yes; b) No
4. What do you think about the "raw vegan" - raw foods,
unprocessed heat [or less thermal process] E-free?
a) I love; b) I do not like; c) I do not care
5.Have you ever used the catering service?
a) Yes; b) No
6.Have you ever ordered raw vegan catering menu?
a) Yes; b) No
7.Do you use eating at the restaurant?
a) Yes; b) No
(If the answer is No, answer the questions number. 12.,
13., 14.)
8.How often do you have a meal at the restaurant?
a) 1 at least once a week; b) 1 time per month; c) 1 every
few months; d) 1 every year
9. What do you usually have at the restaurant?
a) Breakfast; b) Lunch; c) Dinner
10. Are you satisfied with the raw vegan menu offer of
the restaurants?
a) pleased; b) satisfied; c) dissatisfied
11. Have been at least a vegetarian, vegan or raw
restaurant?
a) Yes; b) No
12. Which is your work field?
a) Education; b) Health; c) Other [indicate
the] .........................
13. What age group do you belong?
a) 20 - 30 years; b) 30 - 40 years; c) 40 - 50 years
14. Your gender is:
a) Female; b) Male.

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What were the goals of this questionnaire? Self-
evaluation of food-type:
1. Confirming or cancelling the reply to question 1.
(Truth interviewee)
2. Confirming or infirming 1 and 2, but also introduce the
character in issue.
3. Interest in raw vegan and disclosure vegan raw
definition.
4. Studying the interest in this type of service.
5. And if catering is prepared for this type of food, or it
should be encouraged by us, by this research.
6. How many percent are using public food service
establisments?
7. What is the frequency of application of this type of
food in public food service establishments?
8. Which meals are often served in public food service
establisments?
9. To what extent the consumer is satisfied by this type of
food in public food service establisments?
10. Checking the consumer knowledge about this type of
raw/vegetarian or vegan restaurants and beyond
11. 13. 14 Which category of customers are deeply
interested in this type of food?
Analyzing and gathering information from the
questionnaires, there has been found out that of the 50
people surveyed, 52% were females and 48% males.
From the percentage of 52%: 28% are women within the
age group of 30-40 years old, 16% are in the age group
of 20-30 years old and 8% are in the 40-50 years
category, and from the percentage of 48% represented by
males, 26% are in the age group of 30-40 years old, 26%

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are in the 20-30 years old group and 10% are over 40
years.
Concerning the type of work, education and
health are in equal parts - 17 of the total of 50,
representing 34%, the remaining 16% being owned by
banking - 50%, 31% by IT and 19% by mass-media
(advertising). Of the 26 female persons, 10 are working
in education, 9 in health, 5 in banking and in advertising.
Of the 24 male persons, 7 are providing educational
activities, 8 work in health field, 3 in banking, 5 in IT
and 1 boy in the advertising field.
It is very obvious that all the persons in the
private sector [IT and advertising] are used to serving
meals at the restaurants. Of the 17 people who work in
education, 10 persons do not go to a restaurant not even
once a year, 2 go once a year, 5 usually have dinner at the
restaurant once a month.
In Figure 1, one can see the diversity of
mealtime served in restaurants by persons between
20-30 years old. Females show their preference for
serving lunch and for all males, lunch comes first.
Discussing about the questionnaire, all people, without
exception, considered lunch as "Brunch", meaning that it
includes breakfast and lunch, which is, in most cases,
only one meal a day. Two of 9 girls have dinner out and
only one of 8 boys pay attention to this. This report
changes when it comes to dinner, only a girl serves
dinner, two boys reported that they prefer dinner.

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 Fig.1 The diversity of mealtime served in public
food service establisments for persons between 20-30
years old
Of the 14 females falling in the category 30-40
years old, 4 never go for any type of meal service,
service outside the home and of the 10 females who
attend this type of diet, 3 go at least once a week, 5 once
a month and 2 once a year. Of the 13 males, 3 did not use
public food service establishments for food, out of the 10,
in number equal to the females go to the restaurant once a
month, and only 2 at least once a week, while 3 use these
services once a year. Among the preferences of this age
category, the majority is held by dinner, followed by
breakfast for females. However, males are
overrepresented in terms of dinner, and females with
regard to breakfast. As a percentage, lunch is uniformly
considered as interest for both females and males.

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Regarding the senior category, this is the case: of the 4
women and 5 men with this age, one from each meal
served at the restaurant, both with a frequency of once a
month, except that lunch is preferred by females and
dinner by males (Figure 2).

Fig.2 - Meal frequency in public food service

establisments for persons between 30-40 years old
Analyzing the females by age group, it is a clear
difference between them, pointing out that ladies between
40-50 years prefer cooking at home. Ladies between 30-
40 years prefer to dine by catering units, arguing that
they get socialized. It is noted that 20 years females
category, same as those of 30 years, do not use this
service for a period of several months, often go at least
once a month at the restaurant, while the elderly, when
they decide, they do it every few months. Surely, this is
where financial power interferes, considering that it

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would be more expensive using these services than home
preparation, but here it is also the tradition that seniors
love to sit at the table with their family.
Like the females, most of the males of 40-50
years old do not serve meals in public food service
establishments, while the younger, often use these
services, highlighting the frequency of once a month, of
the males in the category of 30 years old.
It appears that of the 33 people who believe they
have a healthy diet, 27 are in agreement with the phrase
"A day without salad is a bad day", which establishes that
they have an idea about healthy eating.
Of the 33 individuals who believe they have a
healthy diet, only 13 are used to consume unprocessed
heated food, while 20 do not conceive it. Of the 17 who
dont think they have a healthy diet, 8 consume heated
unprocessed food and 9 no.

CONCLUSIONS
Raw vegan menu - living food, unprocessed
heated food [or less thermally processed] - E-free, is well
understood by everyone, only that of the persons who
consider themselves to eat healthy, more than half are
against it or uninterested on such food. More balanced is
the group of those persons who do not have a healthy
diet. It is surprising that among those who believe they
feed themselves correctly, there were responses of
indifference to this issue. Coincidence or not, the
statistics regarding the use of the catering service is
identical to assessing healthy eating or not, meaning 33
persons used catering service, while 17 did not.

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 Of those who serve breakfast at restaurant more
than once a week, 2 are satisfied with the raw vegan
offer of the restaurants they attend. Of those who serve
lunch more than once a week at the restaurant, no one is
happy with their vegan offer and of those who used to
serve dinner at the restaurant more often than once a
week, 2 are satisfied with the vegetarian offer.
15 of the all persons who attend restaurants have gone at
least once to raw vegan restaurant.
It can be concluded that, despite the reluctance of
the persons who are not fans of the raw vegan food,
every persons becomes, more or less, aware of the
benefits that this kind of food may have for the body and
to cure different diseases. Only that they need time and to
get more informed and taste more often the raw vegan
foodAnd more raw vegan food restaurants should be
opened and been advertised in Bucharest.

REFERENCES
1. Brown, L. Opiuni dificile. Confruntarea cu
perspectiva crizei alimentare, Editura Tehnic,
Bucureti, 1997.
2. Gonea, I., Alimentaia raional a omului, Editura
Didactic i Pedagogic, Bucureti, 1971.
3. PopescuD.V., Alimentaie, Editura ASE,
Bucureti, 2001.
http://www.naturalnews.com/036054_chemotherapy_physicians_t
oxicity.html
http://www.financiarul.ro/2012/06/09/75-dintre-doctori-refuza-
chimioterapia-pentru-ei-insisi/

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