This post's title promises easy weight loss from a raw diet. The NHS calls a food processed if it has been changed in some way when it's made or prepared, and says most foods we eat are processed in some way. A raw diet cuts out one kind of change, which is cooking. Whether eating less processed food makes a difference has been tested in a hospital ward by researchers at the US National Institutes of Health.
Twenty adults, two kinds of menu
Hall and colleagues published the trial in Cell Metabolism in 2019 (PubMed 31105044). They admitted 20 adults with stable weight to the NIH Clinical Center. Each person spent two weeks on an ultra-processed diet and two weeks on an unprocessed diet, one straight after the other, with the order decided at random.
The three daily meals were designed to be matched on what was put in front of people: calories, energy density, sugar, salt, fibre and the balance of fat, carbohydrate and protein. Then everyone was told to eat as much or as little as they liked.
What happened on each diet
On the ultra-processed menu, people ate about 508 kcal a day more. The extra came from carbohydrate and fat, not protein. They gained 0.9kg in those two weeks. On the unprocessed menu they lost 0.9kg. Weight change tracked energy intake closely.
Processing was the difference the trial was built around. In the paper's own table, ultra-processed foods made up 81.3% of the calories on one diet and none on the other, where unprocessed foods supplied 88.1%. People rated the two sets of meals about the same for pleasantness and familiarity.
One more finding from the full paper is worth knowing. People ate faster on the ultra-processed menu, by about 17 kcal a minute. The authors suggest, as a possibility, that softer food that was easier to chew and swallow may have sped up eating and delayed the feeling of fullness. Their conclusion is careful too: limiting ultra-processed foods "may be" an effective strategy. Each diet lasted two weeks, and there were 20 people.
Where raw food fits in
The trial compared processed with unprocessed food, not raw with cooked, so it can't show that raw beats cooked. What it supports is the less exciting half of the raw-diet pitch: eat less of the heavily processed stuff.
The NHS describes ultra-processed foods as ones that often contain ingredients you would not usually have at home, such as preservatives, sweeteners and emulsifiers. Its examples include sweetened drinks, crisps, packaged cakes and biscuits, ice cream, and sweets and chocolate. It also says not all processed food is unhealthy, and that wholemeal sliced bread, higher fibre breakfast cereals and baked beans can be part of a healthy diet. So the useful target is the snack-and-sweets end of the shelf, not every food that has been cooked.
Dates on a less processed plate
The older version of this post described a raw chocolate cake held together by Medjool dates. Dates are a concentrated food. USDA FoodData Central lists 100g of Medjool at 277 kcal, with 66.5g of total sugars and 6.7g of fibre. Deglet Noor is similar at 282 kcal and 63.4g of total sugars per 100g.
The NHS counts a 30g portion of dried fruit, and it names dates, as 1 of your 5 A Day. It adds that dried fruit should be eaten at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth. In practice that means a few dates with breakfast or after lunch in place of a packaged biscuit, rather than handfuls through the afternoon.
The calorie side never goes away
The NHS puts it plainly: you're likely to lose weight if you eat and drink fewer calories than you use. The Hall trial fits that. On the unprocessed menu people ate less and lost weight, even though they were free to eat as much as they liked. A raw cake bound with dates still carries 277 kcal for every 100g of Medjool that goes into it.
The older post also suggested nuts as a filling savoury snack. The page it pointed to is still linked here for anyone who wants to find more information on it.
Buying dates in Malaysia
Kurma Nabi's about us page mentions prices for both retail and wholesale buyers, delivery across Malaysia and customer service on WhatsApp. The contact form is not available at the moment, so the contact us page gives the WhatsApp number to use for a quote.
This article is general information, not personal advice. If you plan a big change to the way you eat, speak to your GP or a dietitian first.